It’s a way of feeling…

It had been a few quiet days, time moved as fast as it moved slow, the rest of him still, propped up against a pilar, lacking the will to move- he could feel the thick, smokey air in the longhouse dry out his eyes, burn, then try to lubricate between every time his body was forced to blink. He didn’t want them to close because every time he let them he’d see her…

Why am I still here…

But, keeping his eyes open only forced him to linger on the dots that all lead back to... He couldn’t bring himself to think on Broek, but that’s only because he knew he couldn’t… what Karl was doing to him in his dark little room only a few feet away, though the noises begged it… after the other night he knows he should have known something before… and in a way he did… but would do anything to not know, now…. Not after...

Why…

Just as Ebbe had expected. Norsemen eventually came knocking, his dry eyes finally and slowly roll, grinding against the edges of his lids as the shadows of their feet etch the mid-day light coming through the gap at the bottom of the door. Most likely home from a raid- wondering where their parents, wives, brothers, sisters, and children went, he thought. His heart jumps as time refocuses around the moment a second knock, harder, belts its way through the room.

Ebbe recognizes the bigger one while phasing in and out over the flames of the fireplace from the dark corner he’d been brooding in; Broek and Frigg’s father, Áleifr, when Karl finally appeared out of no where and opened the door to greet them. Ebbe could only imagine the way Áleifr would… images flash in the back of his mind, he had to look away to avoid meeting the father’s eyes.

As Karl calmly, easily explains his not seeing any one of late, a faint, hot, sick smell drags Ebbe's attention around the room; something was different. A stray source of light…

Karl hadn’t had time to lock his chamber properly in his nervous hobble to the front door.

A hard lump grew in Ebbe’s throat as the forbidden creaked it’s way open to him in the breeze of uninvited evening air that shafted through the longhouse- all hairs quiver their way on end. Senses to the sixth suddenly overwhelm, his curiosity invited by the warm flickers of a few candles somewhere in the room… angling himself slightly for a better look, he didn’t understand what he was looking at at first, but through a hard strain; Ebbe catches sight of the frame of his childhood enemy, chained to Karl’s dirty, scribble enhanced wall and… his innards? Splayed gently over the side of Karls tool and paper covered desk draining into containers, flesh outstretched and pinned to a plethora of propped-up boards and cris-crossed string, a bouquet of animal intestines sewn to bladders of fluid above overflow Broek’s lips and- his pained eyes, clouded, but ominously aware of his surroundings… alerted by who’s voice he’d heard, and of who was now watching him.

“And what about you, Ebbe, have you seen any of ‘em?” Áleifr’s booming voice suddenly cuts through the hold what he’d just seen had on him.

“NO!” He replies only half cognizant before the question could truly register. Every shred of Ebbe’s soul screams as he notices Karl’s greasy, matted, wrinkly head lazily roll back to look over his shoulder at him. Karl’s cold, quick, all-knowing stare beams into the reflection of Ebbe’s eyes as they connect dully in one direction but observe another. “No… I- I haven’t, Áleifr. I’m sorry.”

Karl wisely held his composure opposite the soon departing presence of his visitors, “If I hear anything I know where to send my boy to tell you, I hope they turn up soon.” He says as he pulls his crinkled eyes back toward the blinding outside light and into theirs.

The two large, well furred men’s body language seems to flirt with the idea of following the inklings obviously brewing deep in their gut, and Ebbe almost wished they would… but after a moment and t o his anxious surprise, looking Karl up and down, they didn’t seem to need any further proof. “We know you aren’t from here, old man, but we have rules, if we find out you know something, we will be back.”

“May your travels be without incident.” Karl replies softly, weakly, as he traps his secrets back inside. Purple stained fingers lock the door.

—

Ebbe jolts awake, stress induced exhaustion must have taken him while waiting for night to come. Nothing seems to have changed since earlier, he listens cautiously… still, nothing. Ebbe stands, scrambles to pack a bag, grab a fur, and make his way across the dirt floor to the front door, shaking nervously, stifling heavy breaths… it wasn’t locked? He pulls lightly. An unfortunately now-familiar scent flits and swirls through the small opening as he tries to get a preemptive look to no avail, only an angry glow against pure cloud-cover black. Now on full alert, his back straightens, his shoulders square, he steps outside to a blinding fire.

Across a pile of crackling, twisting flesh and popping of human juices as they hit white hot coal, Karl’s shadow dances on the miles-deep forest of tall pines that walled the clearing… waiting, through billowing smoke are wrinkled, unblinking eyes, intensely pondering. “Ebbe, I need to talk to you before you go, come.”

Ebbe naturally takes a half step forward before his entire being locked into place. From somewhere deep in his blood between the life preserving, self deprecating obedience of a ruined child and a fear of the unknown in a twisted world he found himself up till now unbothered to try to understand, there was a third… a will… one that reared it’s head and looked straight into Karls unwavering eyes…. Ebbe snapps.

“This is has gone far eno-“

“COME.”

Ebbe had already dropped his bag, his clammy fingers curl into rock hard fists as he gets closer. Each step gearing him, getting heavier in one way, lighter in another as he finally lets the past three days eat him alive.

“God loves and forgives all of his children, even those that do not know him, yet. One could do everything wrong in life, but in the sacrifice of a few are invaluable lessons and eternal life for countless others…”Karl rambles, unmoving as Ebbe makes his way around the fire.

Just as Ebbe steps into a 6 year punch, a sharp pain grips him, he looks down and sees a blood covered hand pressing a knife into his stomach, and a fist coming straight for his face.