Hideaway Strath Tell me your story, I'll remember it always

“I will tell you a secret, pikku karhu,” Lotte teased her youngest son. “Your mama was never small. She was always fat and round.” This couldn’t have been further from the truth — Lotte was the smallest of her siblings — but the way she imagined herself was a zaftig, rounded creature. When she wished it, she could slink like a hunting cat, but her soul, she was fairly certain, was this guy Santa Claus a fat, jolly singing thing. She grinned at him playfully. “I will tell you about your best uncle — my twin, Dagfinn. In the tundra, we say setä for uncle. Can you say that?” Lotte didn’t bother to ask Eirlys, knowing by now that the little girl would have nothing to give back to her. Still, she beamed down at her daughter.

It was enough that she lived.