Alfheimr Renaissance

Borgarsandr, day 12

Iselin

I wonder if Iselin knows the concept of behaviour training and positive reinforcement, because I feel really positively rewarded right now. It was wonderful to wake up, on my side with one arm under the pillow, and my other arm around her stomach, and Iselin cuddled in like the little spoon. Her hair is everywhere, and I lie there smelling her faint fragrance. It turns out that she woke up quite a long time ago, but didn't want to get up, so she cuddled towards me to feel me holding her, and feel embraced by me. Iselin say that when she moved, I reflexively pulled her closer to me, took a deep breath and just contentedly sighed. This is better than morning sex, and we lie and listen to the rain outside and are just happy to be in each other's arms.

How long have I known her now? Three and a half weeks?

Less than a month ago, a too young but smart, charming and adorable goddess came into my life and gradually became the most important person in my entire life as an adult - old life included. I've had girlfriends I loved, but not like this.

Or is it just time that made me forget the feelings from back then?

Probably. At least I haven't though about them for a while. It annoys me a little that she is so young - only 20 years old. In the beginning it was unimportant, as I tried to keep it more businesslike and she was a maid. To me, she isn't that any more, and honestly hasn't been for a while. She is more a personal assistant and mistress that I didn't want to admit to myself that I am in love with.

Sure, here in Alfheimr it's not uncommon for a 40 year old man to have a 15 year old wife, but it is looked down upon a bit here too. More importantly, I look down upon myself because I am 36 years old, and I want this 20 year old woman as my fiancée, but the heart ignores what the brain thinks. This has hardly been a normal healthy relationship - she is my ex slave and still in my service. So much for my morale. She works for me, but at least she's not a slave any more. I really don't like the agreement we have. It was a reasonable idea back then, and logically it still is, but it's felt more like a burden as the days goes past.

It's too early to truly think about marriage, as at least I seem to be in the 'love struck' phase. My brain probably sees everything in a pink fuzzy shimmer, and quite frankly I care too much about her to want to force her into marriage. At least that is how it feels to me - as if I would be forcing her. I think everyone else would see it differently because of the difference in our statuses, and I'm worried that Iselin will see it that way too. I want her to love me for me, not for my status or future status. But maybe I should plan to propose to her the coming winter or something, or probably better next year, when the Academy might be nearing completion.

I'm starting to understand all those powerful men who marry a young woman. At least I have no family, wife or girlfriend that I betray. Just myself. I, who haven't had a girlfriend for a decade - have fallen hard for Iselin. So damn hard. I need to terminate our agreement, but I'm worried she'll be leaving me. I don't think she will. Logically or emotionally. But the insecurity is there inside me like a little evil demon who whispers that I don't deserve her. I'm too old for her. She can find someone better. I probably can't make her a mother if she wants to, which is something all other men here can do. If she left me, it would break my heart. If I marry her, and she becomes distant and jaded as I can't make her a mother and give her a good life, and as we grow older ... It will be worse.

I'm beginning to understand Kari's attitude and desire for a pure business like partnership without feelings - positive or negative - that can grow into something stable and comfortable. Emotions and inner demons are a damn combination. But right now its not the time to tackle this. I need to wait until after the King's decision.

Ha, what a fucking coward I am! Postponing the decision and have anxiety for days to come.

Man the fuck up!

"Iselin, what Kari set in motion for our future probably means that she will be given to me as concubine by the King in a few days, which I won't be able to say no to, as it's supposed to happen in connection with the King giving me land for my Academy, and she will be a gift. Kari knows that you are more important to me than anyone else, including her, but she got a chance to choose me as her man instead of the future she was heading for - so she took it - and I can't fault her for that, in view of her probable future. If she was honest about it. That she choosed to tell you so early, gave me time to try to prevent it, and I can only interpret that, as she has prepared something that would hurt us if I didn't accept her solution.

It will be good for our future that she is on our side. I simply need her knowledge, so I have accepted her in my future instead of taking the risk of trying to force her away. That's why she gave me that kiss a few days ago, as a reward for figuring it out and as a 'thank you' for her likely future as my concubine. But just because she is probably going to be my concubine, I don't have to start having sex with her, although people will probably assume that we do. But eventually we will have sex. Kari is loyal to the King, until he announces the decision and she is given to me as a concubine. But she is smart enough to not get between you and me. I just hope that you can accept all of this."

Iselin looks a bit unhappy, and I'm not surprised that she doesn't like that Kari wiggled in to our lifes, but at the same time she gets a smile so I guess she likes that I talk to her about it and that I think she is more important. I hope the next part makes it even better. I won't tell her that Kari's actions hastened it, since I don't need to make Iselin grateful to her.

I hope that she wants to be grateful.

So I ask if Iselin wants to listen to some music, and she nods. I say I have a song I want her to listen to, but that she should stay in bed as I fetch the stuff. I take the folded agreement out of the backpack and discreetly sign over it with one of my pens, while I pick up the MP3 player and the earbuds, and it's fortunate that she's facing the wall so she doesn't see this. Discreetly I leave the agreement on the table within reach, and crawls back down under the covers with her. I ask her to turn around and she puts in the earbuds. My heart is really beating when I choose the song, but I can't really deny it. We lie there and I look into her eyes as the owl call in the introduction to 'Cecilia Vennersten - Det vackraste (The most beautiful)' makes her react. The song is slowly sung in Swedish which have a lot of word related to Norse, and when she begins to understand it's meaning, it is so adorable. It seems to hit her emotions, just like she has done in mine. Especially the end, as there are tears in her eyes. Finally, Iselin asks, with a hope tone;

"Again?"

Cecilia's sweet voice starts playing again and this time Iselin really seems to listen to the lyric from the beginning and understands more. Especially when she actually crawls close on a couple of occasions and gives me a little kiss, and she has such beautiful tear-filled eyes when I hug her. I don't know how much she really understands but I 'sing along' to the last little phrase in as good Norse as I can.

'You lay here next to me, and I feel how you breathe. To be loved by you, is the most beautiful thing to me...'

I gently remove our earbuds and give her the agreements folded paper, which she begins to open as I say;

"Iselin, I love you. The agreement just feels like a heavy stone and the agreement is fulfilled. You are now a completely free woman, with no obligations. I love you. I hope you love me back and want to stay with me, and that we together can create our future, but you're not forced. You are free. Where I come from we have no concubines, and only one wife, but we have something we call 'engagement'. You can think of it as the man and the woman is each others concubine, and equal in the relationship. It is a pre-stage to live together and see that the pair function as a couple, before maybe getting married. Iselin, do you want to be my fiancée?"

Iselin looks at me with tears running down her face and I hope they are tears of joy. She barely even looks at the agreement paper after seeing what it is. She just drops it on the floor and hugs me and kisses me while the tears flow and she tries to nod 'yes' at the same time as she seems to have lost the ability to speak, and lightly headbutts me instead. We both laugh, but it doesn't stop us.

"I love you Robert, and I have for weeks. You're the 'most beautiful to me' too. I'm overjoyed to be your fiancée, or concubine, and I'm so honored if you in the future ask me to be your wife, but there's such a huge difference in our statuses and you shouldn't feel compelled to ask me. That sejd thing women can get that prevents children? I want it, so so much. I want to feel you in me often and intensely, without anything between us and whenever we want. And when you're ready, I want to give you children. I want to share your bed every night so I can fall asleep in your arms, and wake up every morning with you, so you are the first thing I see."

Our kissing becomes more intense, and she moans in my mouth when my first finger finds the right spot, and she starts to eagerly massage my penis. Time is irrelevant, but it takes a long time before we leave the room. The others congratulate us when we tell, and both Ciara and Kari give me a kiss on the cheek.

Kari is really happy for them. She had hoped Robert would make Iselin his concubine in the next few days, because they seem so in love with each other, and there are few couples who can build a life based on love without family involvement, and she hopes it ends as the Saga it is. It also makes her own position as Robert's future concubine a little more secure, because he must have told Iselin before they became a couple. That Robert asked her to be his 'fiancée' instead of a concubine is telling of how he sees her, and how much he values her, because being a concubine wasn't good enough for Iselin. None of them seem to care that 'fiancée' isn't a status enshrined in law, while concubine is, but Robert walks his own path through life, with rules and laws governed by his heart and the Gods.

The only thing that can ruin her plans now is King Asbjörn Aeriksson. For the King isn't as smart, logical and rational as Robert, and the King has a history of brusque harsh decisions against those who act against him, or for some reason makes him angry. Kari can only hope that the days that pass give the King time to accept her goal. Whether he understands it is her goal or not.

I have a hard time focusing on anything other than Iselin who is constantly on my mind, and now I don't have to be ashamed of it, or push my thoughts away. I would have liked to spend more time in bed with Iselin, but the weather clears up and I manage to test lenses and they're better than expected and the prisms too, although I will have to grind and polish them myself. Need to build the binoculars and test distortion when finished, although it technically will be a monocular since it's only for one eye.

I probably should ignore the prism design because there are many imperfect glass surfaces that distort the view and small micro bubbles in the glass which scatter light and distorts the image, especially in some parts of the prism. But now I know and have them, and since the light will be focused to a smaller beam it will only go through a smaller part of the prism, so it might still work okay. I try to hold up the lenses and get them in focus in front of my eye and it gives a magnification of about 5 times, without too bad color spread and image quality if I polish them more. It's hard to keep the lenses stable enough for a proper test, but I need to measure the distance between lenses. The image is of course rotated 180 degrees, but that is what the prisms are to be used for. Sure, a single roof prism or similar would be better than two 90 degree prisms, but that is much too difficult to manufacture correctly - maybe in the future if I can precision cast glass and have grinding templates.

Now it's time to make a suitable body to keep everything in place, and make the focus adjustable. There are several ways to do it, and as long as it doesn't need be 100% moisture-proof, it is not that difficult. I will also need to be able to disassembled the monocular, to clean and remove condensation on the inside. This won't hardly be a modern binocular with coated color corrected doublet lenses and nitrogen or argon filled interior to avoid condensation.

I takes all the physical measurements of the lenses, distances and takes notes, then I make exact copies of the diameter in thickest paper as a template, and make sketches for the cast body for prisms, but I might as well bring the lenses with me too and a couple of prisms. I also makes a couple of sketches and diagrams with cross-sections to see if Digraldi can shape something in brass for the body.

Bodil says she has finished with that hearing protection I wanted, and of course it dampens a little but not so much it feels worth it. She has also rubbed in some oil to protect the wood and make them nicer. So I explain that they're not finished yet, and ask Ciara to sew a padded tube with other fabric in it, preferably something fluffy, to which Bodil suggest padding material for armour but just thick wool blankets should do, and then those tubes will be glued along the edge. They will probably have to scrape the oil threaded surface of so the glue sticks. At least Ciara and Bodil will have something to do when we leave for the town.

This time, it's just me, Iselin and Alith heading in to town for another shopping trip. It is a beautiful day; the sun is shining and the sun beams are shimmering through the trees, and there is a bit of beautiful fog rising over the fields and among the trees. We see a rainbow further away and the birds sing and play. I wish Iselin didn't need to drive so I could hold her and just enjoy the day, but Alith as our guard should be free and be ready to act. Iselin and me manage to give each other a couple of kisses anyway, and we are both happy and enjoying the day.

She's my fiancée!

Digraldi is happy to see us, and after welcoming us, we dive into my project. Brass can be soldered, and is quite nice to work with, so it will be made in that. I wasn't expecting to find anything that might fit, but he does have a couple of scrap tubes that works for the ocular lens, but that will have a focus mechanism, so not ideal. So I explain the design and ask him to make three tubes, the large one slightly conical, and how I want it attached and tube in tube solution with an angled groove with a pin so that rotation moves the rear part in and out. He offers to do most of it today if I am willing to accept apprentice work, which I am, but say it can wait until the casting job is finished. I need everything at the same time, so no need to have just a few parts. He will cast the body parts in brass, and I give him the sketches and template on prism sizes etc so it should be correct. Slightly too large is also better than slightly too small, and I have to add brass or wood pieces to hold the prisms in place, so I can adjust for each one. One complete prism monocular will be made of five larger parts with smaller lens fixing rings, and he will make parts for a simpler mono tube monocular. Apparently it's no major work, and since I don't care about a nice outer finish, it might be finished tomorrow afternoon.

I want to give Iselin a new necklace. She became my fiancée today and I want to give her something special, so we visit the jeweller next door. I'm thinking about some kind of gemstone and gold. We look at his necklaces and gemstones, and he has a few green emeralds looking stone that Iselin adores and they match her eyes. The jeweller takes me a side and show a large one that is almost heart shaped with nice clarity. That is special enough for Iselin, but its setting isn't at the same level - silver and quite plain with a few other smaller gems not really matching - which the jeweller agrees with. It isn't his craft, and after a bit of persuasion I manage to have him remove the gemstone and use a finer wider gold necklace that Iselin liked. We negotiate the price so Iselin and Alith won't hear, and I tell him to add the smaller emeralds on each gold segment, at 2 and 10 o'clock, one or two on each side in line with the gold necklace before the necklace chain take over. I ask if it is possible to get it finished at the same time as my ring. Four days is short, but he is willing to try as he already have the necklace. Quite expensive, and he wants half in advance so I give him 3 ounces of gold.