earned it

Hypnos seemed honestly interested in what Kapra had to teach him, which elicited a smile far more genuine than was typical of the tawny viking. Slowly he would turn to face him more fully, the small stub he had left of a tail wiggling excitedly at the prospect of a lesson.

”Let me tell you something of my gods,” he began, his excitement subsiding slightly as he shifted into a more serious demeanor. As far as he was concerned, his gods were the only gods -- and he wouldn’t have spoken otherwise in the presence of most others. But this boy knew nothing of his faith and he would give him a chance to learn, whether he chose to believe it or not; he just had to understand and follow the values that he and Katja shared.  ”I am told that in the beginning there was nothing. Instead, there was a great, dark abyss of emptiness, before there was any earth or sky. Of this nothingness erupted a great, vast land of ice known as Niflheim, while a land of fire came forth from the south. This land was angry, full of fire and flames, and from this land known as Muspellsheim came great rivers of fire and poison. The frost from Niflheim began to flow as well, and together they collided to form a godlike giant known as Ymir. As more of the ice from Niflheim began to melt, a cow came forth who began to nourish Ymir with her milk. She, too, needed nourishment so she began to lick at the ice, uncovering the first of the gods, Buri. It was Buri's son who married Ymir's daughter -- they fathered the three gods Odin, Vili, and Ve. It is these three gods that birthed everything that we know as life now." For a moment, he paused. The story was a lot to take in, he knew this, and the names would likely be foreign to the boy. But the backstory was important to him. He needed to know his gods, even if he did not choose to accept them.

Slowly he would move from where he stood, twisting his head toward the river, inviting Hypnos to walk with him while they spoke. "Odin is one of the most important of the gods," he began, still serious despite how animated this talk had made him. "It is to him that we owe our existence. He is the giver of all wisdom; it is he who instructs us to care not for rules or conventions, to ride into battle with frenzy and to be as sinister as we must be to pursue knowledge and glory." He was not the most noble of the gods, but that was what was so appealing to him -- and why he felt such a strong pull to Odin, the father of all creation. A gentle grin painted his features as he turned his head to Hypnos, searching for a reaction. After a moment his head would twist back forward, his gaze searching for something in the distance. Before their meeting, he had searched for a plant that he could teach Hypnos about. For him to truly understand the gods, he had to slip from the reality he knew and Kapra knew a perfect way to make this happen.