Well they can do a lot of that while they wait for her last child.

They can do so much of that! Technically there's like a baby and stuff but they can definitely spend most of their non-baby time having sex that is not even a little bit terrible.

Sounds good.

Eeeeeee.

And eventually her son and his minders reach the fairy ring. The women pause when they don't see anything, but Frey charges ahead and - stares at them.

"Hey kiddo."

"...Mom? I thought you disappeared."

"I did. I'm back now. I met a fairy, and I thought you'd very much like to meet him, too. Don't tell him your name, please. If you eat some food here you should be able to see the paths that fairies follow. Some of them make you as small as an ant, so you can see the world the way the insects do."

Frey thinks this sounds like an AWESOME idea.

Oh good.

And now she has all of her children back! Three of them don't even sort of hate her! 

Which means there is nothing in particular on the agenda before they attempt to trap the Emperor.

Nothing, though?

Okay maybe one thing.

That's good.

Yes.

...they do probably want to deliver him plenty of time before night happens so they don't get stuck again, though, so at some point she writes a note and gets him to sign it and then delivers it in what should be a fairly obviously magical manner.

And now they really have nothing better to do, don't they. Plausibly they should ever check on Tyr and Sigrun and make sure they haven't burnt down the treehouse or something, but besides that.

Well, have they burned down the treehouse? Are they feeding themselves okay?

One moderately long and fairly relaxed trek back to Norway later, and it looks like no, actually, they're kind of bored but mostly fine. They're pretty glad that their last brother is back with them, even if they're also kind of disappointed that he has also been separated from their father.

Do they want to learn woodworking or treehouse building or anything.

Tyr is still too mad to want to learn anything from fairies, but Sigrun thinks that woodworking is probably a better use of time than her other options. Frey and Ingolfr, too, although they're a lot worse at a lot of fine motor control stuff.

Well probably they'll be fine. He doesn't remember at what age he was taught this but he doesn't think he was that big.

They can all practice things, then. Except Tyr, who is going to sullenly wander the countryside and maybe occasionally look for food, and Ragna, who is going to work on walking and babbling and moving rocks and sticks around and eventually on beginning to say more words.

Still not a person (he'll notice when she is). Getting close, though.

Soon.

If they check Sweden again they'll notice that the Emperor is taking the time to gather some other nobles to ride into the forest with him, but that he should in fact reach the fairy ring today, probably a little bit past noon.

How considerate of him. "In that case I think we should drop him off at my court and then continue south and plan to spend the night in, like, Greece, more stuff grows there."

"Yeah, that sounds much better. We might not want to spend the whole time before waiting right here, either, it's gotta be another couple months yet, right?"