Many Happy Returns (May 2997) - [Ceolmund]
Feb 28, 2018 22:33:35 GMT -5
Post by Runa on Feb 28, 2018 22:33:35 GMT -5
“Runa, sweetheart,” Hildred hummed, whisking forward to where the young woman was bent over the laundry basket. It had been six months ago that her daughter had still held traces of youth upon her; now, though, it was the day of her fifteenth name day, and she looked very much a woman. Her body was full of curve, and her shape was soft. However, in the same span of time it had taken for such gentling, Hildred had watched Runa’s face fall away from warmth. Her jaw, even at rest, seemed set in a frown, and her brow was naturally as cold as a winter’s freeze. Perhaps with patients, certain threads of the daughter she had known resurfaced. Her smile, when she gave it, was like springtime sun, and her laughter, when she loosed it, was musical.
But more often than not, her face looked stern, and her laughter was stilled and silent. Eight months ago, in that past October, a slew of soldiers had been taken to the hall after a slipped watch. It was a grisly affair, one that forced her daughter to take on responsibilities that were, at the time, far beyond her training. And with those overreached responsibilities came the consequences and experiences she should not have yet had to harbor. When the soldier passed beneath her very hands, Runa had lost a piece of herself. It was like she had forgotten how to celebrate life.
Even there, as Runa looked up toward her mother from where she was folding pillowcases and sheets, her pale, delicate features looked as powerful and cold as the Starkhorn. “Yes, Mama?” She asked.
“One of the boys from the training grounds is here—he’s asking for you,” Hildred hummed lightly. The day had been relatively slow; only a few of the beds were occupied, so work had been mostly tidying, boiling new extracts, and straightening supplies about the longhouse. Runa, she was certain, would be thankful for the change of pace. “I think he’s one of your classmates.”
Runa leaned, peering around her mother’s skirt. Sitting on a cot at the far end of the hall was a little boy. He was twelve, though she knew that by association and not by looking upon him. Bjarr was unusually small for his age, though a bright boy and the son of a captain who had recently been decorated for his service to the Eored. She knew he, like the others of the young boys who he trained with, was frightened of her. Since she had taken to spending her days off training alongside the Eored recruits, Runa had seen a fair share of strange looks from the boys. At first, it had been laughter that followed her. Though, once she bested the best boy they had to offer in a spar, the laughter had turned to whispers. For Bjarr to come seek her out meant something was certainly troubling him.
“All right,” Runa said as she stood. “I’ll go see him.”
“He looks all bruised,” Hildred said with a small frown as her daughter began to move away. “He reminds me of—”
“I will see to him, Mama,” Runa interjected hurriedly. She did not want to hear that name. This was her first name day spent away from him, and she had already come too close to tears that morning already. She hurried down the hall, approaching the bedside with quiet steps.
“Bjarr,” she greeted, tone even.
The little boy looked up; his jaw and eye were black and blue, tinges of yellow creeping over his lip and nose. His eyes looked as if he had been crying, though all tears were no more than lingered tracings down his cheeks. Runa’s heart clenched, and a gentle hand came to brush his hair out of his face as her cold blue eyes scanned the damage done.
“Hello, Runa,” Bjarr answered. He was a polite child, though it seemed such a thing had set him apart from his training class from the moment he had turned ten years old.
“Did Reidar do this to you?” She asked, her voice still even and low despite the slight crackle of lightning that shot through her eyes.
Bjarr’s chin dropped, and Runa moved to grab some oils, and a warm cloth. “After you beat him off me…he said I was a coward for letting you fight him instead.”
Runa’s brow pinched and she turned to look at him. “You didn’t let me do anything,” she said definitively as she pressed the cloth to his eye and cheek. “Nobody lets me. I speak and act for myself. I’ll make sure Reidar remembers that.”
It would take little more than words; Reidar, at fourteen, was one year younger than Runa, and already taller. Still, Runa was much better at sparring, and the young boy would not wish to initiate any sort of squabble once Runa had reiterated they were not to bother Bjarr any more.
Maybe it was because Bjarr reminded her of him, too. The one she could not think on his name, for the sadness it placed inside.
“You don’t have to do that,” Bjarr assured her. Still, Runa merely flicked her eyes to him and offered a small curl of her lip.
“I don’t have patience for cruelty,” she answered.
The front door opened, the bright chirping of the newly hatched sparrows in their nest streaming in with the bright spring morning’s golden light. Two figures stood in the entry, long shadows marking their presence upon the floor like a herald, and it was those very black shapes that drew Runa’s eyes to the doorway. Immediately her heart sank, and her lips twitched downward.
Bjarr, with the one eye that was uncovered, followed her gaze, and a young woman with delicate features pressed up to Runa’s side. “Looks like your brother is back with that cute carpenter’s son,” the girl giggled as she elbowed Runa’s side.
Runa grunted. “Adelais, can you get the arnica salve for Bjarr’s bruising?” Already Beorhtric was waving to her, and Gudmund, the russet-haired carpenter was smiling at her.
“Runa, I think he brought you flowers!” Adelais said, already moving to take the cloth in hand and set to work. Runa could very well see the bouquet. It was beautiful, truthfully. The blue and white blooms mixed well. Still, the flowers were merely a reminder that her brother had started the search for her husband, and all they made Runa wish to do was groan.
“Runi!” Beorhtric called the moment his eyes were upon her. He was smiling, in bright spirits, and so was the young man beside him.
Gudmund was the same height as Bear, though paler in feature. He was smiling as well, and the softness in the motion as he looked at her was enough to make Runa’s stomach knot.
Runa hesitated, though Adelais gave her a nudge, a smirk on her face. “Well? Go talk to him.”
Runa knew the girl well enough to know she did not mean her brother.
Slowly at first, then purposefully, Runa crossed toward them. “Bear. Gudmund,” the young woman greeted.
“Ru,” the russet haired young man said. His grin was lopsided, eager as a newborn pup, and he extended the flowers immediately. “Happy name day.” His voice was warm, kind and gentle as the stream that flowed from Meduseld down through the city.
Ru. Gudmund was the first, and so far the only person to have used such a name on her, and the young woman was unsure how she felt about it. Stiffly she took the bouquet, and though she did not deliberately sniff the flowers, the scent washed up and over her; it was fragrant, and had the flowers come to her by anyone else for a different reason, she would have been thrilled to sit them in a vase for a time. As it was, the flowers were a show of affection. Gudmund was kind, but he was not who Runa’s heart yearned for.
“…Thank you,” Runa said quietly after the shade of silence stretched awkwardly long. Gudmund did not seem to mind, though he seemed to not mind much of anything. She could never look at him in a smile, and the seventeen year old was going to still think she was the finest gem in Edoras.
“Runi,” Beorhtric hummed, giving her a pointed look to warn her she was seeming rude. “Gudmund had a mind to take you to the bakery when you are off work this evening.”
“I have heard you love honey cakes,” Gudmund smiled, his eyes bright and dancing. His large, callused hands fidgeted at his side, the only indication he was nervous at all.
“…Oh…I…can’t,” Runa offered slowly. Her mind was scrambling; she needed a proper excuse, and one that was not outright a lie. “I appreciate the offer, but…I…have a tradition of my own.”
It had been to sit with him, at least before he left for Aldburg. Thirteen, fourteen…fifteen should have been spent with him too. As it was, she supposed she was reverting to the tradition from before he had ever entered her world.
“Oh, that’s a shame,” the young carpenter lamented honestly. “Perhaps…perhaps tomorrow?” He pressed, hopeful.
“I’m working,” Runa said quietly. Her brother was glaring, so she sighed. “I will…see how I feel when I am off shift.”
That had been enough to brighten Gudmund’s face. “I hope the gods smile on me, then. It would be a pleasure to treat you to the finest honey cake in the city.”
“Bear, sweetheart,” Hildred’s voice sang out from over Runa’s shoulder, and she turned just in time to see her mother sweeping forward, blue eyes shaded in concern. They were giving Beorhtric a once-over, and then shifted to do the same to Gudmund. “Is everything all right?”
That was when her eyes fell on Runa, and the flowers.
Runa could see for a moment the startlement flicker in Hildred’s eye and she turned her attention once more to Gudmund. The expression, while not unkind, was curious. If Bear and Gudmund noted it, they did not show such a thing. In fact, Beorhtric smiled. “Everything is fine, Mother. Gudmund and I just wished to see our lovely Runi on her Name Day.”
Hildred offered both of them a smile, though Runa could see that something of it looked reserved. It was warm, and it was kind, but there was no sparkle in her eye like often glittered in her best of humors. “That is kind of you,” the woman hummed. Our Runi? Her mind repeated the statement as she glanced to her daughter. Runa did not look overly thrilled. “Perhaps, though, you might wait until after she is done working, hm?” Hildred’s eyebrows raised and Bear chuckled, while Gudmund immediately uttered an apology.
“We’ll be going then,” Beorhtric said, holding up his hands in mock defeat, words ringed in laughter.
“I must get back to work anyway,” Gudmund offered. He gave Hildred a smile and once more turned to Runa. “I hope to see you tomorrow, Ru,” he hummed.
Runa offered a somewhat stiff and detached smile, and he turned. Adelais approached, falling to a halt beside Runa as the three women watched the two visitors leave through the front door of the Hall.
“I don’t know why you don’t want to give him a chance,” Adelais said, crossing her arms. “He seems very sweet. Not so bad to look at either.”
Runa sighed in frustration and turned, thrusting the bouquet of flowers toward Adelais and scoffing. “You may have him if you like him so much.”
Adelais dropped her jaw, laughing as the flowers were handed to her, and she caught Hildred’s eye. “I’m taken, thank you very much,” the girl volleyed back. “But Gudmund would be a good match, don’t you think, Miss Hildred?”
Hildred felt a grimace in her chest, though her face remained serene. “If Runa does not think so, it does not matter what anyone thinks,” she answered. Though, perhaps her and her daughter were of one mind when it came to such things: there was someone out there that made Gudmund an impossible match.
At the thought of him, Hildred felt her heart drop, and she heaved a heavy sigh. She had not heard from him since he had settled out in Aldburg, though Torsten and Brandr had often sent correspondence home to confirm that Ceolmund was doing very well. Each letter made Hildred wonder if she should feel sad or proud; Ceolmund deserved to thrive, though she had seen the way his absence had tolled upon her daughter, and even upon her own self. Her son was gone, and before he had ever had a chance to take his baby for a bride and make it so by law.
Runa passed back to Bjarr, smiling as she rounded to face him. “Let me get you another compress,” she hummed.
The little boy nodded to her, though said nothing, waiting for Runa’s hands to once more pick up her work with the arnica salve.
But more often than not, her face looked stern, and her laughter was stilled and silent. Eight months ago, in that past October, a slew of soldiers had been taken to the hall after a slipped watch. It was a grisly affair, one that forced her daughter to take on responsibilities that were, at the time, far beyond her training. And with those overreached responsibilities came the consequences and experiences she should not have yet had to harbor. When the soldier passed beneath her very hands, Runa had lost a piece of herself. It was like she had forgotten how to celebrate life.
Even there, as Runa looked up toward her mother from where she was folding pillowcases and sheets, her pale, delicate features looked as powerful and cold as the Starkhorn. “Yes, Mama?” She asked.
“One of the boys from the training grounds is here—he’s asking for you,” Hildred hummed lightly. The day had been relatively slow; only a few of the beds were occupied, so work had been mostly tidying, boiling new extracts, and straightening supplies about the longhouse. Runa, she was certain, would be thankful for the change of pace. “I think he’s one of your classmates.”
Runa leaned, peering around her mother’s skirt. Sitting on a cot at the far end of the hall was a little boy. He was twelve, though she knew that by association and not by looking upon him. Bjarr was unusually small for his age, though a bright boy and the son of a captain who had recently been decorated for his service to the Eored. She knew he, like the others of the young boys who he trained with, was frightened of her. Since she had taken to spending her days off training alongside the Eored recruits, Runa had seen a fair share of strange looks from the boys. At first, it had been laughter that followed her. Though, once she bested the best boy they had to offer in a spar, the laughter had turned to whispers. For Bjarr to come seek her out meant something was certainly troubling him.
“All right,” Runa said as she stood. “I’ll go see him.”
“He looks all bruised,” Hildred said with a small frown as her daughter began to move away. “He reminds me of—”
“I will see to him, Mama,” Runa interjected hurriedly. She did not want to hear that name. This was her first name day spent away from him, and she had already come too close to tears that morning already. She hurried down the hall, approaching the bedside with quiet steps.
“Bjarr,” she greeted, tone even.
The little boy looked up; his jaw and eye were black and blue, tinges of yellow creeping over his lip and nose. His eyes looked as if he had been crying, though all tears were no more than lingered tracings down his cheeks. Runa’s heart clenched, and a gentle hand came to brush his hair out of his face as her cold blue eyes scanned the damage done.
“Hello, Runa,” Bjarr answered. He was a polite child, though it seemed such a thing had set him apart from his training class from the moment he had turned ten years old.
“Did Reidar do this to you?” She asked, her voice still even and low despite the slight crackle of lightning that shot through her eyes.
Bjarr’s chin dropped, and Runa moved to grab some oils, and a warm cloth. “After you beat him off me…he said I was a coward for letting you fight him instead.”
Runa’s brow pinched and she turned to look at him. “You didn’t let me do anything,” she said definitively as she pressed the cloth to his eye and cheek. “Nobody lets me. I speak and act for myself. I’ll make sure Reidar remembers that.”
It would take little more than words; Reidar, at fourteen, was one year younger than Runa, and already taller. Still, Runa was much better at sparring, and the young boy would not wish to initiate any sort of squabble once Runa had reiterated they were not to bother Bjarr any more.
Maybe it was because Bjarr reminded her of him, too. The one she could not think on his name, for the sadness it placed inside.
“You don’t have to do that,” Bjarr assured her. Still, Runa merely flicked her eyes to him and offered a small curl of her lip.
“I don’t have patience for cruelty,” she answered.
The front door opened, the bright chirping of the newly hatched sparrows in their nest streaming in with the bright spring morning’s golden light. Two figures stood in the entry, long shadows marking their presence upon the floor like a herald, and it was those very black shapes that drew Runa’s eyes to the doorway. Immediately her heart sank, and her lips twitched downward.
Bjarr, with the one eye that was uncovered, followed her gaze, and a young woman with delicate features pressed up to Runa’s side. “Looks like your brother is back with that cute carpenter’s son,” the girl giggled as she elbowed Runa’s side.
Runa grunted. “Adelais, can you get the arnica salve for Bjarr’s bruising?” Already Beorhtric was waving to her, and Gudmund, the russet-haired carpenter was smiling at her.
“Runa, I think he brought you flowers!” Adelais said, already moving to take the cloth in hand and set to work. Runa could very well see the bouquet. It was beautiful, truthfully. The blue and white blooms mixed well. Still, the flowers were merely a reminder that her brother had started the search for her husband, and all they made Runa wish to do was groan.
“Runi!” Beorhtric called the moment his eyes were upon her. He was smiling, in bright spirits, and so was the young man beside him.
Gudmund was the same height as Bear, though paler in feature. He was smiling as well, and the softness in the motion as he looked at her was enough to make Runa’s stomach knot.
Runa hesitated, though Adelais gave her a nudge, a smirk on her face. “Well? Go talk to him.”
Runa knew the girl well enough to know she did not mean her brother.
Slowly at first, then purposefully, Runa crossed toward them. “Bear. Gudmund,” the young woman greeted.
“Ru,” the russet haired young man said. His grin was lopsided, eager as a newborn pup, and he extended the flowers immediately. “Happy name day.” His voice was warm, kind and gentle as the stream that flowed from Meduseld down through the city.
Ru. Gudmund was the first, and so far the only person to have used such a name on her, and the young woman was unsure how she felt about it. Stiffly she took the bouquet, and though she did not deliberately sniff the flowers, the scent washed up and over her; it was fragrant, and had the flowers come to her by anyone else for a different reason, she would have been thrilled to sit them in a vase for a time. As it was, the flowers were a show of affection. Gudmund was kind, but he was not who Runa’s heart yearned for.
“…Thank you,” Runa said quietly after the shade of silence stretched awkwardly long. Gudmund did not seem to mind, though he seemed to not mind much of anything. She could never look at him in a smile, and the seventeen year old was going to still think she was the finest gem in Edoras.
“Runi,” Beorhtric hummed, giving her a pointed look to warn her she was seeming rude. “Gudmund had a mind to take you to the bakery when you are off work this evening.”
“I have heard you love honey cakes,” Gudmund smiled, his eyes bright and dancing. His large, callused hands fidgeted at his side, the only indication he was nervous at all.
“…Oh…I…can’t,” Runa offered slowly. Her mind was scrambling; she needed a proper excuse, and one that was not outright a lie. “I appreciate the offer, but…I…have a tradition of my own.”
It had been to sit with him, at least before he left for Aldburg. Thirteen, fourteen…fifteen should have been spent with him too. As it was, she supposed she was reverting to the tradition from before he had ever entered her world.
“Oh, that’s a shame,” the young carpenter lamented honestly. “Perhaps…perhaps tomorrow?” He pressed, hopeful.
“I’m working,” Runa said quietly. Her brother was glaring, so she sighed. “I will…see how I feel when I am off shift.”
That had been enough to brighten Gudmund’s face. “I hope the gods smile on me, then. It would be a pleasure to treat you to the finest honey cake in the city.”
“Bear, sweetheart,” Hildred’s voice sang out from over Runa’s shoulder, and she turned just in time to see her mother sweeping forward, blue eyes shaded in concern. They were giving Beorhtric a once-over, and then shifted to do the same to Gudmund. “Is everything all right?”
That was when her eyes fell on Runa, and the flowers.
Runa could see for a moment the startlement flicker in Hildred’s eye and she turned her attention once more to Gudmund. The expression, while not unkind, was curious. If Bear and Gudmund noted it, they did not show such a thing. In fact, Beorhtric smiled. “Everything is fine, Mother. Gudmund and I just wished to see our lovely Runi on her Name Day.”
Hildred offered both of them a smile, though Runa could see that something of it looked reserved. It was warm, and it was kind, but there was no sparkle in her eye like often glittered in her best of humors. “That is kind of you,” the woman hummed. Our Runi? Her mind repeated the statement as she glanced to her daughter. Runa did not look overly thrilled. “Perhaps, though, you might wait until after she is done working, hm?” Hildred’s eyebrows raised and Bear chuckled, while Gudmund immediately uttered an apology.
“We’ll be going then,” Beorhtric said, holding up his hands in mock defeat, words ringed in laughter.
“I must get back to work anyway,” Gudmund offered. He gave Hildred a smile and once more turned to Runa. “I hope to see you tomorrow, Ru,” he hummed.
Runa offered a somewhat stiff and detached smile, and he turned. Adelais approached, falling to a halt beside Runa as the three women watched the two visitors leave through the front door of the Hall.
“I don’t know why you don’t want to give him a chance,” Adelais said, crossing her arms. “He seems very sweet. Not so bad to look at either.”
Runa sighed in frustration and turned, thrusting the bouquet of flowers toward Adelais and scoffing. “You may have him if you like him so much.”
Adelais dropped her jaw, laughing as the flowers were handed to her, and she caught Hildred’s eye. “I’m taken, thank you very much,” the girl volleyed back. “But Gudmund would be a good match, don’t you think, Miss Hildred?”
Hildred felt a grimace in her chest, though her face remained serene. “If Runa does not think so, it does not matter what anyone thinks,” she answered. Though, perhaps her and her daughter were of one mind when it came to such things: there was someone out there that made Gudmund an impossible match.
At the thought of him, Hildred felt her heart drop, and she heaved a heavy sigh. She had not heard from him since he had settled out in Aldburg, though Torsten and Brandr had often sent correspondence home to confirm that Ceolmund was doing very well. Each letter made Hildred wonder if she should feel sad or proud; Ceolmund deserved to thrive, though she had seen the way his absence had tolled upon her daughter, and even upon her own self. Her son was gone, and before he had ever had a chance to take his baby for a bride and make it so by law.
Runa passed back to Bjarr, smiling as she rounded to face him. “Let me get you another compress,” she hummed.
The little boy nodded to her, though said nothing, waiting for Runa’s hands to once more pick up her work with the arnica salve.