Embers of fire help us get through the cold winter

The first thing that caught the baby's blurry vision was the flickering golden-red firelight reflected on the dark brown wooden roof.

A beautiful, gentle woman's face, though her forehead was damp with sweat, came into his view. She smiled weakly and gently wiped his body with her soft fur, her movements as delicate as if she were afraid of breaking something.

The soft humming above his head gradually soothed the tension and confusion in his body. He stopped sobbing and calmed down.

A stern, bearded face approached, blocking the flickering firelight. His eyes gleamed in the shadows as he spoke excitedly. The man extended a rough, calloused hand and gently placed a cold, hard object beside the now-quiet baby.

The baby turned its head away, its newborn eyes struggling to focus.

It was an axe, a small battle axe. Its edges reflected the flickering firelight.

He could no longer comprehend the concept of a "weapon." But in that chaotic perception, that cold outline was so different from the warmth around him. Driven by instinct, he let out a soft "ee-yah" sound, and his arm, wrapped in sheepskin, twitched in that direction.

The mother immediately noticed this subtle movement. She saw the axe, and her beautiful eyebrows furrowed slightly. She knew the tradition and understood its necessity—Harald had to announce the successor's martial destiny to his people and the gods. But as a mother, seeing this killing machine placed alongside the tender little life that had just left her, she still felt an instinctive resistance.

She didn't say anything, but hugged the baby tighter and raised her humming tone slightly, as if trying to build a soft wall with her voice.

Time passed slowly amidst the newborn's drowsiness and intermittent sensations. He was sometimes fed a few drops of slightly sweet and fishy milk, sometimes wiped clean, and most of the time he sank into a half-asleep, half-awake state.

Deep within the consciousness of the newborn, something is sinking. Molecular bonds, mathematical formulas, stress curves, unanswered WeChat messages from parents... little by little, bit by bit... sinking into the seabed called oblivion.

On the verge of losing consciousness, the sounds from the longhouse gradually faded, the wind and waves growing more distant, and then he heard those sounds again…

"Ho—ya!"

"Ho—ya!"

These auditory hallucinations, like tides, lapped against the shoreline of consciousness. Within these chants, there seemed to be many familiar sensations and memories. But these feelings vanished in an instant, leaving only an empty, cold emptiness.

In his half-awake state, his little hands waved unconsciously, his fingertips accidentally brushing against a strand of his mother's hair that had fallen against his cheek. At that moment of contact, the sound of "Ho-ah!" suddenly became clear for a brief instant, like a plea from another world.

He shuddered and his eyes widened.

His mother noticed immediately, gently patted him, and whispered, "Shh...it's alright, my little wolf, it's alright..."

The baby couldn't understand words, but he could understand the soothing rhythm. He calmed down, and his senses returned to the longhouse. The fire was breathing, his father was pounding berries, a woman was spinning in the distance, and livestock were ruminating in the darkness.

Just then, the father, Harald, finished mashing the berries and brought over the bowl of purplish-red paste. He used a clean wooden sliver to scoop up a little and gently applied it to the mother's chapped lips. Then, he carefully extended his finger, still stained with berry residue, and touched the baby's forehead.

"Sleep now, my son." The voice was calm and low, no longer the excited declaration it once was. "Tomorrow, the sun will rise as usual. And you must learn to watch it."

After saying this, he turned back to the hearth and began to carefully polish the tip of a flint spear with a whetstone. The "rustling" sound mingled with the sound of the waves and wind outside, and faintly echoed the whistling in the baby's head.

The mother, cradling her baby against the raised fur, was finally overcome by exhaustion. Her humming gradually faded into even breathing.

At the boundary between cold and warmth, in the gap between reality and auditory hallucination, the baby closed its eyes.

He drifted off to sleep. In his dream, he seemed to be lying on something huge, made of wood, sailing towards an unknown dawn on an endless icy sea to the rhythm of "Ho-ya!"