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Terran-descended crops grow poorly, and we live on the very edge of survival."
        "What are you saying?" Bera says. The fear in her voice hooks your attention away from the pain and the whirling madness of the world.
        Ragnar shrugs. "What if we had left him where he lay? No one would have blamed us, leaving an outlaw to die at the teeth of trolls or snolfurs."
        "But you didn't leave him, did you?" Bera says. "When you brought him here, you made him your responsibility."
        "Aye," Ragnar says. "No good deed goes unpunished."
        "So what are you going to do now?" Bera says. "Take him back up into the hills? Murder him and toss his body into a geysir? Eat him, if we get hungry enough?"
        "Don't be silly, girl," Ragnar says. "Remember who you're talking to."
        "I know who I'm talking to, my lord," the girl says. You hear the wobble of fear in her voice, but she ploughs on. "A man who's sworn to uphold the law and customs our forefathers embraced. And now talks of leaving a sick man in the snow?"
        "I can remember who I am without needing your reminding." He leans into her face; you see her swallow, but she doesn't flinch. "I've worked long and hard to earn and keep my people's respect. I fought off three tribes of trolls at the Battle of Giri Pass. I've won the Silver Shield for my verse from the Althing, and been compared with the legendary Egil Skallagrimsson." He bangs the wooden pillar supporting the barn's roof as if he is one of the Viking warriors of Old Earth beating out his defiance on his shield. "What have you ever done, girly? Apart from open your legs the minute a man looks at you. Bringing shame on yourself and I, who was foolish enough to take you in! That'll teach me to think out loud in front of a chit of a girl who misunderstands the processes of thought! I know who I am, girly – remember who you are!"
        He stalks from the barn, leaving her shivering, but when she looks up at you, her eyes blaze with triumph. "The danger with myths and heroes, Loki, is that sometimes the myth starts to become more real to the heroes than the truth."

    When she leaves you alone for a little while, you taste the straw that is your bedding. It's almost inedible, but overwhelmed by hunger you force it down. When she returns and catches you, she scolds you. "I've bought you extra gruel," she adds. "It's all there is."
   You get most of it in your mouth, finishing it within seconds. You lick the plate clean with what the rational part of your mind flags with inappropriate haste (inappropriate to what?), then you nuzzle amongst the straw and lick it clean.
    "Oh, Loki." Bera gently touches your arm. "You have to start behaving more like a man, and less an animal, or Ragnar will have all the excuse he needs to get rid of you." You look up at her, drinking in her features. She says, "Do my looks repel even you, my child-man? Or do you not care? He didn't."
    Then, as if the food has awoken some animal from its slumbers, the world is again full of voices shouting mostly meaningless words:
     "Iceland had no fruit-bearing trees–"
     "Humanity has split into a myriad of factions–"
     "Isheimur's low gravity and inability to generate carbon dioxide through vulcanism render the colony sub-optimal, un likely to return the company's investment–"

    People behave as if you're a zoo exhibit. Like the tides the pain that accompanies the strangeness (and yes, the terrible beauty) recedes for a while, before sweeping in to the shoreline of your mind and you start gibbering again.
        One of the gawpers is a pregnant woman who nudges her friend, an older woman. "See? He's possessed: jabbering like he's got a head full of spirits. I reckon that he's a seidr."
        "Don't let our Gothi hear you talk like that," Bera says from the doorway. Even though part of your mind is still in the here-and-now and you're aware of your surroundings, you hadn't