Concerns...

[Sven & Hermes]

DATE & TIME : May 30th, early evening
WEATHER CONDITIONS : Patches of blue here and there, mostly cloudy. Light wind.
CHARACTERS INVOLVED : Sven, Hermes
PREVIOUS THREADS ? Grand Meeting Of War

Just a little warning, some of the thoughts racing through Sven's head might not be for the faint-hearted, so yah. Also, this song is fueling his thoughts: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNJczEUpOAs

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Sven was walking along a gravelly beach, some way out from the village. As preparations for the looming war ahead, intrusive thoughts were slowly seeping into the young man's head. He needed to get away from it all for a little. He had no idea how long he would walk for, but he just continued, scraping his feet against the crunchy gravel beneath him.

Disturbing thoughts pecked at his mind like hungry birds. What would become of him? What would this be like? Would he die? He thought about the hundreds of people who would probably die when the war begins, those who won't even make it through the first hour. He thought of endless fields of red, screams and crying of grown men.

Sven hadn't grown up around Vikings. His hometown was well isolated from any sort of conflict bigger than an argument or the occasional scuffle. On that basis, Sven had no aptitude, or eagerness to fight. Fuelled by colourful war stories of the past, Sven had never been keen on entering such activities. And now he was forced into it. Because he was on a Viking-ridden island.

As he walked, he felt his cheeks growing moist. Catching himself spilling tears, he did nothing to stop them. He didn't want to. He kicked at the sand with a sort of reluctance. He was crying. But he didn't feel sad. Why should he feel sad? No one had died yet, but the eerie foreshadow of death was mentally suffocating him.

Suddenly a fit of rage took hold of him, with a yell he grabbed a handfull of the gravelly sand, and threw it out to sea, where the waves playfully lapped on the shoreline. How come everyone and everything appeared indifferent to the impending doom? His dirty, sandy hands were raised above his head, clutching at his mess of yellow hair.

He heard a croon behind him. Twisting around so fast that his neck cricked a little, a foreign black mass came into view, about twenty feet away. Recognizing the body, he went red, embarrassed and ashamed. He turned away, but anger was still eating at him. Hermes...

He turned back around again, slowly this time. He stared at Hermes, into those cool-blue eyes that almost glowed in contrast to the black belt. His eyebrows furrowed.

"YOU! If it wasn't for your stupid instinct, we wouldn't be here!" He shouted. "We wouldn't have to fight! We wouldn't have to die!" His voice was faltered and broken; it was clear as day to the dragon, but she said nothing. Attitude indifferent. Like everything in this world.

He turned away once again, tears returning. He continued walking. Desperate for some sort of beacon of hope to cling onto. The Vikings had Vallhalla. Even the dragons had their own form of deity and afterlife too, as per the myths that circulated around Ambassador dragons. Sven had nothing. Nothing solid.

Sven sunk to his knees, overwhelmed by emotion.

---

Hermes had been concerned with Sven, especially when he tried to sneak off elsewhere when he was supposed to be giving tactical information. He hadn't been stealthy enough, though. The dragon followed him to this beach, but stopped as the pathway ended. The pathway was at the bottom of a small rocky crevice that had been eroded by an old stream that had disappeared over time. Sven appeared to be just walking... until she heard a sob. Within the shadows of the crevice, she cocked her head. She stepped out of her concealment, and padded towards him, ready to comfort her colleague, whatever the problem was.

A fit of anger befalled him, and it shocked Hermes. She took several paces backwards, genuinely afraid, because she had never seen him so angered and distraught and upset at the same time. She took in the full blow of his brief words, hearing only pain in his voice. She would have reasoned - but she remained silent. He turned away, walking away from her.

At this, Hermes sank her head, not really knowing how she could intervene... maybe she should just let him vent out his feelings... She decided it would be her duty to let Sven have his private moment, and returned to the pathway, hoping to not let anyone pass. She mounted the rocky sides, so she could overlook the whole passageway. She could also see Sven from here too, in case he got into trouble.

Fanning out her wings, she tried to sun herself with what little sunlight there was before the sun began to set.

[Ari]

War was painful, and Ari knew this. The fear of lose, the horror felt when that became a reality. It was in the last battle Berk participated in that had taken his two brothers and had come close to taking him as well. War was damaging, and Vikings had the wrong approach to it.

Ari had come back from talking to Rialle’s family to find out what they, and more importantly she, was going to do. She was now going back to a main meeting to work out the logistics of what they were going to do. As he walked along the street, he saw Sven walking out of the village. He watched quizzically for a few moments, Where’s he going? He still needs to give us some information about the attack. He looked around for a few moments and, not seeing anyone else had noticed him walk off, followed.

He followed the young man from a distance, watching him walk along the beach, he was obviously upset by everyihng that what happening and he seemed be wanting to let it out. Ari heard a noise above and looked up to see what he guessed was Sven’s dragon, was it Hermes that Kenna called her? The dragon flew down and landed in between Sven and Ari, looking at the former. Both of them were too in their thoughts to have noticed their starker it seemed.

He froze when he heard shouting. He did know what he was saying, but he had heard that voice before. Not the voice itself, the tones in it. Anger and fear, fear of death, anger at having no control. As the healer, he’d heard it so many times. ”Not yet…Not now…” he recited to himself, he’d forgotten how many times he must have heard those lines. He could see the dragon move to the rocky sides and keep watch as the boy sunk to his knees.

Ari started to walk towards again to where Sven now sat. While he didn’t like this fact, he was the village healer, and it was his job (and the nature of the persona that people knew him as) to help with the wounds that weren’t physical as well as the ones that were. He didn’t like people, but Ari still needed to follow the point that people thought he did, so if someone was as distraught as this, he was obligated to help...even if he was a outsider.

[Sven & Hermes]

Hermes had draped herself over the rocks, head resting at the edge so she could see anybody who would come by. Her anticipation proved worthwhile, as an old man came ambling down the pathway, with a look of curiosity and concern on his face. As soon as Sven came into his field of vision, he froze slightly, obviously moved by Sven's current ordeal.

Hermes, shifting her weight, slid off her rocky throne in front of Ari, making a quiet gruffing noise. He was an old man. She assumed he would be well versed in dragonese, so she spoke: "I don't recommend seeing Sven at this time." She made a quick glance over her shoulder, making sure her colleague was okay. Quickly shifting back to the old man, she continued; "He doesn't even want me around right now. And I'm like his closest friend in this place."

With that, her expression softened, but still staring intently at Ari with her cool eyes. No matter what tricks this guy might pull to get past, she would make sure he wouldn't bother Sven.

Meanwhile, Sven had now degraded himself into a ball, forehead resting on the crunchy gravel beneath him. Through a gap, he could see a figure of Hermes blocking the path for someone. Oh... How Sven wished for someone who could relate, that he wasn't the only sane person on this forsaken island. "Hermes..." he mumbled. The dragon didn't react. "H-Hermes!" He said a little louder, though his fractured voice sounded like it was going to shatter.

One of Hermes' crests flicked, hearing Sven's tiny voice behind her. Her eyes narrowed. What was with this sudden change of mind? Bowing her head, she gave in, sidestepping a little to allow Ari to pass. She would keep a watchful eye on him though - she didn't want him to ruin Sven even more.

[Ari]

Ari saw as the dragon get off it’s punch, and moved in front of him. It started to speak in the familiar tongue. Ari smiled, “sorry, I can’t understand you, but I know you can understand me. I want to help Sven; I think he needs to talk to someone.”

He could tell that that didn’t work, the dragon seemed to feel that no one should see his master. Was that was Sven had said?

He then heard the man shout Hermes’s name. The dragon seemed to think of a second, eyes narrowing, and then she side stepped to allow Ari passage.

Ari slowly walked to him, slowly mulling over what he should say to him. What could he say to him? He didn’t exactly know what he was thinking about exactly. I mean of course, he’s thinking about the war. But what exactly about it?

As he got to Sven he sat down next to the boy and paused before saying, “What’s wrong?” He left a gap and then, “I think you need to talk to someone about it, and I’m a good listener.” Of course, while both statements were true, Ari internally disliked the fact that he was doing this, but he pushed his thoughts back into the recesses. He would help this outsider.

(OOC: Sorry for the shortness, I do have quite a lot of things for Ari to say, but I think Sven should get it all out so he (and I) know what to deal with.)

[Sven & Hermes]

Sven heard the crunching of gravel grow louder as Ari approached, though Hermes insisted on kept her distance. He sighed, and with a groan lifted himself from his position, so he was kneeling. His blonde hair was even more messed up than usual now, and his forehead was covered in specks of sand. He wiped his face with his white-banded sleeve, hoping to remove any trace of how wimpy he was being, though his eyes were still red.

Ari came into his field of view, and he sat on a nearby rock. Sven didn't really want to say anything. He remained quiet when the old man asked him what was the matter. Sven didn't say anything. Where could he even begin? He listened to Ari's reasonings. He knew at first time that talking was a great cure to relief one's stress. He gave one big sigh, turning to look at the old man with his red and emerald eyes.

"I'm..." He gave a sort of brief exhaled laugh, realising how stupid the following would sound. "I'm scared, okay? Terrified." His voice was still very broken, and his hands were still trembling.

He waved a hand behind him, where Hermes stood several yards away. "If it wasn't for her and her stupid migration instincts, we wouldn't have got caught up in this mess!" With that, Hermes sunk her head, as if she was feeling guilty. Guilty for his current state of mind, anyway. Hermes decided to return to her 'watchpost' in case any more people would come, which she highly doubted.

Sven shook his head. He predicted what Ari would say in his head. Always the same things he'd heard everywhere else; it's not her fault, it's not your fault, everything will be ok, it's normal to be scared, and so on. He closed his eyes, hands resting behind his head as if he was about to be executed, and waited for his response.

[Ari]

Ari smiled slightly once Sven had finished, nodding slightly. He’d hoped that he could have gotten a bit more out of him than just what he could tell by looking. Oh well, he thought to himself, I’ve got enough.

“You’re scared?” he said, the signs of his smile was nowhere in his voice, and quickly neither in his face. He held out his nearest arm to Sven, “Snap.” His hand was shaking in much the same way that Sven’s was. Yes Ari was putting it on, but only because he’d gotten so good a stopping his hands from doing it, a healer with shaky hand is a worrying thing. He was actually scared of all this.

“When I was 17, we had a war on home soil, the last war on home soil we had. At the time we had an outsider like you. He was more of an explorer than what you are, although he did have a dragon of your quality. We were both scared by the idea of fighting, this was before I became lame. About three days from our conflict, the man just disappeared, flown off and was never seen again.”

Ari paused for dramatic effect, “The think about migratory animals is...well, they migrate. You could get on Hermes right now and fly off. But you don’t, something holds you back from letting your fear turn into cowardous. Why?”

[Sven & Hermes]

Sven's train of thoughts paused as Ari claimed he was also scared. He even showed his trembling hands, in much the same way as Sven's was right now. But the young man didn't buy it. Lots of old people had shaky hands. But behind his voice made Sven want to believe him.

As the old man began to recount his tale, Sven listened. The part about being through a war zone at 17 - three years younger than him moved him, but not as much as finding out he had lost his two brothers as well in the fight. The boy's face softened, forgetting his own concerns, perplexed by the story.

It was true he hadn't flown away yet - but honestly, he had no idea. "Ambassador dragons have weird migrations." He muttered under his breath. For the most part, he was grateful for the random journeys in which Hermes herself had no idea where she was going, because it allowed him to discover more species of dragon. He only wished her internal clock had told them to leave sooner.

Sven shook his head again, looking back at Ari. "No... No, Hermes gets uncomfortable if she leaves the place her messed up internal compass has told her to go." Sven sighed. It was the logical reason, anyway. But then something sparked in him; realising why he really wasn't leaving.

He had made friends. And he cared about them. "Oh god no..." Sven stood up and walked away from Ari, towards where the ocean lapped the beach, taking away pebbles, only to spit them back. Sven had gone and made himself friends, when he knew he shouldn't have; not knowing when he would leave, leaving without saying goodbye...

But that was a selfish thought. He thought about the people he had met on this island... Luna, Kenna, Cataract, and countless others, dragons among them. He genuinely liked them, and did not regret meeting them. Sven realised what made him stay, for it was a part of his persona that had been with him for as long as he could remember - he was here to help these people he had grown attached to.

Sven sighed, though. No matter how heroic that thought sounded, he was still terrified. The atmosphere of impeding doom was still wrapped around his head like a rotting cloud. Sven didn't want to die... despite these people he has grown to care for, there were people closer to his heart that were oblivious to was Sven was walking right into...

Tears game gushing back. How long had it been since he had last seen his parent's faces? How long had it been since he had told them how he loved them? Now, along with the other fears bestowed upon him, for the first time in his life he felt something else added onto this terrible list - Sven was homesick.

Turning back around to Ari, hands clutching his yellow hair once more, he hoped this old man of experience would give him an answer - an easy way out of this... an easy way to endure this. "W-what am I going to do?" He moaned through the sobs.

[Ari]

He’d chosen wrong it seemed...well, partly wrong at least. The way Sven had just broken down again meant that Ari had struck a chord more than just he should have. It was then Ari remembered something he worked out once.

“There are three kinds of men on this island; everyone fits into one of theses catorgaries, including you and I. The first one is a Thor category. These are your big, short-tempered, butch men. Perfect example would be Pickle Manface,” Who, Ari thought, does look quite like Thor come to think about it.

“Then you have your Odins. These people are strong, but they have some level of brains behind them to add to it, I think my niece, Kenna is a good example of that kind of person, or myself when I was younger. Both these people are good people to have in a fight, although you only really want to be run by the latter.

“And then you get the third type. Loki. Of all of our gods, Loki is the one I worship the most. Loki types aren’t fighters, or at least not by their first vocation. What Lokis are is smart. I you want someone to fight mindlessly, get a Thor. If a problem arises, get and Odin. But time and again the gods have got their outsider to fix things. They got Loki. You’re a Loki. And do you know the best thing about being a Loki in a war? A Loki in a battle is relatively safe, because people will be too busy worrying about the Thors and Odins. Obviously safe, no one’s safe in a battle, but you won’t be as obvious a target, especially since you’ll only be in battle to get the injured out.”

Ari paused before continuing, “It helps that they will want you to be doing your job.” He knew that would get Sven’s attention. “The last thing either we or they will want is to outright slaughter us. You want to know why? Because if we all die in battle then they’ll have sent every member of an enemy village to Valhalla and lost an enemy as well. And they would hate the fact that they would lose someone to fight and the fact they’d given us paradise...or at least the Thors and Thor based Odins paradice. I personally do find Valhalla very enticing, Hel sound bettered to me, just an afterlife, no punishment or ‘paradise’.”

[OOC: I was going to do more but my mind's gone ablank on what I was going to do. You can reply to this for now anyway. ]

[Sven & Hermes]

Sven looked away as the old man began to lecture. But he listened. Sven did not know much about the polytheist culture the Vikings possessed, but had got the grips from day-to-day speech that Odin and Thor were very important.

His sobs died down as he listened to the descriptions. Hidden from Ari's view, a smirk twitched at the corner of his lips at the first; Sven's stereotypical outlook on the Vikings. There was only a handful on this island who weren't in that category, in his opinion. Those people were those who had become his friend; those who it had become his obligation to protect.

The next category, Sven supposed it was the 'mediocre' class. He had not much to ponder about the matter. Since he did not know this man; he did not realise his niece was actually Kenna, the blacksmith that he had been teaching Dragonese to.

Of course, Sven knew he wasn't strong nor brash. He shook his head a little. The old man's logic was terrible. But then the third divine reference was spoken, and it stalled all train of thought from the young man. He had never heard of this god before, not from anywhere. He let his mind go numb of stupid thoughts, and listened carefully to Ari's description.

Not a fighter? True... Smart? Well, Sven was a modest fellow. An outsider? Most definitely. Fixing things though... he felt he had caused more trouble... Though it wasn't him who had decided to go out so far from the island... He glanced at Hermes surveying the cliff side from the corner of his eye. With a dragon like Hermes, they'd be useless in the upcoming battle.

Sighing and slumping his shoulders, Ari continued yet again. But now Sven slowly turned around, fully concentrating on the words emitted by the man. Sven personally didn't believe in an afterlife; his travels had opened him to so many cultures and beliefs he decided long ago to make no allegiance, though the idea that this what what these people believed in reassured him that there would be no pointless killing.

"Hel sounds a lot like another afterlife I've learnt from on my travels." He managed to say. Sven didn't really want to talk about the matter of beliefs, he had no idea how these people would react to an atheist.

"Anyway, I resemble some god I have never heard of before; I don't feel 'god-like'..."

Before Sven could erupt into a huge counter-argument fuelled by emotion, Hermes had picked up his last sentence, and trotted up to the two humans, a smile betraying her emotions. Though she felt she was intruding in his space, she nudged his shoulder and snorted as if to laugh.

"Some myths say that our species are second in command to some dragon 'god', and that our purpose is to facilitate dragon-human relationships. Look at me, I'm probably the weakest dragon out of all of them!" Now she raised her head proudly and made a laughing sound from her throat. Sven scowled at her reappearence.

"How can you be so proud of being weak?" He asked in common tongue, respecting Ari's presence, unaware that Ari had declared himself unable to speak dragonese beforehand to Hermes. The smile on the dragon in question turned upside-down.

"Oh please. Unlike you humans, we hold little importance to territories. Where's your sense of patriotism? You like these Viking people, so you should be happy helping them out." Sven said nothing, as the dragon was finally using her intelligence to good use and outsmarting him. "So I'm going to use your human saying: 'Man up'. You're on the back seats anyway. We have dragons on our side. Theres no way in any hell that these guys will ever get to wherever the medic camp is set."

Sven continued to say nothing, not finding a decent answer or comeback. Hermes was right; she nearly always was, after all... but the feeling of fear was still deep within him. He doubted anyone could fix that.

But Hermes could tell he needed some form of reassurance. She bowed her head, holding herself at his chest, where as expected, he slowly caressed both the top and bottom of her head with a shaky hand.

[Ari]

Ari smiled at his comment about hel. Ari would have been more surprised if he hadn’t really, he’d heard of many religions in his life and he didn’t know one that didn’t have some form of hel and niflhel (the equivilant of christain Hell). Vallhalla was only there because Odin was a paranoid god that felt he needed all the warriors he could to fight Ragnarok.

Then, after Sven had made complaint about his final comment, Sven’s dragon was by them and started to converse with Sven. He found it interesting that Sven used talked in common in this converse, even if he only spoke a little.

They came to a stop and the dragon lay down on him and he started to stroke it. “I don’t know what you were saying,” Ari said, “But I do know this. I use my gods in that as archetypes, archetypes everyone fits in some way. You don’t feel like a god because...well there isn’t exactly a way to ‘feel’ god-like. The gods are very human. Each of them has their own flaws just like the rest of us, their own insecurities. Even our greatest heroes had flaws. Our greatest hero, or greatest chieftain, was a Loki.”

Ari paused for a moment, “You ever heard of him? Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the third. Hiccup the Useful (OOC: I know, I’m using the Book name for him, though tbh, he’d probably pulled that one out when he became chief anyway)?” Sven replied and Ari nodded to himself, “He’s the reason you currently have a dragon on your lap, the one to get, not just us on berk but indirectly all the islands around us the main land to understand what dragons were really like. He was probably the bravest among them at the times, simply because he understood the dangers and went into it anyway.”

Ari stood up, he knew that he’d done all that he really could, and he needed to get back to the village, people would notice him missing if they were gone anymore, “We should probably head back,” Ari faked his perfect kind smile, “And like I said earlier, all you need to do to be safe is make sure that you are never more than the second biggest threat to the enemy. That’s how Hiccup survived, that’s how most Lokis survive in our lands.”

[Sven & Hermes]

The moment of truce between Hermes and Sven allowed Ari to speak. Sven was glad he spoke in common, finding out that Ari couldn't speak Dragonese. The duo listened to Ari's words. Sven, brushing a few tears from his eyes, finding the idea of using gods more as an archetype than a symbol of worship and all-poweful being.

Ari asked him a question, looking up at him quickly, he played the name through his head, before shaking his head. "No... No I haven't." The old man continued, describing a hero who apparently created human-dragon relations. Sven looked down at Hermes. In his homeland, his dragonology work has provided information that made people less afraid of dragons. The young man wasn't arrogant to consider comparing himself to a celebrated hero here – even if he did, Sven wasn't alone when he met Hermes for the first time.

Coming out of his train of thought, he found himself no longer gravely upset; the conversation with the old man had distracted him from his concerns. Sven, wiping the last traces of moisture from his cheeks (though his eyes were still quite red), nodded in agreement at Ari's proposal. They still had a lot of work to do before the Hysterians arrived. And Sven had realised that distractions were proving yet again necessary to overcome terrible thoughts and fears.

Hermes retracted from Sven's breast, raising her head high as she always did, looking down at him smugly. "Yeah, what he said." She stayed close behind him as he followed Ari up the beach towards the village. Sven finally gave a weak smile. Ari's wise words had definitely lifted his spirits, in a way he couldn't quite put a finger on it. Old men were often wise.

”I-I'm sorry, I don't know your name.” Sven called out. When Ari replied, Sven's eyes widened in shock. ”Wait... Sigmundr? You're related to Kenna?” Thinking back to the archetype examples, he could finally put a name to the Odin archetype.

[Ari]

“Oh,” Ari minorly coughed. He’d forgotten to say his name. He smiled a missing a relatively important information for him to know, “Ari Sigmund, healer of the village.” He smiled as he put two and two together, “Yes, as I mentioned she’d my neice. She’s mentioned you, which is why I thought I should keep an eye on you.”

They reached the village, and started to walk towards where they had meant to be quite a while ago. He would be able to talk people around it. He looked at his companion as they walked through the village. There was something about him that felt...odd. He wasn’t sure what though. His reaction to the war. He had something in his past that he didn’t want to talk about, something Ari was unlikely to hear about from him.

Still, whatever it was, it affected him differently from what he’d have expected. Ari had met many people and their reactions to war. This man was someone who didn’t like boundaries, who didn’t like to stay in one place...he was running. But what was he running from? Was it something to do with Hysteria or was it something unrelated to us and them and it’s just this am incoming group that was likely to want us dead just give him a reason to want to leave here?

He knew speculation was a pointless thing to do...but he couldn’t help it. Why did he have a feeling about this man?