Valkyrie Field Guide to Mortal Oddities

I was not born to marvel at mortals, and yet here I am—sentinel of Odin, note-taker of their strange little rites. From my perch between battlefields and banquets of the dead, I observe the rituals of the short-lived. Their oddities unfurl like petals and thorns, at once laughable and luminous.

What follows is not a lecture, but a field guide—inked in reverence, laced with irony, and bound by the quiet oath of an observer who has walked among both gods and men.

The Observer’s Oath

We Valkyries are not mere scavengers of the fallen; we are archivists. Odin’s decree is clear: record the mortal condition in all its peculiar splendor. To watch, to listen, to transcribe with both empathy and precision. Their small dramas and curious compulsions deserve cataloguing, for they are fleeting—and therefore divine.

The Great Unconsciousness: Mortal Sleep

Each night mortals surrender to a rehearsal of death. They slip into darkness as if burying themselves, only to claw their way back at dawn. It is an odd cycle of miniature resurrections.

• Dream-Wandering: Their souls roam shadowy dreamscapes, sometimes tender, sometimes grotesque. One wonders if their gods do not laugh at the little theaters they stage inside their skulls.

• Nightmares: These are hauntings of the self—portents born not of demons but of anxieties mortals dare not name in daylight.

• Comfort Totems: Many cradle talismans—pillows, toys, trinkets—against the abyss. Small wards against the howling void.

Sustenance Rituals: Fueling the Brief Candle

Food, to them, is never merely fuel. It is theater, covenant, identity.

• The Thrice-Daily Consumption: Breakfast, luncheon, dinner—incantations that keep their frantic hours tethered to a rhythm.

• Communal Feeding: When mortals share bread, they stitch invisible threads of belonging.

• Feast Days: They crown the year with orgiastic banquets, elevating nourishment into spectacle. Here, the “wishing candle” ritual burns bright: wax, flame, and desire braided into one moment of edible magic.

Pair-Bonding Behaviors: Courtship & Mating

Ah, mortal love—part delirium, part paperwork.

• Attraction Displays: Some strut, some whisper, some wield cologne like a spear. The battlefield of flirtation is as perilous as any shield-wall.

• The Digital Matchmaking Revolution: Once they wooed with glances across firelight. Now they swipe, scroll, and algorithm their way into each other’s arms.

• Bonding Ceremonies: From garlanded temples to courthouse signatures, mortals sanctify their unions with public rituals. Love is fleeting; the ritual pretends it is eternal.

Mortal Oddities of Leisure

Mortals do not simply rest; they invent labyrinths of distraction.

• Screen-Trance Phenomenon: They stare into glowing rectangles as if praying to small gods of glass. Hours dissolve.

• Simulated Combat: Their thirst for battle lives on in games where no blood is spilled, but pride is slain mercilessly.

• Rhythmic Movement Rituals: Dance, revel, procession—mortals conjure ecstasy through synchronized flesh. Always, music is their invocation; its pulse binds them, its crescendo undoes them.

Modern Afflictions: Artificial Extensions

If once they clutched swords, now they clutch soul-vessels—those glowing devices called smartphones.

• Handheld Soul-Vessels: Within, they store memories, secrets, and selves. A reliquary of identity, disguised as glass.

• Virtual Selves: They construct phantoms—idealized masks—to parade in digital arenas.

• Stimulant Cycles: Their glowing appendages drip constant doses of novelty and alarm. Many are enslaved, though they would never admit it.

The Emotional Spectrum

Mortals drown in feelings and call it life.

• Joy: As fragile as a sparkler, as overwhelming as a thunderclap. They find it in both sunsets and promotions.

• Grief: The abyss left by love. Mortals carry it like a shadow stitched to their heels.

• Rage: A furnace that razes or reshapes. It is both weapon and prayer.

The Mortal Calendar

Their lives are ruled by cycles and holy pauses.

• Winter Gift-Exchanges: Tokens wrapped in bright paper—gifts as armor against the cold.

• Warm Weather Migrations: Like geese, they flock to sunlit shores.

• The Work-Rest Cycle: Labor and leisure in precarious balance. The curious invention of “weekends” stands out—two days carved as sanctuary from toil, worshipped with devotion equal to any deity.

Communication Systems of the Short-Lived

They speak in riddles both ancient and modern.

• Silent Signals: The twitch of an eyebrow, the drop of a shoulder—entire novels told without words.

• Dialects: Thousands of tongues, each a banner of territory and tribe.

• Emoji Runes: Digital hieroglyphs, equal parts crude and profound. A smiley-face can wound or woo depending on the sender.

Why We Cherish Them

And so—why do we immortals keep watching? Because mortals burn. Briefly, brilliantly, with a heat we can never replicate. They carve meaning out of impermanence. They love as if it will save them, grieve as if it will break them, rage as if the world might bend.

We who do not die find their oddities intoxicating. A moth cannot resist the flame, even if it dies in the glow.

And so we write. We record. We remember. For the Valkyrie’s true task is not simply to choose the slain, but to honor the living in all their exquisite strangeness.