[In between: Sif and Hel]
Hel seldom dreamed, but she'd rather been doing a great number of seldoms as of late.
She'd visited home, for example. Vale was quiet, as none of them were old enough yet to require replacements, reincarnations, or whatever it was they called themselves in order to find comfort in their realities. The verdant fields slumbered in timelessness, and Hel remembered her youth with a mixture of fondness and regret.
She'd visited her demesne, the large gates opening for her and revealing a palace of unheard of beauty. Beyond the gates, the dead suffered and her hounds waited, and she still refused this fate. It wasn't that she'd any fondness for her people, and their death troubled her not at all, but this was not the life she'd chosen, and she refused to be saddled with it without her approval.
She'd returned here, to Repose and the waking, and the Wild Hunt had reminded her of wilder things, things missed and yearned for. And, tonight, she was here. Between. Hel needed no sleep, though she enjoyed it. Hel needed no dreams, though she sometimes enjoyed walking in them. Tonight, she walked. But, she realized this was not her dreaming. Ah, well, no matter. As long as it wasn't dull, then she was content to remain.
She approached the fire dressed in white, long blonde hair streaming at her back, eternally youthful. She seemed the antithesis of death in all her pallor, and she fixed her attention on the woman. This was obviously the woman's dreaming, and Hel did not need to focus on the woman's garb to know this was one of her ilk. "I hope it is not always this peaceful," she said in Old Norse, assuming she would be understood. If not, it was an easy enough change to repeat the words in English. One of her many gifts involved language, and she'd long ago perfected all of her talents.