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Scream It Until You're Coughing Up Blood - An Early Medieval Punk Fairy Tale

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[X] Take the weapon.

Probably a bad idea since having a weapon makes you think fighting is an option, but in these parts we might regret not having it either.
 
[X] Take the weapon.

I almost don't want to take it out of pure contrariness tbh. But 'weapon as agency' is so firmly ingrained that its hard to let go even consciously.
 
[X] Take the weapon.

If it was a sword, I might hesitate. But a spear, even a short one balanced for throwing, is as much tool as weapon. We might practice spear-fishing, or even simply use it as a walking stave.
 
I honestly got a bit anxious the longer the campfire scene played out.

[X] Take the weapon.

Is this self-destruction, you wonder, a killing of some kind? Or some more sinister betrayal.

The grip feels alien to your palm, chafing, so you can almost convince yourself that this is not a change. Not yet.
 
[x] Take the weapon.

We aren't yet so impolite as to refuse a gift when freely given, and if our sister had had a spear in her hands that day she might still be alive.
 
[X] Take the weapon

Better to have a javelin and not need it than vice versa
 
The vote is now closed, with an obvious winner. The update will likely go live Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, I'm in a middle of a busy streak.
 
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4. The Hands That Thieve
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    • 4. The Hands That Thieve

    Delicately, as if afraid that it could grow teeth and snap at you, serpent-like, you remove the spear from the ground and bring it up. From the tip of its ash-leaf shaped blade to the butt of the shaft, it is runs a little longer than your arm, and its weight reminds you of a large plunger for churning butter. But unlike that tool, it doesn't seem familiar to your eyes. The spears that hung on the walls of your home, the ones your brothers would carry, were all longer than this one, their blades more like chestnut leaves in their shape. As you turn the drifter's gift in your hands, you can't even tell what kind of a wood it was made from.

    But you decide it is yours now. A weapon is a weapon, and even if you scarcely have any idea on how to wield it, where to grip it, how to throw it or stab with it, you can't just leave it behind. For now, though, it serves you a different function. By the base of the blade, reddened with a patina of rust, you tie your bundle, and then prop the shaft against your shoulder. After a moment of consideration, you also take down the cloak and wrap it tightly around your chest and arm, exposing the dress beneath. You have a river to ford, and you don't want it getting wet.

    It turns out to be more difficult that you have expected, on both counts. Although by the shore the water is shallow enough that it scarcely reaches past your ankles, you quickly realize that you have to pay close attention to the bottom nonetheless. The riverbed is littered with shells and rocks and you stub your bare foot painfully with one misaimed step. You try to move slowly, feel the surface with your toes before setting the foot down, but the dress, once damp, restricts your tread even more. The progress through the shallows is drudgingly slow, but it is when they give way to deeper water, reaching past your waist, that you start to really struggle. To move through them, you have to fight not only against the harsh river-bed, but also the current, surprisingly swift even in the lazy month of summer. Your feet sinking into the mud, dress completely drenched, you move forward one tiny step at a time, so short that it feels like running in place at times. Worse still, there is no steadiness to the current and sometimes, a wave hits you, threatening to make you trip, fall below the surface, or just have the javelin slip from your hands and lose it and the bundle. You fear that, you fear being dragged by the undertow and drowned; you don't know how to swim. Despite the cool of the river, you sweat.

    It feels like hours before you finally reach the shallows at the other side and then the other stony bank. The solid ground under your feet is a blessing; you crouch down, exhausted. The bundle, at least, remains dry, and only the hem of your cloak caught water. You strip from the dress, wrap yourself in the cloak and try to wring as much water from that bloody garment as you can; when you put it back on it is still damp and you know that it will remain such for hours. You look at the sky and thank the Saints for the good weather.

    Hungry, you eat some of your meagre supplies; a bit of cheese, some dry bread. There is not much of it, and even as you force yourself to be frugal with it, there is no way it will last you for more than a day before you have to start going on an empty stomach. Another reason to go back, to end this stupidity. You grit your teeth at the thought, linger in the sun a moment longer and get going. There is a path that runs from the ford into the trees, well-trodden enough to make you a bit less worried about following it. Time to enter the woods.

    This side of the river, the forest looks different. Instead of trees growing so dense that it was difficult to tell where one of them ended and another began, here you walk through an airy expanse. From green, moss-strewn underbush, slender pines sprout, but never close together, sunlight easily making its way past their branches. Sometimes, you pass by clumps of broad-leaf growth, just as tight and foreboding as other side, but they are rarely larger than a groove. Herbs carpet the forest-floor.

    You spot bear garlic growing among them and stop to gather some of it, greedily stuff some leaves into your mouth even before you are done picking. Their smell and taste bring back a memory, and you remember similar woods not far from home, near the farm-fields; mother called them fields still, even as pines conquered them. You'd go there with your sister when she was not busy running into the deep forest to gather herbs and fruit, and she would tell you the reason why they were called fields by the family was that not long ago, it was where you grew your rye and wheat. But the soil turned barren and they were abandoned, left for the wild to reclaim.

    Wild animals sometimes slink to your sides; you catch a doe or a deer in the corner of your eye, or maybe the sound of something larger reaches your ear. The grip you have on your spear tightens, and nonsensical thoughts entire your mind: that you should go hunt, now that you are armed. You know you can't. You eat the last of your food by the evening, try to set a fire and fail. Instead, you hide in a depression of the land, over which a few fallen trees cross, forming something of a roof. The soil there teems with ants and other insects, so you bring your knees to your chest and cover yourself tight with the cloak, not even removing the wraps from your head for the night. You sleep terribly and wake up cramped and sore, but at least unmolested by the vermin in the soil.

    You've gone hungry before, so at first it is the dress that draws the most of your ire; still not fully dry and as restrictive as ever, it makes you feel as if there were irons on your ankles. It has always been a problem for you; the dresses you wore were once your mother's and your sister's and they were both tall, taller than you. But it never felt that difficult to walk in it, it never felt like something you wanted to curse.

    There are moments when you want to just strip yourself from it, stay in the cloak and nothing else, but you'd die if you had to go naked. There are moments when you instead think of taking a knife to it, shortening it. It never gets past a stray thought. There is something in the thought of cutting it high that disturbs you, viscerally, in ways you don't quite understand. It is just wrong to destroy something like that. It is just wrong to wear something like that. So you do nothing with it, stay in it and grow less and less comfortable with each passing moment.

    After a while, the forest thins and you emerge onto a large clearing. There are fields here, and on the fields, bowed down with their hands in the soil, you see women. As the trail takes you closer, you soon recognize them by their hunched-down frames and bundles of stray grain in their hands. Gleaners, picking up the leftovers that the harvester would not deign to dig up from the dirt and detritus of the soil himself. You slow down and feel the hunger inside unwind to remind you that you still have not eaten. You step from the path and bend down to pick a stalk of wheat.

    They notice you, too, their heads turning to face you. Owl-like, they freeze in place at the sight of you, eyes locked. The weight of their hungry stares makes you straighten. You don't understand. Are not the fields open to all paupers of the world to glean from? It is how the saintly faith teaches. Why would they want you away?

    The realization creeps on you slowly as you see them take a step back, then another. You recognize their fear and then, belatedly, the source of it. The blade of your spear gleams red-bright in the sharp sun. They are not staring at you, not at your covered face or meagre frame. It is the bare weapon that draws the entirety of their attention. They are preparing to flee.
    Do they see a brigand in you? There is something unbearable in the way every twitch of the spear on your shoulder is unerringly followed by them, in how they seem afraid to as much as blink. They expect you to hurt them, force them away. You try to step back from the field, and wave an open hand at them, as if to indicate that you mean them no harm. But they remain still and tense and you can't linger. Hurriedly, you turn away and return to the trail. Within moments, they are behind you, but their eyes track you all the way until you again enter the woods. You don't even have to turn to see that; you can feel it. It chases you away.

    Carrying a weapon in the open – it is such a simple thing. And yet, the change is so palpable. They were not looking at the dress peeking from under the cloak, the dress you wanted to tear and hide. They were not looking at the meagre frame or at the eyes barely visible through the folds of clothing wrapped around your head. All they could see was the spear and the danger posed by it. You realize that if you had shouted at them, or even shaken it, they'd have fled. The notion makes you hold onto the spear tight. If you can make others afraid of you, then you won't have to fear them. Yet, there is something to that thought that feels wrong, some hidden fault you can't quite name.

    Then, the hunger swells up and for a moment, you think only of it. You look around for another crop of herbs you could pluck and chew on to keep it off your mind. But the underbrush here is bare, save for an odd patch of lichen and moss. You follow the trail for a while longer, hoping to run across something – anything – before finally realizing that it is along the road that all will have been plucked and stripped. So you step off it, and promising yourself that you won't go far, move between the trees.

    You find nothing at first, so just walk in a straight line, confident that this airy, spacious wood will not betray you. Along the way you find what you have been looking for: patches of sorrel and bear garlic, the soil near them disturbed by the animals grazing. Then you notice berry-bushes nearby and start picking; you don't recall them being that enjoyable before. You are not done until your hands are entirely drenched in the dark juice, but even then you gather some more for the next day.

    The hunger momentarily sated, you turn and head back towards the trail. It strikes you that the forest around you is beautiful in a way have not appreciated before. Its empty spaces and green floor given an open feel, free of that oppressive gloom and shadow of the woods around your home. There is sun here, and even a taste of the wind; the trees grow lithe and sleek. It feels safer, and even the sounds of the animals in the distance don't stir up that much fear and worry. You breathe a bit easier. Even the soil under your feet seems soft; the pine needles prick gently, and there are few rocks or hard roots to trip or stub.

    In all of that, you miss the trail and become hopelessly lost.

    A part of you yells, somewhere in the back of your head, that you should panic. Scream for help. Scramble around. Do something to find the trail again, to be on a way once more. And yes, you worry, you worry a lot; you are tense and your thoughts swirl back to all the dangers of the woods you have heard of. Yet, the fear does not cut it past that, past worry and tension. The panic you feel does not come.

    You stumble through an expanse of trees, fallen trunks, ridges and bushes that feels and seems all the same to you; it is likely you have left the path so far behind that you will never find it again. But after all, wasn't it what you were after? You crossed the river to enter the forest and become lost in it. To follow your sister's road, to some far-away heart of old growth. Trails, roads that lead to somewhere: you wish you could follow them. But they are not for you. It's hard to say that you enjoy being lost. You wish you weren't. It is just how things are.

    The Saints smile on, though, and before the day is done, you stumble through a broadleaf grove and out into another clearing, neatly fenced; and beyond the fence, you see a house, large, larger than your family's, and you hear voices and smell food. One of the many families that live scattered through the forests; perhaps it was even one of their fields that you have passed by earlier today.

    You hesitate at first. You remember how the gleaners looked at you, and you know that a dress and a spear are no match and that they will see it if you show it to them. But you are not a person of the woods, not yet, and the berries and sorrel are no meal. The sky darkens; you don't want to sleep with the ants again.

    You pass the fence and with a barking dog announcing your arrival, you walk to the door and ask for hospitality.

    ***

    They seated you on the place of honour, opposite of the high seat where the father of the house sat. Although his hair were like old silver, nothing in his posture betrayed a single hint of weakness. In the oil-lamp light, the bands of gold he wore around his wrists seemed to burn with inner fire of intensity such that only the fervor in his booming voice could match. When he spoke, he gripped the carved pillars around the high seat and as he did, his muscles bulged.

    His sons were at his side, each a younger image of him; fair-haired, bright-eyed, full of bluster and laughter. To frown seemed foreign to them, to whisper: a travesty. In that they were not much different from the cousins and nephews on the low bench, sitting around you and drinking the ale rolled out to celebrate the arrival of an unexpected guest. Even the women at the cross-bench, wives and concubines, were cheerful and hardly quiet. Flustered with drink, they were easily match for their kin.

    You feel out of place.

    It's in everything you do. It's how you don't know how to prop the spear against the wall so that it doesn't appear as a slight to the house. It's in how the weapon draws the curiosity of the house-father's sons and yet you can't even explain to them from what land does this foreign weapon come. It's in how you grip the drinking horn awkwardly when they pass it to you, trying to unlearn the dainty woman's grip in the moment and yet failing to hold it like brothers and sons. It's how you are quiet to their shouts and sullen to their laughter.

    It is not like they didn't notice the dress or how you looked when you removed the wraps from your face. But they also saw the cloak and spear and even if they watched your awkward failing at playing someone you most certainly are not, they pretended not to see. Instead they treat you like they would a drifter, a man of the woods, a man of the road. You can't even protest; it is this good grace that they extend without even being asked for it that allows you fill your belly to the point of being sick, that makes it so that a horn is constantly pushed into your hands, always fresh with ale. The harvest is behind them, and so is the war-going; the coffers are as stocked as the larders, and they do not skimp on anything.

    There is a strange feeling that sprouts inside of you as the feast progresses. It takes root somewhere in the gut and creeping around the stomach, it extends its stalks into the throbbing heart in the chest clenched by some kind of pressure that bears down on you from all sides. You feel its growth but pay it no heed until it squeezes its vines suddenly and you almost retch, excuse yourself wordlessly, step out to catch a bit of fresh air. The bustle and cheer ring behind you and you hate yourself for hating that. How can they treat you like someone you are not? How can they mock you? You see it, you are sure of it: they cannot tell you in the face that you are just a usurper, some stupid girl pretending to be a warrior, pretending to be free, and yet still wearing a dress as if going to a wedding after tonight. And still no one mentions, no one does anything! They just look at you with something in their eyes, some pity like they would offer to a beggar or a cripple.

    You don't want those feelings and these thoughts but they are out of your control. You try to swipe them away from your mind, but they resist, cling to the underside of your skull with a tenacity of a malignant tumour.

    When you return, they notice that there is something wrong about you and try to lift your spirit like good hosts would. The father of the house tells the stories of war-making, of conquest and of tender love won by sword and shield. Even though everything about you is fake, they treat you like a warrior. You don't want to revolt against that even though everything inside of you twists and churns at the thought.

    As the night drags on and the lights die down, the feelings inside you quiet a bit, and in their wake, there is a new kind of fear. You watch the women so drunk they are almost asleep and men who spent themselves all on feasting and shouting and laughing and you wonder why did that hate find such a fertile ground in the undergrowth of your flesh and bone. It terrifies you – not in the blood-curdling way a howl of a wolf would, but rather as a mounting sense of wrongness you can't shake – that those feelings are something so entirely outside of your control, that you can't squeeze them back into some sealed chest from which they will never surface again.

    You want open your mouth to speak, to say that your clothing is worn down and useless and if they could offer you the garments for a man, that would make you appear more like what you should be, then you would be forever grateful. But you know you won't. The mere thought makes you squirm. You are sure that if you do, they will finally call your bluff and tell you that you are not a man.

    It's not like you ever wanted to be one. Right?

    One of the men whispers something to you; you feel his breath on your skin, damp and reeking of beer. It snaps you out of your thoughts; you turn to face him and freeze as he leans, as if to rest his face on your shoulder. Before the whine can escape your mouth, another man – one of the sons – reaches over the table, shoves him out of the way. He tumbles to floor, already asleep. The son starts to talk very fast, blurting out an apology and you don't quite understand for what. The booze is going into your head, too.

    When you return to your thoughts, they are a jumbled mess you have no idea how to untangle. The only thing that is clear is some sense of disdain for all of this, for this obvious falsehood, and above all else, for yourself. For the fact that you are going along with it just for the promise of a full stomach and a shelter for the night. For the chance to ask for- no, you are not returning to that thought. Even if it too refuses to leave.

    The feast starts to drag. More and more depart for sleep and ale stops flowing; for that, you are glad. The son that knocked away the cousin who tried to touch you talks to you some more, and you really don't know what any of his words even mean. They've been so good to you and yet contempt swells in your throat.

    They offer you a place to sleep in the fire-room, not far from the house-father's bed-closet. They even offer you a blanket that you can spread on the floor so that you don't have to tarnish your cloak even more. You lie down, hoping that the sleep will come soon. It doesn't. There is something wrong with you, you grow increasingly certain. Something awful and twisted, that makes you resent them even though you know you shouldn't. You know how to be a good daughter, a good woman, and what are you now? A runaway freak playing at something false, someone who shouldn't be allowed under a respectable roof, a fake warrior in a woman's dress. Booze still clouding your mind, you come to the only available conclusion. It can't continue like that.

    You wait until you think that everyone has gone sound asleep and then start to crawl forward, careful not to stumble over a sleeping man. There is a chest you remember noticing, put against the wall, a bench by day. You pray to saint Egil of exiles that they did not close it for the night, and your prayers are answered.

    The lid screams as you push it open. You almost drop it when you hear someone behind you twist and groan, but manage to hold it up. No one is waking, and you can do what you set out to do. Rob the house that gave you the finest of hospitalities. You reach a hand inside and find what you expected to – your fingers touch fabric. Clothes, the finest linen and leather the house has, stored for weddings and funerals and the greatest feast. You lose breath.

    When you pick through them, you do so blindly and quickly, wanting nothing more than to be done with it, to find a pair of leggings and a shirt, take it in your hands and run away; you are not staying under this roof a moment longer. You find them soon enough. But not only.

    It is under some linen shirt that your hands scout out something else. A fat pouch; it clinks as you move it. The sound of gold is easily recognizable. The house's wealth. Coins, most likely – at least as far as you can tell just from feeling them. A lot of them, too. Maybe not a fortune, but enough to afford much. It'd be so easy to steal it along the clothes. What's one sin to another?

    At that notion you balk, physically. It hasn't been a week since you ran and you are already a robber? Those people did nothing to deserve this from you. Whatever you feel for them is what is wrong with you. Right? You still have some dignity?

    Right?

    You hold the lid open and decide.

    [ ] You're not a thief. Steal nothing.
    [ ] You don't care for the wealth. Take only the clothes.
    [ ] Fuck 'em. Fuck everything. Steal whatever you can.    ​
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Fuck 'em. Fuck everything. Steal whatever you can.

    It is easy to fall into the weakness of the human heart. Giving into wretchedness.
     
    [X] You're not a thief. Steal nothing.

    The very act of carrying a weapon seems to have made us feel wrong. Perhaps we should not become a thief as well.
     
    [X] You're not a thief. Steal nothing.

    First, we come with the indignity of bearing weapon and deceiving them to think that we are a warrior, and they gave us right hospitality and honoured our deception, despite knowing full and well. Now we stand over a chest of theirs, skulking in the dark, threatening not only to break the hospitality freely given, but also to steal from them like the common brigand that the women saw in us when they saw our spear.

    Is this who we want to be?
     
    Hmmmm "Steal Nothing" and "Steal Everything" both feel a bit..off. We're falling from what we were, but we haven't hit that point yet? I don't think?
     
    [X] You're not a thief. Steal nothing.

    The most sacred and ancient of laws.
     
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