I know that I hung on that windswept tree, with all the worlds in its branches. Nine days and nine nights I wore the deadman’s collar. Nine days and nine nights I bled from a spear-wound in my side.
A wound I put there. An offering of self to self.
The hubris.
I swung, lashed by storm and chafed by rope, bound and blinded. Nine days. Nine nights.
No one came looking for me. No one came to help me. I cried out from hunger, from thirst, before the end.
There was no answer.
Then at last I came unto the edge of the Abyss that is Death, and there at the precipice of an eternal night so dark I felt only my own soul reflected back into me and nearly went mad (again) with the effort of holding my own gaze at last I saw-
THE RUNES
and they burned so bright before my eyes I raised my hands to shield them, to seize them, and I took them up screaming-
and I awoke, soaked through and bloody, tangled in the branches of Yggdrasil, the runes burnt into my skin and my memory,
the noose still hanging limply around my neck.
(My spin on Odin's discovery of the runes, did my best to do the original justice)
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