Rumble

Early afternoon had arrived and Freyja was looking forward to going home shortly. It was a bit earlier than she normally left, but her life had gotten easier when she’d taken on an apprentice. Aleinn had turned out to be a quick study, which she was certainly thankful for.

And later tonight she was supposed to be joining her family for dinner. She’d invited Johan and his two young daughters to join them, and while not everyone in the family was very excited about the new man in their mother’s life, Freyja was determined to welcome him and his children. What the others thought about him didn’t interest her, as long as they were polite and didn’t bad mouth him to his daughters. She’d had to have that talk with Sofie twice already, and it had taken bringing up their dead father to get her to see the problem with saying rude things about a man to his children.

But those were problems for later. She was nearly finished walking around the scaffold, triple checking that everything was progressing correctly and looking for any errors or inconsistencies. She was just about to hop down and go see how Aleinn was doing when a familiar face caught her eye.

Styrr greeted her, and Freyja smiled wide as she approached him. It had been some time she’d last spoken to him. He was a viking, and they were the same age. They’d trained together often when she’d been a thegn. But she’d failed to keep in touch after she left all of that behind her to become a shipbuilder. “Hello, Styrr. Good day?” she asked, nodding to the string of fish he held in his hand. “How’ve you been?” she wondered, crossing her arms across her chest. “Still getting into trouble? Or have you settled down in your old age?” she grinned at him, doubting he’d ever really ‘settle down’. He didn’t seem the type. She couldn’t really recall if he was one for teasing, but that was about Freyja’s entire personality, so she hadn’t stopped to consider he might not be too pleased with the way she started a conversation.