#nordpreußen

[caspia-writes]

Othala

Synopsis: Heathenism is forbidden at Gerhardtschule. Unfortunately for Ernst, the headmistress has become suspicious.

Word Count: 1,700

Content Warnings: Corporal punishment/mild physical abuse, verbal abuse, xenophobia, self-hate, slight gratuitous German

Other: I originally didn't have any intention of posting this, but hey. It's the winter solstice. Why not?

Tagging: @sleepy-night-child (though I think you've read this already), @thelaughingstag

It had been several months since Ernst had been in this room—Schulleiterin Braune’s office, with its tall bookshelves and ticking clock. Normally this was good news. A short bit of praise when Ernst had done outstandingly well on a test, or a little acknowledgement of some service he’d rendered to the school.

Something was different this time, though.

For one, Braune wasn’t sitting at her desk when Ernst had come in. He’d been brought in by one of the matrons, sat down, and told to wait. That had never happened before, but Ernst was beginning to fidget after several minutes of staring at the wall. Only a little bit of it was from boredom of listening to the clock tick on and on.

Worse, though, Ernst couldn’t imagine why he was here. Every other time he’d had some notion of what he might’ve done to deserve a private conversation with the Schulleiterin herself. But today, even having had several minutes to think, he couldn’t think of anything he’d done out of the ordinary.

No wonder, then, he jumped as the door opened and Braune’s clacking heels announced her presence.

“Ernst.” The word came out flat, stale in the air before it reached Ernst’s ears. Braune stalked to the other side of the desk, both hands clasped behind her back. “Good. I need to ask you something.”

“Is something wrong, Frau Schulleiterin?” Ernst asked. He already knew the answer.

Braune took her hands from behind her back, revealing that she was holding a small off-white woolen bag. Ernst’s bones frosted at the sight. He knew that bag. More important, he knew now why she had called him to her office.

At best, this was a visit for punishment.

But more likely, it was for his expulsion.

She loosened the string holding the top of the bag and spilled the twenty-four bone tablets across the polished pine wood of her desk. They clattered for a moment, then went silent. Their silence brought icy claws that began to rattle up and down Ernst’s spine, digging towards and clutching his heart.

“What are these?” she asked, tapping her finger on one of the runes.

Yet despite having the clarity of mind to recognize how bad this was, and as much as Ernst knew he needed to say something, he couldn’t speak. His mouth hung open, useless, as he gazed at the rune stones. Braune’s face contorted and reddened with every passing tick of the clock. If he didn’t want to be expelled, sent home to his parents in disgrace and shame, he needed to answer her question. Now.

But the words wouldn’t come.

“Answer me!” Braune shrieked. “What are these?”

Ernst swallowed hard and winced. His throat stung, and so did his eyes. Still, he took a deep breath and rasped out, “Rune stones.”

The whack of a ruler across the crown of his head was immediate. “Open your eyes and look at me when you speak!”

Everything seemed too bright and there were drops of spittle on his glasses, but Ernst met Braune’s boiling amber eyes. “They’re rune stones, Frau Schulleiterin.”

“Yes.” She nodded sharply. “These are rune stones. Now, you’re a very smart boy, Ernst, and I trust that you’ve received a good education here at Gerhardtschule, so I’d like you to answer some questions for me.”

These were not going to be good questions. Ernst hung his head and waited for Braune’s trap to fall on him.

Braune cleared her throat and began. “For what purpose are Norse rune stones used in Sächsische Volksglauben religious practices?”

She asked as though this were a simple oral exam, and not a snare Ernst was hopelessly caught in. The thought snares made him imagine the barbs biting into his ribs, and as he reflexively clenched his hands, he found them slick with sweat. Maybe that explained why he had to swallow again before he could answer.

“None.”

“Correct.” Braune gave Ernst a small nod. “What are rune stones used for?”

The sweat on his hands was unbearable. He wiped them on his pants and hoped Braune wouldn’t notice and scold him. “Divination, in several northern heathen religions.”

“Correct again!” Braune nodded a third time and gave a thin smile. It rather looked like the snakes Ernst had seen in the encyclopedias. He repressed a gag and clenched his roiling stomach. “If you follow the new Sächsische Volksglauben, as any good pupil of Gerhardtschule does, why were these found in your room, with your personal belongings?”

“I wasn’t using them for divination!” Ernst protested. “They... they were a gift. From a friend of mine.”

Maybe Braune hadn’t expected that. She raised her eyebrows and finally, finally, sat in her chair on the opposite side of the desk. “A gift from whom? I thought you were only friends with Jürgen and Paul. They’re both respectable Großsächsisch boys who wouldn’t dream of corrupting a schoolmate this way.”

The friend wasn’t a schoolmate. Unfortunately. “His name was Tjørvi.”

“That’s a very Norse name.” Braune narrowed her eyes and her lingering smile wilted to a frown. “Have you been visiting the villages again, Ernst? I know we’ve talked about this before.”

Of all questions in the world, that was one Ernst had less than no interest in answering. He sucked his lips and began to examine his shoes. The left one was scuffed slightly—he’d have to polish it later, or risk being told off by one of the matrons. He thought he’d had quite enough telling-off for one day as it was now.

“Well?” Braune began to rap her long, red fingernails on the desk. “It isn’t a difficult question. Have you or have you not been visiting the villages again?”

“...Yes.”

In that very instant, Braune’s hand flew through the air and found its way to Ernst’s right cheek. Mingling with the sting of the slap, a burning pain seared just under the arm of his glasses. When he touched his fingers to it, it was hot and thick. And, as he realized upon opening his eyes, his glasses had hurtled off his face, leaving the world a blur of meaningless color.

“Do you understand why I’m doing this, Ernst?” This time, Braune’s clawed hand found its way to Ernst’s shoulder, lingering there even as he shied away. “It’s not because I dislike you, or because I want to upset you. This is for your own good.”

Somehow, Ernst found himself unconvinced. He didn’t say anything.

After several seconds of silence, Braune sighed. “You’re Großsachser, Ernst. Sometimes you seem to forget this. It’s my duty as the director of this institution and as a good Sächsisch woman to make sure you don’t forget, and that you grow into a proper Großsächsisch man that Wieck himself would be proud of. Do you see now?”

He was Großsachser. Right. That’s why he was so short, and why had the Nordpreußisch fat pads over his maxillary sinuses, running from his shoulders down his chest and back. That was why he had blond hair and gray eyes. Why he still trilled his r’s and, as his teachers so lovingly phrased it, ‘spoke like he had a mouthful of hot mashed potatoes.’ The only Großsächsisch thing about him was his long nose, which was still too pale and too freckled to have come from anywhere but Nordpreußen.

No. It was Braune who couldn’t see that, whether she liked it or not, Ernst had more in common with a heathen boy like Tjørvi than he did with his pure-blooded Großsächsisch schoolmates like Jürgen or Paul. He didn’t care that the paper said that he was a full five-eighths Preußer, merely three-eighths Norse. Heritage wasn’t such simple chemistry; that was a fact he could see in the mirror and feel in his soul.

But he couldn’t say that. So what would he say?

Just as Braune began to tap her fingernails again, a proper idea of what to say came to Ernst. It would be either the best or worst answer he could have conceived of—and he could only think of one way to find out.

“I can’t see anything just now, Frau Schulleiterin.”

There was a long, agonizing pause.

“No, I suppose you can’t.” Her heels clicked away across the wooden floor, paused, then came closer again. “Here, you poor thing.”

Braune slid the glasses back onto Ernst’s face, though she didn’t get them to the right distance and they were slightly skewed. Worse, now they had spittle and dirt on them, some of it mixing to form mud. The urge to take them off and clean the lenses left Ernst’s skin crawling and his fingers twitching.

But ingratitude would get him nowhere. Especially now. “Thank you. I can see now.”

“Good.” Though the drawl of the word left Ernst quite certain that Braune knew precisely what he’d done. “I’ll trust this time that these rune stones were a gift that you accepted out of well-bred Großsächsisch politeness, and that you’re telling the truth when you say that you’re not using them for Norse heathen magic. Do not make me regret my confidence in you.”

“I won’t,” Ernst promised.

Then his hands scampered across the desk, trying to collect as many of the bone pieces as he could before Braune could change her mind. Before she, with a single sweep of her arm, sent them scattering across the floor and taunted Ernst for ever believing he would be permitted to keep relics of his forbidden kinship.

But it didn’t happen.

Schulleiterin Braune let him grab all twenty-four. She even handed him the bag he kept them in.

“Thank you,” Ernst said as he poured the bones into the wool and pulled the string tight again. “Am I excused now?”

“One more thing before you go, please.” Ernst could only nod as Braune’s hands drifted, like a pair of snowflakes, to the top of her desk and tented. “No more visits to the villages without permission. It’s clearly becoming a bad influence on you.”

That permission would never come—Ernst knew that already. But the unspoken alternative, to be prohibited still from going to the villages or seeing Tjørvi again and lose what he had left of both too, was worse.

There was only one possible answer to her demand.

“Jawohl, Frau Schulleiterin.”

[caspia-writes]

Letters!

Totally not copying @sleepy-night-child's idea or anything... but here's a letter exchange between Ernst and his parents!

Word count: 1,700+

Content warnings: Mention of animal sacrifice, less-than-loving parenting, mention of drug abuse

Ernst's Letter

Dear Father and Mother—

I’m very glad to hear that you are doing well and staying warm! As best I can, I try to listen to the weather reports for Neue Lüdersen. It seems the winter is colder than usual this year, so far as I can recollect at least, and I was beginning to worry that there might not be enough firewood so far north.

Did Sigfred and Sonja go through with their marriage? From the occasional letter I’ve received from Sigfred, it seems the two of them get along well. I still regret that I couldn’t try and attend. If there’s anything I could send to them as a more thorough apology for my absence, I would be happy to do so.

More than that, if they are married, how are things going for them now? Sonja seemed an honest woman, but of course I’ve never met her myself. I hope that she hasn’t become a headache for Sigfred now that he’s married her. And are they planning to have children soon? Even if I wouldn’t be able to really meet them for another few years, I would be very happy to hear that I’m the uncle to their children.

If this year’s schedule at Gehardtschule is like last year’s, the results for the national exam should be back by now. Did Pieter also get invited to Universität Altenstadt with a scholarship? The results for Nordpreußisch schools aren’t posted here and I couldn’t get anyone to tell me whether Pieter was given a scholarship or not. I very much hope he was, and that he accepted it—having someone else from Nordpreußen here would make this place a little less miserable. Perhaps we could board together?

And if he wasn’t accepted here, then what is he planning to do once he finishes with his schooling? Surely he still intends to attend somewhere, with his academic record and being a few months from his Abitur.

As usual, tell Gertrud that I remember her and that I look forward to seeing her again when I can. Has she written anything for me? Or has she written any new poetry? She seems to have taken quite the shine to trying her hand at that, and I thought her last poem was quite good.

My studies are going well enough, but I wish more than anything in the world that I could come home and tell you both all this in person.

I’m still boarding with the Braune family in Altenstadt. They are only just more tolerable than the Schulleiterin back in Gehardtschule. The food here is awful—all the meat is cooked to brown leather and none of this venison is anything like seal meat, despite the butcher’s protestations to the contrary. Even the fish here taste all wrong! Every meal is an ordeal in not gagging on these wilting bouquets of foul flavors.

The other matter is that their daughter seems to have taken an affection to me. Worse, she has a key to the attic room I live in, and has taken to letting herself in as she pleases and pestering me with questions about what I’m reading, what I’m writing, if I would like some coffee or maybe an apple, whether I intend to watch the latest film at the cinema or not. If it weren’t so disruptive to my studies and felt more conversational than interrogational, it might be halfway endearing. As it stands, it is a nuisance, and more than that a nuisance from which I suffer daily.

Romantic affections have been cruel to me as of late besides. There was a particular girl—whose name I see no point in mentioning, given the conclusion of this story—who I had begun to develop a fondness for. Perhaps she would have found some similar feelings for me in time, had I not embarrassed myself so in front of her.

She had come to meet me in the university library so that we could have a short midday meal together. In my excitement to go greet her, I tripped down the stairs. Luckily, I fell backwards instead of forwards, so that I wasn’t hurt too badly and neither broke my glasses, but it caused enough of a commotion to gather the attention, I think, of every soul in the building. The girl who I was going to meet was kind enough to try and help me up and inquire as to whether I’d come to any harm, but I was unfortunate enough to sneeze on her as I tried to get to my feet and recollect myself. Not just one small sneeze, which might have been forgivable, but two or three sneezes the likes of which would have made me fall down the stairs again if I hadn’t been at the bottom of them already.

I have thus far been unable to convince myself that ‘disgusting mush-mouthed Arktischer barbarian’ was meant as a term of endearment under these circumstances.

And, while I’m telling you about one misfortune I’ve had from sneezing, I’ve had a terrible cold for weeks now. The filthy air here seems to make it worse—when I’m inside, with the windows closed, sometimes I can go an hour without sneezing, but I can’t go five minutes near an open window or outside without having a sneezing fit that makes my eyes run and my head spin. I’ve sneezed my glasses off more times than I care to count, and I was very nearly dismissed from one of my labs when I started a small fire on account of my sneezing. And this is to say nothing of how difficult it is to learn anything with a throbbing headache and a stuffed nose.

Regardless of my own misfortunes, I hope things in your lab are going better than they are for me. Have you made any progress in your research, or any progress in discovering why your assistant was breaking so much equipment? It could be a difference in our experiments, or in the climate, but I’ve found it rather easy to keep from breaking as many beakers in the last few months as you reported your assistant breaking in a week.

Please let everyone know I’m thinking of them!

With warmest and sincerest regards,

Your son,

Ernst Schneider

Parents' Reply

Ernst—

The winter is like every year. Your mother and I will be fine, as we have always been. Focus on your studies instead.

Yes, Sigfred married Sonja this March. The wedding was totally unremarkable as far as weddings goes, but your brother also expressed wishes that you had been able to attend. He understands, of course, the impracticality of you returning to Nordpreußen in the middle of your studies. I believe they would both appreciate it greatly if you would write them a letter, belated as it will be.

As for the newly-weds, they seem to have settled into their new lives comfortably, and they seem every bit as happy now as they were before. I suspect you will be an uncle soon. Possibly in fewer than nine months; your brother was very enthusiastic to wed, and neither he nor Sonja has come by for a meal in the weeks since the wedding. If I don’t, I’m quite certain your mother will write you when we know.

And do not sacrifice a rabbit for them, under any circumstances. The last thing any of us need is for you to be dismissed from your studies over such nonsense. If it’s needed, your mother or I are perfectly capable of doing it ourselves.

Unfortunately, Pieter did not get a scholarship to Universität Altenstadt, but he’s trying his luck with the more local universities. He asked me to send his regrets that he won’t be seeing you for a few years yet.

Gertrud would like you to send her a postcard sometime. She wants to see what the city looks like and what you think of it. I expect she will write a poem about it at any rate.

On the further note of your sister’s poetry, she wrote one that warranted publishing in the local paper. At the urging of both your mother and Getrud, I’ve sent a newspaper clipping of it with this letter. On an amusing note, your mother noted that the paper misspelled her name—it was printed as Gertrüd, not Gertrud—and wrote in a complaint about it. I hardly understand what she expects to accomplish, but she insisted.

Your remarks on the Braune family disappoint me greatly. They are doing you a large, unfounded service on nothing more than the request of the Schulleiterin who you tormented with your constant insubordination. It would serve you to be more grateful, even if their cooking is not to your preferences and their daughter is rather too interested in your activities.

Furthermore, it is a very good thing that you embarrassed yourself in front whichever girl you were fawning over! I cannot approve of any romantic activities on your behalf in Altenstadt. You should be patient and wait until you return to Nordpreußen to begin a family. The women there will have blood too thin to withstand Nordpreußisch winters, and we are both perfectly aware that you intend to return here once you finish your studies. Such a marriage could only result in death or divorce, and any children from it would be too weak to survive in our climate.

However, your mother and I both suggest you consult a physician in regards to your cold. It does sound a thoroughly unpleasant experience, and if it’s interfering with your studies, something ought to be done for it. Your mother sends her sympathies.

To answer your question, my research is going well insomuch that the lab has not burned down around us. In other words, I can’t report any significant progress since you last asked, other than relieving myself of that assistant. He’d taken to synthesizing and imbibing in ether—at last I caught him in the act and could relieve him of his duty without guilt. Hopefully working with a sober assistant, once I find a new one, will yield better results.

I will pass on your regards.

In turn, we all send our regards and, as always, would be interested to know what progress you are making in your studies.

With best wishes and warmest thoughts,

Dr. Mikael Schneider

Hilda Schneider

Tagging: @sleepy-night-child, @thelaughingstag

[caspia-writes]

Runajöda

Synopsis: An unwanted fireside chat turns into more than Ernst expected.

Word Count: 1,100

Content Warnings: Xenophobia, gratuitous German, language

Tagging: @sleepy-night-child, @thelaughingstag

* * * *

For the first time all day, the house was quiet. Erika and Alois weren’t bickering with each other over some toy, or whose turn it was to have the colored pencils. No other houseguests were bustling about, cackling at a joke that had never been funny enough to warrant such an uproar. Burkhardt didn’t have the radio blaring the latest slowfox or jazz or tonight’s selection of traditional Sächsisch music, and neither was he debating with his wife whether lavender or lilac would better complement the next party’s décor.

That was all over now. Now it was quiet. Now Ernst could sit and relax with the aftertaste of smoke and coffee saturating his tongue and the gentle crackling of the fireplace soothing the edges of his nerves. It was a nice reprieve from the chaos, even if one of the Burkhardts was sitting two meters away from him. And just as long as that Fritz didn’t say anything, it would stay that way.

Which, of course, meant it couldn’t.

“...Would you mind too much if I asked you a question, Dr. Schneider?”

It had been a nice reprieve. But now Fritz wanted to talk, and if he was anything like his father, that meant Ernst wouldn’t be getting another moment’s peace all evening. Not answering wasn’t an option either, at least not a good option; all that probably would do was make Fritz repeat himself louder and louder until Ernst couldn’t stand it anymore and had to answer.

Ernst leaned his head back on the cold limestone and sighed. “What.”

“You’re from Nordpreußen, right?” Fritz laughed quietly, then blew out a long, shaking breath. “No joke, of course you are, that was a stupid question. I meant... where in Nordpreußen are you from?”

Briefly, Ernst contemplated making something up. To claim he was from some ridiculous-sounding place, something like Scheißhausen. If his time in Universität Altenstadt had taught him a single thing about these damned Altenstadters, it was their lack of knowledge on Nordpreußen was surpassed only by their willingness to believe anything about it, so long as it sounded ridiculous enough.

Then again, Ernst figured, it’d be precisely his luck that Fritz would tell his father. Who would be every bit as gullible, and broadcast to the entire archipelago that Ernst and his entire family had grown up in a town called Shithouses. As if it wasn’t bad enough everyone took one look at him and thought of cannibalism, human sacrifice, and rape. If there were any things in the world Burkhardt didn’t need more of, it was food and more ammunition for slandering Nordpreußen.

So this time Ernst would tell the truth. “Runarfjørður.”

The reaction was as he’d expected. A frown, Fritz’s head tilting, his brow furrowing as he tried to stumble over the unfamiliar vowels and as his r’s fell flat. “...Runajöda?”

“Runarfjørður.” It wouldn’t matter, but Ernst drawled the word out this time, taking special pleasure this time in trilling the r’s far more than necessary. “Run. Ar. Fjørð. Ur.”

“Yes, I know... wait!” Fritz’s face brightened as he straightened up and gave Ernst a wide grin. “Wait, that’s the place with the runes carved into the cliffs on either side of the river to bring luck to the men who were going south to the glacial plains to find food for winter, isn’t it? And—and it’s said that anyone who’s dipped in the river’s water as a child will grow up to be a bear hunter, right?”

Ernst’s heart numbed in his chest. Fritz knew about Runarfjørður.

He wasn’t supposed to know that. He wasn’t supposed to know any of this. Not that it was a real town, not that there were runes in its cliffs, and he shouldn’t have had any idea about the legends. Or the sagas, assuming those were what he was irreverently calling mere stories.

“Yes.” Ernst swallowed hard, and now it was his turn to let out a shaking breath. “That’s Runarfjørður.”

Fritz responded with a triumphant laugh and scribbled something into his notebook. If it hadn’t been for the sudden palsy that left Ernst paralyzed and trembling on the fireplace, he would’ve snatched the damn thing away from Fritz and thrown it into the flames beside him. An Altenstadter shouldn’t know that much, he’d decided. Especially not one who called the sagas stories, and not one who couldn’t pronounce the words right.

“It’d do wonders for my ethnography to be able to ask you some questions about your homeland, and Runajöda is such a culturally significant town.” “Could I please interview you, Herr Doktor—please? I’ve already been working on this dissertation for years and—you’re a doctor of chemistry, so you know how dissertations are, don’t you? I’m just asking for an interview...”

The request made Ernst’s stomach clench. He coughed to hide a gag. Fritz was begging him for an interview?

An interview was the very last thing Ernst wanted to give him. A punch to the face, or a freshly-dug grave, those sounded all right—but not an interview. Especially not if it was going to be in a dissertation, a small book on every cultural obscurity that could be warped into some disgusting new stereotype, something Burkhardt would take and spin into a new permutation of savagery and barbarism.

Yet maybe Ernst would have to do it anyway, even if the very notion made him want to vomit. How else would he find out just how much Fritz knew about Nordpreußen, what sort of nonsense he could expect to hear over the radio next? At least if he knew what Burkhardt was working with, he might be able to brace himself for the next round of insults rather than coming dangerously close to an aneurysm every morning.

And, as much as he wanted to strangle it, there was a voice in the back of his mind, whining at him. Whining that maybe Fritz was an exception. A good Altenstadter, someone who would write his dissertation an apologetic of Nordpreußisch culture instead of another condemnation.

“...Mh.” The word tasted of acid and bile, so much that Ernst had to forcibly wipe a grimace off his face, but he managed to spit it out. “F-fine.”

“Great!” Fritz leapt off the fireplace and almost made it a step before his overgrown, lanky legs got in their own way and tripped him. Not that it seemed to dampen his spirits any, as he carried on all the same. “I’ll have someone bring up some coffee for us. You go ahead and get comfortable on one of the chairs, we might be here a while, and—and thank you! Thank you so much!”

With that, Fritz crashed his way out of the room, leaving Ernst with the beginnings of a throbbing headache and leaden guts.

[caspia-writes]

Summer of Whump #18 — Collapse

Summary: A war-hardened soldier's musing are interrupted when he wanders off course.

Content warnings: Death mentions, implied death

Gebhard felt he had every right to be angry. He’d already done his share to secure Großsachsen, or as much of a share as any one man could be expected to give. More than that, even, considering he’d endured years of constant supply line collapse and disease and shelling. He hadn’t had the luxury of being promoted to some pencil-pusher, sitting back behind the lines with nothing to do but try and get the food to the soldiers. No, all three years he’d been a common infantryman, cycling through the varying rings of Hell.

But was he done?

No. No, of course he wasn’t.

Now, after three years of war, Gebhard was stuck in another one. This one because some Nordpreußisch heathens couldn’t accept that it was time to enter the modern era with the rest of the world instead of sacrificing bunnies and dancing naked around bonfires. (Or whatever exactly they did—come to think of it, Gebhard didn’t know. Nor did he really care.) And naturally, instead of doing the reasonable thing and letting these fools return to whatever pre-industrial age they wanted to, Wieck insisted on trying to keep the heathens with the rest of his empire, for whatever good they’d ever been. None that Gebhard could think of.

Parasites. That’s what he was fighting for. A lot of ungrateful little parasites who—

—Crack!

His mental grousing came to a sharp halt at the sound as he crouched down and ducked. It would be just his luck that there was a sniper around here, and that this was how he would die. He would make it through three years of watching everyone around him die to artillery shells and gas and dysentery just to get his brains blown out by some sniper on a lake in what had no right to be enemy territory.

Fantastic.

But then Gebhard thought about it a little more. The crack hadn’t been right to have come from a sniper rifle. Or any firearm at all. It’d been... different. More musical. And if he wasn’t wrong, it had come from beneath him somehow. Which made an unfortunate amount of sense seeing that, in his musings, he hadn’t realized he’d wandered off onto a lake.

This could be bad.

With no small amount of dread, Gebhard looked down at the ice beneath his feet.

There he saw that he had, unfortunately, been right. He really was standing on a frozen lake, and more than that it was now a crackedfrozen lake. Gebhard had never expected to see the day where he would be disappointed at a lack of enemy snipers in an area. But it seemed that Nordpreußen was a land of surprises.

Disappointed or not, he was no more interested in dying to a lake than a sniper. Perhaps less so, even. So he took a deep, shaky breath and tried to steady himself. Panicking wouldn’t help. What he needed to do now was think. That’s what had gotten him out of Südanglia alive—calming down and thinking for a moment. Perhaps more than a little luck too, but a man couldn’t rely on that alone to get him through situations. Certainly not this one.

After a few moments, Gebhard had an idea. This could well be the lake’s way of telling him that he could go precisely this far, and not a centimeter further. After all, the ice had seemed perfectly sturdy until his last step. And if that were the case, that he could go this far but no further... well, Gebhard could work with that. He’d just take slow, cautious steps back towards the shore and go around instead. Like he was supposed to be doing anyway, per his orders.

Maybe his plan would’ve worked. But Gebhard never had a way of knowing. As soon as he moved to begin creeping back to solid land, his feet slid in opposite directions. He fell backwards.

The damaged ice didn’t hold. Before he knew what had happened, everything within arm’s reach had collapsed and he was underwater. His chest had gone tight. In fact, every muscle in his body was stiff, and none of them would respond to his urgings. All he could do was gaze up at the sunlight playing off the ice and ripples as he sank deeper into the lake.

[caspia-writes]

You’ve been visited by the random oc questions tabby kitten!!💙

Who did your character last say 'I love you' to? Did they mean it? Did the other person say it back?

Thank you for the ask, @random-oc-questions-tabby! Sorry this took so long.

It ends up being relevant that German has two (main) sentiments of ‘I love you’—‘ich habe dich lieb’ [more familial/platonic] and ‘ich liebe dich’ [decidedly romantic].

Also, because I answered this for four characters, I'm going to put the actual answer beneath the cut.

Johannes uses ‘ich habe dich lieb’ much more often than ‘ich liebe dich’, mostly because whether he and his wife are on good terms changes on a daily basis.

Most days there’s at least one argument between him and his wife—that he’s a workaholic, that he never spends time with their children, that she never knows whether to make him dinner at night, that he broke some promise he made. It doesn’t help that she thinks he’s having an affair either.

The last time he told his wife ‘ich liebe dich’ was after a long argument, and it was more a reminder that he still wants to stay married to her than an actual declaration of love. Magdalena said it back... about three hours later. This was at least a year ago.

The last person he said ‘ich habe dich lieb’ to was his oldest daughter, Ada. This statement tends to occur in weekly or so intervals. He meant it that time. While he hasn’t been as involved as he wishes he’d been able to be, he is proud of his daughter and he does care for her. Being a teenager, Ada doesn’t generally say it back.

Otto makes regular use of both phrases.

Otto and his wife get along well. They don’t religiously tell each other ‘ich liebe dich’, but it gets said a few times a week at least. It’s reciprocated and truly meant when it is said.

Most of the times that Otto says ‘ich habe dich lieb’, it’s to one of his younger children. Between the three of the younger ones, it ends up getting said on a daily basis. His family life is actually one of the nicer ones in the upper government of Großsachsen.

Ernst doesn’t say either very often, but he writes ‘ich habe dich lieb’ much more often than he says ‘ich liebe dich’.

Generally, he writes ‘ich habe dich lieb’ in every single letter to his parents, as a reminder if nothing else. He thinks he means it, but it’s hard for him to be certain how he feels about people he hasn’t seen since he was three. His mother will write it back in her letter; his father won’t unless there’s some special occasion calling for affection than usual, which hasn’t been since he was conscripted in the Großsächsische Reichswehr. (Unfortunately, Ernst doesn’t know this during the actual war; there’s no mail getting out of Nordpreußen into Großsachsen, so none of his parents’ letters are making it through.)

The last person he said ‘ich liebe dich’ to was a woman he was romantically involved with during his bachelor’s degree about six years ago. He was in love at the time, and so was she—at least enough to say the same. Since that relationship ended, he’s been too busy to take any romantic relationships past light flirting.

Theodor says ‘ich liebe dich’ to his wife on a daily basis, entirely heartfelt, and unless he’s done something to deeply annoy her, she says it back.

Despite very much caring for them, Theodor is considerably colder to his children; he said ‘ich habe dich lieb’ to his son before the boy was to have his appendix taken out, but other than that he doesn’t ever say it. He does mean it when he says it though, and he doesn’t begrudge his children too much for not saying it back.

[caspia-writes]

Summer of Whump #2 — Food Poisoning

Summary: In an attempt to raise the morale of Großsachsen following the outbreak of the Nordpreußisch Rebellion in the midst of a faltering war, Otto gives a speech to a crowd of fifteen thousand in Altenstadt. Unfortunately, he realizes in the last few minutes of this that the Nordpreußisch Rebellion isn't the only rebellion he'll be forced to deal with tonight....

Content warning: Vomit

It wasn’t Otto’s modus operandi to lie, not per se. He operated more by omission. People would tell themselves what they wanted to believe, almost regardless of what they were told. Otto’s job then was not to tell egregious lies in hopes that the Großsächsisch people would be stupid enough to believe all of them. Perhaps they would be, but then they would know where the ideas came from. No, Otto’s job was to nudge the public consciousness in the right direction, to lead them to the proper assumptions necessary for whatever the Party needed them to believe then.

However, for all the merits of this method, it had one major flaw. False assumptions, no matter how fervently believed, did not change the reality of a situation. The Großsächsisch people could not assume their way out of the logistical breakdown on the northern fronts. Neither could the soldiers there assume their way out of starvation and hypothermia and typhus. When hard facts met assumptions, without fail, the facts won.

At this very moment, Otto was coming to personal terms with this truth. As inconvenient as it was, the time for which he could assume his symptoms were anything but was passing and passing quickly. Whether he cared to acknowledge it or not, the truth of the situation was asserting itself. The nausea that had plagued him for hours now had nothing to do with the anxiety that had never been, and the sweating had nothing to do with the lights being hotter than the Sun or with overexertion.

No. As convenient as those assumptions had been, these burning cramping feelings in his guts could only mean one thing.

Something he’d eaten was not agreeing with him, and it was not the sort of disagreeing that he could ignore indefinitely. Sooner or later—and Otto was thinking it would be sooner—the disagreement was going to assert itself. Violently, and without any regard to the fact he was still trying to finish a speech.

“We cannot wait for this plague of sedition to reach the mainland, to reach Altenstadt. This sedition is a plague upon our nation, spread the agents of the Anglians and Gauls. And, as with any plague, it will be invariably fatal should it reach the heart and blood.”

The pain was getting worse, and Otto swore he could feel his stomach crawling up between his lungs. It was only a matter of time until—

He gulped down a mouthful of saliva. He was not going to vomit here, in front of fifteen thousand people. The foreign press was going to have to try harder than that to come up with their next round of anti-Großsächsisch propaganda. The headline was already spinning through his head—Großsächsisch Publicity Minister sickened by own lies, vomits mid-speech. From there it would only get worse; how, he didn’t have the time to ponder, but no doubt it would. There was not a chance of even the thinnest veneer of civility, not after a speech condemning them for sowing the seeds of sedition across the Reich.

...Did they not realize how much this sort of behavior hurt their own arguments of not doing everything to bring down Großsachsen?

“These foreign agents have already reached Nordpreußen and Südanglia and led our blood-brethren away from us!” Otto couldn’t help wincing as the effort made his stomach contract, acid crawling into his esophagus. “W-would you let a foreigner drag your brothers, sisters, children screaming from your homes, my fellow Großsächser?”

The crowd, mercifully, didn’t seem to notice the discomfort Otto was in. Their response, a thunderous “No!”, echoed through the hall, shaking the floor Otto stood on.

“Then we must double, triple, our efforts before it’s too late!” “Our brethren there will not be able to liberate themselves from these lies, no more than they could liberate themselves from foreign influence before. The time has come, fellow Großsächser, to reclaim what is ours! This is the time in which we must reclaim our families, our homes, and our honor!”

Breathing with a stomach full of hot knives was not easy, it turned out. Especially considering he had to not only breathe, but then scream loud enough for the entire crowd to hear him and hear him clearly. It was over now, at least, but the pain wasn’t fading nearly as quickly as he’d hoped it would. In fact, he wasn’t sure it was fading at all.

Otto took a gentle, deep breath, careful to not let his lungs press too forcefully against his already-irritated stomach, and prepared to walk off the stage. Once he was off of here, at least, he could admit to being in pain without destroying his last two hours of work in the process. No one would be watching him, or at least no one he cared about seeing him sick. And there had to be a toilet somewhere that he could acquaint himself with for a few minutes, until he felt well enough to make it the rest of the way home.

He’d just begun to turn around when the hall exploded with noise.

"Alles zum Wohle! Alles zum Wohle! Alles zum Wohle!”

That patriotic fervor had swept the crowd into a frenzy was fantastic—it was exactly what Otto had been hoping for when he began the speech. It was this sort of fanaticism that was needed to salvage the war effort and prevent the total collapse of the Großsächsische Reich! Under any other circumstances, he would have been ecstatic to hear the crowd burst into a chorus of Alles zum Wohle! without having to start the chant himself.

Unfortunately, the current situation did not lend itself to being happy about any of this. Otto wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep his stomach contents in his stomach, and the hot saliva flooding his mouth was far from encouraging. Nor, come to think of it, was the burning pain in his stomach as he repressed another retch. This time it barely worked, and his arm instinctively wrapped around his gut. The only thing he needed now was for the crowd to decide to sing the anthems too, just to drag the ordeal out another five minutes.

“Gott segne Großsachsen...”

Damn it. He’d just had to think that, hadn’t he?

Otto wanted to be happy that his speech had been such a resounding success. It was a hard-won victory, even more so with his own body rebelling against him in the last minutes. Any other time this would have been the highlight of the day, if not the month entirely. None of his other speeches had ever moved a crowd to this sort of spontaneous demonstration.

But why, why, did these demonstrations have to during the one time that he really couldn’t afford to wait the extra few minutes?

Nonetheless, he couldn’t keep standing there, looking utterly dispassionate. Not with all fifteen thousand pairs of eyes trained on him. That would send a message, and not the one he wished to cultivate with the current public opinion. This was a time when the NSGRP needed to be relatable with the common man, encourage them to put in the extra two, four, six hours of work. Standing there and not reacting to their show of loyalty would undo everything he’d achieved in the last hour.

So even if he couldn’t bring himself to sing—and there was no chance of that just now—he could at least move his lips and pretend to be. How would any of them know the difference besides? One voice out of a chorus fifteen thousand wouldn’t be noticed. Just five minutes of moving his lips, pretending to sing, and then, finally, he could have some privacy and let down his façade.

“...Glück auf, glück auf, unser Großsachsen!”

At last, the singing died down. The hall didn’t go quiet, far from it, but the murmuring was now between the members of the audience. No longer something that Otto had to concern himself with. No longer something Otto could afford to concern himself with, as another red-hot knife stabbed into his stomach.

With the last drops of restraint in his blood, he turned and began walking off the stage, instead of sprinting the way every muscle in his body was screaming for him to. That, too, would go ruin the sentiments he had just worked so hard to instill in those fifteen thousand people. He couldn’t call for the steadfastness of the Großsächsisch people, only to flee from the rostrum as soon as the speech finished. Even with as much reason as he had, they didn’t—or he very much hoped they didn’t—know that he had any reason to be anything other than nonchalant about this. He of all people knew that if anything spread faster than news, it was whispers, and every last person in attendance would whisper if he broke down and ran away from them.

No. He had kept it in this long. He could manage another thirty seconds. There was no choice. Just another thirty seconds, and then he could succumb to the nausea.

Unfortunately, the fates had other ideas.

No sooner had Otto gotten away from the eyes of the crowd did a young man charge towards Otto, brandishing his pencil and demanding in a whiny voice, “Reichsminister Burkhardt! If I could ask—”

Otto opened his mouth, intending to bark at the journalist to move, go away, leave him alone. The last thing he needed was one of them seeing what was about to happen. Especially not at the point-blank range that the journalist seemed to be insisting on. He had made it this long without letting on that he was sick; he did not intend to let his efforts go to waste now.

Unfortunately for both Otto and the journalist, words were not what came out of Otto’s mouth. Instead, it was his lunch and breakfast, followed in short order by last night’s dessert, and then the dinner he’d had before that. And somehow, almost all of it had ended up on the journalist’s clothes. Given the circumstances, Otto couldn’t blame the journalist for leaping back and yelping in response.

Without trying to utter another word, Otto pulled a handful of banknotes out of his pocket and thrust them at the journalist. It would be enough to cover the cost of the dry cleaning, or at least Otto hoped it was. He couldn’t bring himself to care how much it was, nor could he care to try and count it. Now he just wanted the journalist and his questions to go away and leave him to spit bile in peace. If that turned out to have taken a few hundred Großsächsisch Reichsmarks, well, that was about as much as he’d paid Herr Ober to get him into this sorry state in the first place. The journalist deserved it after that, too, so long as he agreed to keep quiet.

Seconds after the journalist plucked the money out of Otto’s hand, a swarm of black-coated Staatspolizei converged around him. He hadn’t noticed them there before, but of course they were. So Gradl would be hearing about this, just as he heard about everything. The groan that escaped Otto’s lips had almost as much to do with this realization as it did the new bout of cramps.

One officer thrust his hat in front of Otto’s face, and several pairs of hands seemed to be steering him towards a chair. Or dragging him. The room had begun to twirl around him, spinning too fast for Otto to be able to make out which way he was walking. If he hadn’t known better, he might’ve thought he was beginning to float towards the ceiling, even as he was sat in a chair that creaked under his weight, and then his stomach cramped again.

A few mouthfuls of bile later, Otto looked back up. Gradl was here too, as it so happened. But of course he was. It would be criminal for him not to be around to see Otto embarrass himself. Otto almost wondered if Gradl wasn’t somehow responsible for this. With everything else the Staatspolizei did, or claimed they did, poisoning a dish in a restaurant didn’t seem outlandish. In fact, he wouldn’t have been surprised at all if it turned out Gradl had tried to poison him.

The one thing that kept him wondering was that Gradl wasn’t mocking him. He’d expected to be called a fat swine at least, if not something worse.

But instead of standing around and taunting him or otherwise being even more useless than a soggy newspaper in a rainstorm, Gradl was talking to the journalist.

What about, Otto couldn’t hear over the blood rushing in his ears, but it didn’t look like an arrest. If he squinted hard enough and ignored the state of the poor journalist’s clothes, it could almost pass for a pleasant conversation. As pleasant as any conversation involving Gradl could be, anyway. And whatever the two were talking about, it seemed to go over well enough. The journalist nodded several times, said something that resembled Feel better!, then turned and left without another word and without appearing to be running for his life. Maybe Otto would have to thank Gradl for handling that.

The thought alone made Otto retch again.

Any thanks to would have to wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow, at least.