Deviation Actions
Literature Text
“Who will be the Godparents?” Mary asked, curious.
Linda shrugged, leaning back on her chair.
“To be honest, neither Max nor I have any idea of whom to choose as Godfather. For Godmother, we have my best friend Carol, but for Godfather…” She snorted. "We don’t have any good candidate. Maybe we won’t choose anyone.”
“He can’t not have a Godfather!” Mary exclaimed, trying not to shout on the office. “He needs a Godfather, he’s the one who gives you presents and looks after you if your father is not there.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Linda snorted again. “We don’t know anyone who’s suitable for the place. Max has no friends to whom he would want to trust the child.”
“But he needs a Godfather.”
“I know, you just told me! But no one is suitable. Okay, we’ll name Loki as Erik’s Godfather. He can’t be worse than Max’s friends.”
“Ha, ha,” Mary rolled her eyes. “You can’t name a fictional pagan god as your son’s Godfather.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t give you something more coherent than that. Loki will be the Godfather. At least my son will be able to say that someone’s his Godfather, even if that someone doesn’t exist.”
“I’ll find someone,” Mary stated. “The boy needs a real Godfather.”
Linda smiled, rolling her eyes.
“My Godfather died when I was very young, and I haven’t really felt his absence in my life. Not having a Godfather is not the end of the world.”
“Poor child, such a mother…”
Then she laughed, followed by Linda’s laugh, and she finally went away to her office’s desk.
***
The child cried and cried. Max had the night shift on the hospital and wasn’t home. Linda tried to hurry things up in the shower, but she wasn’t done washing her hair yet. The baby had to wait five minutes until she could get out of the shower, get dry and put some clothes on. They had just arrived from the hospital that same day, and she had had the brilliant idea of taking a shower. Little Erik cried and cried and cried at the top of his lungs. He was hungry. Or his diapers needed to be changed. Or he just didn’t want to be alone.
Oh, why had she decided to take a shower in the first place? The woman sighed, sluicing her hair out as fast as she could. She turned off the tap, got out of the shower and took her towel.
Before she finished wrapping the towel around her body, the baby fell silent. All of a sudden, he stopped crying. Linda frowned, tilting her head to listen. Silence. And then a soft and deep masculine voice.
“Max?” She asked, opening the bathroom’s door and peeking into the corridor.
Max didn’t reply. A man’s voice came out of the baby’s bedroom, and the man was singing.
That was not Max’s voice, and Max didn’t sing.
Wrapping firmly the towel around her body, Linda grabbed the first thing she could find: a metal shovel that was next to the trash can. With fast and silent steps, she run towards Erik’s bedroom and stopped when she reached the open door.
A man was sitting on the floor, with his legs half bent to give support to the baby sitting on his abdomen. The stranger was young and handsome, and his red hair had a Viking style. He was dressed with clothes as odd as him, it looked like a Viking costume in keeping with his hair.
Erik was lying back on his legs, eyes wide open, fascinated by what the man was doing. Apart from singing something in a language that sounded like German but less harsh, the stranger made his fingers dance to the rhythm of his voice.
But that was not what had left Lisa petrified.
What had left her speechless was that, between the man’s fingers, fire blazes danced. They formed shapes and disappeared, fast and restless, following the stranger’s song. She thought she saw the shape of a crow and the silhouette of a man in the flames. The fire moved too fast and the figures weren’t defined, dying as fast as they were born.
The song was repetitive, with the same rhythm in every stanza. The crow and the man appeared many times between the fingers of the man, as if they were the main theme of the song.
The man finished a verse and left the note trembling in the air. The flames died on his hands. And then he turned his head and looked directly at Linda. A hidden light shone on his pupils, like he kept the fire inside him.
“Mine unnskyldninger for—“ He smiled broadly. His teeth were bright white and his fangs sharp as a wolf’s. He cleared his throat. “Right, in English. My apologies for appearing without letting you know. It wasn’t a great good manners display.”
Linda frowned.
“Who are you?”
The young man stood up with a single move, raising Erik on his arms.
“For real?” He rolled his eyes, opening a hand. A question mark made of fire appeared over his palm. He extinguished it closing his fist and answered, given that Linda didn’t understand. “The Godfather. You named me Godfather of the child. If you did it as a joke, well…” He shrugged and smiled again at her like he found it extremely amusing. “It makes no difference, I’m still his Godfather. Isn’t it like that, Erik?” He looked down at the baby and touched his little nose with his fingertip. “I will teach you great things,” he whispered.
The stranger… god? ...left the baby on the cradle and stood up straight. He pointed the corridor behind Linda with a finger.
“You left everything wet. You will have to dry the floor.”
Linda looked back instinctively. When she turned back again to the room, the god wasn’t there anymore, and all that was left was a smoke spiral on the air.
You can see the contest here:
fav.me/dc75ykt
Basically, two artist collaborate. One writes, the other does something related to visual arts (drawing, painting, photography, modeling, etc.) I participated last year as a writer, and my buddy was a photographer, Lunnika-Horo
The two deviations have to work together as a single great work. Last time, I wrote something based on a already made work of my buddy. This year, my partner is my real life sister LooneyDreamer and now I'm the one creating first, and she'll do something based on what I wrote.
The theme is "Hidden light", and I took it (as you will see when you read the story) as the fire hidden inside Loki's eyes and body. A power restrained by him inside his physical appearance.
Here is my sister's illustration for this story: fav.me/dce0z75
This story was based on a prompt I found on Internet, here:
i.pinimg.com/originals/1e/4b/7…
It says:
"For lack of better candidates, someone's parents jokingly named the Norse god Loki as the child's Godfather. He decides to take this seriously."
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If you are curious to know what song Loki was singing, it's in Norwegian and its name is "Kråkevisa".
Kråkevisa (The Crow Song), also known as Bonden og Kråka (The Farmer and the Crow) and Mannen han gjekk seg i vedaskog (The man went into the firewood forest), is a widespread Norwegian name for a folk song and jocular ballad spread over all of Scandinavia. There are different versions in Norway, which also uses other melodies. Kråkevisa was sometimes sung by two people as a duel song, where the loser was the one who forgot the verses, or was not able to come up with new verses. Variants are also known in Danish, Faroese, and Swedish. Although the song is counted to the Scandinavian medieval ballads, it is still widely well-known, often as a song for children.
Here's a version of Kråkevisa, more specifically the one that Loki was singing on this story:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHRBcf…
The lyrics in Norwegian are in the description of the video in YouTube. Someone made a translation to English in a comment on YouTube, but I will put it here for you as well. It's not something you would sing to a baby to calm him down, but well... we know Loki.
The Crow Song
A man went out in the wide forest,
hei fara, in the wide forest.
There he heard a crow croon from the hills.
Hei fara, falturil tural tura.
And the man he thought to himself,
hei fara, he thought to himself:
"I think that crow wants me dead."
Hei fara, falturil tural tura.
So the man turned his horse around,
hei fara, his horse around,
and went back to his homestead.
Hei fara, falturil tural tura.
And the man drew his bow by his knee,
hei fara, his bow by his knee,
and shot the crow so that it fell down.
Hei fara, falturil tural tura.
Then he fastened before it his horses ten,
hei fara, his horses ten,
but the crow was too much for all of them.
Hei fara, falturil tural tura.
Then he fastened before it his horses twelve,
hei fara, his horses twelve,
and so pulled the crow onto the barn floor.
Hei fara, falturil tural tura.
Then he flayed the crow and made of it glue,
hei fali og falaleia.
It weighed between eighteen and twenty weight-pounds.
From the hills it thunders, falaleia.
The meat he salted and put on barrels,
hei fali og falaleia.
And from the tongue he made yule-food.
From the hills it thunders, falaleia.
From the bowels he made twelve pairs of rope,
hei fali og falaleia.
And the claws he uses for dung-forks,
From the hills it thunders, falaleia.
And the beak he uses as church-boat,
hei fali og falaleia,
so that people could sail both there and back.
From the hills it thunders, falaleia.
From the eyes he made window glass,
hei fali og falaleia.
And the neck he placed on the church for decoration.
From the hills it thunders, falaleia.
And he who cannot make use of a crow like this,
hei fara, make use of like this,
he should not think to catch a crow such as this.
Hei fara, falturil tural tura.