The tavern was suddenly very quiet. All movement stopped. Every breath was held. Eyes refused to blink for fear of making a sound. Idun swallowed in spite of the silence, gulping down the thick bile of emotion as Bragi removed her hand a second time. She had hurt him. Idun knew that. But she wasn't prepared to see that. She hadn't been ready for conversation, and that was perhaps the easiest part of all of this. Pick a word, and the rest would follow, more likely than not without proper observance of punctuation or grammar. She'd said one word to the mortal Bragi and that word had spiraled into every detail of this tragic tale. But seeing her Bragi was harder than picking a word could ever be. He wouldn't look at her. Idun had forced him away after making it clear that she was going to hate him. Bragi didn't know she never got the chance to even try. He didn't realize why finding him had been so very, very important to her.
Idun looked at Bragi's hand and felt as defeated as she had back at that seventh tavern. But that feeling only lasted a moment. Even though Bragi wouldn't look at her, Idun looked at him. She wouldn't look away. She'd look hard enough, intent enough, with enough devotion, for the both of them. He could remove her hand as many times as he liked. Idun took his hand in hers, and covered them both with her other hand. She held firm. Bragi would fight, but she'd fight back. He wasn't running away. Not until he knew everything Idun lacked the words to say.
She tipped her chin to acknowledge what he'd said, a tiny nod that he would miss because all his focus was on not looking at her. It didn't matter. A nod was inconsequential. Bragi was a god of words. Words were what would matter in the end. Idun whispered to herself that she needed to find the right ones. She needed him to know everything that the mortal Bragi now knew. All the things that might fix him. It was a battle, though. He was fighting her so hard, with so much determination. Idun let out an uneasy breath, and the right words cowered behind the wrong ones.
"What's it about?" she asked him. Idun felt unsteady. If it weren't for Bragi's hand, hers would be shaking. He was keeping her steady and all he wanted was to run away from her. It was terrible. What she did to him was terrible, but she needed courage to try and fix that. She wasn't there yet. After three long months, she still wasn't there. "I've been hearing a lot about great love stories, but someone once told me a true love story always includes some tragedy for the lovers to overcome. Is that true?" There had been dozens of taverns, perhaps more. Perhaps hundreds. The skalds all had wonderful things to say about Bragi. He read to them sometimes.
The true tragedy was that Idun hadn't heard him in three months, and the only words he had for her now were cold and carved from stone. But Idun had earned that. She deserved that. Now she just needed to fix it, like she'd promised mortal Bragi. She just needed to fix him.