"Open hostilities have broken out across several nations across Europe, Asia, Africa and South America where negotiations between belligerent nations appeared to break down within a matter of hours of each other.

On a scale not seen since the height of the Second World War, opposing armies have engaged in terrifying battles that have already claimed the lives of thousands. The United Kingdom, and the Prime Minister, have declared they will fully support any and all allies that are under attack."

-+-

8

Runa cancelled the morning lessons, sending both children to their rooms, saying little else to either of them. Stigr complained, of course, that she had promised he could play his game. It was as though he simply could not understand that he had done something wrong. He felt no guilt. No sorrow. As far as he appeared concerned, Runa chastised him for nothing.

She had no idea how she could explain it in a more simple, easy to understand way. A way that even Stigr could understand, even if he didn't think he was wrong, but she had explained it simply enough. Stigr simply did not see it, nor agree with it. The anger Runa had stuffed down resurfaced at his reticence to accept his error. He had disobeyed her and didn't care.

Had she done the same to her father, she would have suffered far more than have gaming privileges taken away. She moved an inadvertent hand to her backside that had seen heavy slaps from her father, more than once. Not with any malice. Never to the point of abuse (though she knew many would see it as abuse now, regardless of the amount of force used). A simple punishment, performed and then forgotten.

She could never do that to her children. Though getting them to understand what they had done wrong, sometimes, proved more difficult than teaching them complicated mathematics. Hertha had grown to a point where she could, or should, understand. Yet, even she looked at Runa as though it was she that didn't understand. Runa had watched them both slope up the stairs, eyes dropped to the floor.

That left Runa alone. She tried to occupy herself while listening to ensure the children did not whisper to each other across the hallway above. She washed and dried the plates and cutlery, wiped down the kitchen surfaces and then ran a mop over the stone-clad flooring. That didn't help. It didn't stop the whirl that had invaded her mind. Didn't stop the rush of thoughts and questions.

She tried sitting down to relax in front of the television, but most of the programming had switched to constant newsfeeds, detailing the chaos of the weather or the drums of war, or the other disasters that had seemed to hit the world all at the same time over the past few days. It felt as though life on Earth, and the Earth itself, were tearing themselves apart. It felt like the apocalyptic scenarios predicted in many religious texts. The end of days.

Despite everything happening beyond the shores of the island, she found herself caring about, and thinking about, only the things that mattered to her, here and now. She found herself thinking of those words from Hertha, impossibly echoing the words from her nightmare. Words that played through her mind even now.

She was not ready. Ready for what? How could she become ready for something if she didn't know why she needed to be ready? She switched off the tv, the reception had started to flicker anyway. Instead, she switched on the big, old fashioned radio and found a station that played relaxed, smooth music with few advertisements, setting the volume low.

A coffee, made as she listened to an old favourite song, now warmed her fingers in its mug as she stared out into the premature darkness of the storm. The wind and rain assaulted the island almost as strong as it had that first night. She worried the cottage would suffer damage, but her husband's family knew their island. They had built the cottage to endure heavy storms, though she wondered if those ancestors of her children had ever imagined a storm like this.

There seemed no end to it. The clouds showed no signs of dissipating. The winds showed no sign of mellowing and the rains looked as though they could continue for forty days and forty nights, prompting the building of another Ark to save the few at the expense of the many.

"You are not ready, daughter of the North."

Those words, spoken by the voice in the dream, felt as though they reverberated through Runa's chest. It felt as though she heard them right now. This very minute, accompanied by the crack of thunder and the flash of lightning that arced from the sky, smashing into the buffeted wind turbine at the far end of the island. The lights flickered and then dimmed before switching off.

In the seconds it took for the batteries to take over, Hertha and Stigr had appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Without saying a word, she shook her head and pointed back up the stairs and the children slumped their shoulders, tramping their way back up each step as though it were a mountain in itself. She sent them back upstairs, not to continue punishing them, but because she wasn't certain what to do.

The batteries could last a few hours, perhaps a day, if they used only the minimum of electricity, but if the wind turbine didn't pick up the slack, Runa doubted the solar panels could provide enough power. Not with the storm hiding the Sun. She wondered if the island still had an electric cable connected to the mainland and whether it would automatically switch over, or whether she would have to do it, herself.

"Beware, daughter of the North. Mighty Yggdrasil shudders once more."

That was not a memory. Even as she thought that, she felt the ground move beneath her feet. Another earthquake and now she felt certain that things were not normal with the world. She expected to hear screams or shouts from the children, but, even as she tried to make her way to the stairs, the shaking Earth sending her barrelling to the side, she could not hear even a snuffle from upstairs.

"Hertha? Stigr? Stay away from the windows!" The shaking of the ground ended as fast as it had begun, with no warning whatsoever, still she moved to the stairs and her children. "Are you all right?"

"We're alright, mummy!" Hertha looked down the stairs, holding Stigr's hand in hers. She didn't seem to show any concern.

"Big Dog warned us, so we hid under our beds." Stigr's eyes were as wide as plates and a grin almost split his face. "Earthquakes are exciting!"

"'Big Dog'? 'Big Dog'!" Despite the terror of the latest earthquake and the raging storm, Stigr mentioning the 'Big Dog' lit a fire under Runa. "I'm tired of hearing about it! I'm sick of it! There is no 'Big Dog' and you two? You two have almost got yourselves killed twice! Don't you care? Is it funny to you that I was scared witless? That I thought I'd lost you? You selfish, selfish children!"

All the anger she had held inside boiled up in that one moment of short, sweet relief. And she immediately regretted it. Her children's eyes widened, mouths opening, and then she saw tears appear. Theirs and hers. She had never shouted at them like that. She had always fought to control her temper, especially around Hertha and Stigr.

Runa felt bile rise in her throat at the looks of pain and betrayal in the faces of her children and her hand rose to her mouth. Backing away, she kicked another shoe, dropped in the middle of the hallway. A shoe she felt certain she had already tidied away and it only served to make her anger rise again. Anger that she couldn't allow herself to show to the children. Not again.

She turned, grabbing her coat from the rack, and ran for the kitchen door. As she opened it, the wind almost tore it from her hand, fingers clasping onto the edge and then the handle as she fell outside, into the storm, slamming the door closed behind her.

Without thinking, she wrapped the coat around herself, fighting against strong gusts that threatened to lift her from her feet, to tear the coat from her hands. She fastened the coat tight and then began to run. One last look behind showed the faces of Stigr and Hertha at the cottage's window, but she turned away, continuing to run.

Where she expected to go, in the midst of the storm, she couldn't imagine. She only knew that she had to get away, if only for a short time. She had to be alone, outside of that cottage. Away from her children, and she hated herself for thinking that. As she ran, she cursed the storm. Cursed the damnable island and cursed the virus that had taken the life of her husband and had led to them moving here.

Her throat had become dry and she realised she had screamed those curses out loud, shouting out, with bitter venom into the storm. But the storm didn't care. It surrounded her with its fury, taunting her, tripping her. It tormented her with its power and its rage and she matched that rage with her own. A rage fuelled by events that she could no longer control.

The sound of her feet striking against gravel turned to the softer sounds of shoes falling upon sand and pebbles, and still she ran. Her hair fell about her face, soaked by the rain and she could hardly see a few feet before her, and still she ran. She ignored the crashing of waves upon the shore, ignored the booming of the thunder, the flashing of the lightning, and still she ran.

She ran until her chest felt as though it would explode, until her legs began to shake from the cold and her exertions. Until she found herself in front of that scar upon the surface of the cliffs. That cave that was not a cave. Falling to her knees, she howled wordless screams towards the cliff face, fighting to breathe as she felt the biting spray of the freezing waves battering her back.

The feeling of icy cold rose from her toes and fingers, trickling up her arms and her legs, causing her chest to tighten. She collapsed forward, digging stiff fingers into the sand and begged for it all to end. Begged for everything to return to normal. Begged for her husband to come back and share his strength with her once more.

"There is no going back, daughter of the North. It is inexorable. Inevitable. And now, I fear, you have forced it to happen far sooner than I had hoped."

More words that were not from her dream. Words that held no comfort. Words not spoken aloud, but felt with every fibre of her being. Words that resonated through her mind, her flesh, her bones and her hair. She heard a deep snort and a heavy thud and, as she looked upwards, she thought she had gone mad.