Firestone Hot Springs each must die someday

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The winter storm does not relent and not for the first time Kjalarr is left to wonder if his sacrifice to Skaði — goddess of the winter — is enough. So he stalks another sacrifice. A young buck, with budding antlers still a child by it’s spots, bleating miserably for it’s mother lost in the snow and shivering. Kjalarr does not have to kill it but he: fierce and unforgiving is the last thing the frightened ungulate sees nevertheless. The Viking’s struggles as it attempts to flee and as a result the young one’s death is not swift nor painless. In a cruel way, this lessons Kjalarr's own pain, however briefly. The cold has seeped into his heart, as unkind and harsh as he was becoming. He sees it in the way he snuffs out the young ungulate's life and further by the acknowledgment that he is not bothered by it. The cold — the weather of his true home, of a home he is bred and built to endure and conquer — the grief of his daughters has made him just as frigid and harsh and he feels nothing as he lays the deer to the bloodstained snow. No sorrow. No guilt. Nothing. It was a sacrifice and that is all. It was food to appease the goddess so that she might spare him and his blood and she continues to reap her dead. “Hagl Skaði, gyðja vetur, gyðja veiði. Samþykkja þessu blóði, samþykkja þessa fórn sem þakklæti fyrir leiðsögn þína í gegnum sköpun og fyrir áframhaldandi leiðsögn og vernd í gegnum það.” Kjalarr murmured the prayer over the deer’s rapidly cooling body, it’s sinew already beginning to stiffen. He hovered over it a moment longer, swiping salmon pink tongue over his jowls to catch the droplets of blood but it’s stain remains upon the platinum silver of his muzzle.

Kjalarr turns his back to his offering, heading deeper into the hot springs so that he might draw from their warmth to offer respite from the bitter cold and to replenish his energy for the rest of the (short) journey back home to his waiting kingdom and his son where he no doubt where he left him: suckling at his mother’s breast.

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