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The world is fire. The world is hot and red and unrelenting.
He is fire, the very blood that courses through his veins a terrible consumption that beats a desperate rhythm in his chest, his throat, his temples. Destroy, his blood says. Kill. Ruin. Undo all that you find, until there is no more. Until there is only you and the endless ravenous flame.
Each blow he strikes is wild and terribly powerful, terribly swift. He is a one-man army. He is a force of nature. His enemies fall before him, one at a time and then ten at a time and then a hundred and then he loses track of both them and himself.
He is fire.
Until she throws herself on him, her small arms encircling his neck and her knees finding pressure points on either side of his rib cage that make him gasp for breath. She is less than half the size of the trolls he has felled for hours with ease, but she is fast and she is strong and she knows how to bring him down. She is wrapped around him and he cannot reach her, can only lurch about and try to throw her off.
"Thor!" she bellows, and distantly he knows that sound, recognizes it; recognizes her voice. "Thor! That's enough."
Recognition is a strange feeling. Any feeling is a strange feeling. Fire does not feel. Fire only consumes.
He roars. She tightens her grip on his throat and leans in closer to his ear. He could grab her now, grab her by the neck and fling her over his head, but he hesitates.
"Thor." Her voice is steel, smooth and sure. He finds that he wants to hear more of it. "We have won the day. We are safe."
His blood is still pounding, still full of urgency and need. Still it says, Destroy. But dimly he realizes that except for her, he is alone. No movement in the dark haze of the world around him. No sound except his beating heart and her voice in his ear.
The fire has consumed -- everything.
"We are safe," she tells him again, softer.
His hands clench, release. He wants to feel satisfied, but fire is never satisfied.
He could consume her. Now her grip has slackened, and if he is very quick he might reach back and seize her by the long black shining hair; might rip her from his back and throw her on the ground and devour her.
She brushes her lips against his ear, feather-soft, and he thinks: No. She would be ready for him. She would dig her knees into his rib cage and he would wish he had never so much as reached for her.
And...
And he does not want to reach for her.
Slowly, he lets his hands fall to his sides. He feels the tension seep from her body like blood from a wound.
"Thor," she murmurs. The familiar sound.
A word. A name.
His name.
He wets his lips. They are cracked and bloody and difficult to shape into words of his own. He tries twice, managing only to spit vaguely, and his voice is rough from disuse. Finally the simple sound claws its way free of his mouth: "Sif."
She stiffens, then shivers, then sighs. "Yes," she says, after a long moment. "That's right. I am Sif. Do you know me, then?"
Laughter. A swordfight with sharpened sticks. Hair the color of summer wheat, fluttering in the breeze. Hands on her hips, nose turned up, and for some reason that was the moment when he first knew he loved her. She was skinny one summer and curvy the next. Her kisses uncertain but fiercely determined. Her shoulders freckled.
His dearest friend. More than that. Strawberries and honey wine and a thousand years of adventures, of battles, of war.
"I know you," he said, and he meant it.
Sif smiled against his skin and teased him, "Damn right you do," but his temple was wet where her eyelashes brushed it.