The Broodmother

The Broodmother in Járnviðr  

Her shack stands brittle under iron skies,  

gnarled trees clutch whispers of coming ruin.  

No path leads to her, but all roads end.  

Behind her eyes, the depths of old myths.  

She spins shadowed thread; it won’t unravel.  

Her loom hums with ancestry’s dark cadence.  

Births the beasts bound to unsettle heaven,  

one maw for the moon, one for the sun.  

The wind sneers through jaws of forest teeth.  

She feeds her spawn with marrow of despair.  

In troll’s disguise, her hand knows no mercy.  

One cub, Sköll, sings centuries of hunger.  

He will leap through dusk’s battered veil,  

claws catching the sun’s last defiance.  

The sky bleeds orange, then bleeds no more.  

Her laughter cracks the spine of the wind.