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In the centre of the North, beneath the world tree Yggdrasil people now called Weirwood, under its third root, lay the hall of the Norns. Forgotten by humans in their desire to follow new and even newer gods, the three sisters still were bound to their duty to weave, measure and sever each person’s thread of life. Had the people of earth once, long ago, held them in the highest esteem, so were they now footnotes in the books of faith. Between the Seven, the Old Gods of the Forest, the Drowned God, and R’hllor, there seemed no place in people’s hearts or minds for them. Weird-Sisters they even called the three women rudely, butchering the true meaning of their name, in the rare moments they were mentioned. But Skuld, Urd and Verdandi still sat in their flooded cave-like hall and watched the world go by as they brought forth new threads, whose owners’ names they forgot the moment they were spun, and easily cut years later.
On a day of no particular importance, like a trillion times before, a shimmering window to the world opened, to see but not take part in the happenings it presented them with. The last one had just closed a few minutes ago. A woman had been about to be raped and then murdered in the process. They had left it to Urd, in her crone’s wisdom to handle deaths linked to bodily violation of this nature. The assault had been stopped, without discernable reason, though, and the woman’s thread stayed unharmed. Most humans escaped their fate once, but never a second time.
Skuld’s eyes, through the veil on her head, took the image the projection now showed them in. A man, filthy, apathetic and newly handless, was the focus. Skuld gazed at the severed hand, still oozing blood, swinging around his neck. Would it be infection? Blood loss? No, she thought, watching him stare into nothing while he ignored the woman – the same that had escaped rape, how curious – bound opposite him. Loss of his will to live, that would be his death sentence.
“Thread,” Skuld demanded, and her sisters complied with the practiced ease of a thousand years of repetition. The thread they brought her was a pitiful thing. Frayed at the edges, worn thin in the middle, some split ends already escaping to show it was ready to snap any second even without their interference.
“Are you so craven? Live. Live, and fight, and take revenge.”
Skuld barely inclined her head to the opaque shimmering images before her. A few words by this woman, whoever she was, were not going to change anything. Humans.
However, when she heard Verdandi gasp, she left the thread untouched, for the man had taken up a piece of bread and bit into it with fire blazing in his eyes. Disgruntled, Skuld put the string aside. His time would come. Just on another day.
XXX
“Thread,” Skuld pointed at the according one. She knew they would see the woman again. Everyone’s time came at some point and this one had already danced on the edge. Verdandi spanned the string between her hands and pulled it taut for Skuld to cut through.
As the maid fell to the ground, her stained and slashed pink skirts fanned out around her like a pool of crusted blood, and the bear roared at her, Skuld readied the shears. But the moment the scissors’ rusted ridges closed in on the thread, a body thumped to the ground next to the woman. Thinking on her feet, Skuld bellowed, “Bring me the other one too. Hurry!” First he would die, then, when no further help was coming and he was still, it would be the woman’s turn. Two birds that once escaped them, killed with one stone.
Before her sisters had even found the man’s twine again, the female victim had already been heaved out of the pit. Grabbing with both hands after the man’s life thread she had espied, so not to lose two opportunities that shouldn’t even exist in the first place, Skuld was already slashing down the scissors when her sisters whispered her name. She stopped the movement of her hand, millimeters before they touched the string. She pressed her eyes closed, her lips shut, and prayed it was not as it seemed. Sighing, she turned her head to the shimmering portal. The woman had pulled him out in the last second.
With affected slowness Skuld lay the scissors down.
XXX
He had to, he just had to. Skuld warily inclined her head to indicate to the other two Norns that she needed the right thread, the woman’s this time. She was in a boat, not far enough away from the castle of Riverrun to not be in danger anymore if someone saw her leave. And someone did. Him.
Two times each of them had evaded her, something that had never happened before, but now it was the woman’s life on the line, and the words they had spoken before had been clear. Should they meet again on the battlefield, they would be enemies. The woman’s plan had failed and now they were again on different sides. He had to raise the alarm.
Skuld knew it wasn’t part of the protocol to follow living ones’ paths until their end landed in her hands, but she wasn’t used to failure, so she had steered the window, once or twice, to look on these two humans.
With bated breath, she watched as the man raised his hand. Surely to finally raise the alarm.
Her hand shook on the scissors as he waved to the woman, his gaze forlorn.
Slamming the thread to the ground, with no care for its wellbeing, Skuld stared at the moving pictures. This was ridiculous, and not even possible. They were a nuisance like she had never witnessed before.
XXX
This was it. The day at least one of them would be dying. He was charging a dragon. And she was not in sight. Skuld opened a second window to make sure the woman was in another part of the world, and not riding to his aid.
The flames grew closer to him, and the Norn’s grin grew to horrific proportions. Her sisters hovered a few feet away, glancing at her with barely concealed worry.
All she could see now on the shimmery surface was fire.
Then there was suddenly the sound of a splash. When the projection settled on him again, he was on the shore, another man lying beside him.
“No!” Skuld’s scream shook the cave walls. “She wasn’t even there! Who is that?!” She whirled around, hurrying to the other two, a crazed twinkle in her eye. “You saw that, right?”
Verdandi slowly approached her, her deceivingly young looking face pained, her hands spread in front of her body. “Yes, we did.” She carefully touched Skuld’s shoulder and softened her words. “Sister, it just wasn’t his destiny to die today. We cut them when there’s no other way, no more, no less.”
But Skuld grabbed the shears and smashed them, closed, into the wood beside the thread, which was lying innocently on the table.
On her way out of the hall she heard the man’s voice echo, “I refuse to die anywhere else than in the arms of the woman I love,” in the tones of a drowning man gasping for air. She wasn’t even sure if he had spoken these words aloud.
Skuld just walked away.
XXX
When the winds blew heavier and the window’s surface shone in white, almost from one end to the other, Skuld rested exhausted on her back in the corner of the hall, her head cushioned on Verdandi’s lap, Urd carding gnarled fingers through her sister’s hair.
The Wights and White Walkers had overrun the land. The scene the Norns saw was the longest they ever had to endure. Pictures of the final battle, dead upon dead lying in the snow.
Thousands of snapped threads littered the ground beside the sisters.
Jaime Lannister’s face took over the image, streams of frozen blood on his cheeks, the Night King reflecting in his eyes as he drew his sword to slash the human in half.
There was no point in picking up the shears.
With a scream, a flaming sword buried itself in the undead king’s gut and disintegrated him into mush, melting on the rapidly thawing ground. Brienne of Tarth fell into Jaime’s arms, burrowing into his embrace while she kneeled in the remains of the evil king.
Resigned and numb, Skuld watched, grabbing the hands of her sisters in hers.
They didn’t waste one look at the two undamaged threads in the other corner of the room.
If they had, they would have seen them turning golden.