Who is that girl?

Who is that girl?

by Turts

Tingly Loup is pretty girl. It isn’t a matter for discussion. To her credit, she never thinks about it herself. Some things are fact and there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it.

She will have a very long time to bear this burden. The immortal don’t age as we do. They don’t even age like the mountains age, over millennia. They just persist. Consequently, old Throndar the one-eyed, for example, will just have to put up with her wispy moustache and complete lack of depth perception until the cows come home, and we’re not talking about the cows that are in the fields today, oh no. These are the ones that won’t even be born until the land that is land right now is at the bottom of the sea and the bottom of the sea is raised up to be the land that these particular cows will be ruminating on.

Tingly Loup is a Valkyrie. Being pretty for a Valkyrie is very much de rigueur, but unlike the majority of her ilk, she was not one of those that Woden just made up. Now, there is a god that knew how to turn heads. At one time, he thought about them a lot and vast numbers flew over battlefields to lead valiant warriors to the halls of Valhalla. There are many less of them now. There is much debate these days about whether any of the gods really exist or not and if they do then it can only be reasonable to assume that they don’t carry the same authority as they once did. Certainly, they would need fewer staff. One would probably think less about pretty girls too, but that assessment would be only speculation.

Once upon a time, however, Tingly Loup had been a living, breathing girl who had aspired to grow up to be a woman. She didn’t get the chance, though. She had the misfortune to live in violent times. Her older brothers had looked after her and taught her how to use an axe and a shield but when they had all gone off in the longships, there was only her, her little brother and ‘Vicejaw’ the dog to guard the family farm. When Hell arrived at their village, she was the only one to make it out of the burning house alive. Hearing the drunken voices cheering at the flames, she’d grabbed up the wood axe and swung it at the first head she saw and watched as it bounced into the throng. She hadn’t seen just how big a raiding party had arrived until the cheering stopped and so many faces turned in her direction.

Not that the odds were her primary consideration at that point, but they were so very, very much not in her favour. They had improved ever so slightly in the last few seconds, but not a whole lot. You certainly would not have mortgaged your house on a positive outcome.

Neither, up until that moment, had she known that she had a battle-cry. Her brothers had had them. She’d heard them. In fact they practised them just like they practised the swings and parries they used in mock combat with each other and the log mannequins that they hacked and slashed at. She’d even laughed at the nonsense of it. It’s not as if flames shot out of their mouths, like the dragons up in the mountains. It just told everybody where their enemy was and that he was not a happy bunny. They had tried to tell her that the shouting wasn’t about anyone else, it was about you. They each said that they felt as if they had grown into giants, gained the stamina of wolves and the speed of the birds, that their screams turned them into unstoppable beserkers. It was true that more often than not they had to turn their hand to building new mannequins when they’d calmed down again. Even they didn’t know the proper mechanics of it. They just knew it worked for them. Those Loup boys could really kick some arse!

Then Tingly felt it too. It was a powerful sensation. She suddenly felt sorry for her enemies. She wanted to give them the chance to go home and bring more friends to help them out of the fix they’d got themselves in. She’d picked up the dead raider’s axe and waited to see which of these cowardly, motherless lemmings was the bravest.

Unfortunately, it turned out that they all were. Alas! Even with bits of somebody else’s brain in one’s hair, a young fighter in her pj’s isn’t quite as intimidating as she might have felt. Her arms swung about her like the blades of a maniacal windmill, severing appendages with gay abandon, but eventually it all came to a stop. The broken bits of her that were left and could still be found were thrown into the fjord.

 But they didn’t get her spirit. That had been ‘collected’.

Now it is all that is left of legend of Tingly Loup. It isn’t a lot, in corporeal terms, but it’s plenty to be getting on with. She has a presence, but it is only visible to those that are facing mortal danger. She’ll be floating about nearby if you find yourself being brave. It may be just a silly 'boy' thing, but it makes you want to start doing heroic type stuff in the hope that you might get to meet her.'

Now what could possibly be the harm in that?