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She actually reached out and squeezed Einn’s hand. Not a hug, not a reassurance of any kind, just a quick, unprecedented touch. That was all. Nothing more.

So, why was Tveir being so nice at this point in time?

Her hand was on E’s shoulder, and she was actually giving a reassuring pat.

It made no sense. Well, none that Einn’s poor, tired, strung-out brain could conjure.

It had to be an act, a manipulation of some sort.

There was no other explanation. T was demanding, exacting, and an absolute tyrant when it came to their work.

Well, when it came to anything and everything, but especially any and every project, game, or experiment Einn was bringing to life.

She’d even set up parameters, time tables, and pie charts for their games of hide and seek as children.

It was maddening, but Einn couldn’t waste any brain power on it. She had to focus. She had to think of something to say. She had to deflect from her lack of progress and get her twin talking about something other than the ticking of the timeclock and the lack of forward progress on the experiment.

There was no way she would survive a level 6, Def Con 666, Tveir the Tyrant temper tantrum. Not at the best of times, and definitely not with no sleep, no cookies, and none of the wonderfully warm and delicious brew the humans called coffee.

She needed to… She had to… There was no choice. She would… “Baffle ‘em with bullshit.”

“What was that, Sister? I didn’t quite catch it.”

Overjoyed that Tveir hadn’t heard her repeat one of their father’s favorite sayings, Einn knew precisely what she had to do.

Spinning on her toes, she smiled with such forced ferocity and fake cheer that the muscles in her cheeks literally burned.

Then with all the chutzpah she could muster, she did the one thing she never wanted to do, she lied through her crooked, yellow teeth.

“Battling with the sprockets.” Clearing her throat, she tapped the palm of her left hand with the wrench in the right.

“I said I haven’t been to bed yet because I was battling with sprockets.

I had to change to micro ones in order to add a few more logic circuits and transducer coil chips that we got from that new god on the Norse Pantheon. What’s his name? Takis?

“Taeknis.”

Tveir’s answer was quick and sharp. The tension was instant and palpable. Her true nature was pushing through the shiny veneer she was trying to present and Einn knew her time to throw up a smokescreen and get her sister to leave was limited.

The grinding of T’s teeth was an undercurrent to the hum of the equipment E had running. Tveir was baiting her. As always, she wanted Einn to say or do something that she could blame for making her mad and ultimately blame Einn for the ensuing argument.

But on this one occasion, unlike all the millions of others, Einn refused to fall for it.

She just kept nodding and saying a lot of words without really saying anything.

It was tedious, even for someone with the gift of gab.

However, it had to be done. She had to keep talking, to keep her sister from getting more than a couple of words in edgewise or the proverbial shit would hit the not-so proverbial fan, and the resulting mess would have more than tears. ..

There would be blood.

“Oh, yeah,” she chuckled nervously. “How could I forget Taeknis? I mean, how many times do you meet a god taking a walk in Central Park? A Norse god no less. Then there’s the fact that he only received his godhead a little over a century ago.

That makes my top ten list of strange and unusual things.

Let’s be real, pretty much no one but those with Magic of some kind running through their veins still gives a hoot about gods and goddesses and Odin went on ahead and made another?

Weird. Not to mention that the new dude’s name is the old Viking word for technology.

” She stopped, brightened her already megawatt smile and kept right on going.

It was the perfect opportunity to say a whole lot of words about a whole lot of nothing.

“Another thing on my top ten list: the fact that the old Vikings had a word for technology but didn’t have any technology?

Well, not like we think of technology. Duh.

They had knowledge and skill that led to so very many inventions that the world still uses in some form or another. I also understand that…”

Completely disregarding that Einn was even speaking, her twin interrupted with her usual haughty tone and overwhelming sense of entitlement and superiority. “Until a few decades ago, Taeknis meant technique, not technology.”

“Right! That’s what I was about to say,” Einn quickly commented.

“The Northmen were very inventive. And not to repeat myself, but I’m going to repeat myself.

Many of the tools and devices they created have evolved into those we use today.

” Holding the dog bone wrench over her head, she continued, “Take this for example. The Vikings had something like it that they used to tighten…”

“Yes, Einn, I am well aware that the Northmen were highly intelligent and advanced.” The split-second, silent pause seemed hours long, but Einn refused to stop smiling or stop looking her sister right in the eye.

Einn had been caught in that trap of not keeping her gaze locked on her twin too many times.

Yes, they were identical. Sure, their DNA matched down to the very atom.

Absolutely, it was difficult for anyone to tell them apart.

However, they were two very different beings, and Einn had found out the hard way how brutal Tveir could be.

On more than one occasion, it was downright mean and hateful.

She wouldn’t go there again if she could help it.

Then T added, “But the real question is, are you as highly intelligent and advanced as those Northmen? As I believe you to be, dear sister?”

Waves of frustration and impatience rolled off her twin like an angry ocean beating at the shore. Einn wanted to blink. She wanted to back away. She wanted to put distance between herself and her sister. She wanted to be anywhere but in the lab.

Sadly, Tveir stood between her and the only way out. So, she simply had to come up with another way. There had to be a plan that T wouldn’t see coming–a way Einn could trick her twin into leaving on her own terms.

But what? Thoughts swirled and whirled through her mind. Flashes of inspiration went down in flames as she rejected each and every one.

The harder she thought, the more she returned to the same irritating, confusing, and downright aggravating conclusion–Tveir would always be her best friend and worst enemy all rolled into one.

But why? Why couldn’t they have been identical in temperament as well as looks?

It would’ve made life infinitely easier–at least for Einn.

Where she was patient, Tveir was anything but.

If there was one certainty, it was that her twin had never been good at waiting for anything .

She wanted everything two seconds before she asked for it and she demanded perfection.

She’d always been that way. Einn blamed it on the fact that she had been born second and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

T liked to be numero uno at all costs. Of that, there could be no doubt.

Einn tried to joke about it. She told her sister that birth order didn’t matter because they were twins, but Tveir did not agree.

Since she’d taken her first breath, T had to be the best and thought E should rise to the occasion to provide nothing if not a competition that she could win.

It was always a contest, one Einn hated with a passion.

Why couldn’t she just putter around? Why did all her inventions have to have purpose, detailed flowcharts, timelines, and strict completion deadlines?

After all, she’d created the very first Twinometer while trying to do something completely different.

It was supposed to be a blaster, a weapon to kill the nasty creatures they’d named Scrubs, before the yucky, ooey, nasty little buggers got into the Manor and ate everything in sight.

Flat and elongated, their carrot-shaped bodies were iridescent and shiny and almost pretty if Einn squinted her eyes, tilted her head as far to the side as it would go, and turned out all the lights.

Unfortunately, that was as far as their ‘beauty’ could be stretched.

They were not only vermin out to eat, poop and spread disease, but they were also known to grow to as long as four feet, as wide as three feet, and have venomous fangs.

Thankfully, Einn and Tveir were somehow immune to the deadly toxin.

Maybe because they were Demi-goddesses. Who knew.

Sadly, they were not resistant to the stinging hairs of their extremely long and incredibly dexterous antennae.

One touch and a painful, itchy rash instantly appeared.

Then the flesh turned red, welts developed and the rash spread.

If not stopped, a person could be covered from head to toe in ten human hours.

The first time it had happened, Einn was the victim. After trying everything they had and a few things Tveir whipped up in the lab, she was bright red, lumpy, bumpy, and so itchy she’d resorted to wearing socks on her hands to keep from scratching herself raw.

On the second day, when Einn was soaking in a tub of Unicorn milk, she saw what the humans called a commercial on the TV they had liberated from a home on one of their many visits to Earth.

Those wily, intelligent, go-getters she admired so very much had come up with what they called a ‘wonder drug’.

Its name was Calamine, and she just knew it would stop the spread of the rash and the horrible itch that was driving her crazy.

And she had been right. Of course, it didn’t come without its downside. The cool, smooth liquid was the ugliest shade of pink she’d ever seen, and when slathered on her skin instantly became crusty.

Nevertheless, it stopped the itch, and that was what mattered. It also gave Tveir something to tease her about and together they laughed for hours. It was one of the many things they harassed each other about then chuckled and giggled until their tummies hurt.

But in the last few years something had changed. Tveir hardly ever smiled. She never laughed. And when Einn brought up the old times, she frowned and grumbled under her breath.

If only E had time to figure out what was wrong and why T was so focused on getting the Twinometer’s range and focus kicked up to an eleven in record time. Maybe then she would understand why getting to Asgard six months before their arbitrarily set deadline was so important.

But there wasn’t time…

Her eyes flashed to the second clock counting down the time she had left, the one over Tveir’s right shoulder and her heart skipped a beat. The numbers were down to one hour, forty-three minutes, and seven seconds.

She needed to get a move-on, but she simply couldn’t be the first one to look away. She had to…

And then it happened. Tveir looked down at the tablet laying across her forearm and the tap-tap-tapping of the tips of her nails hitting the screen filled the lab.

Before Einn could so much as breathe, T barked, “You are falling behind, E. You need to get busy. You only have one hour, forty-two minutes, and twenty-one seconds. Do I have to do everything myself? Do I need to find a source of Power that is…”

“That’s it!” Einn screamed. Flying across the room, she slipped her long, knobby-knuckled fingers between the back of the tablet and Tveir’s forearm, grabbed the device, and lifted it over her head. “That’s it! That’s it! Nanny-nanny-boo-boo! I, the Great and Wonderful Einn have figured it out!”

“For the love of…”

But that was as far as Einn let her sister get before doing a happy dance to end all happy dances. She shimmied and shook. She turned to the side, swung alternating arms downwards while kicking the opposite leg behind. She did a little boogie then ended with the famous Saturday Night Fever move.

Suffice it to say, she covered all her bases and made sure it was as irritating as possible for her twin. After all, it was only a fraction of what Tveir deserved.

Stopping with her right hand holding the tablet to her chest and the other as high as she could get it in the air with her fingers wiggling all about, she shrieked, “Zip it! Hush! Shut the hell up! Listen to me. I have something to say. I have figured it all out!”

“Okay,” Tveir sighed with an unconvincing roll of her eyes. “But you know how I feel about being told to shut up.”

“I do… And I don’t give a good diddly damn.”

Huffing as if she was auditioning for the part of the Big Bad Wolf, Tveir pursed her lips and sassed, “So, spill. Tell me what you think you know. Then I can figure out how to make it better.”

“Oh, sister dear,” Einn mocked, feeling a little guilty but loving the surprised look in her twin’s eyes. “There will be no making it better. What I just figured out is the best thing ever created. It is Magical. It is wonderful. It is intelligent. And it is mag–fucking–nanimous.”

Doing a soft shoe dance toward her twin, Einn sang at the top of her lungs, “It’s love! True! Big time, sappy, rom com, Fate will not be denied, the Universe made it–Love! Love! LOVE!”

“What in the hell are you…?”

“Oh, do be quiet, Tveir,” Einn hushed before tossing the tablet at her sister then spinning toward her workstation. “Pull up the info from our last visit to Earth,”

“But…”

Whipping back around, her fists hit her hips, she glared with flames dancing in the depths of her bulbous black eyes and growled, “Just. Fucking. Do. It.”