in my dreams we are always together

Watching Thistle go full term with their children, knowing that within her womb the babes were alive and growing was, to the Viking, a beautiful thing. They were alive - if they were not her body would have aborted them by now; and they would be alive when they were born. While it was a wondrous thing, a knowledge that he cherished, it also made him inherently glad that he had been born a man. He could not imagine what it was like having life growing inside you and then to go through the pains of labor and child birth to have them. Perhaps he couldn’t fathom it, or understand it even because he wasn’t a female. “Our opinions are different on that,” Ragnar spoke teasingly, with a forlorn smile. “You would have laughed watching him. I almost did.” It hadn’t really been important because Tyr could have remained a captive with no memory. Ragnar hadn’t needed to adopt the boy, Floki too all but, but the two Vikings had; and it had been fun besides the fact that it had felt good to take something precious from the Amazon Queen. “If he wants to be, he will be, but sometimes our paths are fated to run together for only a short time.” It was a sad logic but true, nevertheless.