Work Text:
Dreams did not come to Brida since she became heavy with child. There were not many chances to sleep, let alone dream nor dwell on what those dreams could have been—not with the snake Æthelwold slithering and alive, not when Danelaw lost the Battle of the Holme, not in captivity under the bastards of Wealas after Tettenhall, and especially not within the walls of Winchester, with the traitor Uhtred at its gates.
It did not matter. When Vibeke came, Brida had something more concrete. Someone. Someone who would never betray nor abandon her. Someone hers and hers alone.
Brida did not possess the sight Vibeke possessed, yet what she could see when she looked at her child were no mere fabrications of her mind. Vibeke would grow up to become a seer more powerful than a child soothsayer, more formidable than war seers the likes of Storri and Skade. Vibeke would walk blindfolded among the people of the gods to select a chosen one, guided only by those that dwell between life and death, of Freyja herself.
The images brought back hope burning inside Brida—that the völva Vibeke would come down from her high seat, stand tall before her, and finally touch her hand, and upon Brida would be bestowed a sense of purpose and means to a meaningful end.
Vibeke was born a Dane on Danish soil, a descendant of warriors feasting in the halls of Valhalla. Once she departs in her old age, upon fulfilling the will of the gods, she would join her forefathers at the long table where Odin sits and rules, or dine with Freyja and the battle-fallen whom the Lady herself chose, in the field of Fólkvangr.
That was how it should have been.
Yet all Vibeke came down from was a crumbling roof in Eoferwic, meeting her premature demise in the old Roman city where young Brida the Saxon died all those years ago.
Brida was born a Saxon to the Christian faith. Throughout her years she paid for the birth and life she did not choose, for a faith she barely knew and remembered. By blood. Of Saxons and Danes and Britons and Welsh and Saxons and Saxons and Saxons. Of the children she felt inside her spring to life and die shortly after. She paid for more than her share, for more than what was asked, believing and fooling herself that she could also belong in the halls of Valhalla. But all that awaited her had always been a void, a limbo no different from the land the Saxon King Alfred liked to dream of becoming one England.
Dreams did not come to Brida until her arms were heavy with the body of her child. In the darkness of her slumber, she could see but could not reach the cold and damp halls of Hel where a little girl was lost and helpless without a mother to give her warmth and protect her, without a mother able to follow her into the depths of the realm of the dead. Between the echoing sobs, she could hear Vibeke, her small voice faint and trembling.
Mother, why did you leave me your fate?