The Hidden Folk
Title: The Hidden Folk
Rating: G
Warnings: Nothing at all to worry about
Summary: Iceland has two populations: one he can see, the other is invisible
Notes: Tried to make this about huldufolk and Icelandic history; I feel a bit like the pursuit of the former gave a lot less focus to the latter. I hope you still like it though <3
For sakuratsukikage for the nordic5_xmas Secret Santa
For years, he could see nothing. He could only feel, feel the mist hover on his pale, untainted skin. Taste the salt in the air from the sea. And hear the rumbles of a volcano far off. Then he heard footsteps and felt himself lifted from the ground. Eyes he didn't know he had opened to see a blank face. He curled his small fingers and reached out to grab the long blond hairs that blew around this face in the wind. The face smiled at him and touched a finger to his nose. "Island," it said in a low, flat voice that resonated through his body.
And then he went away on the ocean, leaving behind some people who cut his rock and grass to build their homes. There were also others. They built their homes in his rock. He could see them, sometimes when he wasn't really looking for them, but he could always feel them, hidden under his skin.
The years passed, more people came. Clusters of homes became towns. Said towns grew larger. Sickness came, starvation; the people he could see were dying in massive numbers. He felt he could have died as well. The face would return from time to time (though now he understood it to be part of a whole body: the body of his brother, Norway). Each time his brother visited, he considered raising the subject of the hidden people to ask if such a thing was normal, if his brother had people hiding under his skin as well. But he never did ask; he merely nodded and accepted his offers of help. Once, his brother brought with him a man, tall with a big smile, who ruffled his hair and called him Ice. Norway explained later to him that he was now their brother as well.
But he would look at this man, and he knew that they were not brothers. One day, as he roamed along a hillside, he saw his brother sitting in the grass while his not brother was hurling stones down the hill, apparently just for fun as he would shout, 'Did ya see how far I got that one?' from time to time.
He gazed out over the prairie. The people were out there in the grass; he could feel them there. "Stop!" he cried as he rushed down the hill. The tall man paused just before he hurled another sizable rock. "You mustn't throw stones," he gasped, trotting to a halt with weak knees.
"Why?" the man chuckled, turning the rock over in his large hand, "It ain't like there's anyone out there for me to hit."
He opened his mouth to prove the man wrong but found no words could come out. Instead, he looked from his blank faced brother to the stone thrower and back.
"Denmark," his brother translated his unspoken distress, "You're upsetting him, just stop throwing things."
"Tsch," the Dane scoffed and threw the rock to the side, "fine."
"It's late; we should go anyway," Norway said as he got up. They left together, and he looked back at the grass flowing in the breeze and smiled a little knowing that his hidden people were safe.
The years continued to go by for the lonely little island. He was visited less and less then not at all by his brother and more and more by the man who claimed to by his brother. While he visited, the Dane threw stones at the people he could not see and took the money and goods of the people he could, calling it trade.
His people were poor and hungry and began to leave him for the new world, and he felt the same way, though there was no new world for him to run to. Some days it was all he could do just to stare out the window at the hillock across the plain that those hidden people lived in and know that they were strong, functioning independently of economies and politics; all they had to worry about was getting hit by rocks. They would never leave him, he knew.
Despite his troubles, he grew as a country. Through his mind, strained by hunger and clouded by volcanic ash, the idea came that he didn't need Denmark. He could stand on his own; he must.
Almost immediately after he was given his freedom, it seemed that everything in the world came rushing to his doorstep. He fought over fishing grounds with the United Kingdom; America built him an airport. For the first time, Iceland felt like a real country.
And as a real country, he thought, shouldn't he have nice buildings? good roads? Yes. Yes, he should.
Yet during construction projects, he would receive reports about machinery breaking down on the job while the men were working to vacate a large stone from the projected path or trying to raze a hill. The plans were always changed to go around the obstacle, and the mechanical troubles always stopped soon after. When reading these, he would look out at the hillock and couldn't help feeling a bit aggravated at his hiding people.
On a crisp afternoon early in winter, he hiked out to the hillock. It was twilight when he finally reached the spot and began wandering around the rock face looking aimlessly.
"What are you looking for?" came a smooth voice behind him. He jumped and turned to see a woman with fair skin and hair wearing clothes that he hadn't seen anyone wear in a century.
He didn't say anything; this was the first time he had seen one of his hidden people before him rather than as a flicker in his periphery. "Do you know who I am?" he asked, his voice cracking.
"Of course we know you, Island," a second voice laughed on his other side. This one was a man, tall and lanky. "The only thing we don't know is what you're doing here."
"You've been messing up building projects," he stated, crossing his arms. The two elves exchanged a brief look over his head before chorusing 'yes' as though it wasn't a problem.
"What of it?" the man queried, leaning against the rock face. "Have we done something wrong?" Iceland stared at him before looking over at the woman whose expression repeated the man's questions.
"I'd say you have," he replied in a hot tone, "You're destroying equipment; you're standing in the way of progress."
"Progress?" the woman scoffed while her companion circled around him to stand by her side. "You call destroying homes progress?" She shook her head and disappeared into the hillock. Iceland got the sinking feeling that he'd said the wrong thing.
"We grew up hearing stories of you," the man added, "It's sad to think that they were false." He pushed his arm into the stone.
"Wait," the nation cried, and the elf paused. "Stories? What about?" he could remember plenty of tales his people wrote about the hidden folk but had never known that the process went both ways.
"About how you cared for us although you couldn't see us," with that the man dissolved into the stone.
"Hey!" Iceland called, rushing to the spot where both people had entered the hillock. The rock was very much solid and cold to him. "Come back!" He pounded on the rock to no avail. He tried to find cracks in the surface where they must have pushed to get through, but there was nothing. "I still care," the nation said weakly looking up the sheer face of the rock before turning and going clumsily down toward home.
A few weeks later, his brother called and asked what he was doing for New Years. When he replied that he had nothing planned, Norway heavily implied that he needed someone to come with him to Denmark's.
"I'm not feeling very well," he sighed, staring out the window and the hillock, "I don't think I should travel."
"What's wrong?" his brother asked, sounding almost plaintive.
He didn't respond for quite some time. The question he'd had in his mind for a thousand years was so close that his lips quivered ever so slightly at the prospect of finally asking it. His brother's voice asking, with the faintest sense of worry and urgency if he was alright, was very far away. "Is it normal," he whispered, "to have people living in you?"
"Of course it is," his brother replied as though this was the most obvious thing ever.
"I don't mean like normal people with houses and cars and stuff," he said slowly.
"Neither do I," Norway agreed, wondering briefly if his brother had a delusion inducing fever. "Are you having a problem with them?"
"They're holding me back," he mumbled, fiddling with a pen while staring at some new reports of machinery tampering. Then he mumbled something else that Norway couldn't hear.
"Back from what?"
"Big...planes," he blurted out, "smelters, all kinds of stuff! The future!"
"The future," his brother echoed, "hmm, Iceland, do you think the nations that have these things are happy?"
"How do you mean?" he leaned on his hand and stared out the window again.
"Do you know what big planes and smelters get you?"
He was quick to reply with, "Respect."
"More work," his brother corrected, "and a thousand other things I'm sure you don't want." He sighed, "I didn't give you Sight just so you'd throw it away so soon. I hope you feel better." Norway hung up the phone.
Iceland stared at the papers on his desk with the phone still pressed again his cheek.
Before he knew it, another year was over. He stood out by the road with two spoons in a bowl of stew getting colder by the second, hoping to see some of his people and apologize. He looked down at the bowl in his hands; lots of people left food out for them this time of year, but he'd never done so himself. Did they even eat lamb?
"That smells good," a voice at his shoulder said. Iceland started and almost dropped the bowl. It was the man and woman, walking arm and arm.
"It's for you," he said holding it out to them. She took it gently from him, and he watched them eat. "I wanted to apologize for what I said before; I shouldn't have gotten so angry with you." They would take turns looking at him and listening while the other ate. "It was wrong to put people I could see over those I couldn't."
The man handed the half emptied bowl back to him. "Thank you," he said, "it was very good."
"And if was good of you to say that," she added, "we're sorry we hadn't made ourselves more visible to you. We're not so different." She smiled at him. Iceland gave her a puzzled look.
"They're not sure either of us exist," he clarified, gesturing to the town down the road. "But they still believe in us whether they can or not." They shared a smile before the couple moved on down the road, leaving clean footprints in the crisp white snow.
"Oh," the woman paused and turned back to him, "Happy New Year," she said with a small curtsy.
"Same to you," he called with a wave and an awkward smile, and watched them go into the dark, humming a song Iceland was sure he hadn't heard in a long time.
Rating: G
Warnings: Nothing at all to worry about
Summary: Iceland has two populations: one he can see, the other is invisible
Notes: Tried to make this about huldufolk and Icelandic history; I feel a bit like the pursuit of the former gave a lot less focus to the latter. I hope you still like it though <3
For sakuratsukikage for the nordic5_xmas Secret Santa
For years, he could see nothing. He could only feel, feel the mist hover on his pale, untainted skin. Taste the salt in the air from the sea. And hear the rumbles of a volcano far off. Then he heard footsteps and felt himself lifted from the ground. Eyes he didn't know he had opened to see a blank face. He curled his small fingers and reached out to grab the long blond hairs that blew around this face in the wind. The face smiled at him and touched a finger to his nose. "Island," it said in a low, flat voice that resonated through his body.
And then he went away on the ocean, leaving behind some people who cut his rock and grass to build their homes. There were also others. They built their homes in his rock. He could see them, sometimes when he wasn't really looking for them, but he could always feel them, hidden under his skin.
The years passed, more people came. Clusters of homes became towns. Said towns grew larger. Sickness came, starvation; the people he could see were dying in massive numbers. He felt he could have died as well. The face would return from time to time (though now he understood it to be part of a whole body: the body of his brother, Norway). Each time his brother visited, he considered raising the subject of the hidden people to ask if such a thing was normal, if his brother had people hiding under his skin as well. But he never did ask; he merely nodded and accepted his offers of help. Once, his brother brought with him a man, tall with a big smile, who ruffled his hair and called him Ice. Norway explained later to him that he was now their brother as well.
But he would look at this man, and he knew that they were not brothers. One day, as he roamed along a hillside, he saw his brother sitting in the grass while his not brother was hurling stones down the hill, apparently just for fun as he would shout, 'Did ya see how far I got that one?' from time to time.
He gazed out over the prairie. The people were out there in the grass; he could feel them there. "Stop!" he cried as he rushed down the hill. The tall man paused just before he hurled another sizable rock. "You mustn't throw stones," he gasped, trotting to a halt with weak knees.
"Why?" the man chuckled, turning the rock over in his large hand, "It ain't like there's anyone out there for me to hit."
He opened his mouth to prove the man wrong but found no words could come out. Instead, he looked from his blank faced brother to the stone thrower and back.
"Denmark," his brother translated his unspoken distress, "You're upsetting him, just stop throwing things."
"Tsch," the Dane scoffed and threw the rock to the side, "fine."
"It's late; we should go anyway," Norway said as he got up. They left together, and he looked back at the grass flowing in the breeze and smiled a little knowing that his hidden people were safe.
The years continued to go by for the lonely little island. He was visited less and less then not at all by his brother and more and more by the man who claimed to by his brother. While he visited, the Dane threw stones at the people he could not see and took the money and goods of the people he could, calling it trade.
His people were poor and hungry and began to leave him for the new world, and he felt the same way, though there was no new world for him to run to. Some days it was all he could do just to stare out the window at the hillock across the plain that those hidden people lived in and know that they were strong, functioning independently of economies and politics; all they had to worry about was getting hit by rocks. They would never leave him, he knew.
Despite his troubles, he grew as a country. Through his mind, strained by hunger and clouded by volcanic ash, the idea came that he didn't need Denmark. He could stand on his own; he must.
Almost immediately after he was given his freedom, it seemed that everything in the world came rushing to his doorstep. He fought over fishing grounds with the United Kingdom; America built him an airport. For the first time, Iceland felt like a real country.
And as a real country, he thought, shouldn't he have nice buildings? good roads? Yes. Yes, he should.
Yet during construction projects, he would receive reports about machinery breaking down on the job while the men were working to vacate a large stone from the projected path or trying to raze a hill. The plans were always changed to go around the obstacle, and the mechanical troubles always stopped soon after. When reading these, he would look out at the hillock and couldn't help feeling a bit aggravated at his hiding people.
On a crisp afternoon early in winter, he hiked out to the hillock. It was twilight when he finally reached the spot and began wandering around the rock face looking aimlessly.
"What are you looking for?" came a smooth voice behind him. He jumped and turned to see a woman with fair skin and hair wearing clothes that he hadn't seen anyone wear in a century.
He didn't say anything; this was the first time he had seen one of his hidden people before him rather than as a flicker in his periphery. "Do you know who I am?" he asked, his voice cracking.
"Of course we know you, Island," a second voice laughed on his other side. This one was a man, tall and lanky. "The only thing we don't know is what you're doing here."
"You've been messing up building projects," he stated, crossing his arms. The two elves exchanged a brief look over his head before chorusing 'yes' as though it wasn't a problem.
"What of it?" the man queried, leaning against the rock face. "Have we done something wrong?" Iceland stared at him before looking over at the woman whose expression repeated the man's questions.
"I'd say you have," he replied in a hot tone, "You're destroying equipment; you're standing in the way of progress."
"Progress?" the woman scoffed while her companion circled around him to stand by her side. "You call destroying homes progress?" She shook her head and disappeared into the hillock. Iceland got the sinking feeling that he'd said the wrong thing.
"We grew up hearing stories of you," the man added, "It's sad to think that they were false." He pushed his arm into the stone.
"Wait," the nation cried, and the elf paused. "Stories? What about?" he could remember plenty of tales his people wrote about the hidden folk but had never known that the process went both ways.
"About how you cared for us although you couldn't see us," with that the man dissolved into the stone.
"Hey!" Iceland called, rushing to the spot where both people had entered the hillock. The rock was very much solid and cold to him. "Come back!" He pounded on the rock to no avail. He tried to find cracks in the surface where they must have pushed to get through, but there was nothing. "I still care," the nation said weakly looking up the sheer face of the rock before turning and going clumsily down toward home.
A few weeks later, his brother called and asked what he was doing for New Years. When he replied that he had nothing planned, Norway heavily implied that he needed someone to come with him to Denmark's.
"I'm not feeling very well," he sighed, staring out the window and the hillock, "I don't think I should travel."
"What's wrong?" his brother asked, sounding almost plaintive.
He didn't respond for quite some time. The question he'd had in his mind for a thousand years was so close that his lips quivered ever so slightly at the prospect of finally asking it. His brother's voice asking, with the faintest sense of worry and urgency if he was alright, was very far away. "Is it normal," he whispered, "to have people living in you?"
"Of course it is," his brother replied as though this was the most obvious thing ever.
"I don't mean like normal people with houses and cars and stuff," he said slowly.
"Neither do I," Norway agreed, wondering briefly if his brother had a delusion inducing fever. "Are you having a problem with them?"
"They're holding me back," he mumbled, fiddling with a pen while staring at some new reports of machinery tampering. Then he mumbled something else that Norway couldn't hear.
"Back from what?"
"Big...planes," he blurted out, "smelters, all kinds of stuff! The future!"
"The future," his brother echoed, "hmm, Iceland, do you think the nations that have these things are happy?"
"How do you mean?" he leaned on his hand and stared out the window again.
"Do you know what big planes and smelters get you?"
He was quick to reply with, "Respect."
"More work," his brother corrected, "and a thousand other things I'm sure you don't want." He sighed, "I didn't give you Sight just so you'd throw it away so soon. I hope you feel better." Norway hung up the phone.
Iceland stared at the papers on his desk with the phone still pressed again his cheek.
Before he knew it, another year was over. He stood out by the road with two spoons in a bowl of stew getting colder by the second, hoping to see some of his people and apologize. He looked down at the bowl in his hands; lots of people left food out for them this time of year, but he'd never done so himself. Did they even eat lamb?
"That smells good," a voice at his shoulder said. Iceland started and almost dropped the bowl. It was the man and woman, walking arm and arm.
"It's for you," he said holding it out to them. She took it gently from him, and he watched them eat. "I wanted to apologize for what I said before; I shouldn't have gotten so angry with you." They would take turns looking at him and listening while the other ate. "It was wrong to put people I could see over those I couldn't."
The man handed the half emptied bowl back to him. "Thank you," he said, "it was very good."
"And if was good of you to say that," she added, "we're sorry we hadn't made ourselves more visible to you. We're not so different." She smiled at him. Iceland gave her a puzzled look.
"They're not sure either of us exist," he clarified, gesturing to the town down the road. "But they still believe in us whether they can or not." They shared a smile before the couple moved on down the road, leaving clean footprints in the crisp white snow.
"Oh," the woman paused and turned back to him, "Happy New Year," she said with a small curtsy.
"Same to you," he called with a wave and an awkward smile, and watched them go into the dark, humming a song Iceland was sure he hadn't heard in a long time.