Chapter Two

  Janean sat with the sun on her back, the warmth spreading across her shoulders, listening to the Spotify playlist Songs of the Viking, waiting for her food to arrive. She adored Loki Laufeyson and Thor Odinson, still laughing about how they’d discovered each other. She jokingly and lovingly blamed Tom Hiddleston for bringing Loki into her life, his portrayal of the trickster god inspiring her to design a tattoo and get it, him encouraging her to be proud of her work. She was agnostic back then, her attitude causing her to dare Loki to prove he could affect her life, thereby proving he was real. After that, she felt his nudge to contact the Greek Underworld, recognizing that she felt like her life was Hell. Then again, back then, she’d been working in a call center as an empath in a department that had nothing but angry, entitled customers calling in with complaints. It was grueling and depressive work that was pushing her towards an early grave, and Loki had been worried. He hated the sound of her pain, knowing she just wanted to be free and decided to gamble without a risk, aside from losing her to the Greeks.

  Knowing her health was failing under the weight of the depression, he arranged for Persephone to take her life. Her gallbladder failed, landing her in the hospital getting emergency surgery. A few weeks later, sepsis due to the necrotic fluid from carrying around a dead organ in her body nearly finished the job when she was so depressed she couldn’t find the motivation to get out of bed. The last memory she had before she’d laid down in defeat, knowing something was wrong and that she was dying, had been to reach for the unknown man she’d seen as she did her best to figure out what her perfect partner was like as a person, crying as she apologized for not being strong enough to keep going. Seeing how sensitive she was, Loki had taken a gentle approach to training her to work with the spirits, following her intuition and feeling to work with them. Waking up, knowing she’d almost died, she headed the call to change her life for the better, starting with self-examination and evaluation, helping her recognize that, though he was a good guy, her second husband was holding her back from being able to live. He recognized that she’d been a good wife, doing her best to take care of him and find his strength, but he was refusing to do more than stop catering to fake friends that only used him for his kindness, generosity, and naivety.

  “He’s a good guy, sweetheart, but he’ll never be able to meet you halfway, he’s too afraid, even if he was in the military,” Loki said, settling into the chair beside her as she cried.

  “Sweetheart, don’t fit to him,” Persephone said. “We encouraged you to write your books to help you be free and take control of your life. But you need to let him go.”

  She’d cried then, and still cried when she thought of it, knowing it was co-dependence that had caused her to hold on for so long. She’d been a nomad during childhood and hadn’t had many friends that stayed in her life that were healthy for her, so the thought of losing him had been a hard blow, making her realize she was already on her own, even if she still lived with him and her parents. It was rough, but she’d found strength and comfort with Loki, a friend to keep her company and help her cope. The platonic love she felt from him helped her open us, allowing her to cry when she’d held it in for so long it sat like a spiked rock in her stomach, pretending like she was fine when she was so far from fine it was dangerous. She needed to make a change to save her own life, the constant reminder that suicide wasn’t an option, barring her from Valhalla and Elysium if she gave in to the depression. She hadn’t realized that part of it was missing her partner, even though she didn’t know who he was in the Physical World. She’d caught a glimpse of him when she was writing; sardonic, sarcastic, stoic, and mean, but he’d seemed to open up and start talking when they connected, and she’d been looking forward to meeting him ever since. She wasn’t sure what she needed to achieve for that to happen, but she was doing her best to figure it out and do so.

  “Hey,” Loki said, “you want to daydream about the future with me?” he asked, and Janean immediately started crying, she couldn’t help it. That man was always in her dreams of a happy life and she missed him. “Hey,” Loki said, putting his arms around her and offering the sleeve of his tunic, making her laugh as she sniffed and getting up to grab a box of tissues. “It’s ok, two-wing.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She knew she needed to let it out, even though she still wasn’t used to crying, letting out and then buttoning it up, drying her eyes and moving forward, not seeing the point in wasting time crying when she could be productive, falling back on old practices to get out of her head and make progress towards her goals. She needed to have a career with residual income coming in as soon as possible, but couldn’t rush the writing process, lest she end up with another lesson experience like her first book, publishing what was essentially a rough draft that she only kept to remember her partner. As it was, she needed to work on herself, honoring Loki, Thor, Persephone, and Hades by keeping her inner-child healthy, the Gods working across pantheon lines to help her succeed, honoring the strength of spirit and personality by letting her stay in touch with both pantheons and recognizing her as both a Daemon and a Valkyre.

  “If you had a physical body, I’d curl up in your lap and pass out,” she admitted.

  “You are so predictable,” he said. “Next, you’ll be asking how your partner is doing and dreading the worst. He’s fine, constantly touching his head because he shaved it and it’s growing out.”

  “I remember that” she said, remembering when she was in the hospital and had shaved her head after over dying it. “It’s always fuzzy, but the breeze is nice in the warmer months,” she said, twisting her own dark brown and blue hair up in a bun to get it off her neck.

  “Just remember, it’s your own fate to be aware of him, but it’s better if you follow the feeling to the worlds you create to speak to him, that way you don’t have to worry about spirits trying to make you speak out loud and getting confused,” he said. “It may have worked once before, but you saw the distress it could cause and didn’t want it cause issues for him, so I can’t guarantee what you did with Pan will work again. I’d much rather you work with me. He knows me and knows how to talk to me. I know Persephone wants you to work with Zagreus, but he confirmed he’d rather talk to me than have to learn a new guy.”

  “It’s still a good story, though,” she said. “And it could help others looking to recover and heal old inner-child wounds.”

  “I know,” he said, “and, I agree, for the transformation of the self it is a good way to honor the Greeks. But, I need you to stick with me for now. You still learned, recognized how the Law of Abundance gave you solid foundations for changing your inner dialogue and adopt a more optimistic mindset, catching and stopping the defeatist mentality you grew up with. And, yes, I know it got ugly when you were essentially fighting your own shadow. You were raised with the right tools, you just needed to overcome your mother’s victim mentality to be more positive. Fuck, October of 2021, you were already seeing the lesson moments, accepting and bebopping on down the road and open to adventure. In that one trip to Orlando, I had enough to show that you were ready to be out and adventuring for real. The only reason we had to fall back on the Hero’s Journey outline was because you got nervous when your partner showed up and he didn’t face you to let you know that he was ready for you, hence why he ended up with another lesson relationship while you did more work than you needed to in an effort to perfect yourself when that just isn’t a thing. You recognized the first time you were working with Zagreus that you still had old mentalities to overcome, primarily your mother’s influence, which is why I’m thankful you listened to Persephone and could relate to her, even though there’s no denying you’re too Viking to ever fully relate.”

  “I thought that was a good thing,” she said. “Knowing I’m not her and recognizing her influence to hear her wisdom.”

  “Sweetheart, she started seeing looking after you as an obligation,” he said and Janean started, eyeline immediately going to the ground, ashamed she hadn’t realized it sooner, swallowing the tears.

  “Oh,” she said. “That explains why Zagreus said she was just a mom-friend more than a mother figure. Loki?”

  “Hmm?” he asked.

  “Why do I feel like I was being spiritually observed for someone else’s entertainment while I was fighting my shadow and doing my best to get free of the In-Between when it was basically being forced into my head?” she asked, remembering waking up in the morning to reports n a toxic relationship that was screwing with her mind as she fought to defend herself and point out that she wasn’t the one causing harm.

  The look of Loki’s face said a lot, no longer appearing as Tom Hiddleston but as himself, his hair on the darker side of blond, braids at his temples and in his beard, his dark blue eyes like denim and piercing. The muscle in his jaw jumped as he stared forward and she knew he wasn’t happy.

  “You were meant to face your fears, not have them force fed to you the way they were,” he said. “The sigil you did brought the spirits into your life, and you had to do corrections to get it to calm down. Most of you working on yourself belonged in spirit, meaning you writing fiction based on truth. Recognizing that someone else was involved and you didn’t want others attempting to cause harm or control your story, the concerns you had about certain individuals using Astral to fuck with you or other people, the fact that you were being encouraged to do magic on a regular basis, it created a cluster fuck we’re just now coming out of. All is not lost, and letting go of the need for revenge when it really was just an accident caused by a minor deity that was behaving like the villain. The truth is, your partner hated when you did inner-child work, not realizing you were doing for yourself to help you heal after seeing the behaviors you wanted to correct in yourself to help you feel more at peace. The work you’ve done in the last few weeks has been some of your best and I’m sorry if it seems like it’s unappreciated.”

  “I was laying in bed getting ready for sleep the other night after doing Shadow Work, laying with my inner-child, and I heard him say he was looking at his life,” she said. “It was touching at the time, but now I wonder if he was seeing someone else in my place. I hate this, Loki.”

  “I’m sorry, but he decided to stay ignorant of you, so, when you think about the future and present yourself, he deflects that onto his abuser,” he said. “He doesn’t really think about you, sweetheart. Even though he keeps getting you to think about him and his girlfriend, even when you’re actively working on your own life to honor his wishes when it came to rejecting you without knowing you. At most, he saw that you were working on yourself, something you did because you wanted to, because you felt the drive to improve when you realized you going to be out on your own as an adult for the first time. Then, he wanted you to sympathize with and help a female that exploited him and nearly drove him to violence. Then, it started to become a battle as he tried to connect you to his current girlfriend to teach her how to be a good girlfriend to him when she only saw it to manipulate him. He kept saying, ‘do her light,’ and I know you hated it because it was a fa?ade and you didn’t want to help her manipulate him. Then, he kept saying ‘do it over.’ It was like he wasn’t satisfied with anything we did, getting pissed off when you started feeling more like yourself and were genuinely on the mend. Back then, you showed off for him and we could see the you that we adore, that loves deeply, loyally, and fiercely, protecting those you love while giving them the room they need to grow. You’ve been wanting to do good work for us for a long time and giving you that chance is something that needs to happen, instead of getting sucked into the toxic drama that only makes it harder to do that work.”

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  “Is that why I heard him resentfully acknowledge that I had grown at all?” she asked.

  “Like I said, things got fucked up, but it’ll get better,” Loki said. “Even if you must remember you’re Valkyrie and move forward in mourning. Do your best to remember what it felt like when it seemed like it was just the two of you and you didn’t have to contend with his girlfriends. Back then, you could just imagine new love without worrying about the consequences. You wanted to give him the chance to figure out how he felt while you did the same. Unfortunately, his girlfriend didn’t afford him the same courtesy, and he kept pressing your buttons to make you feel like shit and make you jealous because he was holding her in his arms and abandoning you, making you feel inadequate by making it seem like her superficial appeal meant you’d never be good enough for him. All he did was knock you off your path and then ignore when you got better. We told him ahead of time that trying to do the dance of faking it with his girlfriends while loving you wasn’t going to work because it would fuck with your head, gas-lighting you and driving you to suicide. We told him to take a break and get to know you in person, even if you told him you were a work in progress and new to life. The only good point is that you’ve already done the work, so won’t ever behave like the brow-beating liar or the immature embarrassment. You’re already prepped and ready to hit the ground running, even if you take the time to adjust to each other for real and just relax for a bit before leaning into the work. Just remember that, back then, when you started to awaken more to the spirits and started exploring your sexuality, he already thought you were perfect because he’d been listening to us and agreed. Spiritually he was proud of you and happy he figured out where you were.”

  “Understood,” she said, knowing it was so she could hold on to what healthy love felt like, part of the manifestation process to bring more that feeling into her life, but she didn’t just sit in meditation wanting it and demanding it be given to her. She channeled that feeling into her work to build her career, earning while she sat with the feeling and enjoying what she did. All she had to do was figure out a place to start a new story.

  “You’re a tough bitch, old girl,” Loki said. “I’m going to leave you with Tiwaz so you can work, alright?”

  “Ok,” she said and saw the Divine Viking, his dark hair half tied, hugging her from behind, lithe and strong, embodying his namesake, the rune for warrior.

  “Hey,” she said as he kissed her cheek, her only reason for flinching being that she saw another woman instead of herself when he did so. “You ok?”

  “Yeah,” she said and explained what she saw.

  “It’ll get better, two-wing,” he said, and she got the feeling Loki and Tiwaz were calling her that to remind her that she’d put the work in to earn her wings and it wasn’t just assumed she was angelic because of a fake sweetness, like aspartame that turned to formaldehyde at higher temperatures and was linked to cancer when consumed in large doses. Angels were bad-asses, not haughty, entitled pricks. She was just thankful Loki adjusted to want she needed, even as it changed. Angels worked together to help others, and she was thankful for them and her guides for helping when she was half blind. She wasn’t sure if she should pay attention or just wait for any updates she needed to be aware of, but she had a feeling waiting was the best bet to save her sanity and help her move forward. She’d been aligned with the Infernal for so long, her passion driving her forward as she worked, she wasn’t sure if she’d been misjudged. She was proud of Hades and Persephone, even if they didn’t want her anymore, the situation with her partner causing a strain between them she was desperate to heal. But, all she could do was keep working and be patient, the “hurry up and wait” feelings causing her stress.

  Needing to take her mind off things, but not knowing what else to do, she looked t6o her cards, remembering she needed her Card of the Day.

  Judgement – Awakening, Personal Evolution, Reckoning, and Renewal: Judgement is a card of personal evolution. It represents the chance to make a fresh start while remembering the valuable lessons you’ve learned on your journey so far. It is a time to review all you’ve learned, release what does not serve you, and pay attention to what is calling you forward.

  Pausing, she realized what she needed was guidance and, closing her eyes and forcing herself to sit with her feet on the ground with her head up and her back straight, she heard a voice from below that her story was useful, bringing tears back to her eyes in relief. She’d begun the day letting go, recognizing the situation for what it was as best as she could and knew adjustments were being made to ensure her efficiency and effectiveness in her work, her strongest skill being intuitive writing more than channeling, her natural response to fight control making it difficult to have a conversation with her guides if she wasn’t medicated enough to relax and just let it happen. But doing so often felt like the wrong thing to do when it seemed like the words she said were being misspoken or misused, making her feel like she’d done something wrong and couldn’t take it back. She knew her partner was skilled at communicating through emotion; that’s how she’d been able to write books with him only using spiritual communication, letting her choose the words and build the worlds to be able to visualize the conversation. She needed to get back to that. Knowing she had Tiwaz with her, as well as Loki’s craftiness, she knew it was him setting things up when she felt Heimdall smile, the chuckle of the all-seeing being one that couldn’t be mistaken. Seeing Hel in the corner of her eye, she decided to grab her runes as soon as she was done with her Card of the Day, the goddess of the Norse Underworld already aware of her reading style.

  “Just pretend I have no idea how to read runes or cards,” Tiwaz said. “Teach me,” he added, taking her by surprise. “You’re a child of Loki, like it or not, which means you have magic in your blood. On top of that you’re an Unfrid Valkyrie. If I was human, I’d marry you. In Norway, in the Viking villages, a healer and warrior was celebrated, the fact hat you feel like home and hearth means you’d be a coveted wife, so me being helpful to you is important to me,” he added looking at her out the corner of his eye, the indigo color helping him feel more real and less like a cartoon.

  Focusing on his style of dress, she could see the details of the leather bringing him closer to her reality. It was intuitive and, as he showed her his hand, she could see the texture of his skin, his palms slightly roughened yet pink, though his skin was darker than her own, the feminine versus the masculine, even though her own skin was sun-kissed from sitting outside. His dark beard has a bit of red in it and she could see the shine of his hair in the sun. It was new, and she felt the change. Granted it also made her wonder if Loki was having Hel do a reading before she could cast her own runes. She knew fortunes helped and, grabbing her own runes and a deck of cards that felt like the deck she needed, the Pot Tarot, she wondered what the Bi-frost, Marijuana, and the Infernal together would yield. Then again, she new Loki’s Tenants, even if she needed to reread them every now and then, the two jumping out her the most being Experimentation: A mistake is only a mistake if you do it twice. Until then, everything is an experiment. And Creativity: Make awesome stuff. If you don’t like it, blow it up and do it again.

  Grabbing her runes, amazonite stones, amazonite having the properties of being a stone of truth, courage, and communication, promoting self-discovery, and inner peace, she shook the bag and pulled three.

  “Rune readings,” she told Tiwaz, “tell the story backwards, The Possible Course of Action, then the Challenge, then the Overview, reflecting the Viking tendency to follow their intuition which can often be seen as shooting first and asking questions later. Trust and faith built the intuitive skills of the humans when it comes to the Norse Gods, which probably why Persephone was having a difficult time with me when I decided to learn from her, curious about her Mysteries and how they helped one heal when I discovered she had her initiates work with her daughter for their Shadow Work, Melinoe taking on the guise of their inner child so the initiate could have conversations with their shadow and self-parent without neglect because Melinoe would make her presence known when there was something within the shadow of the initiate that needed attention. It fell out of practice two thousand years ago, but I understand what she was doing, Artemis offering the safe harbor of the soul by providing a strong female protector to remember the initiate’s progress as they healed and grew, helping to reinforce their progress if their personal identity ever felt threatened, and Persephone providing the ‘goal’ by being a queen the initiate could look up to and emulate as they worked on themselves. Back then, part of why it fell out of practice was because it seemed like a bunch of little Persephones popping up, instead of the humans retaining their individuality. A Viking doing her Mysteries was a crafty move, so I’m fairly sure that why Loki said to go ahead and learn, but Persephone didn’t want me losing my unique qualities as a person, even Aphrodite telling me I needed to stay Viking.”

  “Good,” Tiwaz said. “You’re a good woman as a brute,” he said, making her chuckle.

  “Now, in traditional tarot readings, what the Greeks prefer, even if it’s just one a day, read like a linear story, the person receiving guidance needing to be led down the path by the hand to ensure they follow the guidance properly to have the best outcome,” she said. “Runes cater to the Viking spirit of trust your gut and keep your advise in your pocket for when you need it, chances are, you’re already prepared and don’t even realize it. When I look at my runes and the tarot deck, I see the intuition and a story forming with a meeting on the bi-frost as the setting. I still use the beginner’s book for my runes until I can memorize them and be able to read them without having to look it up, even though I still do that with my cards, considering how big my collection is, mixing and matching oracle decks with tarot decks to read the cards the way I’d read runes to a point, doing so feeling more natural to me with the oracle card serving as the overview with the tarot cards providing the guidance on a linear path.”

  “So, what do the runes say?” Tiwaz asked.

  “Wunjo; harmony a peaceful meeting between friends to help guide to pleasure, comfort, prosperity, reward, and success. Rado; Journey, riding, rhythm, spontaneity, evolution, decisions; remembering one’s journey and being attentive to patterns and rhythms, seeing how spontaneity registers and a possible spontaneous decision to journey to obtain the pleasure and reward earned through the journey. Perthro; Destiny, fate, chance, mystery, secrets. Reading it correctly, I see a meeting on the bi-frost about one’s destiny, embracing the warrior spirit and being in control of one’s life to clear their head and ground more than roaring to show their strength, a ride on horseback from a vision I once had where the man I rode behind was speaking with Loki as they rode side by side, and a conversation about the meaning of true pleasure and success when it’s not found in material wealth and fame, but in the quality of life, home, and hearth. With the Pot Tarot I’ll be able to find the introduction,” she tells Tiwaz, knowing Loki was listening in and knew what she was talking about when it came to the visions. “The Five of Pipes,” she said looking at a card colored in pastel depicting five different types of marijuana pipes all filled with ground green Mary Jane and surrounded by buds, “Uh oh,” she read from the guide book, “your stash is split and chaos abounds, often in the form of conflict, stress, destruction, and defeat. Is someone or something challenging you pretty relentlessly? It’s not a pretty picture, but there’s nothing you can do to change it, so best extract yourself from any lingering battles, dust yourself off, and prepare to move on. Check your need to be right,” she finished.

  “What is it?” Tiwaz asked.

  “Check your need to be right,” she repeated. “When the battle becomes a matter of principle, blinding you to the needless waste of energy in the argument when the conflict can end simply by walking away or ending the relationship, one gets caught in the toxic cycle of fighting without end. Checking one’s need to be right isn’t a question of humility, it’s more in line with recognizing the waste and preventing more. A leadership lesson by leading oneself down a path to success, pleasure, and reward, setting oneself free by shedding unnecessary obligation. Loki can use that to help my partner as I recognize that the best way to help him is in person, following my instincts to continue my path while Loki helps him. I think it’s time to revisit an old setting I built before. The Forest of Healing.”

  “You want to meet there from now on?” Tiwaz asked.

  “Yeah, there’s a house by the Lake of Galaxy,” she said. “I’ll meet you on the porch. And, don’t be surprised to find me smoking a pipe that doesn’t have tobacco in it. I got the Pot Tarot for a reason. I use marijuana to medicate and relax.”