Thorfinn Thorsson }{ Karlsefni (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seekingvinland) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sixthiterationlogs2016-07-13 07:44 pm
seekingvinland) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2016-07-13 07:44 pm
Arrival: A new land
WHO: Thorfinn Thorsson
WHERE: The Fountain
WHEN: July 13th
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: N/A
STATUS: Closed
It's another nightmare.
It was the first thought that crossed his mind when he felt the water around him and his eyes flew open. He needed air… Dream or not, Thorfinn had little choice but to push up towards the light in the distance. Swimming was always one of his strong points. Kicking as hard as he could for the surface as his lungs started to burn desperately needing air. When Thorfinn came bursting through the water his scarred hands grabbed onto the edge of the fountain. Coughing heavily as he heaved himself over the edge onto the ground.
This was the strangest dream he had ever had… Well, kind of.
It took a few moments of coughing to get the water out of his lungs before he could breath. Pushing himself onto his hands and knees and sitting back his long blonde hair plastering to his face. He his eyes widened as he looked around him. Something akin to fear started to fill his senses… This wasn't the bodies of the dead, this wasn't his father or Askeladd. This wasn't a dream.
From the way the air felt on his wet skin, to the strange ground beneath his hands biting into his palms. It all screamed reality. It was no dream.
"Móðir! Einar! Ylfa!"
He called out the names of those who had been in the house when he had slipped to sleep. His instincts seemed to finally catch up with him as he pushed himself to his feet. He was in strange shoes he had never seen before. Clothes like those almost from a dream. A dream that he had long forgotten. One of strange islands in the sky connected by small bifrosts. He stood there examining the strange light gray clothing on him. Confused and soaked to the bone.
"Hvað er þetta? Hvar er ég? Odin, gefa mér merki."
WHERE: The Fountain
WHEN: July 13th
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: N/A
STATUS: Closed
It's another nightmare.
It was the first thought that crossed his mind when he felt the water around him and his eyes flew open. He needed air… Dream or not, Thorfinn had little choice but to push up towards the light in the distance. Swimming was always one of his strong points. Kicking as hard as he could for the surface as his lungs started to burn desperately needing air. When Thorfinn came bursting through the water his scarred hands grabbed onto the edge of the fountain. Coughing heavily as he heaved himself over the edge onto the ground.
This was the strangest dream he had ever had… Well, kind of.
It took a few moments of coughing to get the water out of his lungs before he could breath. Pushing himself onto his hands and knees and sitting back his long blonde hair plastering to his face. He his eyes widened as he looked around him. Something akin to fear started to fill his senses… This wasn't the bodies of the dead, this wasn't his father or Askeladd. This wasn't a dream.
From the way the air felt on his wet skin, to the strange ground beneath his hands biting into his palms. It all screamed reality. It was no dream.
"Móðir! Einar! Ylfa!"
He called out the names of those who had been in the house when he had slipped to sleep. His instincts seemed to finally catch up with him as he pushed himself to his feet. He was in strange shoes he had never seen before. Clothes like those almost from a dream. A dream that he had long forgotten. One of strange islands in the sky connected by small bifrosts. He stood there examining the strange light gray clothing on him. Confused and soaked to the bone.
"Hvað er þetta? Hvar er ég? Odin, gefa mér merki."
no subject
If you asked Jo, she might more say never, but she's a hunter, the daughter of hunters, a caretaker of hunters, friend and lover of, and she and "God" have a very different, complicated, rather unreliable relationship. Which was true, deep in her marrow and in every drop of blood in her body, and a million others left on the ground, before she met other Gods from her universe and across the multiverse, before punctuating it swarms of angels just left behind.
Whom someone better, the hell, be keeping in line.
(. . . and taking care of.)
To her great disappointment, when she makes it down the path there is no one else about, except the guy in light grey scrubs. They were darker with the water, but she remembered what they looked like this wet. Blonde hair stringy and dripping. There's a sigh she wants to push out but she doesn't. Instead, she just called out, "You okay over there?"
no subject
He was still knelled by the fountain poking at the water, he had been at this for a few minutes. Maybe it was a touch of an unwell mind, but he didn't care. It had to work. He wanted to go home, back to his family and Einar. He almost missed the sound of the steps approaching but what made him look up was the voice. It was like something out of a dream, a dream long forgotten.
He looked up at her his brown eyes wide. It hadn't fully clicked and yet like his mind was running ahead of him a word tumbled out.
"Jo?"
He stared at her as he lifted both scarred hands into his hair, and froze in place as the world started to dance without him. He could speak her name in her language, one day he planned to show her that.
no subject
Jo went instantly still. Maybe it was the pause of a heartbeat only.
But it happened. Not the stillness of a rabbit considering running away.
The stillness of someone gauging whether to reach for a weapon or not.
No one ever knew her name. That wasn't a thing. That wasn't even possible. Her steps inched her forward, as his face got clearer and clearer. Details filling themselves in. Dark eyes, and scars, both that she knew. But impossibly older. Longer blonde hair. For a second he was cross layered with a young boy, soaked to the skin, in the rain. He was soaked here, but there was a completely different hold to his shoulders, even as he stared at her wide eyed.
Her heart and her guts couldn't decide what to do, so instead they roiled, dangerous, like razor wire, cutting at everything nearby. Breath was suffocating, and she'd never needed to breathe anyway right. Not with this. Not when the world had tilted sideways. Her fingers tightening on her bag strap at her shoulder, as the still unclosed stab wound that was Anna on the docks changed, became a knife with the present and the past twisted into one.
Anna in her bar on Earth, suddenly an angel. Anna on the docks of Medietas, not knowing her.
The boy in the rain. The child with a blood soaked sword. The man who just said her name.
It's a careful, too careful, word. "Thorfinn?"
no subject
Yet, the dizziness did not stop him. He shifted quickly from his knees to his feet. Kneeling he might have looked bigger, his arms certainly looked bigger, but he wasn't any taller than the boy she held in the rain. The angry broken boy solider was long gone to him. Buried along side the man who killed his father. The day his passions and desires died. An empty void had torn open inside of him, and the wise words of an old man told him to fill that void with anything. Become someone new and be reborn.
"Jo!" He called out again, and smiled widely. His heart thumping against his chest as so many things seemed to click. It wasn't a dream. Still, good things never lasted.
"Þú ert alvöru! Ég hélt þú værir draumur! Það hefur verið svo lengi!"
'The daughter was right, you do sound like your speaking in heathen curses.'
no subject
In contrast to her, he's suddenly all movement. Up on his feet in a flash that makes her wants to take steps backward, but she doesn't do backward. She doesn't do running away. Copper eyes following every movement. Heart torn into something fiercely confused, startlingly sharp and entirely impossible to describe. When he's suddenly smiling and calling out her name again. Not a question this time, but a triumphant burst of sound, in this creepy overgrown little park, with only the splashing water behind it.
He's smiling, which is a baffling enough thing, to add in with old, older, but then he's suddenly rambling at her in a language that sounds like all sharps and guttural tones. Too exuberant, and too foreign, for her to feel much more than second tilt and fall of her stomach. Because this place was already six sides of fucked up, and backwards. Archaic and behind the times.
There were no devices here. There was nothing to translate him here.
It's a sinking sensation, sucking at her feet even as she says, "I don't understand."
"English?" Like her name. "Do you speak English now?"
(But she's sure she knows already, as she asks.)
no subject
He didn't move any closer he just looked at her smiling. Looking happy for once, he could smile properly and it did light his whole face up. At least until she spoke back. One word rolled from his lips as the smile faded.
"ríða"
The tone said enough, a curse of some kind.
"No, no English." The lessons from the school were just muddled in everything else trying to come back. He cursed himself in his mind for not making Einar teach him, they had all the time. He could have learned. Hindsight was a bitch.
He reached up, pushing his hair out of his face, with a look of utter disappointment, it was then as he tucked the blonde hair behind his ears that the scar on his cheek and the chunk of his left ear missing became clear.
no subject
The smile vanishes with the kind of expression and word no the world over needed explanation for . He was right here. Even if he wasn't. Even if he was...whatever he was now. This. Not him. Still him. Different. Older. Had he vanished from Medietas when she had? Or later? And to where? Now that it seemed there was absolutely no way to ask, words shoved themselves up her throat, battering like bullets at the back of her teeth, harder to swallow back than sand.
She didn't do apologies well. At least not for things that weren't obviously her fault.
Jo walked closer, nodding. Even if it was a dubious, absolutely expected, kind of acceptance of the three words he said. Which left her talking to the air, and feeling like an absolute idiot, as she said, "Yeah. That's what I thought. No English for you, and no whatever that was for me."
The steps stopped somewhere just short of him. Close enough to see he was still almost exactly her height. Except. Except for all of the excepts. How many years older could he be now. Where had he gone. Who had he become. How the hell was he here. She'd barely known him when she had known him, and even if was only two weeks ago for her, it was obviously a hell of a lot more time for him. And she couldn't ask, and the more she couldn't ask, the more it crowded in at her. Pressing like a weight on her skin.
Making her press her mouth as though it was the only way to keep from asking things he'd never get to begin with.
It was another second, and almost but not quite a hesitation, when she raised her hand toward his face.
Slow enough he could stop her, with an uncertain, but attempting, sort of set to her brows.
no subject
His English was so limited. In his travels Askeladd always handled speaking to people when words were needed. Since his fall, he hadn't needed it. Everyone on the farm spoke Norse. His choices never ended up being the right ones.
"Þú getur ekki talað Norse?"
It was strange, in younger years he would have scoffed at not understanding. Stalked off and brooded alone. Yet, he didn't move. He stayed still as she approached him. He had no fear of her, he didn't ever really learn what fear was outside of his dreams.
He didn't stop her, his brown eyes stayed on hers. Unsure what to do, how to ask where he was what was going on... how this was possible. He bit his lip just before skin could connect. A sad look. How was he to talk to her?
no subject
The shape of his face is right. The color of his eyes is right. The scars are right.
But, also. There are more of them. There's a section of his ear missing. His hair is longer.
Even the way he looks sad for the second instead of angry, that's different. That's new, too.
But. She looks at his face again, and then finally settles on those eyes: sad, confused, but comforted. "It is you, isn't it?"
That should be impossible. She knows how these things work. Anna was an outlier, but from her world, her time. Thorfinn wasn't.
And if it really wasn't him? He should go for it now. She'd rather figure out how to shoot him in the face right now, than anytime later.
no subject
Like with his mother, he did not fight Jo in this. He even helped tip his face and let her look. Being closer he could see the differences now that before he had been to far from home to see, she was smaller than Ylfa. Her hair had a darker hint of blonde than Ylfa as well... but yes, they were still so alike. Beautiful and strong.
"Jo Har...velle." The last name tripped on his tongue a bit. The first time he had spoke it in the Roadhouse asking her about the name had been a heavy weight, now it was harder to say, but important. He had to try and dig into a dream, a dream from years and years ago. Nothing at all was making sense and his resolve was all that kept him still. "Thorfinn Thorsson....Karlsfeni." He didn't need translating for that, her tone, her look they did it for him. He gave his name, the only thing he really had besides his life he didn't know what else he could do and that alone hurt.
no subject
There's a sigh out her nose. Because that's just perfect, isn't it. Again. A-fucking-gain. Turning the whole things on it's head once more. Making it so it wasn't impossible. Somehow. Someway. Someone she knew. Once upon a time. When they were someone else. And dropping them in her lap. But making it impossible in a new way. All communication all but lacking. Why was there never anyone to punch or stab or shoot for these things.
The way they made her want to knit her teeth, clench her jaw and left her with nothing but to sigh. "Yeah."
Releasing his face with more care than she usually showed touching anything. "Yeah, that's me, and that's you."
Muttering, as she looked at the fountain, while rubbing the water off her hands, from his skin and dripping hair, onto her white tank top and the top of her black scrubs pants. "That's us, all rolled up and fucked sideways in this mess. Again. But with even more perks." She looked up, and over at him again, thinking about what the hell to do. She couldn't leave him here, and he was hardly going to understand her, even though he seemed to recognize her. Maybe even trust her.
"I guess I can't let you go now, can I?" Jo considered holding out a hand, but that seemed almost wrong.
Too much like relegating him to being a child, who needed to be lead. He wasn't dumb. They just couldn't talk.
She raised a hand and waved for him to follow. "C'mon. I'll show you where I'm staying." Where he could stay if he wanted.
Not that any of her thoughts, nor any of her words, were probably helping, except to sound like endless gibberish tossed at him.
no subject
Still, he appreciated not being treated like a child. He had hated that even when he was a child. Language barriers were nothing new to him, just another annoyance... but one he could deal with to have a familiar face near by. When she lifted her hand and waved for him to follow, he did just that.
He used to move so silently, but the new boots felt strange on his feet. He moved a bit uneven, his steps a little louder, the steps of a man who had never wore boots like these before. They felt nearly like armor and had it a little harder to move the way he was used to, and yet he followed along anyway. His fingers messing with the straps of the pack on his back. It was nothing like his old satchel but he was less concerned with it than the buildings coming into sight, and following the head of blonde hair before him.
While he only understood one in ever four or five words Jo was saying, the sound of her voice was a comfort enough. She was an old hand at this other worlds confusion, they would find a way.