Lady of the Mountain

“Do you eat nuts?” That’s a very important question and he scratches his chin. “And do you eat them in bread?”

“I mean, I lived alone before Aleks and I were a thing.” But he and Aleks had bee together over eight hundred years by this point… and Mathias wasn’t sure he could ever live on his own again, so he somewhat understands where she’s coming from. “Whatever makes you happy, sweetie.” A warm smile crosses Mathias’ face and he tugs her close, pressing a sweet kiss to her head. 

“Ouch. That hurt. You love my best friend more than me, your own brother-in-law. I see how it is. Thanks, love.” He quirks an eyebrow before laughing at her antics, giving a small shake of his head. “Noooo, alright, let’s do it.”

“And we both know how long that’s been, Mat.” Was it a cheap shot at how old he was? Maybe, but she only teased him out of love. It’d be weird if she wasn’t giving him a hard time. The kiss to her forehead almost elicited a sharp retort from her, but instead of arguing she just purses her lips slightly. “Maybe one day I’ll be able to have something like you and Aleks have.” It’s abundantly clear that she’s jealous, but she’ll never directly say that; it’s not like its their fault they found one another, after all.

“Time? For what now?” Mathias watches Elín with an odd expression on his face as the vodka bottle is shown to him. Obnoxiously…decorative things with bottles? “Ooookay. I’m not very…artsy. Also, why are you still living with roommates? I’ve never understood that.”

She gives Mathias an incredulous look before rolling her eyes. “Right. You get to live with someone all the time out of love, I can’t expect you to understand. I have roommates because it’s fun and better than being a lonely cat lady?  Plus, I’m going to college. Wouldn’t it be kind of weird for people to find out I own a house? Not that I haven’t thought about it before, because I have.” She holds up the bottle again. “And I wasn’t looking for actual art skill, otherwise I would’ve asked Willem. I’m looking for obnoxiousness. Highlighter colored paint. Glitter. Other things that would be terrible to decorate glass bottles with. Maybe we can glue macaroni to the outside. ” 

“Isn’t there a charm in ugly sweaters?” Johanne teased her, deciding not to bother her about the whole pity thing. She never gave pity compliments, that’s for sure. And besides, she kinda found her tacky design cute. If she could fit it on her dog - who was at the moment completely sprawled over the other end of the couch, upset he wasn’t getting any tummy scratches - she would.

“Usually tulip dyes turn out more lilac, honestly. I could look up how to dye it green naturally if you want. Spinach could work.” She shrugged and smiled at the compliment of her food. While Johanne was a decent cook, she was honestly better at bread making. She could make any sort of bread, whichever way you like. So, hearing compliments made her grin.

“Of course - I have been on a really big bread making kick lately, honestly. I have some my homemade jams if you want. Black berry jam, apple jam…” She shrugged and pushed herself off of the couch to go and make them a tray with the fresh bread, butter, jam and some coffee that should be finished brewing.

When she was corrected, Elin looked up and away from Jo, embarrassed. “I don’t typically dye things.” She replied a tad defensively; it certainly wasn’t Johanne’s fault that she didn’t have knowledge of tulip dyes, but Elin couldn’t help herself. Her tongue was always a little sharper than it needed to be when it came to the older Scandinavians. “... that’s a much better use for spinach than eating it, though.” Her eyes sparkled at the mention of homemade blackberry jam. While there were a variety of wild berries in Iceland, blackberries were not among them, and that made such foods a delightful treat. “Some blackberry jam would be great!” She replied enthusiastically.

As Johanne hopped up to get bread, Elin returned to knitting on the bottom of the sweater. It needed only one more row of stitches, but they were simple ones; she surely would be done by the time Johanne returned, and she turned to hold it up slightly towards the pup pouting at the end of the couch. “What do you think, hm? Horrifying?” She asked him with a small smile. “I bet I could make one for you, but maybe one that’s a little more dignified than this. I’m sure this one’ll fit Milk, and may even be worth putting on her once it’s green or lilac.” Putting the last stitch in the sweater, she sat it aside to lean forward into the bag at her feet and pull out her scissors. “Boom.” Snipping the sweater free, she weaved the tail into the stitching before setting it on her bag and scooting closer to the canine, patting the couch next to her. “Now quit pouting, come here.”

Johanne was behind her kitchen counter when Elin spoke, pulling out the fresh loaf of bread. Like so many people this year, she really discovered huge kick for making bread. Hell, she even made her own sourdough from scratch! Letting the loaf rest and cool, she went to see what was the issue.

She leaned over the couch to look on her project. Yikes. Chuckling, she lifted her hand to ruffle her hair. “It’s not that terrible!” Her inner mother figure was showing, but she still reached out to brush her fingers over the sweater. “Well, the design is a bit… but the construction is good. How about we dye it?” She offered, and hummed in thought, before snapping her fingers.

“I believe I have some tulip dye. Wanna try? Though, you should probably finish it before we dye it, yeah?”

 With most of Elin’s hair in artfully messy braids, there wasn’t too much to mess up, else she likely would’ve swatted at Johanne’s hand. “You don’t have to give me the pity compliment. I recognize a truly ugly sweater when I see it.” If Elin knew one thing, it was ugly sweaters.  She regarded the tiny sweater again thoughtfully, really trying to picture Cookie wearing it. Nope, stupid. She wouldn’t subject one of her babies to that.

The Norewgian just made an indignant squawking sound when Elin whacked him on the shoulder, following it up with a dumb grin and a laugh as he sat Saga on her feet. He knew that Elin wasn’t really mad at him, Aleks never really did too much to earn the ire of the Icelander. He just liked to poke and prod a little bit, much to Elin’s chagrin. That’s what she got for having him as a brother. 

Finding Elin looking more than a little excited to see the destructive capabilities of three lundehunds and two Danish spitzes, he sighed and pet the patch with a forlorn look on his face. His poor house. “Don’t give them any ideas. Next they’ll start gnawing on the bedposts and I’ll go to sleep one night and the whole damn thing will just,” He made a vague gesture of something falling open, almost like a book. “Come all undone. Swear they’re like human children with how smart they are.”

“Bribing them gets good photos, and we only ever take them for the holidays. We just don’t try to get clear ones any other times of the year.” A fond smile painted itself on his face; taking their yearly pictures was one of his favorite things to do all together with Matthias and the dogs. “I’d ask if you were hungry but you’re my sister, you know where the kitchen is. Help yourself to whatever you find.”

“Ha!” It was probably terrible to laugh at the thought of Aleks and Matthias sleeping harmlessly in a bed and having it collapse under them, but she couldn’t help herself; it was just a great image, and now she definitely had some plans in her head that she’d play the long game to execute. Wiping a nonexistent tear from her cheek, she moved to pat the wall as well. “May the Gods smile upon this wall and give it the strength it needs to withstand the next brutal attack by the savage beasts.” She said, almost like a prayer.

Getting permission to go get food from the kitchen, Elin proceeded to do so, skipping over to stick her nose in the fridge. “You shouldn’t give me free reign, I will have you know I could eat an entire shark if given the opportunity.” She replied, seeing some cheese and snatching it out like a goblin seeing something shiny. “I have, in fact, almost done that, but Katla stopped me.” Katla was a familiar name to come from the Icelander’s lips; she was one of the few humans who knew what she really was, assigned to help her out of the typical trouble early twenty-somethings often found themselves, despite Elin being older than anybody on the Island. “Do you want some cheese?”

Grabbing a knife to cut some chunks of cheese off the block, she bobbed her head absently and smiled. “I’m sure Matthias told you, but I recently got two more kittens. I would’ve sent you both pictures of them, but I can’t even bribe them to sit still. Adopted them from a friend of a friend of a friend, you know how it is. You couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a cat in Reykjavik.” A piece of cheese found its way into Elin’s mouth, and the sound that came from her was nothing short of pure bliss; there was nothing quite like a good piece of cheese. “They aren’t big enough to jump up on counters yet, but they’re definitely already troublemakers. I had to replace my favorite skirt because they clawed so many holes into it. I’ll need to go clothes shopping again soon.”

Bastian purses his lips moving to help Elin for a moment only to think better of it and let her do what she was going to do. He didn’t want to insult her and he didn’t want to step on toes, but he’s smiling slightly and nods, peering at all the random costumes for dogs, cats, ducks (he guessed?). “My pets would hate me.” He murmurs. But Cocoa and Butterscotch would be adorable anddddd… “I’m in.”

Clapping her hands together, a wicked grin forms on her face. “Yes, yes, good.” Digging through her bag, she begins pulling out random costume pieces and looking at them. “Listen, Bastian. I’ve dealt with all sorts of pets, and I can safely tell you from experience,” she pauses, giving a careless shrug and a smile, “ that I’m the bad guy for many a house animal. You can be the good guy with the treats.”

‘Uncle Matthias’ had become a running gag amongst the Disaster Quad, with a very drunk Belgian having slurred it out one day. It was never, ever going away. He was now Uncle Matthias to a growing collective of other nation’s pets and the Dane was more than okay with it. “Can I be Uncle Matthias to your cat, then? Since you once answer me otherwise?” Eugh. His name was Gunnar? “He sounds like a tool.” Matthias said matter-a-factly and with a loose shrug of his shoulders. “Listen, Elin, if he thought cameras stole souls.” He paused, spinning to dramatically look at her, hand on her shoulder. “Then there’s no saving him. You should mentioned that Aleks’ ravens would swoop down and try to eat his brains out, too.” He snickered at the thought, giving his head a shake.

“Nope, not trying to manipulate or bribe, just trying to welcome the best sister-in-law with open arms. And coerce her into stay– wait. That means manipulation. Forget I said it.” He waves his hand quickly before laughing and nodding. “I did. I should’ve taken a picture of his face. But basically, he called from the kitchen with that disappointed mom voice of his and was like ‘the ever loving fuck is this in our home.’ I felt like I had desecrated some sort of Christian artifact.”

“Cats.” Elin corrected. “I have three now.” Was she turning into the crazy cat lady down the street? Maybe, but she couldn’t split up the sister pair at the shelter. “In addition to Kisa, I now have Cookie and Milk.” the two new additions to her family were still very small, and being away from them was difficult, but she’d left them in the capable hands of the woman who’d been assigned to keep an eye on Elin while she was at home (as the nation was so prone to wandering off for days at a time when left unsupervised, which was a problem with her government for some reason unbeknownst to Elin). “And I suppose you’d be Uncle Matthias to them you goober, since you can’t be to me. I’ll even video chat with you once in a while and call you ‘Uncle Matthias’ in baby talk with one of them.” That was a plan she was already relishing in her head.