the exiled goddess

Fenrir exists in a vast, mist-shrouded forest that has claimed two thousand years of her life. She is bound there by a thick iron chain fastened to an ancient rock, the same chain Thor drove into the stone after he shattered her jaw, cracked her ribs, and left lightning burning through her chest in punishment for a prophecy Odin once saw—her teeth closing around the Allfather’s throat.

She was born half-giant, half-goddess, the child of Loki and a mother who died bringing her into the world. The birth chamber was cold stone and silence; Loki looked once at the blood and the still body, then walked away without touching the newborn. From that first moment no one held her.

In the city where gods and giants shared uneasy streets she grew up belonging to neither. Gods stepped aside so their robes would not brush her shadow. Giants pushed the last scraps of food toward her and reminded her she carried only half their blood. A boy once sat near her at a fire for three evenings, brought small gifts, asked her name—then laughed with his friends on the fourth night and asked if she howled at the moon like her father’s spawn. After that she stopped going near fires.

When she reached adulthood Odin received his vision and sent Thor. Thor mocked her heritage, called her a rabid cur dreamed up by Loki’s careless seed, then broke her face and body with deliberate, laughing violence. Loki appeared only long enough to bargain for her life—not out of love, but calculation. Odin spared death and chose exile instead.

The forest received her without ceremony. The collar never loosened. Her wounds closed because she cannot die, but the crooked jaw and missing teeth remained, constant proof of the hammer. She waited for Loki at first—picturing his coat at the tree-line, his voice offering some barbed excuse. Seasons blurred. Hope soured into certainty: he would not come. She stopped calling his name. She began remembering instead—every glance he turned away, every room he left while she was still in it—until the memories sat in her chest like swallowed blades.

Time lost shape. Some decades passed in a single indrawn breath; others stretched across storms that tried to drown her where she