After leukemia had ravaged her beyond what even her indomitable strength and spirit could withstand, I’d kind of just... let go of all that. Let go of laughter, of pure, vicious, feral joy. From her death when I was twenty-one until now, I’d just put my head down and trudged through life. Six years of studying and working, putting more effort into my relationship with my cat (who also died, go fucking figure) than I did any other people.

Finland was often quoted as being one of the happiest nations on Earth. I wondered now if I’d somehow become one of the unhappiest people in it.

But I wasn’t in Finland anymore.

And, startling as the admission was, I wasn’t unhappy, either. At least, not entirely. Not in this moment. Not with my cheeks still bunched and aching, my limbs slack but tingling with delight.

“It is good to see you smile like that,” came the deep voice from beside me.

I sighed, but for once it wasn’t one of weariness or frustration.

“Feels good to do it,” I said. I rolled my eyes at the ceiling with what I was about to admit, but I knew in my bones it was true. “As crazy as you are and how rocky the way we met was, I think my sister would have absolutely loved you.”

I’d only had two serious boyfriends before she’d died, and she’d disapproved of both of them for the same reasons. “Too boring,” she’d told me. “You need someone with some life in them! Someone who can make you laugh so hard you think you’ll pee. Who loves you so much you can’t think straight!”

“Boring is nice sometimes,” I’d argued back at her defensively, even though a small part of me had kind of agreed with her. Neither of my serious relationships had ever created an I can’t think straight intensity of sensation. I’d never been compelled to say I love you, either. “Maybe I’m boring, too.”

“You,” Elvi had gasped, staring me down with crackling eyes and drawing herself up to her full height of five-foot-two, “are not boring. And you deserve someone who would set the fucking sky on fire for you.”

Or turn it into stone...

Well, how’s this for not boring, Elvi? I’m currently in bed with an immortal berserker alien who looks more like a dragon than a man.

And despite it all...

He really makes me laugh.

When I didn’t say anything else, Skallagrim replied with, “Well, I am exceedingly sorry not to get the chance to meet your sister. She was clearly a woman with exquisitely refined taste.”

And now I was laughing all over again. The ego on this alien! He had that half-satisfied, half-hungry cat look to him again as he gazed down at me, his elbow pressing into the mattress, the bottom of his snout resting on his palm.

“That’s one way of putting it,” I snorted. The mirth died down and my eyes misted. “She was amazing, you know? And she was so young when our mom died. She’d only just turned twenty, but there was no question in her mind that she’d come home and look after me.”

“She was not at your home already?”

I traced the lines of glowing tubing in the ceiling with my eyes and laced my fingers together on my stomach.

“No. She was an anywhere-but-here sort of girl. We had different fathers, and she never really clicked with my dad as her step-father. She was out of the house, and out of the country, just about as soon as she was able to go. She did all kinds of stuff. Travel blogging. Working on cruise ships. I didn’t see her that much even after my dad died because she was always off in Asia or out on some boat in the Atlantic or whatever. And plus, with the age difference, we just weren’t all that close. At least, not until our mom died.”

My throat got too tight to speak for a minute. Skallagrim waited with far more patience than I would have expected him capable of. One heavy hand came down over both of mine and gently squeezed.

“As soon as she got the news, she dropped everything and came home. I still remember the first time I saw her again so vividly. It had been more than two years since the last time I’d seen her. And the first thing I thought was, holy shit, her hair is green. Like, deep, dark, I-just-dyed-this-and-it’s-still-box-fresh green. My next thought was how beautiful it looked on her.”

I didn’t have to glance over at Skallagrim to be reminded that he, too, had green on him. I felt him shift slightly, as if his chest had swelled on his next inhale, and I hid a small smile at his preening.

“She stayed in Finland with me after that. Settled back in our hometown and raised me.”

“What happened to her?”

“She got sick. A human disease called leukemia. She was a fighter, my Elvi. But eventually there wasn’t anything anyone could do. And after everything she’d been through, she deserved to rest.”

His hand stroked mine, then suddenly tightened as his whole form went stiff beside me.

“Could you become ill with the same thing someday?”

I let my head loll towards him on the bed. His smirking look was gone.

“Unlikely. It’s not typically hereditary or anything like that.” I smiled, but it felt a little sour. “Don’t worry. I promise to do this whole mate thing with you and cure you before I go off and die.”

Skallagrim shot upright in the bed, like my words had run along the mattress and electrocuted him on contact.

“That is not why I ask!” he snarled savagely. “That is not why I worry!” He swiped his claws through the air. “Let my memory all be torn asunder. Let the entire universe tremble under the weight of my maddened rage. Let there be no hope left for me, no hope left alive for anyone! I do not care a whit for it, any of it, if I do not have you!”

I hadn’t fully started crying while talking about Elvi.

But I started crying now. My eyes filled and overflowed. Skallagrim’s enraged expression turned to one of dismay.

“Little star, I am sorry. I-”

“No. I’m sorry,” I choked out. What I’d just said to him was incredibly unkind, and it was only fully hitting me now. “I shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t fair.”

He lay back down on his side, looped a strong arm around me, and hoisted me across the bed until I was curled into his front. He rested the bottom of his snout on the top of my head as I dug my forehead against the scales on his chest and sobbed.

“I am sorry,” he repeated quietly, “for the anger in my reaction.” He sounded like he was in pain. “But I cannot... I cannot think of losing you. I cannot even think around it.”

I sniffed hard, then took a weepy breath, trying to calm down.

“I get it,” I said weakly. “When Elvi first got sick, I told myself every single morning that she wouldn’t die. It became like a mantra. Because if I’d stopped to consider the other possibility, I never would have been able to get myself out of bed in the morning.”

His hand caressed the rounded line of my spine, warmth penetrating through my tunic’s fabric.

“Grief for loved ones lost is a stone around your neck in the middle of the river,” he said quietly. “It will drag you right down to the bottom.”

“Have you ever lost anyone?”

As soon as the sniffly question was out of my mouth I wanted to smack myself. Of course he’d lost people. You didn’t live as long as he had without people around you dying.

“Yes. My parents I am certain of. My mother’s name was Jolakaia – a family name you no doubt recognize. My father...” He quieted for a moment, and his hand stopped stroking my back. “I do not remember my father’s name. Or his face.”

That broke my little human heart. As much as I missed Elvi, and our mother and my father, I could at least think about them. Time had worn away some of the sharp corners, turned many of the memories dusty, more akin to dreams, but at least they were still there. Still real enough that I continued hearing my sister’s voice, even now.