Re: [In between: Sif and Hel]
"It could be," was Sif's response, but she didn't sound convinced of it. Again, her own opinions had been formed over the ages, and she knew herself as well as any could. Giving rest to those along the way, keeping a warm hearth and fertile fields of grain, she didn't consider it a role per se, and it was most definitely oversimplifying to say or think so. But over those ages of her existence, she'd learned other things as well, and one of them was to let others think what they would of her. Hel thought motherhood to be boring, marriage to be a trap, and Sif's choices to be obedience to some greater fate. Sif knew all of these things to be untrue, even in the dreaming-in-between, but she returned Hel's multilayered smile with one of her own.
"War is tedious and serves no one, in the end," came her reply to the 'reminder'. Soldiers were mutilated, civilians became casualties, and those in power never stayed in power. There was more than enough for everyone without the need for battle. Neither she nor her husband had yet graced Hel's final doorstep, and she had no plans for it any time soon.
As was always her thought, there was a difference between speaking plainly and speaking brutally. One could be honest while still being soft, and it had nothing to do with what humans considered polite. Hel seemed to have very little understanding of or predilection toward softness of any sort however, and in her words seemed to deem it a weakness. But, family or not, it was not Sif's responsibility to change Hel's mind.
The grass left an emerald trimming around the hem of Hel's skirt, a sign that would linger in ways beyond this place, that she'd spent time at Sif's hearth. The goddess herself gave a little nod before the other took her leave. "I'll come find you, if it comes to pass." And then, as a parting and with the sun beginning to sink enough to show between the trunks of the trees, "Safe travels, cousin."