sjaldan er ein báran stök - there seldom is a single wave

[valdyr]

WHO: Ubbe Ragnarsson
WHERE: Fountain, Inn, Around the south village, probably the greenhouse, too.
WHEN: Week of January 18th - 22nd
OPEN TO: Arrival closed to Margaery - OTA after that
WARNINGS: Narrative of a drowning

---

Arrival, Fountain; Locked to Margaery Tyrell

Ubbe can't remember when things started feeling different, just that after a hard, uncertain swallow after challenging King Frodo in one to one combat things went pitch black and suddenly time seemed to speed up. Or was it stopping? He couldn't tell. Soon enough, it didn't matter because a memory played out in his mind like it was happening all over again.

Ubbe, Hvitserk.. stop

But they don't and after a few more feet they look back; a crack resonates before they plunge into icy cold water. He sees her face and as she pushes him to the surface, Ubbe's face breaks the surface just as he does in the fountain, letting out a loud gasp while a hand reaches for something. Anything.

Around town/Inn

Being told he's in a different world wasn't completely grasped. It's an impossible notion, more like a dream. Perhaps a trick. Yes, a trick. But by who? The gods? Was this something Loki, the cunning trickster of the Aesir, was responsible for? Yet, why? And why only him? Where was Torvi and Alfred? Where were the Danes? Where was here?

Ubbe wanders and takes in the structures grouped like the huts in Kattegat. Inside them are as confusing as the outside, with machines that make heat and boxes that contain winter within them. He passes a large see-thru building with plants inside, equally as unsure before entering a Great Hall which looks nothing like one inside. And then the band on his wrist makes a noise and he stares at it.

He's not sure what he's done to upset the gods, but clearly, this is a punishment of some sort.

Comments

[whipshots]

Now, that threw her for a loop. Brigitte stopped her half-hearted working with the snow, and a snowball tumbled into the messy remains of her angel. She looked more closely at Ubbe, now sizing him up in a way she hadn't bothered doing before, the man catching her interest for an entirely unexpected reason.

No one she's met so far has been from her exact world, nor even a Sweden in any version of Earth. No one's even come close.

"Göteborg is right on the coast of the Kattegat," Brig blurted out in genuine surprise. She was even from the same place his mother was. "Men din accent låter annorlunda?" she added, switching into Swedish as she asked: But your accent sounds different?

[valdyr]

On the coast of the Kattegat. Well, that didn't sound good for his birthplace. How had things changed so much that it was no longer the city he last remembered it.

His brow furrows. "Kattegat is in Norway," Ubbe tells her and after a beat pause, he looks away, eyes shifting distantly. "My brother, Ivar, is King."

At least for now, he is; his brother Björn was heading back to take it from him before Ubbe arrived there.

[whipshots]

King Ivar. She doesn't remember the names of the Norwegian kings all that well, but even casting her mind back as far as she can, that name doesn't ring any bells. It had been impossible to tell Ubbe's origins at a glance, since they're all dressed the same in scrubs and scavenged clothes, but maybe...

His accent is so odd, all loose and muddled. It's like Middle English brought across to modern English: mostly recognisable and intelligible if you focus, but it's slightly off. So that makes Brigitte finally pause and ask, her head tilted: "What year was it? Where you're from."

A beat, then: "Wait, and does that make you a prince?"

[valdyr]

There is something in the way Brigitte looks at him that feels as if she is as confused as he is. With the way she asks the question, Ubbe is certain that his answer isn't what she'll expect, especially given the calendar she's used to using. But before he can tell her, she was moving on.

"At one time. When my father was King of Norway." he sniffs, looking off into the trees remembering that day when his father returned some seven years after attacking Paris for the second time. "My father was Ragnar Lothbrok."

He looks back and sniffs indifferently.

[whipshots]

That name, then, finally pings some faint and ancient recognition. She doesn't know those particular sagas quite as well, but--

"Oh," Brigitte says, with surprise noticeably seeping into her voice. "Then you're... old." After another beat, she realises how rude that sounded, and quickly clarifies: "No, not in that way, but... your time period is much older than mine, and I'm from your future, I guess? That's interesting."

'Interesting' is a massive understatement, but Brigitte's mind has crashed a little, trying to parse this. Most of the people she's met so far have been from a world entirely different from her own, or within seventy years of her or so. Not a thousand years removed.

[valdyr]

Ubbe's brow furrows, clearly offended by being called old when he was only twenty-five years, even if he had married twice by the time he arrived in the settlement. Björn was much older than him and seen so much more of the world.

But at Brigitte's explanation, his brow didn't lift quite yet. There was still the matter of understanding what she meant by being from his future.

"How is that possible?" he dares to ask, knowing full well that might create more confusion to this otherwise baffling puzzle.

[whipshots]

Brigitte shoots him a wry look, her boot scuffing slightly in the snow as she erases the edges of the angel she'd made, a little sheepish about the childishness of it, the fleeting moment of whimsy. "How is it possible for you to wake up drowning in a fountain, in a village with objects and tools you don't recognise the function of? A lot of impossible things can happen here. As best I can understand it, people are kind of... pulled here, to this place, from their own worlds."

A consideration, reaching for a metaphor that he might recognise:

"Like traveling between Midgard and Niflheim, or something. In the old myths?"