#isgeir

Frithjofr tugs at his ring and tries to look dramatically away into the snow, only for it to blow into his eyes.

'Dunno.'

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((OOC:

((I dread to think how many awful mistranslations and misunderstandings I have managed in this. Please, everybody, forgive me in advance, and be gentle in your corrections.))

Song Link: [x]

'Pa! Pa, look! Look at me, Pa! I'm a Blades!'

Frithjofr the Brave, defiant conqueror of all evil, stabbed an invisible foe with an invisible sword and, in the excitement of the moment, fell over on his bottom. The pot he was wearing on his head landed on the floorboards with a clank.

It was promptly scooped up by his father. Isgeir tucked it under one arm and helped Frithjofr up with the other.

'Sorry, Frith, we got to cook Ma's dinner in the helmet,' he said. Frithjofr began prodding him in the leg.

'No. 's my helmet. Gimme back my helmet, I gotta save Martin from the Magic Dawns.'

Isgeir loved his family. He loved them dearly, would fight off frost trolls for them, put himself in the middle of horkers every day so that they could be fed. He also wished, every now and then, very quietly, that he could run away and hide in a cave where they would never find him.

The miners were working late this evening, smelting an extra load of ore. If he listened, and if he could stop Frithjofr demanding his helmet back, he could hear them from inside the cottage. It was all the background noise of Dawnstar, the metal, the ships jostling in the bay, frost crunching beneath feet. Sometimes it was overwhelming, although without it Isgeir knew the place would be empty and cold, just a different kind of wasteland in the Pale.

He nudged Frithjofr away, gently, and took the pot to the stove.

'Blades need dinner too.'

'Blades need sweet rolls!'

'Big, strong Blades eat up their horker loaf.'

'No they don't. Blades hate stupid horker loaf. Blades only eat sweet rolls and honey. I know 'cause I am one.'

Apparently Martin and the Mythic Dawn could cope on their own for a while; after all, sweet rolls were more important than the Oblivion Crisis for any rational thinker. Frithjofr was still explaining the nutritional benefits of dessert when his mother came through the door, grazed and dirty and smiling.

The smile disappeared when a bundle of arms, legs and general dribbly young child thumped into her kneecaps. She stepped back and untangled Frithjofr, but thought better about giving him a kiss. Her sleeve went to his nose instead and rubbed off what she could of the grime. In thanks, he stuck out his tongue and went to see whether he could turn her boots, kicked off in the doorway, into gauntlets.

'Have you been feeding him honey treats again?' she asked Isgeir.

'No.'

'No he hasn't, Ma, and he should of been,' shouted Frithjofr. He had to shout, because he was only just within arm's reach, and clearly she couldn't be expected to hear him from a whole foot away. 'He's the worst Pa ever.'

She patted him on the head and stood beside Isgeir. Her fingers were pink from the snow, red from her work in the mine, but they began to thaw as she held them over the stove. Isgeir wrapped his own hands around them. Neither said a word.

It was warm and comfortable and interrupted within seconds by Frithjofr sitting on their feet.

'Want a cuddle,' he demanded.

Hilde heaved him up into her arms, ignoring the stiffness of her muscles, and Isgeir returned his attention to the pot of vegetables. He stirred them and said,

'Maybe to work off some of that energy you ought to come out hunting with me tomorrow. Just to watch, mind.'

'Can I? Can I really?'

If Hilde's reaction times had been any slower, Frithjofr would have leapt out of her arms and into the cooking pot in his eagerness to accost his father. She manhandled him back into place balanced in the crook of her elbow.

'D'you think that's a good idea?'

'He can sit and watch. Can't you, Frith? And if you're very good we'll get you a sweet roll from the inn on the way home.'

'I'll be very very good.'

Frithjofr twisted around so that he could see Hilde's face, then stopped fidgeting completely, sitting still in her arms. If it wasn't for the residual muck on his face he might even have been considered angelic, although as it was he was more a Dremora on best behaviour. As soon as Hilde sighed he grinned, argument won, and threw his arms around her neck.

'You have to do what Pa says,' she said. 'No wandering off, you got that? And you got to apologise for calling him the worst Pa ever.'

'He's the best Pa ever. 'm sorry for lying.'

'And will you eat all your vegetables?'

'Aye. 'n I'll have seconds, too. And thirds and fourths. And fifths.'

He gave up halfway through the first forkful of cabbage, but pressing the point would have been a waste of everybody's time. All Hilde cared about, by the time she scraped the last of the horker loaf off her plate, was bed. Fur blankets, straw mattress, Isgeir's beard tickling the skin on the back of her neck. Bed and sleep.

Chewing his way through the loaf had put a dent in Frithjofr's energy, a small mercy. After a token protest upon being ordered to his own cot, he gave in and scrambled inside, burrowing into the patchwork blanket. His head popped up at the other end in a fluff of brown hair.

'Tell me a story?'

Isgeir sat on the edge of the cot. It sank beneath his weight.

'Which one?'

'Martin!'

There was no book for this tale. In the corner of the room, Isgeir could see Hilde smile as she shrugged out of her mining clothes and into the fur blankets. The telling might be different, the words might be different, but those were only irrelevant details. The bare bones, the knowledge every resident of Tamriel knew, deep down, somewhere inside themselves, was the story. Frithjofr peeked over the edge of his patchwork expectantly, and Isgeir took a deep breath. The whole world held it with him, and he began.

'Two hundred years ago, in the city of Kvatch, there lived a man named Martin. Martin was nobody special-'

'Did he like sweet rolls?'

'Definitely. He didn't eat them much, though, because he was only a poor priest. He did the best he could, helping all of the people who lived in Kvatch, until one day something terrible happened. The Emperor of Tamriel was killed, and without him to protect the land monsters began to attack. They attacked the Imperial City, they attacked Skyrim, and they even attacked Kvatch. It seemed like there was no hope. That is, until a brave champion-'

'Who was the champion? Was it a Nord?'

'Sure it was. And when the Nord champion arrived in Kvatch, he fought his way through the monsters and the fire until he reached the Chapel of Akatosh, where Martin was looking after all the people who had been hurt...'

After a while, the words arrived without Isgeir having to think about them. He had told this story so many times before, and been told it, as well, by his grandfather, who heard it from his grandfather, who maybe, just maybe, had seen the Daedra swarming over the ice and sacrificed himself to keep the Nord blood flowing.

It went on until the rest of Dawnstar was quiet, except perhaps for the waves and the voices through the walls. Maybe Isgeir said nothing. Maybe the last words were written in the air and in the mind.

'And although Martin was gone, the Champion knew that he had saved Tamriel, and that one day, no matter how long it took or how many miles he had to walk, they would meet again.'

Everyone else was asleep. Hilde was snoring gently. The snow falling silenced everything beyond the cottage walls.

A pause.

And then there was the usual bedtime routine. Isgeir blew out the candles, tucked Frithjofr beneath his blanket and made him promise not to move because he was a big boy now and big boys slept in their own beds all night long.

But the night was cold, and the bed was large, and neither Isgeir nor Hilde was going to complain when another little bit of warmth wriggled its way between them. Not even when it headbutted their chins. Not even when it threw its arms out, taking up more of the furs than both of them combined. Not even when it began snoring tiny childhood snuffles.

As soon as Frithjofr turned his back on Windpeak Inn, everything went quiet.

The ghosts were silent tonight. It was a southerly wind, shoving against the ocean. Snow melted on the back of his neck. Could be a blizzard later and, no matter how hot the Nordic blood in his veins, he had more interesting things to do with his time than be buried under several feet of ice. More interesting things, and more important things.

He padded down the steps, slipping between the houses leaving nothing but a trail of footprints, covered up in moments. When he reached the pier, he stepped quite deliberately on each board and listened to each creak, all thirty-six of them, until he reached the drop into the water.

Forty years ago, for reasons he couldn't remember, on a day which wasn't important, he was sat in the same place, huddled between his parents. He was wearing a new pair of green mittens and he was five years old. Those were all the facts he could recall. Beyond that, it was sensations, of their weight on his arms, their heat surrounding him, his fingers sticking to the fluff in the mittens.

Hildeburh and Isgeir. If they had surnames, they never thought it important to tell him. He was only aware that they had first names through chance; when the Boar-Chasers wanted to know what they should call their in-laws he had to send a letter home, asking whether they had names or whether everybody knew them as Ma and Pa. They taught him all the important lessons, though, the lessons he would have passed on to his own children. Lessons like “iron ore is not for eating”, and “do not go near the Black Door or Ma will tan your hide in”, and “Frith no don't touch that oh Gods”. Lessons like  - love the small things. Love your family, love the snow, love warm beds on a Sun's Dusk morning, because there was no moment more important than this one.

He had a lot to thank them for.

He had a lot to say, and nobody to say it to.

There was no Hall of the Dead in Dawnstar. Before the Great Collapse, the more devoted believers in Arkay would have their remains interred in Winterhold, but most in the Pale kept their secret knowledge of Orkey, Old Knocker, the breath on the ice. They favoured a sea burial instead, where the coffin couldn't reach them and the enemy god couldn't find them. The wind and snow would take their souls to Sovngarde, and perhaps the waves would carry them home.

Was that where they were now? Anja hadn't recognised the names, the childhood cottage had been dark when he passed it and they would never have left Dawnstar willingly. Frithjofr considered investigating further, but when he tried to peer into the sea there was an angry flurry of clicks. He was already scrambling back down the pier when the mudcrab erupted from the water.

He settled on a rock beside the entrance to Quicksilver Mine instead, narrowing his eyes at the mudcrab. Throwing snowballs only seemed to irritate it. Not one to incur the wrath of crustaceans wantonly, Frithjofr resumed his former train of thought.

If his parents were out there, ghosts in the endless sea, were they among the ones who howled when the wind blew? Were they the waves, the ice and the echo of the gulls? Would they hear him if he called to them? They always had done when he was small. He could run for what felt a hundred miles, and when he needed them most, there they would be.

Did it matter?

'I'm here, Ma. I'm here, Pa. I came home.' His fingers tightened, too numb to feel the ice packed between his knuckles. 'Missed you.'

Snow was piling up on his head. The mudcrab was sidling closer, plotting retaliatory action. The clouds were getting thicker.