He was forged in Fire.
"Go-on," Ilsabata urged her son. Brenin shook his head defiantly. Ilsa could not help but admire his backbone. "I won't leave you alone with him. He will not be pleased that we have elected to move so far from the village. He forbade us to move out to Gayde's hut."
Brenin looked at his mother anxiously. The idea to move and thumb his nose at his father's brutish ways had been equally appealing to him. Brenin had happily agreed to aid his mother in the removal of their things from the spacious hut that Hrolf had had built for them, into the smaller, much dingier hut that Gayde, had willed his mother upon her death seven months ago. Gayde had been a tiny, wrinkled, fiesty git, but she'd been like a grandmother and he'd understood the sadness that had overtaken his mother. He'd thought moving into Gayde's home, closer to her, would make his mother happy.
She didn't look happy.
She looked... worn. After Gayde's death, Ilsabata had mourned deeply but she seemed to come back to herself after a fortnight. But the past month she'd been... waning seemed to be the only word for it. His mother had great beauty: Hip length jet locks of hair that shined from continued brushing, large violet eyes in a small, round face, the confidant sway of her hips and her slight figure had turned more than one Norseman's head in the village. The hungry looks the men oft times gave his mother made Brenin ever thankful that Hrolf had made it clear that no-one was to touch her in and out of his presence. And if a man had to lose a hand once in a while to learn that lesson, Brenin felt it only what he was due for his lechery.
But those men wouldn't look twice at her, now. Her once glorious hair hung in clumps down her back, she hadn't brushed it in weeks. Those intense violet eyes that had caused his mother so much trouble in her youth were sunken and shrouded with black circles. Her shoulders hunched as if she suddenly found herself with too much to carry. Her golden skin was pallid and her face was worried,... or pained. He couldn't distinguish. She was withdrawn, quiet, forgetful. His mother who had ever been full of spirit seemed to be fading away.
Brenin blamed his father.
"Mother..." Brenin hesitated, kneeling at her feet, "I am afraid for you. Are you ill?" His mother nervously worked the edge of her shawl. She looked out the window for a moment, calming her fingers. He would not leave her if he worried. Ilsabata looked at her son.
What a beautiful, beautiful boy. He looked much like herself, she thought with no small amount of pride. He had thick black waves of hair that fell in an unruly fashion into deep violet eyes. His hair just touched shoulders that at 12 were beginning to show signs of being quite broad and strong. He stood tall and straight,( he got his height from his father), and stared at her with an anxious look on his face. She sighed. Life had not been easy for him. She was afraid it would soon become much harder.
Ilsabata put her hand on his. “I am fine. I have felt a bit under the weather, but I am feeling much stronger, now. You know I took Gayde’s passing very hard. I have just been mourning.”
She patted her son’s hand and said with a much stronger voice than she had used in weeks. “Go. Enjoy your time, for you will not have much longer to be a boy. Tomorrow you will have to be a man.”
