Ragnar was not in the mood to be festive, yet the Gods demanded that he be. Yet, and not for the first time in his life, Ragnar contemplated being defiant of their wishes, which was about as worse as the time he screamed at Odinn for taking Dagmar and his children's lives before they had came from her womb. Being angry at the Gods was not something that Ragnar openly practiced, or enjoyed being but there were some instances when it had to be ridiculous. Why should he praise them? When all they do — all they would ever do — was give with one hand but take away with the other. Julooke and Verrine were dead. Gyda was missing, Mercury had left to try to find her and Nerian had left without so much as a goodbye. Ragnar wasn't really seeing in which the Gods had given him. These days, the Lodbrok couldn't help but feel that all they did was take from him. And what did they give him in compensation? What had they given him that equaled the unbridled pain of all of that happening at more or less the same time. Nothing. They had given Ragnar nothing, and to say that he was irritated with them was an understatement of the year. He was furious, and he needed to have a nice, long chat with the All-Father and soon; because Ragnar wasn't sure how much more he could take. Again and again he worked tirelessly to prove himself to Odinn, and again and again Odinn tested every single limit of Ragnar's being Repetitive. Unending. Was it too selfish to ask for ease? For a full, happy pack? Or was the blame, instead, to be placed upon Ragnar's own head? Was this — all of it — his fault.
Ragnar kept taking the obstacles as they came, kept surviving in the hopes that someday soon he would appease his Gods and that they would grant him something from all that they had taken from him. Ragnar had little ones to take care of once more, he had a pack to continue to lead, and lives to account for. Giving up, was not only decidedly not in the Northman's nature, but it was also not in the book. This, all of it, was just another bump in the road and like all things, it would pass. Life would resume and the activity of the Bay wolves would pick up and everything would be fine. Ragnar had to convince himself of that in order to convince his subordinates of it. Lesser men would break, but Ragnar had never seen himself as a lesser man, and at the end of the day: he'd endured worse before.
When Thistle's call had risen into the air, he set aside his irritation and his stormy mood as much as he was physically capable of doing in favor of not ruining the festival. The greed of the God's (perhaps it was Loki playing a nasty trick on him all along?) was not enough to shake his faith, nor dissolve his loyalty to them. In honor of the festivities Ragnar had painted his fur in the blood of a sacrifice to Odinn, mixing some of his own blood into the platinum hairs of his coat, enlisting the help of Thistle to twine raven feathers into the en-longed fur at the nape of his neck. The scarred Scandinavian cut an gruesome figure, painted in blood and decorated with raven feathers, but it was in honor of the All-Father (never mind Ragnar's disagreements with him at the moment). He was not the second to arrive, showing up after Gunnar, Krikor, Onyx and Ranger, yet that did not give him any hesitation as he strode to his Queen Wife's side, pausing to give her a playful nip to her cheek, before he took a seat beside his son, offering the boy a playful bump to the shoulder.