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airborneice · 9 months ago

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sooo two days late here's my thing for @sketchbookweek Day 2 - Past/Future / Hilda

uhh this one is a fic, unfortunately for everyone. the fic part is. under the cut. I'm gonna go hide in my fridge now byeee

In which Hilda reflects on how life has changed since she left the wilderness.

———

The wilderness never seemed to change, when Hilda returned there. Sure, new plants sprung up and new creatures made their homes there, it was one mountain short and a few woodland paths had become overgrown in her absence (which made trekking through them more fun, actually), but everything that mattered was still there.

The trees cast dappled patterns on the ground the way she remembered as she made her way underneath them. The grass felt the same underfoot, just like when she’d walked these paths as a child, even after all these years. There was the same gentle breeze rustling her jacket and catching in her hair, the same sense of peace that settled in her soul, that told her she was back where she belonged.

It was all just as it had been the day she left. Well, except for one thing -

“You’re it!”

Hilda jumped as something small and pink crashed into the back of her leg, slightly knocking her off-balance. Before she could react, her little sister bounded away from her, taking off up the forest path.

“Wha - hey!” Hilda called after her with mock-indignation, while Mattie ran further up the trail, giggling gleefully.

“You can’t catch meeee!”

Hilda grinned. “Oh, it’s on,” she said, getting ready to break into a run. Before she could move, she heard Mum’s voice ring out behind her.

“Hilda, just don’t go too far, okay?” She called, making Hilda turn her head. She and Kaisa were standing at a fork in the path several yards back, but in the quiet of the forest, her voice carried easily. “We’re going to find somewhere to set up the picnic.”

Beside her, Kaisa shifted the picnic basket she was carrying in her arms, watching Mattie ping-pong around the woods with an amused expression.

“You know you’re about to be outrun by a six-year-old,” she pointed out helpfully.

Hilda stuck her tongue out at her.

“Yeah, we won’t go too far,” she called back to Mum, turning on her heel and locking eyes with the six-year-old in question.

Mattie, who seemed to have come to a stop while the others were talking, shrieked in delight and took off running. Hilda shook her head fondly. Maybe being in the wilderness really was doing some good for her. They hadn’t been able to play like this back at home.

“Hey, wait up!” She called, running after her.

Mattie pivoted on her toe and fixed her with a grin.

“Nope!”

Hilda wasn’t sure what else she had been expecting, really.

She ran after her at a leisurely pace - making sure to stay just slow enough to let Mattie get a decent lead - watching as the girl ducked in and out of bushes and getting the odd spike in heart-rate as she tripped over a tree root and righted herself at the last second, only to take off again. She’d gotten quite far ahead now, to the point she was barely visible through the expanse of trees. It wasn’t as if Hilda had to worry about losing her, anyway, not with her high-pitched giggles carrying through the trees like some kind of sonar. That child couldn’t be stealthy to save her life.

Until Mattie ducked out of sight, and the laughter stopped.

Hilda came to a stop for a moment, feeling the silence grow uncomfortably heavy.

“Mattie?” She called out, to no reply.

Cautiously, Hilda picked up the pace, pushing past the now thinning-out trees. She knew from experience that there was nothing dangerous - or at least, nothing that dangerous - out here, but this felt off, to say the least. Laughter and shouting she could deal with, but as far as she could remember, “quiet” was not a word that ever appeared next to Mattie in a sentence.

Turning the corner though, she could suddenly see why. Instinctively Hilda slowed to a halt.

Of course. Of course it was here.

Up ahead of her, where the trees thinned out, was the Northern Elf County. And just behind it, even more tattered and broken than she remembered, lay her old house.

The wilderness had almost fully reclaimed it now. Moss and lichen covered every inch of the decaying boards, the remaining wreckage of pipes and wood sunken into the earth. Weeds had sprung up around it, including a blue nettle which had woven itself through the debris like a fine thread. If it hadn’t been hers, she might not have known it used to be a house at all.

Just in front of it stood the small form of her sister, seemingly locked in place. Hilda watched as she stood there a moment, not moving an inch. Then, slowly, Mattie turned her head to look back at her, a slightly fearful look in her eyes.

“Oh - oh,” Hilda hastily closed the gap between them, putting an arm around her sister, which the child promptly latched onto. “Hey, it’s okay!” She said quickly. “It’s not scary.” She smiled at her reassuringly, knowing Mattie wouldn’t fear it if she didn’t. “This is just my old house.”

Still clutching her sleeve, Mattie blinked, the frightened look in her eyes melting into something resembling curiosity. She looked between Hilda and the ruins, a tiny crease forming on her brow. Then -

“It’s quite small,” she said quietly.

Hilda snorted.

“It was bigger when I lived in it,” she replied, dropping down roughly onto the grass. Though she still looked unsure, Mattie followed suit, crossing her legs under herself while maintaining a grip on her sister’s arm.

“It used to be a little cabin,” Hilda explained. “Our great-grandad built it. It’s where me and Mum lived before we moved to Trolberg.”

“…Oh,” Mattie replied, looking again at the heap. Her grip on the sleeve had relaxed, and Hilda exhaled in relief. It was a good sign Mattie was speaking a bit more, even if a little confused-sounding. Now she thought of it, Hilda wasn’t entirely sure she’d talked about her old life to her little sister before. It had all been over long before she had been born, after all.

Beside her, Mattie tilted back on the grass, staring at the ruins as if trying to picture them as something other than wreckage and moss. But she looked more curious than confused now.

“Did you like it there?” She asked.

Hilda followed her sister’s eye-line to the wreckage, and sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

She sat back on her hands, the grass soft under her fingers, and lifted her gaze to the horizon that was so achingly familiar.

“We always had the best view of the woff-migration,” she said, noticing with a smile how her sister perked up immediately (and making a small mental note to find a good spot for woff-watching later). “And it was always so peaceful out here. It felt like it was just me and Mum and Twig in the whole world.”

“Why did you leave then?”

“Oh, um,” Hilda paused for a moment, wondering if this was straying into too-scary-for-a-six-year-old territory. “Well…” she hazarded, “... a giant kind of trod on our house. Accidentally,” she said. “It was sort of my fault, I was trying to help him find someone - that sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, though,” she added quickly, seeing her sister’s eyes had gone wide.

To her relief though, her words didn’t seem to have the impact she’d feared. After a moment Mattie just hummed thoughtfully, turning back to the cabin remains.

“That’s sad,” she said quietly.

Hilda hummed softly, watching the spot on the horizon that had once been hidden behind the cabin roof.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Yeah, I was pretty sad about it for a while.”

A stray breeze ruffled the grass around them, making the blue nettle sway. If she squinted she could almost still see what it had looked like before, the patches of warm amber light that shone from the windows at night and the spot where Twig would curl up by the fire. They were probably sitting right where she’d met a troll for the first time.

Beside her, Mattie shifted slightly, bringing her swiftly back to reality.

“Oh, but - I mean - it wasn’t all bad,” Hilda added quickly, wondering if this might also be a bit much for a six-year-old. “I still got to go on adventures. And I got to meet Frida and David, and Tontu and..”

Hilda trailed off, lost in thought. Now she thought about it, so much of the life she knew now had only come after they moved.

In the wilderness it had just been her and Mum and Twig, and she had never wanted - never even contemplated - anything more. But from there her family had only grown. First with Alfur, then Tontu and…then Kaisa, and sometime later down the line, Mattie too. Somehow, despite spending her life bringing home all manner of strange creatures to join the household, that had been the biggest surprise. Not just the slightly scary witch from the library coming to live with them (which, yeah, to begin with had felt kind of weird), but how much things had changed with her.

It had taken a while, of missing the wilderness and feeling awkward about all the changes going on, but before long she’d had to admit that life was better with this new family in it.

Little moments were coming back to her, as she sat there in the grass in the afternoon sun - Mattie had gotten bored and got up to investigate the elf village by this point, tip-toeing around the tiny houses with the utmost care - not moments from her life in the cabin, but what had come since. What couldn’t have been if they’d stayed.

…Struggling through homework at the kitchen table last thing on a Sunday night with Kaisa (in theory helping but usually just joining her in staring at her textbook in despair). Forlornly muttering something along the lines of not being smart enough for this, only for Kaisa to take her head out of her hands to look at her with a glare that could bore through steel.

“Hildie. I studied advanced transmutation magic to the nineteenth level and I have never in my life seen something as fucking complicated as this,” she deadpanned, while Hilda subsided into giggles. “Seriously. I’m going to hex your maths teacher.”

…Sometime after they had returned from the Fairy Isle, standing at the doorway of the flat, open-mouthed, watching as Mum reached for a book off the high shelf with her feet not quite touching the floor. Opening her mouth to call out in excitement before feeling a gentle tap on her shoulder.

“You know she’ll only worry that other people might see,” Kaisa whispered, having somehow silently appeared beside her. Kaisa turned her gaze back to Mum, a loving look in her eyes, and Hilda had the distinct impression that she hadn’t been the first to notice.

“Let’s just let her have this, for now.”

…A year before that, hovering uncertainly by her parents' bedroom door, the morning after they had left for the hospital, excited and a bit scared and a well of emotions stirring in her chest. Mum and Kaisa calling her in with hushed voices and her climbing onto the bed in the early morning sun, cuddling up to them and the bundle in their arms and being assured that everything was fine, Mum was fine, and “Why don’t you say hello?” and… everything stopping as she laid eyes on her sister for the very first time.

Coming back to the present moment, Hilda watched as her now more grown sister cautiously approached the blue nettle and very gently ran a finger over its petals. How strange that something beautiful could grow out of so much loss.

After a moment of inspecting the nettle, Mattie turned back to Hilda and pointed at it excitedly.

“Hildie! There’s a blue nettle!” She called.

“Oh wow, really?” Hilda called back in feigned surprise. “Is that good?”

“Yep!” Seemingly satisfied with what she’d found, Mattie started making her way back towards her, carefully dodging the elf houses as she went.

“Tildy says they’re good for magic, but I didn’t want to take it because…” She paused as she stepped over the final elf house, teetering a little as she cleared it. “...Because there’s only one and the elves might like it being there.”

Briefly Hilda remembered the last time she had tried to take a plant from an elf settlement without permission, and had to agree.

“Yeah, I think that was a nice thing to do,” she told her. Mattie smiled, then plonked herself down by Hilda’s side again.

“So…” Hilda said, once her sister was settled. She nodded her head towards the ruins. “Not scary?”

“Nope, not scary,” Mattie replied, a hint of pride in her voice. “I bet it was nice there. Blue nettles only grow in nice places.” She was quiet for a moment, then -

Hilda felt the familiar weight of her sister leaning into her arm.

“Sorry your house got stepped on, Hildie” Mattie said softly. “ ’Specially after you were nice to the giant. It’s not fair.”

“Aw, Mattie,” Hilda smiled, wrapping an arm around her little sister and pulling her to her side. Mattie snuggled in, contentedly burying her cheek in Hilda’s jacket. “It’s okay, don’t worry about it.”

She turned to look at the girl beside her, all bright eyes and a curious smile. It was hard to believe she’d had a life before where she wasn’t in it.

“You know…”

Hilda lifted her gaze, laying eyes on her old house and, for the first time, feeling something other than mourning. Something much warmer and kinder, and unshakingly certain.

“I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

#its still about sketchbook Trust Me #but yeah i totally took the opportunity to shoehorn mattie in there and i dont regret it fdhfd #these both couldve done with more polish but i just wanna get it out before i have a chance to overthink it anymore #woe extremely self-indulgent fic be upon ye #sketchbookweek #sketchbookweek2024 #art tag #mattie #hilda ocs tag #also i rushed soo much of the drawing but in my defense drawing hilda's old trashed house is horrible #no wonder they only showed it like 3 times in the show fr #mattieverse

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