A year after Freya first rested her eyes with Fenris snuggled to her body, she opened them again. Her bio-luminescent eyes adjusted to the near pitch darkness of the cavern she and Frigga stayed in within a second.
Throughout her rest, she had simply no need to openly stare at the walls of the caverns due to knowing the one who mattered most to her was in her grasp. She could feel her daughter's tiny mind exploring the numerous sensations its developing growth brought to her attention. She could feel the tiny psychic pawing of her mind's hands on her own and she devoted her whole attention to caressing every inch of her infant, absorbent mind that she could, allowing her to feel all the sensations she pushed forward to both love her and help stimulate the growth of her mind's maturity.
Her daughter's mind grew to understand the instinctive meaning of her mother's emotions, using them as a template to put a "good" or "bad" label on its own emotions, modeling itself after Freya's own mindset, much like a baby wyrm imprinting on the first face it sees as its parent.
She took it slow at first, allowing her daughter to feel warmth and comfort, before introducing a small distance that exuded loneliness and cold. The mind panicked for the first several days as she repeated the cycle of warmth and cold; comfort and loneliness. The child's mind soon began to cling to her mother's presence like a drowning cat to anything that could float. It couldn't stand to live without her mother's presence, even as its obsessiveness grew while Freya caressed it with soothing manipulating instincts and thoughts.
A week into it and Freya knew her child would grow to adore her mother over anything else in existence. It was a good start.
As the weeks turned into months, she introduced more concepts and instincts, correlating their complexity to her daughter's mental growth. She started with hunger and her daughter was quick to respond with images of warm milk from her mother's breastfeeding. This was the quickest since she'd been doing it a couple of times before they came into the nursing chambers. Fenris was quite the hungry child.
However, she had to then introduce Fenris's mind to the other side of hunger and why it was "not good". Whenever she tried to feed, Freya brought her just out of distance and kept her there despite her mind's cries for supplements. This served to introduce another two concepts.
Fear and Pain.
The hunger brought about fear as it didn't know what would happen were it not fed. The uncomfortable pain helped it understand that not feeding was bad but when the hunger and pain got worse, she started panicking again. Freya then introduced a feeling of Helplessness and Despair. Fenris really didn't like the feelings even though she didn't understand the concepts for quite a while, giving up and simply dealing with the sense of powerlessness as if it was simply an aspect mandatory of life; a few weeks at most before baiting the warmth of her mother's food forced Fenris' mind to unconsciously recognize the next step of her training.
Her mind unknowingly discovered the concepts of Determination, Survival, and Will Power; all elements essential for Survival. Her mind forced her body to struggle against her mother's hold, to move tiny weak muscles so she could take what she needed for survival. Her body was weakening from hunger and the pain fought against any movement she made but she didn't want to feel this pain and hunger anymore. She had to eat!
The forced movements of her muscles for the next two weeks caused them to become strong. Thanks to her Royal bloodline's healing, all of the tiny muscle tears during her struggles healed to become stronger than before. By two months end, a near starving baby developed an instinct that basically translated into "Victory or Death", or "Might makes Right."
Due to the regeneration consuming the meager amounts of energy she had before this step in her training, she was very weak but at her last moments, Freya finally fed her. Fenris' mouth weakly suckled her mother's milk, not stopping for entire days as her body quickly turned her mother's fluids into energy needed to feed her brain and body. By a week's time of on and little-off feeding, Freya engraved into her daughter's very heart, mind, body and soul the concepts of Achievement, Victory, Reward, Fulfillment, Hope and Confidence.
Not even three months old and Fenris had already accomplished a feat that would have killed any human alive, surviving against all odds while not eating for an entire month.
Her salvation at her mother's whims introduced more instincts into her very existence. She was so much stronger than her and her continued existence could be decided by her very whim. The fact that Freya saved her and let her feed from her powerful essence imprinted into Fenris' mind the very personification of Mercy, Power, and Authority.
She then realized that she was the only one she was bonded to. She had no idea if others existed. It was just her and her mother. Her mind didn't even know the word "other". She hurt her but helped her. She would starve her but then feed her. She began to attach emotions and instincts to this being: powerful, hope, despair, bad, good, food, hunger, loneliness, comfort. Everything she has ever felt was because of this presence.
This presence has been here for her as long as it was aware, forcing her to grow and rewarding her efforts with comforting caresses and good feelings within its body. It was on the brink of something it wasn't sure a while ago. All it knew was that it wouldn't be feeling pain anymore, but then it wouldn't get to feel comfort anymore either. She came back to her. She brought her from the very deep pits of coldness and pain.
And so Fenris's infant mind attached to Freya the one term she's been hoping for.
Freya's presence equaled Survival itself. She liked living. While the moments of loneliness and pain were bad, she really liked the good moments and the liquid she fed from her mother's body. For the next months, she began to understand this more and more, her mind growing stronger and developing to the point it was the equivalent of a philosophical, self-aware three year old child, and she was only five months old.
As Fenris' mind understood the significance of Freya's presence more and more, she would approve and reward her with more feedings and embraces and less times of hunger and loneliness until her very soul that relied on Freya's mercy finally understood that without her, she would forever fall into that coldness that hurt her so much.
And so, Freya has accomplished the very first true test of all Valkyrian mothers: Instilling an unbreakable loyalty to them from their children.
The children, while not drones, would never turn against their mothers, who in turn would never turn against the species. By the time they would be young children to teens, they would latch onto every word of wisdom their mothers imparted onto their minds.
By human comparison, this would be no different than indoctrination through manipulations in the child's growth stages, but is that not what parenting is among every species alive? Is there really a difference between indoctrination and the efforts a parent goes through when raising their child?
No, there isn't. It's just that a human would be jealous due to not being able to do such a thing themselves.
However, the opinions of humans matter not as this instinctual mothering practice (understatement though the word is) is unknown to all species and would stay that way, just as the secrecy of the nursing chambers were unknown to all outside the Valkyrian Empire... though, their system of ruling would be more of an Instinctual Autocracy.
Still, with her daughter's soul anchoring her existence to Freya's desires complete, she could now do what she's been wanting to do ever since she started the grueling first year of raising her child. With her daughter's being bound to hers, she could cuddle her with all the affection she could want, which is just what she did.
For the next seven months, Fenris'd know nothing but comfort when in her mother's arms. For times ranging from minutes to hours, she would allow Frigga to embrace Fenris to her own body while she amused an energetic Brynhild. A mother though would never allow her child(ren) to be away from her for more than a couple of hours as while at that age, once the bond she had created with Fenris was complete, it would be several more years before it'd be stable enough to introduce children to extended exposure of other mothers and not get the child confused on who was who.
Tiny children like those of Brynhild's age were just old enough to have cemented the physical and psychic identity of their own mothers so while Freya would take Fenris back after an hour or so, Brynhild was old enough to move between the two and even other mothers to interact with them or their children. Secured in the nursing chambers of all types of dangers, Frigga would let her child move back up the chambers to find any other children and mothers to play with. She could always find her way back to them so Frigga and Freya were unconcerned. While Brynhild would spend most of her time with Fenris, she still liked to explore her vast surroundings.
It was due to the few number of visits to the other groups that eventually a familiar duo of children had secretly followed Brynhild back. It came as a pleasant surprise for the child when Sif and Sigyn stumbled into the deepest chamber, the small pattering of footsteps having given them away hundreds of meters ago. Brynhild was excited to play some more but her excitement turned into confusion and unrecognized jealousy when they spotted Fenris and tried to play with her instead. Due to Freya not wanting to let go of her, they understood as their mommies used to do that to them as well so they simply settled on Freya's lap and hugged Fenris, oftentimes simply doing nothing more than petting her white neck-length hair or pointy ears.
Sigyn had gotten out of her shyness enough to even play with Freya's hair, something the grown Valkyrian was more than okay with. Frigga wasn't left out of the interactions either as Sigyn tended to favor her more than Freya, but still was quite possessive of Fenris. The two energetic children were constantly in competition to possess Fenris when Freya would allow it while little Sigyn wasn't as energetic but was simply more opportunistic, getting her chances when the two started horse-playing in childish arguments.
The two mothers simply smiled and kept the children from causing too much of a ruckus for several hours before the two visitors felt their mothers' calling and gave the adults and kids one last hug before hurrying off.
Such a peaceful cycle was a reminder to Freya that her giving so much to her people for moments like these made all of her sacrifice, both past and future, worth it. There's no "would" before "future". It simply was.