past year or so.
Today was the fourth day since I arrived here. The local Motlanders were kind people and none of them seemed to have recognized me as Thor Aurelius, son of the Ruler of the Northlands, Khan Aurelius. I preferred it that way. The whole reason I was here was to get away from the constant pressure I was under back home. This beach would be where I found my freedom and peace of mind.
I didn’t need much except the food I could pick up in the local town and a place to clear my head. When I arrived five days ago and asked for accommodations, I had expected a hotel of some kind. A nice older man had guided me to a tiny house right on the beach and explained that there were no hotels in the area. He didn’t ask questions about where I was from or where I was going. Instead, he invited me to use the small cabin and explained where in town I could get food for me and the dogs. The beach house was a far cry from the luxurious mansion that I grew up in, but I’d accepted it with gratitude because it offered the one thing I was searching for, isolation.
I would have thought that after a few days of not fighting with my father I would be ready to go back and face him. I wasn’t! I had been naïve to think that leaving the Northlands would make my troubles disappear. Now, I was stuck with old arguments running in loops in my mind, fueled by years of anger and resentment between us. His constant disappointment with me weighed heavily on my shoulders. It wasn’t like I’d asked to be the heir of Khan Aurelius. In all fairness, I wasn’t even his first-born child. My sister Freya was almost five years older, and everyone knew she was smarter and more strategic-minded than me. Representing our family came naturally to her, and the people of the Northlands loved her. Freya was always working on ways to make life better for everyone.
I, however, felt suffocated and pressured all day, every day. For twenty-five years, I had tried my best to make my father proud, but nothing I did was ever good enough for him.
He got mad when the press made fun of me for always looking miserable at public events. He never listened when I complained that those events felt stifling and uncomfortable to me. If I didn’t smile, I was accused of acting snobbish and arrogant. When I smiled, it was always spun in a way to make it seem that I had an interest in someone romantically. It was hard to seem enthusiastic about going to an event, knowing that no matter how I behaved I would be criticized.
I could remember arguments between my parents from the time I was little. My father complaining that my mother pampered and softened me, and my mother in return arguing that he was too strict and rigid with me. My parents loved each other, but they never agreed on how to raise me and it had caused great pain in my life.
With my father’s warnings that I shouldn’t listen to my mom, I’d distanced myself from her. At the same time, my mom’s protective love had made me see how unfair and harsh my father was to me. That made me resent him from a young age. Any child wants to make their parents proud, but in my case, they wanted opposite things from me. My mother spoke of fairness and compassion while my father wanted me to be a strong, assertive leader unafraid of conflicts. I had tried to impress him for as long as I could remember and built a hard shield of toughness around me.
My dogs interrupted my thoughts with excessive barking. Lifting my head from the sand, I shielded my eyes with a hand and looked along the beach toward town, but it was empty. I hadn’t seen a single person on this part of the beach since I arrived.
“What is it?” I asked my dogs when they came running and rubbed their wet fur against me.
Pushing at me with his head, Huginn insisted that something needed my attention while Muninn raced past me in the direction of the small cabin. I rose up from the sand and turned to understand what had them so excited. That’s when I saw Linea, a family friend that I hadn’t seen more