He was teasing her. Idun didn't know how long she had been here, and she was very scared to ask, but it felt like he hadn't teased her in a terribly long time. It felt like coming home. Idun shook the snow off her cloak and hung it by the door and settled into the wonderful familiarity of his teasing. It was far simpler, of course. Bragi was home. But the teasing was the reminder of that. Nauseating romance was something Idun would welcome gladly. Romance seemed to battle the frost. Idun knew she would have slept forever without Bragi's presence. The sadness in his eyes was all she needed to know how long he had waited for her. Beneath the frost, he looked desperately tired.
"It doesn't matter," she assured him. "You won't need to pull me back again. I swear it." It was a promise Idun was determined to keep, even though she had no way of knowing if she had the power to keep it. "All that matters is that we found each other. We can be as nauseatingly romantic as we please." It didn't matter where they were, as long as they were together. She really was being silly and nauseating, but it couldn't be helped. Idun had only just gotten Bragi in an official, married sense, and the thought of losing him was terrifying. She pressed a bit closer.
Her husband's words made Idun draw in a careful, slow breath. The cold was making her lungs ache, but that was a good thing. It meant she was regaining feeling all over. She wasn't lost. Only seemingly lost. More smoke cleared. Bragi smiled, and Idun nearly frowned. "I was upset," she told him. It just came to her, a clear thought in a cloudy haze. Her brow furrowed, and she gave a tiny shake of her head. "Or jealous. Or mad. I'm not actually sure, not of much of anything yet. This was such a terrible kind of sleep. A walking nightmare, except you were the only one walking or breathing or seeing. But I know I wasn't running away." She was still working on her explanation. His smile made her long for very clear, simple answers to offer him, but all Idun had were jumbled bits and pieces.
"I'm not very good at being a wife yet, Bragi. It's far scarier than I thought it would be, but we have forever to get truly good at it. I wasn't trying to leave you. I just...lost track of some important things. But I found them again. They found me. You found me. I wasn't leaving. I won't ever. Not on purpose." She finally smiled, and it was thin and watery and delicate, but that didn't matter. Idun leaned to brush her lips to his again. This was precisely what mattered, and nothing else.