Moving through the motions.

[seekingvinland]

WHO: Thorfinn Thorsson
WHERE: House 8, The Woods, & The Inn.
WHEN: September 7th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Nothing yet, will update.
STATUS: Open

---

A: Outside of Kol's House #8
Thorfinn had woken early, which was nothing unusual given how he wakes everyone he lives with when his nightmares get to their peak each night. The shakes of the day had left him muttering about the gods being unpleasant and lead to even more unhappy dreams. Once he had rolled out of bed he had sat downstairs braiding his hair before working on one of his many projects waiting for daylight to break. Once the sun rose he made his way out to the porch pulling the gray scrub shirt on as he made his way out, nearly tripping on a box waiting on the porch not knowing it was for him he knelled and poked at the box a second. Wrinkling his nose some he thought about what Kol had said about not trusting magically appearing things but he was curious and it had English letters scribbled on it.

He sat down on the porch not opening the box but looking at the letters on the box. Recalling Cassie's old tune. "ABCD..." He started saying low to himself. Trying to figure out what the box said. He was sure it was for Jo or Kol, he knew their names were short so maybe their family names were on them as well. He knew he should take it inside but he wanted to try and figure it out.

Late in the evening after multiple trips hauling the wood home and stacking it by the edge of Kol's house, then returning the axe, Thorfinn made his way inside. Tugging his dirty shirt over his head and as moved towards his room. Tossing the shirt in on his bed he leaned in the doorway tugging his boots off and then moved in tired steps to the sitting room. He sat on the floor and started to undo his braids. If he slept on them his hair would be wavy and he hated that. the waves just made his hair seem much more huge. So despite being dead tired he sat there on the floor with a bone comb in front of him undoing his braids to comb out his hair.

B: The Woods
Eventually once he finished messing with the box he stopped at the inn to borrow one of the axes. He made his way up from the inn into the woods. He had decided that even if Jo and Kol didn't trust the tools it was okay for him. He was already cursed he would be fine to use it. Winter worried him more than a curse. So, it was time to fell a tree and start getting serious about the approaching seasonal change. By now it was no strange sound, surely other people were working on the same task since the weapons were found. The sound of the hits could be heard though as he worked on just the one tree for now. His task he knew would take most of the day, to fell the tree then to chop it down into more manageable bits, He'd worry about breaking up the wood after it was home for another day, but just getting started was more important to him right now.

C: The Inn
It was nearing sunset after he had finished hauling his wood pile home and made his way from the backyard of House 8, to inn. He was finally bone tired and moving a little slower into the building to return the axe. His braid had mostly come loose so his hair was half still up half down and messy towards the ends. He was sweaty and looked tired as he made his way towards the room where the tools and weapons were kept.

He usually would call out to someone to let them know he was there but he was mostly ready to just go home and drop into bed, and deal with cleaning up later. So he just moved quietly through the inn with the axe.

Comments

the woods

[notsocommon]

Helen had taken to going to the woods on a daily basis in hopes of gathering herbs that would be useful in medicine as well as cookery. She hoped that eventually she'd have her own pharmacy stocked but until then, she had to gather assiduously every day in order to see if she could find anything of use.

The steady sounds of chopping drew her attention, though, and when she drew up closer she saw that Thorfinn was the man cutting timber. Excellent. She smiled brightly at him and waved a bit, calling out a greeting in Danish.

"Hallo, Thorfinn! Are you well?"

[seekingvinland]

Thorfinn split his days between different taskes, some days he hunted, other days he gathered things that would be useful. Hearing the voice call out in Danish, he looked up, letting the axe rest in one of the bits he was chopping smaller. Smiling for Helen he lifted one of his scarred hands and waved.

"Hallo, I am well Helen. Yourself? How are you settling in?" He inquired as he shifted to pull the axe out of the log to lean it on the ground so he held the handle but the head of it was on the ground.

[notsocommon]

"Just fine, thank you," Helen called back. It hadn't been terrible settling in thus far, though she greatly missed being able to wear something other than her blue scrubs. It felt like she was scrubbing in for a surgery that was never going to happen at this point.

"Busy chopping wood, I see? Thank god one of us has thought to," she said, laughing softly.

[seekingvinland]

"You're welcome." He responded with a nod. The woe of the clothes was one he understood, but he was adjusting to it well enough.

"Winter is coming, and someone must prepare. I am not about to freeze to death if I have a choice. Do you fear the curse that is believed to be on the tools?" He asked. Always curious of other's opinions and it was nice to be able to talk to others, even with his English improving daily Danish and Norse felt more right on him.

[notsocommon]

"I don't, solely because I believe in things that can be investigated."

Helen had spent most of her life investigating and proving that which seemed impossible to most, yes, but she had approached it from the standpoint of a scientist. Curses were unverifiable things, things that weren't grounded in anything but superstition. There was a rhyme and reason to all things; she supposed they just hadn't found it yet.

"I believe in what I can see and touch."

[seekingvinland]

Thorfinn grinned a bit at her words. He knew people of many flavors, but not many who spoke so honestly. Still, it wasn't in his nature anymore to judge people's outlook. At least not openly, and hers was not one he would judge, it was sound.

"A wise way to look at it. I believe in my Gods, but I admit I would feel best with something I could see and touch. Still, I do not fear curses. I fear what I know, and I know winter. I have seen how winter can snuff out life and families with no care."

Pulling the Axe free again he moved it over his shoulder ready to take another swing. "I fear most of these people will wait until it is to late to prepare." His fear on those he lived with, he knew he should have more faith but their fear of cursed items was one of the things they clashed on.

[notsocommon]

"I fear the same. I'm glad at least two of us are thinking ahead." Helen wasn't going to let winter approach her unawares and she had already started thinking about how much food should be saved, how much should be eaten. Being in this place reminded her of being in Carentan for those months and while she never made it to a dark cycle there, she had felt the fervent need to prepare for it.

There was no team working on the outside to save her from this place. How could they? No one knew she was here.

"Is there something you need help with, Thorfinn?"

[seekingvinland]

"Someone must, I don't want to see anyone die needlessly. I fear some of them do not understand what winter can mean."

He moved the axe but off his shoulder but not to swing, once more lowering it to the ground. Normally he might say no, even if he did need help it was his way. However, he was lonely these days and there were few he could talk to without bumbling a word here or there. So he was always glad to see Helen or Kol.

"Here no, well, not yet. It will need moved but it will be awhile yet. I would love some company though if your not to busy. You wouldn't happen to know how to make a fence without a saw would you?"

[notsocommon]

"I actually don't but I am reasonably good at taking instructions," Helen said, laughing softly. This village was teaching her all sorts of things she'd never thought to learn over the past one hundred years or so. She smiled a bit.

"I don't mind providing company, though, and it gives me a chance to practice my Danish."

[lastofthekellys]

There is, in the Inn, a Mighty Huntress. She's new, she's tiny, but she is fierce and attracted to all kinds of prey. Like, perchance, boots. And ankles.

Today, though, Miss Hoppity is cruelly thwarted in her surprise attack on Thorfinn's ankle by her mistress, who calls out, "Mr Thorfinn! Kitten!"

At least, Kate hopes that will warn the man enough before her small, tailless tabby launches her assault on his foot. Having called out a warning, she pushes herself off the pillar at the base of the stairs and hurries up them. As quickly as she can while still minding her foot, anyway.

"My apologies. The Inn's newest resident hasn't worked out how to catch mice. She's practicin' on people."

[seekingvinland]

Thorfinn missed his old boots, the ones he lost four years ago with everything else that had made him who he was. Those boots went up high enough no playful kittens would get there claws in him. Not that Miss Hoppity did. With Kate's call Thorfinn turned, and on instinct swung the axe in a fluid motion from resting on his shoulder to ready to defend himself.

That was until he saw Kate hobbling his way, and realized kitten must mean the small animal that was near his feet. He actually flushed with embarrassment, lowering the axe quickly.

"Thought danger, sorry Kate." He spoke quickly his heavy accent lacing the words more. "...where did she come from." He meant the kitten.

[lastofthekellys]

There's a moment where she wants to yell out 'STOP'. Don't kill the kitten - not yet, she seems just to be a kitten. But before she can get the words out, he pauses. Pauses, stops, doesn't swing, and anyway he wasn't aiming at the tiny thing.

Carefully, she lets out her breath, and then smiles a little ruefully.

"No danger. Kitten is a baby cat. Her," and she points. The kitten is, currently, trying to attack his laces.

"Came in a box. A gift from our captors, maybe."

[seekingvinland]

People yelling his name usually meant danger, usually meant it was time to fight. Thorfinn moved his arm to let the Axe rest against the nearby wall and knelled down holding one of his hands out to the kitten.

"Kitten." He repeated the word. "Freya's animal." He spoke looking up at Kate with a fond smile and nodded, if the kitten choose to bite or scratch at the held out hand he wouldn't show much reaction to it he was just curious about the tiny creature.

"Boxes come often, yes?" he asked looking up thinking about the box sitting in his house.

[lastofthekellys]

Miss Hoppity stares at the hand as if she's NEVER, no, not in her ENTIRE LIFE, seen such a thing. And isn't sure whether to be insulted or not. Experimentally, she bats at his fingers with a tiny paw.

"Freya's animal," Kate repeats, sitting down on the wooden floor herself. It's been a long day, and her ankle has been throbbing with warning. "I call her Miss Hoppity. She hops a little. Like a rabbit? When she runs, it's actually very cute."

Then she nods, looking at him. "Yes. Seem to. I've had three boxes, all with me full name on 'em. Salt, chalk - for writin'? - and kitten. Have you had any?"

[seekingvinland]

Thorfinn kept his hand down, smiling a little more gentle as the tiny creature batted at his fingers. Such a cute little creature. Small animals and children were such wonders. Lights in the darkness of life.

He shifted his gaze to Kate and nodded. "That not important though, you Christian." He pointed to her cross. "Christian god doesn't like other gods and goddesses." No judging in his tone, more just a slight concern that he might get her in trouble with her higher power. He goes quiet a moment looking at her, more specifically her cross. Could he fashion her something better? He could remember the cross that Leif wore. "Hopp-ity." His accent really sounded odd on the word but he spoke it all the same.

He made a face unsure and shook his head. "I not think so." He had left a box on the kitchen table this morning after etching the name on it. He couldn't read English, he could speak the letters well enough but the progress he had made in reading in Medietas was lost to his years back home. He could read runes perfectly, but nothing would arrive in runes. It seemed like everyday he had to admit things he didn't know.

[lastofthekellys]

"No, He doesn't," Kate says with a quiet smile. "But it's important to you." She can speak the language here, clearly, but she's achingly aware that she's out of place and most certainly out of time amongst most of the others.

I not think so, he says, and she looks at him. It's an interesting choice of words.

"Funny thing, about the boxes. I never told anyone here me full name," she says. "And if I'm bein' honest, I was livin' under a fake name where they took me. Not Kate."

It's one of the many, many things that has been bothering her about this whole thing.

"Can you read English?" she asks then, trying to put his word choices together. "No shame if you can't, plenty of people I know back home couldn't."

[seekingvinland]

He smiled softly, when she answered before nodding. "Many back home became Christian, my brother, Einar is Christian, like Kate." His smile a bit fond, flashes of faces playing in his mind. "Freya is goddess of love. Kittens given to new brides, blessing to new home." If she didn't mind he didn't mind sharing to much.

"What name?" He asked curiously, not attempting to pet the little kitten. When she asked her question he shook his head. "I can read, not English, but the runes." he spoke honestly. "I know English letters." He started to sing the alphabet song long, a song written well after his time. The song was first copyrighted in 1835. "A, B, C...." He worked through all the letters focusing his eyes as if pulling it far from his memories. The image of little Cassie Lang walking beside him in the rains as he held the shield over their heads walking from White Willow Village back to her father's home.

#8, The Coulee

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo bounced up the stairs, shifting her weight back and forth with each, the night dark clinging to her and handing her off to the shadows of Kol's porch, even as light shown out through the windows. She slipped into the house, nothing to deposit anywhere, hungry from the day, even if she hadn't gone out across the land to map a new square today. They were all always hungry here.

She crossed the living room and was going to cross the dining room just as fast, looking for jerky or whatever was left of the fruit, when she spotted one of those boxes on the table. She stopped, eyes narrowing, as she didn't waver backward even at the inclination to it. Walking closer only the next second later, to read the full name on the top of the box. Thorfinn Karlsfeni.

Something hard and cold skittered in her chest, and she called over her shoulder, just like a check in, without her eyes leaving the object. "Thorfinn?" Nothing unnormal or concerned about her tone. More to see if he was in his room, or anywhere nearby in the house, before she let herself go down that path.

[seekingvinland]

He had been sitting in an odd place on the living room floor, against the side of the couch. It made seeing him hard with the way he was sitting staring out into space as he worked the comb through his hair. He had spaced out a few moments before she came in. His eyes hyper focused on the shadows of the corner he was in.

He had all but put the box out of mind after he left for the day assuming it was for one of the others. He didn't know much about presents or mail. Those things were not things that happened in his life aside from randomly being tossed a piece of clothing someone had outgrown. Birthdays weren't celebrated unless you were high enough up the food-chain to matter. Another world, another time maybe, but not for him. Not for his life.

It was Jo's voice that snapped him out of his phasing. "Ja?" He called out without thinking about it. He pushed himself up off the floor, still working the comb through his hair as he walked to where he heard her voice. He stopped to lean against the door frame behind her. It didn't sound like anything was wrong, but if Jo called his name, he came to her that was just how he was. "Welcome home, Jo." He greeted her with a faint tired smile.

[tobeclosetohim]

Don't give her that smile, Viking Boy. Jo's mouth is faintly pursed, and she hooks a thumb over to her side, and the monstrosity of brown cardboard on the table. "There a reason you left your box on the table?"

It looked harmless enough, but it annoyed her. Even if she was a small touch curious against the wariness, too. She didn't like the game it played, or the stories of those who seemed utterly to accept it. Gamemakers who gave people things for doing what they wanted. At least this wasn't a death match.

[seekingvinland]

He was still working the comb through long blond locks, working out the tangles and curls. By now even without saying it it's pretty clear he doesn't like his own hair being curly. Even if he loved Jo's curls his own hair was to be straight when not braided. He had not cut it since the time she knew him, it grew slowly out from shaggy unkept to long and flowing. Normally Thralls were not permitted to have long hair, but Ketil thought highly of Thorfinn for some reason, and no one said anything about his hair. Even those that bullied him and Einar picked at other things besides his hair.

When Jo asked her question he pushed off the door frame closing the space to look over at the box confused. Clearly he had no idea. The comb left on the table. "Mine?" He looked genuinely confused. "I thought yours or Kol's." He knew his letters sure enough, he was proud of that, but forming letters to words was a work in progress. "Are you sure?" even as he said it he felt silly saying it of course she was sure she could read English unlike him.

[tobeclosetohim]

Clearly, he really didn't.

Jo watched him, as he neared it, and some sympathy, if with redoubled annoyance for the situation this place put Thorfinn in and her by proxy of her knowledge and relation to him. "Yeah. It's got your name on it."

She walked over to the thing, a frown pressing into her lips, but she still reached out. "Here." Drawing a line under the name on the top of the box, while she read his full name to him. Where his full name was, saying the names as she drew a line under the words written there that he obviously couldn't read. Bastards. "You'd think if it was for you, and they wanted you to have whatever the hell it is, they'd at least have written it in someone you would understand."

Jo probably would have left them alone if hadn't been marked or on the table. Maybe.

[seekingvinland]

Once he was by the table he looked at his name as she drew the line under it, and read it for him. He made a bit of an annoyed face. "Sonur tík" He grumbled looking more annoyed than anything. Why in English? He was getting tired of all the English already. He knew he needed it to get forward here but the sheer amount of necessity of it was grating his nerves. For a moment then old look of half annoyance half anger rested on his face. The look the boy he had been both at home and in her bar, wore nearly always.

He shook his head pushing the feeling aside, slowly building a timebomb of himself. All bad feelings shoved away until he was asleep. "They could have." He pushed from the box to go snatch a bitch to charcoal left in the kitchen for this or that and came back. Being able to read was rare in his time if you were not of high birth or money. Thorfinn, could read, not as well as a monk but well enough to make him useful on old missions. A skill he used to deny but one he saw no issue in now. Under his name in english he quickly wrote out his name in the nordic runes. Looking to Jo, then underlining it. "They bastards." The box had been on the table all day. It was a tiny annoyance.

He sighed sitting the charcoal off to the side and looked at the box, before pushing it her way. "You open. Dont want to ruin letters." He would learn his name with the box.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo lets the angry flash across his face and the tension that suddenly radiates from him go, without any comment. He is being fucked with by whoever is doing this and he deserves to be angry. Angry serves a lot of purposes in situations like this. It was better than being coddled into a false sense of security and trust by being given shit for no reason and told be grateful for one hand giving them shit, while the other slapped them down like bugs.

Jo reached down and pulled a knife from inside her boot, flipping it briefly in her fingers as she watched him write in the runes she could no more read than he could read the English that seemed so obviously to be him and his name. Once he shove the box her way, again, with those words, annoyed, surly, already reaching for better, sooner than she ever would have, she pulled up the cardboard flap with his name on it, carefully by an edge so as not to mar either names, and started sawing the thing off.

Once that was done she put it on the table, and turned back to the box itself, pulling the other three flaps up, and pushing them back.

[seekingvinland]

Stubbornness had kept him alive for twenty two years, and stubborness would keep him alive longer if he had his way. He would learn to spell and write his name in the english. Then Jo's, THEN Kol's and move from there. Name's had power, and he wanted to know to write them before anything else in this language he is being forced to fully embrace.

"They only get away with this one time. I will know next time." He stated as he watched her saw the flap off for him, he would stab it into his wall with a bone until he learns it backwards and forward. He knew the names of English letters because of Medietas, now it was time to dig it all back up and show the people laughing at him that he would not be defeated so easily.

When she pushed the box back he peered down inside then looked back to her through the half curly hair. Looking confused, what was this stuff?

He shifted the box and dumped it on the table, he was lucky he didn't crack the canister of shaving cream, The straight blade landed beside the belt, which was rolled up, and he reached for that first recognizing what it was. The other item on the table was a small box of nails. He looked to Jo then as he unraveled the belt. "...Why would they give things I do not know?" He motioned to the canister and the closed straight blade, since he had never seen a knife folded in itself like a door hinge.