Vikings from Mars
She had made a lot of new discoveries about herself after the first night she and Skars had made love. She was the sex fiend in the relationship, not him. Breaking the twelve-year rule had been her decision, not his, even though he had been sucking on one of her nipples when she had come to the decision.
Leaving his ankle behind, she nibbled her way up his leg to bypass his penis and kiss her way up to his chest. She unbuttoned his shirt and splayed the two sides apart to ogle the hard planes and lines of his physique.
Gliding her tongue over one of his tattoos on the side of his chest, she splayed her hand over one on his biceps.
Curious, for the umpteenth time, she noticed the massive scar over his heart. Usually by this time, she was in the heat of the moment and had more important things on her mind than to ask about his scar that was the size of the palm of her hand.
“How did you get burnt so badly?” Raine ran the pad of her thumb over the scarred flesh.
“It was my birth tattoo. Each Viking male and female has one which shows the lineage of their immediate family. It resembles Yggdrasil, the tree of life in Norse mythology. Have you ever seen pictures of it?”
Raine shook her head.
Skars scooted away from her to rise from the bed. He moved to a wooden trunk and carefully shifted objects she couldn’t see before taking out an overlarge book. Carrying it back to the bed, he sat down next to her and solemnly opened the book to flip through the pages.
“My great-grandfather made this book so our clan wouldn’t forget our history.” Skars pointed at a picture. “This is a drawing of Yggdrasil. He drew this from memory.”
Raine stared down at the page. The drawing was of one large circle with a tree that had as large of roots as it did branches inside it.
“It’s beautiful.”
Skars nodded. “Our tattoos were similar. Our grandfather believed that it was the gods’ way for us to never forget our origins, regardless of how many species we mated with, so we would not lose sight and always find our way back to our family.”
“It would have been cool to have seen what your tattoo looked like to see the difference.”
Setting the book aside, Skars got up again to go to his chest, this time taking out a smaller chest. He set it on the bed and opened it to take out drawings.
Raine shifted into a cross-legged position and, fighting back tears, she slowly went through them. To say the drawings were beautiful didn’t do them justice.
“Who drew these?”
“The newer ones were done by Astrid, Reva’s sister. The others were done by other seeresses from earlier times.”
The pictures must have taken hours to complete with the level of details they showed. Raine pointed at several pictures where there were odd-colored, weird-shaped trees. In the background, mountains and lakes, and people smilingly posing for the artist.
“Where were these drawn?”
“Raum.”
Her breath caught in her throat at the thought that such stark beauty had been destroyed. Then her mind went to the beauty which had been wiped out on Earth. Evil knew no boundaries, or it seemed, no solar system.
“I’m glad these weren’t destroyed.”
“The book is supposed to stay with our elder seeress. Astrid gave the book to Reva when we left Raum to go on a trading mission. It was Thorsen’s first one in the ship our grandfather had gifted him.”
“If Thorsen hadn’t been given the ship, would you and the others have been on Raum when it was destroyed?”
“Já.”
Rain pressed her trembling fingertips to her forehead at the realization how close she had gotten to never meeting Skars.
“If this book was supposed to stay with the elder seeress, how do you have it?”
“On each trading mission, a seeress goes along for protection to make sure nothing goes wrong. Astrid gave Reva the book to carry with her.”
Raine supposed the seeress was the Vikings’ version of psychics. She had never believed psychics could see into the future or into the afterlife, but she could see Skars did. She did have to admit that it did give her pause that the book wasn’t left on Raum to be destroyed.
“Do you think Astrid knew?”
Skars nodded. “Both Astrid and Reva were prewarned. At first, Reva refused to go, but after Astrid and my grandfather commanded her, she went.”
If that was true, it must have been a heartbreaking decision for Reva.
“Did any of you know?”
“No, Reva wasn’t allowed to tell. It would have destroyed the future both Astrid and Reva saw for our clan.”
“Wow, I’m glad I don’t have that gift. I’d never be able to keep from warning them.”
“That is why the gift is only given to those who can use it wisely.”