20 Things You Never Knew
Idea stolen from reading too much fanfiction. I thought it'd be fun to try it for one of my characters and Kassy wouldn't stop harassing me. 20 things you never knew about Kvasir.
1. Kvasir occasionally uses L’Oréal Kids shampoo because it comes in watermelon and Madoc hates the smell of it. Not to mention, having shampoo that doesn’t sting his eyes is a plus. One less worry when he is dancing in the shower at least.
2. Being made for the sole purpose of keeping peace left a bit of an impression on Kvasir’s mind. Sometimes it’s hard for him to think of himself as anything other than a means to an end.
3. Kassy spent ten years as a cat. He’d been a mottled gray and white stray that had been claimed by a woman who’d taken pity on him. He loved her greatly and it was only after her death that he abandoned that form, but he’d kept her pink scarf. It became his favorite color.
4. The silence reminds Kassy of too many bad things. It reminds him of wine and murmurs in the night, whispers he can’t hear and snow that never melts. So he makes sure there’s always noise, whether it be chattering at Madoc or sitting in the corner of a crowded room.
5. Kassy has written several books under various pseudonyms.
6. The flute has been one of his favorite instruments since its invention. He used to play it much more frequently and sometimes danced through town with the children. He’s not entirely certain where they got “Pied Piper” but he starts giggling if it’s mentioned.
7. Occasionally, Kassy has nightmares of those he loves dying. Where he can see their hearts decay and know exactly when their minds cease to function. It scares him more when he wakes up to find that his nightmares aren’t always confined to dreams.
8. It’s a very lucky thing that divinity can remove paint from clothing, otherwise Kvasir might own nothing but paint shirts.
9. Kvasir hasn’t been to many beaches in his time. He loves the sand and the ocean, but it holds no mystery for him. People talk of sands on the beach being innumerable, uncountable, unknowable, but Kassy knows. Could tell you the exact number of grains that it would take to fill his footprint. There’s no mystery for him on the beach, but sometimes he likes to lay there, close his eyes, and pretend there is.
10. Despite knowing the mechanics of swimming, Kassy can’t swim. He never does more than wade in the surf.
11. He was married once, to a pretty philosopher in southern Austria. She died thinking that he’d somehow subdued his subconscious and forced himself to stop aging. He tossed the wedding ring to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
12. There are many reasons for Kvasir to hate alcohol. Being turned into mead is just one of them. When he was very, very young - and it must be noted he was young- he fell in love with a poet. The poet yearned for the meaning of life. The Norns had always said not to tell, so Kassy remained silent for as long as he could, but he loved the man and could not deny him much. So Kassy told him. Shortly after the poet drank himself to death with beet wine.
13. The fear of drowning must be encoded into every Norseman’s DNA. Kvasir is sure that his fear of cracking ice and not being able to breathe has to be an inborn trait. Of course, he could be rationalizing, trying not to remember blood pooling in his lungs. Trying to forget drowning when his nails dug into dirt.
14. Even if he isn’t the most graceful god, Kassy can climb a tree like a monkey. He blames it on so many years of moving about Yggdrasil.
15. Guava is not acknowledged as an actual fruit in Kvasir’s book. He refuses to tell anyone why.
16. There is a music of the spheres. Sometimes he can hear it, late at night when even Madoc has gone inside and Kvasir is left alone with the stars. He can never say no when it beckons him to dance.
17. Kassy doesn’t believe in personal space. He touches when he talks, clings, hugs, leans on, ruffles hair, kisses cheeks. It’s just normal behavior for him, but sometimes it helps remind him that he’s here and not with the hundreds of aching people in his head.
18. There are four unknown Shakespeare plays that survived to this day. Kvasir knows because he may have had a bit of a crush on one of the lead actors and stole the scripts that were his favorites.
19. Kassy is partial to sparkly, shiny things. The rainbow bridge to Asgard has to be to blame, somehow.
20. As long as he’s warm, Kassy can fall asleep anywhere. He once fell asleep curled against Odin at a meeting and didn’t stop blushing about it for a week