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Sunsets over Asgard were one of his favorite things. He’d grown to love them as a child. Thor was a child of the land and of the sky. He was a child of the rolling hills and the early fog, the gold and the white stone, of the hot sun and the purple, orange, pink, blue, green skies at night. He was a child of the soft light that half lit faces in the dusk, when Sol was driving her chariot on, and Mani was just peeking over the still flat oceans to the East.
But as of late the sunsets had been come a monotony, a fact of life, nothing more. The sun came up and the sun when down. The moon when down and the moon came up. It was the cycle, the life and the circle, the beginning, end, middle and prologue. It just was. It was and it is and it always will be. Sunrise, sunset, sunup sundown.
There was no beauty in them, because how would there be beauty in the world when there was so much bad. There were beautiful woman, and beautiful flowers and trivial things, that would die and wither and all that would remain was the dark shadowy shell of the worlds, crusty broken bits, ugly without life in them. A golden throne, an empty cup, a field of barley, the sad song of a fiddle, with nothing left in them now that the life had gone out. Life would die and fade away to blue memories like smoke and old fabric. The sunsets would eventually fad from purple to blood red to black and there would be nothing left.
Asgardian nights were the worst for him, after the wars had ravished the young prince and the cold of new wars threatened his bones. Thor had thought he would be happy after it, after he’d won all the glory and all the praise, he would come home the victory and he would be happy/ He had been wrong. After the parties and the songs and the revelry had been done, Thor had felt alone and quite small in the quiet after his first turn in the wars, he had look at his bloodied hands and his golden skin and he had remembered blurred, distorted images of their faces. Had he murdered women and children, or was that a falsehood like his promised ease? The night had turned long and cold for him and he had hidden in the rich sheets of his bed, until he’d ripped the crimson to shreds in a fit of cold fear. Thor had gone to his brother then, and begged him to help with the fear marks, and Loki had nodded, exhausted and angry, but he still helped mend the sheets, with magic and with thread, until he fell asleep in front of the fire in Thor’s room. Thor didn’t sleep that night, nor any night after that, except for the evening he drank through, numbing the screaming in his head and the broken shards of bone under his nails.
He padded along through the cold hallways at night, wondering through the maze of the grand palace, his bare feet making no sound and no mark on the floors. The palace was large, too large most days, but he had traversed most of it on his nightly journeys, logging step after step until his knees were weak and his hands were swollen with lack of sleep. Then he would lay, face up in his bed, and stare at the ceiling, heart beating in his ears, the dreadful hum of his hammer pounding away in his skull, until the first lights of sunrise would peek through the blinds. Sunrise.
“Where do you walk hero?”
Thor turned, in his loose trousers and tunic, watching a figure emerge from the flickering light of the hall. “I walk nowhere,” Thor said, “And yet I see everything.” Heimdal grinned, white teeth like daggers in the dark as he approached.
“Everything my lord?” The gatekeeper asked. “You are too young to see everything.” Thor laughed as they began to walk again.
“I have seen enough, Heimdal.” Thor answered, as the other clasped his hands behind his back. “I have seen enough.”
“But not all.” Heimdal said, his boots echoing in the hall, against the noiseless sound of Thor soft feet. “I have seen all.” Thor sighed and shook his head.
“I cannot fathom how you can smile after all the things you have seen Heimdal.” Thor said. “They should write songs of bravery to you, not I.” Heimdal laughed, snorting, his golden eyes glinting.
“Bravery does not make me smile, hero.” The gatekeeper said, as they stopped at a great tall window, open to the night breeze and the glimmer of the ocean in the distance. Thor breathed deeply, smelling the rain on the horizon and the city below. They were high up in the palace, somewhere far above the throne room, looking on into the purple blackness of the night.
“Then what?” Thor asked finally. Heimdal stood, with his hands clasped behind his back. “What could bring you peace in a world such as this, a world with destiny and broken people, living and dying and fighting and leaving behind no more good than a pack of wild dogs? I am sick to death of fighting old men’s wars. I am sick of fighting even if the desistion is already decided as readily as the next sunset. I am sick of the circle, of the up and the down, the rise and fall, I am sick Heimdal. Sick.” Thor leaned toward the window seal, leaning bare forearms on the stone, breathing through his nose, as Heimdal stood like a golden statue in the cold breeze next to him. Thor could feel the prick of tears at his eyes, but he wiped them away and brought his face up, the wind biting his cheeks.
“Everything ends, Heimdal, everything ends.” Thor put his hands out, motioning with them quickly and openly, angrily. “Someday, an endless night will come and sweep away us all, like the dark and the sun, and the wolves will catch Sol and Mani and there will be no more sun and moon and it will end, like the soldiers I killed in the wars. They were just being, like me and like you, living and fighting and I killed them.”
“Do you think the night ugly then?” Heimdal asked. “A black pit of nothing?”
“Yes! Yes!” Thor shouted, turning to Heimdal with a desperate plea. “There is nothing in the darkness! There is black, the emptiness of space and the void of sound.”
“There are the stars.”
“What?”
“The stars.” Heimdal pointed, extending his arm out in the air, over the sleeping city, to the vastness of night before them. “The stars are there. In the night. Did your father ever tell you where the stars came from?”
“No.” Thor said, looking out as well, recognizing a beauty he’d never before. “No.”
“They are the souls of the dead,” The gatekeeper said. Thor snorted.
“Because that is not morbid at all.”
“It is not.” Heimdal told him. “They are the souls of the dead so that they are never forgotten. They are the memories and the love and life that they left behind when they died, tacked up forever in the darkness of night, burning on until the end of time and longer than.” Heimdal smiled. “I smile because I know my mother and father are there, and the fallen as well, reunited finally with their families. Even if a darkness comes to eat away the beauty, then there will be beauty still, burning on. Endless. No one can out burn the stars.”
Thor looked out at the sky again, remembering counting the stars as a child with his brothers. “Burning on? Forever?”
“Forever.” Heimdal put a firm hand on Thor’s shoulder and turned the boy back to the hall. “Come hero, we must get you to your chambers. A prince cannot survive on none but any sleep.” Thor nodded, yawning finally, his should slumping as he finally felt sleep begin to settle in his limbs, dragging them down.
He slept after that, and dreamt of starlight and black hair, after many more wars and battles, content with knowing the slain would live on, after the darkness and the end and the howling wind of the night. He found beauty in the world, in the sunset and the sunrise, in the moon and the clouds and the gold in the tile floors. He grinned again.
He slept and the sun would rise and set and he would go on.