ofaheadstronghealer

[ofaheadstronghealer]

ololygas​:

[ofaheadstronghealer]

lifeinpoetry​:

“I want to be eaten alive. I want / to feel wanted.”

— Elisabeth Hewer, from “Wanting,” Wishing for Birds

[ofaheadstronghealer]

ofalva​:

open.

 She stood just to the back of the room, hands empty as a pitcher usually would be in them, it laid on the table for anyone to help themselves. A few other slaves stood as she did, once in a while one getting pulled away by a master or person wanting a bit of entertainment. Her own master, a temporary arrangement, too drunk to even stand let alone beck her over for attention, declared some great thing with all the guests in his home.

    “He could kiss a horses ass and they’d all cheer.” She muttered softly, a small ‘hmph’ surprisingly her in response to the words. She glanced up eyes immediately spotting the source.

It wasn’t often Alma found cause to be in attendance at gatherings such as this but she’d felt it would be rather rude to refuse the invitation that had been extended to her by an overly grateful patron and truth be told the chance to spend a night in celebration with others had been too tempting to turn down, thus she found herself seated at the table trying her very best to not make her regret at accepting the invitation evident to the other guests. In her desire for company she’d forgotten how...overexcited these gatherings could become, it had not taken long for the host and his guests to drink themselves beyond sense and at that point any chance of true conversation had been lost to her and so she had spent most of the evening doing what she did best and simply observing the goings on. It was times like this the slave realized how lucky she was as a slave to Ragnar, being under the Kings protection meant that she was spared the indignity of the wandering hands that the others were being forced to endure but it had not always been so and she found herself thinking back to those times. Strange, how fortunes shift. When she had been a slave on the farm she, and many of her fellow labourers, often envied the house slaves and their perceived advantage, they were not made to work out in the cold fields until their hands were bleeding and their bones sore but now watching them Alma understood it was not all as leisurely as she had once thought. 

Having seen quite enough for one night the woman had resolved that it was far time she head home and saw her opportunity as the master of the house made some grand statement and the fellow guests cheered but before she could slip away a voice, softer than the others, caught her attention, it wasn’t so much the voice that garnered her attention as the words spoken and before she could catch herself Alma let out a small noise of amusement. The healer froze, pale blue eyes raised and met the equally shocked gaze of one of the slave girls. Thankfully for both women none of the party goers were paying any mind to either of them and so their exchange went unheard, she regarded the girl for a quiet moment with a subtle smile on her face before making the decision to make her way over to her. It was subtle of course, were anyone to actually bother looking over at them it would look for all intents and purposes that Alma was simply admiring her hosts home “You should be more mindful of your words, it was lucky it was only me that heard you.”

[ofaheadstronghealer]

The hour had grown late since last anyone had seen or heard from the Kings healer but that was not so strange as to cause much concern, it was known that Alma favoured the workspace provided to her by the King above any other place in the village and that at almost any hour anyone who had need could find her there often puttering around as she was now with a book in her hand studying a new mixture or her sleeves rolled up as she concocted one of her many remedies. “To be mixed in with what? how strange...” 

A frustrated huff escaped her as she lifted a delicate hand to brush away a stray lock of raven black hair that had escaped it’s confinement, she could cure a man of almost anything and fix any sort of broken limb but she could never manage to tame her wild hair even put up as it was...there was something she found quite amusing about that beneath all the irritation. “Good god-”  A flicker of movement caught from the corner of her eye and she snapped the book shut in surprise, the sound seeming impossibly loud in the otherwise quiet halls. How long had she lived among them and still there was that residual sense of fear? Silently she wondered if that would ever truly be gone, if there would ever come a day that she didn’t feel out of place or at risk. “Forgive me I wasn’t expecting anyone...” And why should she? Alma had made only a few friends among the Vikings and as personal healer to Ragnar and his family it was rare that anyone outside of the noble family came to her for aid. Whoever it was stood before her was still cloaked in shadow, the room being less well lit than other areas in the halls due to the woman's aversion to fire, and so it was not clear to her who they were or if they were needing her particular set of skills. A second to catch her breath and her features softened into something less shocked and more welcoming “Do you require healing?” It was not forbidden to her to help others outside the royal family and even if it was it was not in her nature to turn away someone in need of her skills.

[ofaheadstronghealer]

Alma Bio

I know we have official bios but until that was posted I thought I’d temporarily post this to help with interactions, please feel free to message me if you have any ideas for plots or connections or what have you! :)

FULL NAME: Alma

AGE: 36

OCCUPATION: Healer/Slave

CHARACTER TRAITS: (+ Clever +Kind Hearted , -Headstrong - Insecure )

LABEL: The Phoenix

GENDER + PRONOUNS: Cis-female, she/her

BIO

(trigger warning: implied sexual assault)

Alma, an unusual name for an unusual girl. There has not been a moment in her life that could be described as ‘typical’ or ‘normal’, perhaps that is why for most of her life being normal had been something she’d craved so desperately until she would come to understand the true power in being different from the rest. Something her mother had always understood.

Alma was born a fatherless child. Not literally, of course, but in the sense that the man who is her father was not her mother's husband nor was his identity ever known to the girl or to the others in the village in which she grew up. Being branded a ‘bastard’ was her first taste of this ‘otherness’ that she would come to experience her whole life, being the daughter of a woman who was suspected by many of being a witch….well that certainly didn’t help matters. When Alma thinks on it now she finds proof that God has a sense of humor, how hard she fought to be unlike her mother and yet how like her she later became. Alma isn’t a witch, not one of the barbarians ‘Volvas’ or one of their ‘seers’, and neither was her mother before her but that mattered little to the townspeople she grew up around. They were pariahs for her whole childhood, ostracized by the community until one of their people needed a healer with skill unmatched by any other and then only under the most dire of circumstances would they accept them with open arms. Alma wouldn’t realize that until she was much older, a naïve thing desperate for acceptance she would bask in it no matter what the price for as long as it lasted. Sometimes at night she would kneel before her bed and pray, pray to god to show the truth of her innocence to the people so that she might live among them as kin and not be regarded with such fear. The first time God answered her prayers she was but the tender age of 14 and she was shown his power...as well as his cruelty. Had she known the price that God would make her pay for her freedom she would have been more specific in her prayers, would have extended the prayer to her mother as well but alas she was selfish as children so often are and did not think of such things. A life for a life, her mother's death for her freedom. She still remembers the way her mother’s hand felt upon her cheek before they brought her to the pyre, remembers the tremble in her voice as, for the last time, her mother told her that she loved her. Alma was forced to bear witness to her mother's death, forced to stand there as she was engulfed in flame and pleading for her life. Suddenly acceptance didn’t matter so much to Alma, all she wanted in that moment was her mother back. 

The years following her mother's passing were difficult in many ways and brought many changes, on one hand she was welcomed back into the community as a show of the villagers' mercy but on the other she was an orphaned girl with no family and no prospects. Her mother had not raised her as a proper lady, she was not educated in the things a girl should be and though everyone around her agreed she was beautiful she was far too clever and her reputation too marred to make a suitable wife for anyone ‘such a waste of a beautiful girl’ they’d mutter as though that were supposed to make Alma feel appreciated. Perhaps other women if put in her position would have simply bowed to fate but not Alma, she had too much of her mother in her for that. If she had no use as a wife then she would find another way to have use, to make herself indispensable so she could not be so easily cast aside. In what she would later realize was a bold move she became a healer like her mother before her though unlike her mother she was more careful in how she was perceived, cautious to never show up the men around her, to curb her clever tongue, and to never perform acts that could be considered miracles and later used against her. She couldn’t really say in any sincerity that she was truly happy but it was as close as she’d ever gotten, she was valued and though people looked at her sometimes with pity it was better than the terror she had become accustomed to in her youth. If only she’d been able to save her mother than perhaps it would have been perfect. Alma lived this way in the village for many years, alone but accepted as much as she could be. That all changed the day they showed up. 

The day of the raid was like any other, Alma had been making her rounds attending to the villagers when she heard the screams. At first the healer thought it was simply in her head, it wasn’t unusual for the painful memory to surface; it had been haunting her for years, but it grew in its volume and intensity and soon it became clear to her that they were not the screams she remembered hearing as a child. Of course they’d all heard of the Vikings and their ways, how they would often raid and pillage and kill everything in sight, but as every other town did they never thought they would be targeted. She was still in the house of a patient when it happened, the person too weak to realize what was going on and certainly too weak to fend for themselves. Alma is no saint, she will not deny if asked that there was a moment when she simply considered running and trying to save herself but one look at the pathetic state of the woman laying there and her mind was purged of that thought. She could not abandon her. Alma helped the other woman to the back of the house, hid both herself and the woman in a dark pantry not easily seen and for the first time in a very long time Alma prayed ‘Please God protect us, see us through this, save us’. God answered Alma much like he had the time before, granting her her wish but always with a twist. The Vikings that crashed through the house at first appeared as though mindless beasts that had not the capacity to think beyond destruction and for just a moment Alma thought herself and the woman safe. She was made aware of how wrong she was when rough hands tore her from the safety of the pantry, a foreign tongue that she couldn’t understand flooded her ears but she understood the tone well enough. The only thing that got her through the assault that followed was the sight of the other woman, frail but still hidden. Safe. 

Alma doesn’t remember much about the journey that led her to Hedeby, she tries not to think about it. She can recall her captors dragging her back to show the horde their prize, remembers her feeble escape attempt just before they threw her on one of their boats. The rest of the voyage was not memorable, she kept her head down as much as possible on the boat and simply listened. Though she could not understand all of what was being said at some point in the journey she managed to make out that they were going to one of their cities, a place they called ‘Hedeby’. Alma was not certain what to expect, what would become of all those they had taken including herself? Would they be killed? Sold? The thought was frightening but she did not let it overwhelm her, simply continuing to listen and do as the Vikings bid. When Alma was brought to what appeared to be an open market in chains with the others she stood silently as they were inspected by the market goers. As time passed and the other villagers were distributed it became clear to the healer exactly the position she was in, she had always been a slight thing and while that had not been looked at negatively back home it was becoming clear that as a slave she was probably the most unappealing of the bunch. Death, it seemed, would be the escape that God would deliver her. It was not to be so. Much to her own surprise she was bought by what appeared to be a family of little means meaning that they had little to trade and therefore she was the only one they could afford, the man looked brutish, as they all did, but was not unkind in his handling of her. She was in their service for a few years, quietly observing the customs and language of these strange people with whom she now resided, but knew it would not last, she was a healer not a farmer and unsuited for the physical labour demanded of her and every day she grew weaker. It was a miracle of God when one day as she was working the fields a man emerged from the forests and collapsed before her clearly wounded, it was pure instinct when Alma leapt into action. Over the next few days there grew a small gathering of Vikings who watched as she tended to the man, they appeared intrigued by her methods some of which were unknown to them. Unknown to Alma the man she eventually ended up saving was someone that the King of these Vikings held as a very dear friend, King Ragnar demanded Alma be brought to him at once. Alma entered the great halls of the Viking King with the family that had bought her but she did not leave with them, word spread not long after of the healer from a foreign land who was now under the ownership of the King. 

That was many years ago and much about Alma has changed, she still bears the status of slave under King Ragnar and his family but as their personal healer she is treated with a great deal more respect than most slaves. Though sometimes she finds herself longing for the familiarity of her old home Alma has managed to settle somewhat among the Vikings and has found respect for some aspects of the way they live their lives and is, in some ways, more herself here than she ever was back at home.

EXTRAS

- Due to how her mother died and having been forced to watch it Alma has a deep and intense fear of fire. 

- She can fully understand the Vikings language but she still cannot fully speak it

- When first she arrived at Hedeby Alma was incredibly quiet but since being raised to the royals personal healer and over the years becoming more settled she has let more of her true personality come through, she has a clever tongue and a headstrong nature and does not feel she’s in such a precarious position anymore that she must hide those things though she is still cautious with who she shows it to

- Although she acts like she’s over the whole wanting to be accepted and loved thing she is very much not over it and longs for a feeling of home and belonging and love.

- At first she hated the Vikings and saw them as brutes and barbarians but now for the most part she has let go of that view though there are still moments where she considers them beasts

- One of the first things she noticed and loved about the Viking culture was how they treated their women, coming from a place where she was only looked at as a thing of value through marriage and the fact that she had a brain frowned upon she was secretly impressed at the freedoms Viking women were afforded.