Filing System of the Gods, Part IV

Back on Odin's shoulders, Munin doesn't so much as stick his beak in Odin's ear before Odin starts ruminating about Baldur's last day. The great, one-eyed face droops lower and lower, until tears roll down his cheeks and disappear into his beard, and he snuffles like a great, big beagle.

Normally, this is where Hugin takes over--Thought, you know. But not today. He has something else on his mind: The Filing System of the Gods.

Being Thought, Thought with a Capital T, Hugin likes to read books. Philosophy, physics, calculus...well, sometimes an Enquirer, too. Just for fun. He'd rather peck out eyeballs. But a tabloid is a good, close-second option. Sometimes he musses a page or two, but that's because he's using his beak, and, like all truly thoughtful people, he doesn't really pay attention to what he's doing.

Anyway, one of the books he's read is about memories (lower case) and how to organize them: using a house or some other familiar structure, the memories are associated with mental images--mistletoe with Baldur, maybe--and gathered in rooms.

While the book was speaking (figuratively speaking) figuratively, there shouldn't be any reason it couldn't work literally, too.

The only problem is where...where...

Then a bright idea hits Hugin, and it's such a bright idea that he completely loses his balance and topples off Odin's shoulder with a squawk!

Mugin looks back at him, dangling precariously (and upside-down) from a tangle of Odin's gray hair and dark cloak.

"What--" Caw! "--are you doing?" Caw! Caw! Caw! Munin's laughing so hard he almost drops a fat one on Odin's shoulder.

But then Hugin wraps his wings around himself and starts to cawkle, trying to keep the idea in and shaking so hard he finally does lose his grip and crash to the floor, and Munin begins to almost get frightened...

Filing System of the Gods, Part III

With the echo of that statement still ringing back from old shields for miles around, Munin grandly picks up his left claw and half-lurches, half-flaps from the smeared old helm he's been hogging toward a white spear (Hugin thinks) thrusting out of a pile of armor.

"The bright helm to the...thigh bone!" Munin chants. The he lurches right, towards and insect mound covered with dark shapes that normally swarm through dead flesh like it was mulch. "The thigh bone to the...beetle mound!"

Hugin follows Munin around the field of the dead, staying one hop behind.

"The pearly ring to the...scarred sword!"

"The red scarf to the...letter home!"

"It's piiiink," Hugin cawed. But softly. Because, deep inside, he knows, knows beyond all shadow of a doubt (and Hugin, there's a raven who can doubt), that if he interrupts Munin, they're going to have to start all over again.

"The icy horns to the...golden shield! And here's the memory of Baldur!"

Munin is standing o'er a shield bearing the sign of the golden disk of the sun. He lifts his beak up high in the air and strikes it down on the shield, which lets out a bell-like peal, a terrible, iron sound, and the memory of Baldur falling to the ground, pierced by Loki's mistletoe spear (but thrown by an innocent hand) gasps over his soul like the wind that howls over the body of a coward.

Hugin can see Munin opening and closing his beak, but he (thankfully) can't hear a single noise out of that overblown peacock.

Filing System of the Gods, Part II

But Hugin, being the raven he is, just can't leave it alone. Eventually, Munin gives in and brings him to the fields of the fallen.

Out back behind Yggdrasil* is this place you'll never find unless you're looking for it, because it's hidden. It's a battlefield. And it looks just like any other abandoned battlefield you'll find in Asgard. Or Midgard** for that matter, except that Hugin and Munin are the only two ravens there. Dead warriors, disintegrating horses pooling in their plate-mail armor, bright blades snapped at the hilt and poxed with rust, mounds of dirt churned with maggots and pale roots, fingers reaching to the sky with bony wrists, skulls filled with shining, irregular jewels of pus-- rot as far as the eye can see--as far as a raven can see--as far as a hawk can see. Farther than that. Past the horizon. It's vast. It's...

"Corpses?" Hugin asks.

"Memories." Munin struts and preens his feathers.

Hugin looks around at the vastness of it, and says, "Then the question isn't why does it take you so long to find Odin's memories...but HOW YOU FIND IT AT ALL!" --He screeches this last bit so loud Munin scares up into the air for a second.

Munin lands in exactly the same place and clacks his beak at Hugin. "What, you don't know where the memory of Baldur is the day before he died? Or the other names of the Norns? There are quite a few, you know! You want to know how I find it all? Caw! Like...this!"


*The "World Tree." The Interstate Highway and Internet of the Gods--loosely translated.
**A word which here means the mortal realms.

Filing System of the Gods, Part I

(A Fable of Project Management)

So one day Hugin & Munin* are sitting on Odin's shoulders, digesting corpses and crapping down Odin's back, when Hugin turns to Munin and says, "Why does it take you so Garmr-awful long to remember the most trivial of things?"

Munin snaps his beak at this. "So long? So long? Caw! Odin the All-Father has lived long and his memories, both glorious and shameful, are as numerous as the stars! Do you think I can find the specific memory among the fields of the fallen the way a maiden picks daisies? Caw!"

This peaks Hugin's interest. "The fields of the fallen--?"

But Munin is too angry for human speech and ends up cursing in Raventongue. "Caw! A-caw! Caw!"

At first, Hugin tries to explain. But this always happens whenever Hugin has an idea. Hugin patiently explains what Munin could be doing better, and Munin devolves into caw-cussing and doesn't even listen. So Hugin loses patience, too. "Caw! Caw! Caw!"

And then Odin loses patience and shoos them both away, calling for Peace and Quiet,** who are too timid to appear when Hugin and Munin are around.


*Which, if you don't know, are Odin's ravens. "Hugin" means "thought," and "Munin" means "Memory." I always get them mixed up.

**Adumbian and Astillian, Odin's goldfish.