Navigator Tee

The wind howled like a wounded god as the longship creaked through black, icy waves. Flóki stood at the bow, his eyes fixed on the grey horizon. Salt stung his face. His beard was stiff with frost. He had left Norway not for glory, but for something stranger—a new land whispered of by madmen and wanderers, a place beyond the edge of maps, where the sun set late and the dead froze standing. Three ravens huddled in a cage at his feet. They were not pets. They were his compass. The first raven was released and turned east—homebound, cowardly. The second flew high, circled, and fell back to the ship—lost, uncertain. The third... flew west. Straight. Without hesitation. Flóki watched it disappear into the mist. “That is the one,” he muttered. For weeks they followed where no man ruled the sea. Men murmured of sea monsters and falling off the world’s edge. They passed icebergs like shattered gods. The sun hung strangely in the sky, and the stars twisted into shapes unknown. When land finally