Editing AfterRagnarok:The Mythic (section)

==Ylva #423 ==

"Your Valkyr brings me," Superior says. "Literally. She broke into my car while I was... asleep... and brought me here against my will. And now she's avoiding me, when I need to speak with her." Her gaze keeps drifting off you to the bottle by your hand, and she licks her lips unconsciously. 

"But perhaps..." She looks you in the eye then, and you get the impression that she's gathering her courage. "Perhaps your thread is woven in with hers. Perhaps you share more than a death." She hesitates. 
"Were... were you given a message?" she asks, her cracked old voice quavering ever so slightly.
"No message. There's... I saw..."

She shivers, suddenly unsure of how to speak of what she's seen. To describe her... vision, her experience, to a believer is different from telling her friends, her chosen family.

"Someone is still there. A god, or a giant. Blind and bent by sorrow, he seemed."

Her words come in short bursts.

"He seemed alone, but... like he was waiting."

She glances to Camo, then looks Mother Superior in the eye.

"They're not all dead. The world isn't over. There's still hope."
You see Superior go pale at your words. "Hope!?" she stares at you in utter dismay, then slumps against the bar, draining the drink you poured her and snatching the bottle to pour another. "Hope!" She laughs, and it's not a pleasant sound at all.

Camo's expression is comical, eyebrows raised all the way up as he regards the old woodswoman, and he glances at you as if to say what the hell?

"What do you hope for, tell me that? Prosperity? Peace?" She laughs sourly again, and knocks back the drink. Reaches for the bottle.
Ylva snatches the bottle away with well-honed reflexes, then pinches the fingers of her other hand and makes a gesture like striking a match - with her reserves tapped out she can't afford to let anyone drink for free.

"In this world? Nothing so grand. I hope to eat, drink, and fuck another year, and dream to die in a warm bed. Same as everyone."

She stands relaxed, facing Mother Superior squarely.

"But now I have hope for the world after this. It may not be all ice and shadows."

She shrugs, making a gesture that takes in the bar, the hall, the world.

"Maybe we can still get more than this."
Superior's lips purse sourly as you snatch the bottle away; she sweeps one finger round inside the empty glass, sticks the finger in her mouth, sucks the last few drops of booze from it. "Ain't none of going to die in bed," she says, in a voice dead and dull, as she turns back towards the door. "Ain't none of us gonna see the world after this."

She pauses in the doorway. "The gods ain't yet dead," she says, shaking her head. "And you reckon that's cause for hope." 

Her bitter, hopeless laugh hangs in the air long time after the door clacks shut behind her.