The following original work of fiction is drawn from Norse myth and children's stories. It was first published on January 1, 2008, and is herewith republished at OpEdNews, no longer as a cautionary tale, but instead as a reminder of how the end of time arrived.
In the land of the North, the world tree Yggdrasill spread its branches across all the land of Midgard. Yggdrasill was attended by three muses, whose names were Urth, Verthandi, and Skuld: in their order, the Past, the Present, and the Future. Theirs was the task of taking water from the spring of life to the mighty ash tree that it be nourished so its branches could spread ever farther as the world grew from the voyages of those who went a-viking.
The one-eyed god Odhinn could see the muses from his giant chair in Asgarth. Each morning, his eye would cast with satisfaction upon their merriment as he prepared his two ravens, whose names were Huggin and Munin, Thought and Memory, for their day's duties. The blackbirds were set to wing with the daily work of traveling the courses of Yggdrasill's branches to all the world that they could return at day's end with stories for their master. Odhinn, upon sending his birds on their way, would go to his sitting chair, and there he would doze.
Huggin and Munin always traveled far, but they faithfully returned well before the sun had finished its arc across the high canopy of the Heavens so they might have time to sit with the muses they loved so much. Urth, Verthandi, and Skuld would hold a large bowl of clear, cool water high in the air. When the ravens had slaked their thirst, the muses would sit down. Munin would land between Urth and Verthandi, the Past and the Present, and Huggin would alight between Verthandi and Skuld, the Present and the Future. As Munin told of his travels, Urth and Verthandi would hold hands and laugh as Memory passed stories from the Past to the Present; as Huggin told of his travels, Verthandi and Skuld would hold hands and laugh as Thought passed stories from the Present to the Future. At dusk, the ravens would depart their dear muses and go to the great hall Glathsehim at Asgarth to awaken Odhinn and retell the tales that made Memory and Thought so sweet to the warrior god.
One day, as Huggin and Munin were flying high across Midgard, Loki, the god of mischief and evil, spotted Munin and found in the fleeting instant glee in the woe that would vex Odhinn's heart if his Memory were gone. Loki threw a spear into the air and slew Munin. Seeing the death of his companion, Huggin wheeled around from the other side of the world and came upon the place in the sky where he had seen Munin pierced through the heart. Loki, spying the second bird, found glee in the woe that would vex Odhinn's heart if his Thought were gone, too. Loki threw a second spear into the air and slew Huggin.
"I shall go to find Munin," Urth said to herself.
"I shall go to find Huggin," Skuld said to herself.
Verthandi stayed behind to care for Yggdrasill, but she could not carry water to the tree by herself, so she sat and waited for the Past and the Future to return to her side.
That evening, in the forest where once giants had ruled but no longer tread, Urth found the body of Munin, and she fell to her knees, weeping inconsolably. She could not even see that beside her was Skuld, who was weeping over the body of Huggin.
Loki saw that his moments of pleasure had caused great pain, and the crying of the muses made him sad. He considered what kindness he could offer that would end the wailing of Urth and Skuld. He decided that he should kill them, and so he did. When they stopped crying, he was not sad anymore.
The days passed for Verthandi, and she grew weak with hopelessness: her friends were gone, Yggdrasill had withered and died, and Odhinn could not be awakened. She finally arose and stepped out into the world, which confused her because she had never been there without her Past and Future to guide her.
Verthandi wandered aimlessly across the shattered earth of Midgard, which had become a tortuous wasteland of the dead branches of Yggdrasill. So heartsick was she that she noticed not that she was being followed by the great wolf Skoll, who was hungry; but he could not make his way through the awful thicket that was everywhere, so he lept high into the air and walked across the sky. When he came to the sun, he stopped, and there, he opened his great jaw and let Sol, which he had hunted all the days of his life, sink into it. When the sun was in his throat, Skoll began to close his mouth.
Heimdallr, the god of dawn and light, watched as the rainbow bridge Bifrost he guarded from Midgard to Asgarth started to vanish in the dying sunlight. Standing before Glathsehim in Asgarth, he put a horn to his golden teeth and sounded the clarion call that the transformation of apocalypse, Ragnarok, was nigh; but the Aesir, the race of gods who could hear the sound of the trumpet, did not, for they could hear nothing over their own voices asking why the world was so strange this night, which was arriving far too early for their liking.
When Skoll had finished his meal of the sun, Midgard fell into the deep shadow of colorless, frightful night; and from the Earth then arose an impenetrably dense, white fog that enshrouded the whole of the world. Verthandi, being unable to see even her arms outstretched before her, sat down amid the dead limbs of Yggdrasill. She felt upon her pale cheek a single snowflake, and then another and another until, before she could blink, the falling snow had made the whole of Midgard even more unseeable than the white fog had.
Verthandi took the snow falling around her and first turned to her left, where beside her she made a snow sculpture of her lost muse, Urth, the Past. She then took more snow into her hands and turned to her right, where beside her she made a snow sculpture of her lost muse, Skuld, the Future. She looked upon her creations and spoke to them: "You are not real, but you are all I have, now." They said nothing to her, and she knew that they agreed, and they would never again leave her.
This falling snow, soft and unrelenting, covered all the trees, then all the land of Midgard. It continued to fall, covering the harbors, then the seas, and finally the mountains. By the time it had ceased, the whole world was a plain of snow stretching from the darkness without end before to the darkness without end beyond, and no sound could be heard from the Worlds below to the Heavens above.
Now under a blanket of snow deeper than the deepest ocean, Verthandi lay back in the belly of Ymir, the slain frost giant from whom the world had first been made, and there she pulled to her sides the soulless bodies of the Past and the Future she had made from the bitter snow. They were not warm, but they were all she had as she exhaled from her chest the last breath within her. In that place, she closed her eyes in the blackness of her tomb, where she went to sleep forever, alone, never again to see Huggin or Munin who were Thought and Memory, never again to hear the laughter of the Past and the Future who had once lived beside her.
The end of time had come.
