A letter from Odr the frenzied… The first Berzerker, the orgin of the werewolf myth, and the god of combat, Odr is the flame on the battlefield that pushes warriors to fight and survive… but he is also the god of poetry, song, and ecstacy… The first god that comes when Odin sounds his three horns.
This is a letter to his wife Freyja, the goddess of war and mercy, and captain of the Valkyries. When Odr wanders he is looking for something, freedom… he needs to know he is still free. Spring and summer follow him, he warms away winter with passion. When he wanders Freyja sits on a back porch sipping coffee that earned the word sacred. She cries tears of gold that fall on the 9 realms… He has been wondering for 2 months, and this journey is different. There is no Freedom to be found… or rather… there is no peace in his Freedom until he stopped moving, and sat in his pain until he found the source.
My Dearest Freyja,
I am writing to you because this journey is different than all the others. Something has changed in me as I travel the 9 realms in search of something I never would have lost had I stayed. I realized that I am free only when I am by your side. What I found when I stopped running away from myself… was you. I found that I miss you as much as you miss me, and for the first time instead of spreading passion and song and glorious battle to the world… I bring only fire… But it is a cleansing fire, and on that fertile ground I am planting new seeds. It is a fire that burns only for you… It isn’t kindling, it isn’t burning embers in my heart… It is the eternal flame that Odin keeps in his vault which you created. You ignited it somehow inside of me and it consumed the flame that lived there before it. I am not sure when, but since the last time I traveled it has remained burning as hot as it could ever burn. There is no extinguishing it. There is no place to place it where it will leave me.
There is nothing for me out here this time other than wishing I was home… and as strange as it sounds for one like me… Frenzied, moving, racing, fighting, laughing in combat, laughing at the goddess of death Hel herself knowing I am the only one she fears of all the gods… Yet I found a serenity here in the forest. A space where I can sit. A wooden man I made stands overlooking a gully where a creek bed once carved the earth around it over time, and I go outside and lose myself. Not in fury… In a kind of peace I have never found anywhere but in your arms. I let the lute play softly behind me. It sings a song that is not one we use to march into battle. It is not the horn of war Odin is blowing on the wind that normally fills my heart with a focused rage that has to be unleashed or it will destroy me from the inside. It has no battle drum that keeps a marching rhythm… it requires no armor and no shield. I stand with nothing. No weapons. I defend I do not attack. I am defeating the red wolf within me.
It in this place with soft music on the breeze the birds took flight overhead, and I saw a single Raven sitting on a branch not 15 yards away. It sat in a tree and it watched. A Raven of Odin… Keeping an eye on me curiously as I journey for the first time in 8 years to Midgard, where he knows he could come and fight. I don’t think he can win anymore, and I think he knows this.
Odin… the man who turned me to a sea monster 8 years ago, and you stayed. You sat with me in my suffering, horrid and deformed, unable to speak, unable to tell you I loved you, unable to write you poetry… You sat with me in that moment and you told me “I am never leaving you my Odr, even if this is forever”. Odin killed me instead… and because I did not die in battle, Odin exhiled me from Valhalla. You went and burned Valhalla to the ground with all the Valkyries. Tyr didn’t fight for Odin… Thor didn’t fight for Odin… Heimdall didn’t tell Odin you were coming… Because they knew what he did, and if he did that to me, his most powerful weapon against evil, he would do it to any of them. Once Odin was on his knees you showed him mercy. You always show the fallen Mercy, even when they deserved to fall. You created a garden for us to live without our weapons or our armor… or our desires for a rematch with the person who killed us in battle. The Venir were born and I was the first to cross the line to your side because you built Fólkvangr for me to call home… even though home will never be a place, it will be in your arms.
You rekindled the flame in my heart, with something new… With your love you saved me from that monster both outside and within me and I was able to return to my true form. Something remained that I hadn’t felt in the 8 years hence… I didn’t realize the flame had changed color. From flaming red to deep blue. Your blue. The blue of the sunset with just a touch of amber bringing it to the edge of violet without crossing it. The soft warm gold that finds us when we are together sits in the distance behind it, on the horizon… The gold of your tears waiting to fall from the heavens. Ever present as you sit in your pain, wondering if I will leave again like others have… and not come back like others have not.
Thor has not visited, (neither has Loki, thankfully). I have heard no clap in the sky of Mjolnir… I have felt no rain falling on my face since the last time you cried… I can hope that it means you are somewhere in your garden finding your own peace. I feel Heimdall watching too, he knows us both and will help pull us back together when we are ready. I have spoken to Tyr several times since I left home, he visits me in this place. He has helped me understand the blue flame that lives in my heart and tints my soul is the one that burns within his. He has helped me understand the words “duty” and “service” and “justice”… in ways I have not considered in the past. The goddess of healing has visited me… Eir has shown me some tough love at times, and helped me process things, she has always been mentally stronger than I. I know she has visited you as well, she has told me you are… well… As well as you could be… That you are on a similar path of discovery and healing just as I am.
This journey has been different. It has been difficult in ways I haven’t experienced in the days behind me. In ways that have let me find peace inside the pain… Sit in it like you do, and just feel it… without running, without hiding, without breaking… and now, without wanting to leave it or cover it up with ecstacy again. I found no pleasure in trying to cover it with mead and laughter… For the first time I do not seek warmth in the arms of another, because I don’t want another, I simply want you… my Freyja… Not even in ecstasy but in that peace that only you have been able to give me until I found it here. I want your head on my chest, and to smell your hair… To feel you hold on to me like you never want to let me go… and say the words I long to here right now… Not “I love you”… “Home”. I will admit at first on this journey towards the first real freedom I have ever had that I tried to visit the old spaces I always go when I need to let loose the red wolf that builds inside me. The wolf that is fed through boredom, anger, or discovery of a new realm to conquer. The wolf that writes songs and poetry because he cannot live in captivity and needs to express his love for you through any way he can. The wolf who thinks he is not worthy of you, which sometimes causes floods and can drown you when you simply need time and space to sit in peace but he needs you to say you won’t go. The wolf who gets hungry and devours you in our marital bed… and the wolf who gets angry and attacks when he feels that he isn’t free. The wolf who leaves home to go make spring happen in this cold world when he can no longer find warmth at the hearth.
This time the red wolf is starved… shrinking… and another in the pack is rising to Alpha from within me. A white wolf… A wolf as powerful as Loki’s son Fenrir who took Tyr’s hand as he was bound to prevent Ragnarok. But this white wolf is a female… She is bigger than the males of the pack… She desires no war, she knows no destruction, she has no fear in her that would make her attack. She is the spirit of divine feminine of the Venir that has family but not in my soul until now… The gods who live with us in Fólkvangr where I was never quite sure I belonged are calling to me now.
The god of battle is now choosing the garden… without hesitation. The Asians we trade with have warriors as powerful as us and who’s goddess Quan Yin shares all your traits, those warriors have a saying “It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war”. I didn’t realize I agreed with that until this journey, because to me a warrior without a war was simply useless, even when he passed the time with poetry and song he was not fulfilling his true purpose… Protecting those he loves by putting him self in front of harm and saying “not today”.
This journey began with a true test of battle. The second time in my life I was truly afraid of death in combat. The other battles I have fought were always a game, always with Valhalla on the horizon. This time I didn’t think I was worthy of ascending. I believed that your Valkyrie’s would leave me on the battlefield to be reborn in one of the nine realms and I would lose you for many lifetimes until I was once again worthy to be selected by the Valkyries… I didn’t even know if you would recognize me by then. That belief created a fight and a frenzy in me I have never felt… One built from sorrow instead of rage. Sorrow is so much stronger my Freyja… It is focused… The one thought in my mind was your smile, and it gave me hope in the darkness. A light to follow. I sang the songs I wrote for you as I went into battle instead of the war chants of the berserkr… No march as the rage built inside, no skins to walk in… Just the eternal flame burning inside me. The flame for you that I now know can never be extinguished. The flame that feels cold when I am away from you.
I can’t bring the spring anymore. Or rather… Maybe I followed it with the intuition of knowing where it would be but was never responsible for it to begin with. Maybe I found the spring instead of created it. That could have been a hubris that I no longer carry. This journey has humbled me so. Humility does not make a man weak I have discovered. It is not a threat to him. It fills him with peace.
I write this letter to you for one reason and one reason alone. To tell you that I am no longer traveling. I am sitting. When I learn to sit in this pain so that it no longer feels like the prison it did at first… when it could no longer overwhelm me. When Drápgjarn the red wolf no longer speaks to my soul craving combat. When I learn to comfort the fear of losing you that has resided in my heart since the moment I was created for you on Asgard at the dawn of time. I hope you will allow me back in the garden to stay… knowing in your heart that I truly never want to wander again. I know I will return with new songs that sing in my heart… Songs that make a ghost note when we share the love between us… the note that exists between the two songs that resonate our soul that join and play together perfectly and the third note in the air. I know I will still write you new poetry… I know I will still bring humor into your life. I of course will still fill you with ecstacy not just in the marital bed but in life… I know from this day forward we travel together. I will place take you somewhere in the nine realms and watch you with wonder as you show me all the beauty of each world we visit in every fine detail. I once wrote in a song that love can’t be blind because you find beauty in every single thing you see, its no surprise you find… everything worth loving when you look at me… Love can’t be blind because I see you, you see me, and this is love. I hope that you see me as new. A man who would never hurt you again, and a man who would never leave you behind.
The white wolf is the one I want to feed in this place. The red wolf will remain quiet unless there is a threat to our home, but will never be allowed indoors again. I am at peace with Drápgjarn the red, he protected me all these years from an enemy that dwelled within while I thought he was helping me fight the ones without. My white wolf sits with me in the woods now as I write this, she is curled at my feet, slowly breathing as she slumbers. I have named her Kyrr. Her name means “The Quiet One”. She is quieting my anger and more importantly my pain that drives it. She will be the wolf that returns with me when I come home.
Home is wherever you are my love… It shall remain so as long the eternal flame burns in my heart… A flame that will forever only burn for you.
Yours from the dawn of time to the end of it,
Odr
TheGrayJedi 