#and he keeps using the word coward specifically bc that was like a HUUUUGE insult back in the day. Questioning one's bravery was BAD BAD BA

[islandiis]

BLINDSIDED !!

send BLINDSIDED for a scene from my muse's past in which they were betrayed or shocked by what someone did

There are two men pinning him down by his ankles and by his wrists.

The sky is clear and the air is cold, and the grass he's been forced down into is certainly preferable to the abrasive rock that forms their land. A little ways off, there are people he knows - a farmhand and his girlfriend, both skirting eighteen. They keep their heads carefully turned away from him, despite Leifur's hissing and screaming. One of the men snarls him to shut up, and Leifur spits at him.

It is the fucking Norwegians, this is their doing. Leifur liked Tór, despite - he understood now - their initial meeting being an invasion. Tór gave him food. Deep down — despite failing to understand the intricacies of their existence, nor the political plays that these mortals weaponise — Leifur does not wish to believe that this is Tór's fault. It is the people, the Norwegian people, who came here to conquer and to pillage. Under Tór's instruction, yes, and yet...

Could Tór stop this, if he so wished? Could the Góðar?

It is King Olaf who sent Stefnir, King Olaf who sent Thangbrand to the Góðar, King Olaf who - now - has taken several of his people hostage in Norway. It is King Olaf threatening to take their life, should Iceland not convert.

He is aware, too, that the Góðar speak endlessly about Norway. That's all they ever seem to talk about: Norway, Norway, Norway. Friends, that's what they are, and they have to stay that way. It is because of Olaf. No decisions are ever made without the King's presence looming. He doesn't understand why, but he doesn't understand a lot of things. He thinks King Olaf is evil, and he cannot understand why his countrymen simply bow their heads to him. After all — is he not mortal, too?

"Fuck you," he hisses at the men, jerking his wrists against the restraints — ineffectually. Few men would be so heinous as to treat a child this way, but Leifur is no mortal child. He is an immortal boy, physically only five or six — but right now he is a rabid animal, the explosive embodiment of all the great fires of their land. He unleashes a barrage of curses a boy of his age should certainly not know, and he attempts to bite at one man's wrist. "Fuck you! You don't care about Sturla. You never cared about Sturla!"

"You don't even fucking know Sturla, boy."

Leifur spits at him again, then throws his head back against the ground and screams.

His countrymen all know him as a strange boy, coming and going as wildly as the winds of their homelands — and behaving just as erratically. His presence tends to inspire a variety of reactions: some find him endearing, while some find him offputting. They all find him familiar, though, even those he has never met before. He is, after all, the land they walk on and the water they drink. Regardless of how they may find him, he will be exist as they born and as they die.

"Stefnir destroyed everything!"

"And Stefnir is never coming back here."

"And now they've taken Sturla, your 'friend'. Coward!"

The man's chest heaves with rage, and for a moment he looks ready to strike the boy. "You question my fortitude as a man?"

Leifur stops thrashing momentarily to hold the man's gaze, violet eyes all but coring the man from the inside. "I don't question it. You are a coward."

Finally, the man grabs his hair and slams the boy's head back into the earth. Leifur doesn't seem to care or even really react, continuing, "And everyone who Thangbrand got are cowards!"

So, this boy is nothing more than a heathen, is he? It is unusual for one so young - and so isolated - to feel so strongly against the Christians. It was easier to understand it from the farmhands or the sons of the Góðar, but this boy who simply roams, who exists outside the bounds of their society? He doesn't even engage with the Góðar as he should. He may be their land, but he is disrespectful — a lucky little boy who does not know to appreciate what he has. It is infuriating, listening to him whine about the King and the political affairs he takes no interest in. Many of the Góðar are displeased, of course — but law is law, and blood is blood.

"You speak ill of the King and he will have your head, child."

"At least my head won't be bowed. I'm not a coward."