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The thing about being timeless is that it distorts your perception of how time passes all around you. Years flutter by in a blink, and a difference of decades has the same effect as the passing of days to shorter-lived creatures. Frigga was not rightly sure how much time had passed since she’d last passed some hours in her beloved’s arms. It might not have been very long, but she could guess by the advantages the people of Midgard had made since her last visit that it had more than likely been at least a century. It wasn’t intentional, of course. She was the Queen of Asgard, wife to the Allfather, and mother of Thor and Loki, two of the most contentious boys she’d ever laid eyes upon. She couldn’t be expected to call as often as she might have preferred.
Their meeting place this time was a very different climate than the snowy northern lands where Frigga usually made her appearances. The very air in India is hot and heavy, the scent of spices clinging to her as she passes by open market stalls. Her hair is covered with a thin silk veil. The pattern is very different from the ones she sees all around her, but she flows through the crowds so smoothly that no one bats an eye. She passes through a curtain of energy at the mouth of an alley, disappearing from prying as she climbs the first step of a narrow staircase leading up to a rooftop.
The rooftop haven she stopped onto at the top of the stairs was enclosed by a shimmering dome of magic, the waves of energy casting sparkling shadows on the stone beneath her feet. Plants with enormous dark leaves lined the edges of the roof, the thick foliage an extra screen of privacy behind the magic’s concealing influence. Poles had been erected in a circle at the roof’s center, their tops draped in yards upon yards of fabric. To one side of the tent was a table laden with covered dishes, a pair of simple stone teacups that they’d brought to every one of their meetings for centuries taking a place of honor at the table’s center. Beneath the overhanging curtains was a mound of overstuffed cushions, their rich upholstery adorned at the corners with decorative tassels.
There, in the middle of the sumptuous cushions, lay Midgard’s Sorcerer Supreme. Her skin was pale, practically glowing against the brilliant jewel tones all around her, and she was bare except for the thick lines of blue woad curling about her hips. Though Frigga knew there was a mark at the back of the woman’s smooth skull she couldn’t see it for the way they were positioned. The goddess came to stand at the edge of the pile of cushions, ducking her head to slip beneath the gauzy fabrics hanging above them. She lowered the veil over her honey-colored curls first, letting it flutter to the stones. Then her hands moved to the ties on her dress, gently unwinding them from one another as she regarded the reason she’d walked among mortals once more.
“For largely immortal beings,” Frigga began as she let the silk dress fall from her shoulders to pool at her feet, “we are dreadfully inept at remembering to carve out a few moments for these little retreats.” She knelt on the nearest cushion and crawled up the length of the Ancient One’s body, settling herself in the other woman’s arms. “We never give this the proper amount of time.”
Her companion drew one slender hand up the length of Frigga’s breastbone—making her shiver at the sensation—and tapped two fingers against the flesh above her heart. She favored Asgard’s queen with a gentle smile as she leaned in for a kiss, her words ghosting between their lips. “Time is irrelevant when it comes to matters of the heart.”