Origific: Sometimes a Family Is Two Roommates and Their Invisible Elf Friend Who Lives in a Rock
Sometimes a Family Is Two Roommates and Their Invisible Elf Friend Who Lives in a Rock (around 7 K words of story plus a 2 K bonus outtake) by thenewbuzwuzz
Fandom: Original Work, Norse Religion & Lore
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, might need a blasphemy warning or something? Characters crack a couple of jokes about believing or not believing in Jesus.
Relationships: Christian who doesn't believe in elves & Icelander who does & Elf who doesn't believe in humans
Additional Tags: Iceland, Mythology - Freeform, Urban Fantasy, no Norse gods - sorry, Male-Female Friendship, Invisibility, Clairvoyance, Sheep, and other relatable college experiences
This is what I wrote for that original works exchange on AO3 based on a fabulous prompt by Rosemarycat5. It was edited in a hurry, and obviously I've much to learn about writing, but the story seemed to turn out all right in the end. People have described it as "sweet" and "a delight" and even "good". :) Might be fun if folklore floats your boat.
I'm going to put it here under the cut as well, all 7 K words of it in one post if Dreamwidth lets me, so that I can practice making internal links.
I owe more than ever to the patient and ingenious last-minute help of
thewiggins.
Pronunciation hints for the tougher character names if you'd like:
Blær
Jón
Sometimes a Family Is Two Roommates and Their Invisible Elf Friend Who Lives in a Rock
CHAPTER 1
[ Chapter 2, Chapter 3, bottom of post]
“Do you believe in elves?”
“No. Do you?” This was the second time in a week that Fransiska had heard this question from some exchange student. Please. She got that they were basically tourists and tourists like exaggerated stories, but did people have to assume she was naive? Yeah, we never grew up and we believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy too. We are, in fact, unable to tell fact from fiction. It's very cute of us. Make sure to buy a T-shirt when you go to elf practice. Or whatever Magnús Skarphéðinsson calls his tourist trap.
The exchange student stammered.
Fransiska's colleague laughed, walking to the counter with a reheated tortilla pizza. “Are you befuddling the customers again?” he asked in Icelandic.
Usually, the student bar of the University of Iceland was pretty low on the kitchiness. Most of the tourists tended to end up in the fancy downtown restaurants where they could get a whole sheep's head, so traditional, so Icelandic. And Fransiska served the students and locals who just wanted a nice burger.
Fransiska's mood brightened as her best friend Jón walked in, bringing a whiff of rain and wind to dilute the beer-and-nachos aroma of the bar. He looked more lost in his own world than usual. Light glinted off the droplets of rainwater on his glasses before he took them off to wipe them and greeted everyone on his way to Fransiska.
Fransiska eyed him in between serving customers. Jón hadn't just dropped by because he was bored, she could see it. He was fairly vibrating with some unspoken purpose. Fransiska wondered what idea had captured his beautiful imagination this time.
“Elves,” he blurted out. Switched to English out of courtesy to the foreigners. “Hi, Siska. The hidden people. Remind me what your opinion on them was, again?”
This had better be an overture to telling the exchange students tall tales about how Icelanders dance with the elves when they're done wrestling polar bears in their igloos. But, somehow, Fransiska doubted it was gonna be that.
“You know what I think about them. They're a lovely story. Much like the Mothman and Jesus.”
“Fransiska, please. Of the two of us, who just had some quality time with Jesus over the Christmas break?”
Was Jón still bitter that she hadn't made it to his pagan Yule party? “Fine, I went to church to hang out with my family,” she told him. “There's a difference.”
“Okay, sure. Let's leave all that alone. Do you remember Blær?”
Fransiska had to think. “Someone we knew in kindergarten?”
“Kind of.”
And then the other shoe dropped. The shy look on Jón's face, the question about the hidden people... “You're talking about your imaginary friend Blær? Blær who lived in a rock?”
She smiled despite herself. Jón had always had an active imagination. And a passion about the things he believed in, so compelling that Fransiska herself somehow remembered a little boy in old-fashioned clothing coming out of the rock on Jón's parents' farm, as if she had seen him with her own eyes. An impossible little boy, right there in her childhood memories by the grace of Jón's larger-than-life, technicolor dreams.
“Yes!” Jón smiled, so happy that Fransiska got him. She always had. He continued, “Can you imagine? I think I met Blær today.”
Cripes. This was going to be like that time Jón spent a fortune on fortune telling, just to have someone cold read him and abuse the Barnum effect and spew generalities at him. Fransiska loved her roomie, she did, but sometimes he believed things too readily.
“How... how about we continue this conversation in private,” she suggested.
Her shift was almost over anyway. In the drizzling rain, they walked through the center of Reykjavik.
She didn't waste time on reminding Jón that he had made Blær up personally. That it had been just a cute childhood game. He had to know, right? He'd been there.
Oh god, was that it? Was Jón trying to reconnect with his inner child or something?
“So. Tell me what brought that on, about Blær. You haven't mentioned him in years.”
“Well, I was dumpster diving behind the Bónus on Laugavegur...”
Fransiska nodded. They regularly got free food. With the prices jacked up to tourist levels and supermarkets throwing out perfectly good fruit just because it was a tad overripe, a little freeganism never hurt anyone.
“Marysia saw me-the sales clerk, you remember-but that's fine, she's chill. She agrees that wasting good food is stupid and probably a sin in some way. So, as I was chatting with Marysia, who was out having a smoke... the lid of the dumpster just lifted on its own-we thought wind? Or birds. But then, after a little bit, some food started to just float out of the dumpster. Look, I don't mind someone getting to the dumpster before me-even though those raspberries looked good and did they have to get all of them-but we didn't see anyone there! I walked all around the dumpster-nothing.”
“Somebody was pranking you. Must have tied some wires to the lid or something. There are ways.”
“That's what Marysia said, but then we checked and there was nothing. So then she said, just in case, and she was making the sign of the cross, saying out loud how she didn't want any trouble with any spirits. I was having a good time, I said, maybe it's elves. Half-joking, as you do. Marysia went on about how they should ignore her, whatever they were. Then I said something like, no way, if elves were dumpster diving here, I would want to say hi and shake their hand for boycotting consumerism. And I wondered if we'd be invisible to elves just like they're invisible to us, and I said, that would suck. Because I would want the dumpster elves to see me. Then this bag full of food dropped to the ground from where it'd been hovering. Very spooky.” He grinned. “You should have been there. And after a moment, I saw Blær clearly. He'd grown, obviously, but I remember him well. And he said it was him.”
“Oh, your hallucination said it was your imaginary friend. So it must be true.”
They had been heading in the general direction of home, but Jón turned towards the Bónus supermarket instead and gestured to Fransiska to follow. “You really have to see him yourself,” he said.
They walked up to the dumpsters. There was nobody there, but something sent a shiver down Fransiska's back. Probably the weather. Her shoes were starting to get soaked through.
“Blær?” Jón called out. “He's got to be around here somewhere, hold on.” He raised his voice. “Come out, I want you to meet someone!”
As Fransiska was looking around, she thought she caught a glimpse of someone out of the corner of her eye, but there was nobody there when she looked.
There continued to be nobody there for a couple of seconds. Then, the air flickered, and a guy their age seemed to appear-Fransiska wasn't sure how this image was being projected. The image had almost shoulder-length dark hair that shimmered in the light, and he was dressed up in historical costume, like he was cosplaying a 19th-century peasant.
“Do you see me now?” the projection seemed to speak. Jón went to hug him and stumbled right through.
“We see something, all right,” Fransiska said and walked around the image, hoping to interrupt the beam of light so she could see where the projection came from. No such luck. She swished her foot through the illusory sheepskin shoes in case the whole thing was being projected from ground level. The image didn't disappear. Hmm.
“I can hear your footsteps,” the apparition said, smiling happily. “And I can still see you, Jón, but I don't see your friend. To think, I always thought it was superstition when my family talked about the hidden people-the “humans” who live in another dimension. I always tried to ignore the voices I hear. I thought for so long that you had only lived in my imagination when I was little, Jón.”
“I'm still pretty sure you're pranking us somehow,” Fransiska said, “but you're really good at it.” If she didn't think this was being done by some kind of scammer with shady intentions, she'd ask whoever was behind the scenes to help with special effects for the student theater.
“Why don't we go over to our place and catch up?” Jón said, clearly trying to smooth over the awkwardness.
“By all means,” Fransiska said. She wanted to see how whoever was controlling the image would make it move away from the place where the equipment was set up, presumably.
As they walked over to the small house where they rented a basement room together, the image of Jón's so-called elf friend flickered and disappeared, and Fransiska thought that was it and good riddance, but then Jón said, “Blair, where did you go? I don't see you!” and it appeared again. Portable equipment, then, huh.
At home, Blær flickered into existence long enough to tell Jón how his family had moved from the farm when Jón's parents moved to Reykjavik, and how they had been living in a mountain in the east of the country since then.
“That's fantastic-in a mountain? And good job, you've been visible all this time!” said Jón excitedly.
“Oh, I have? That's a relief,” said Blær and disappeared.
“Not anymore. ...Now I can see you again, yay. So what was it you wanted to say? Hang on, you disappeared again.”
“It's worse than Skype,” Fransiska said over her sewing machine. She didn't understand how this was being done, and it made her cranky, but at least Jón's seeming friend hadn't made any demands to give him large sums of money or anything, yet. She would keep an eye on this. In the meantime, she did have a set of costumes to make for this spring's performance at the student theater.
“You don't seem very keen on reading that book,” the alleged elf addressed Jón. “What is it?”
“Yeah, it's boring. It's for a statistics course we have. See, I'm studying Tourism Studies, which seemed as good as anything, but I don't know, man. I'm not really feeling it.”
Fransiska had been concerned about Jón's lack of motivation before. He was doing fabulously at all parts of the university experience except for the actual studying. His priorities were his own business, but she didn't think he'd be continuing with his current studies for long. Maybe next time he'd listen to her and pick what he was really interested in. And with people skills like his, it wasn't like his university diploma would be the thing that would get him a job in the end.
“I mean, I'm in the second semester,” Jón went on, “and I swear I spend half my time on stuff that is just common sense or something I learned in high school, such this statistics jazz. Or economics and how to make more money, which, ehhhh.”
“I understood some of those words,” said the elf impersonator. “What's jazz?”
“Right,” Jón said, pacing around the room. “It's not your fault, you've really been living under a rock, you poor thing. Fransiska, he doesn't know what jazz is. So sad. Wait, aren't Karl and his friends playing at Múlinn tonight? Let me check.” He pulled out his laptop and clicked around for a minute. “Yeah, they are. Let's go, Blær, I'll show you what jazz is. You wanna come along, Sisk?”
Normally, Fransiska only joined in on a few of Jón's endless social engagements when she had more free time, but this situation needed watching. She put her sewing project away and followed them out.
The jazz was nice. Fransiska could always trust Jón to know where all the good events were happening. As the sounds of synthesized pipe organ, drums, and singing tumbled over one another like waves in a warm summer river, Jón explained to this Blær fellow about semesters and how he was thinking of dropping out and studying something else instead (so Fransiska's hunch had been right!)
“Just go for that creative writing program,” Fransiska said. “Just do it. You know you'll end up there in the end anyway.”
Jón blushed a little. “You really think I'd be any good at it?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, you doofus.”
Jón was quiet for a moment and then started explaining to the other guy what he was currently studying. The elf person acted like the concept of tourism was some sort of holy revelation. Fransiska watched him like a hawk. It was high time for the conman to make a move for what he actually wanted from Jón, and she felt like this bit of weirdness might be setting it up.
“Why are you so interested in... tourism studies?” she asked.
The guy faded out of sight and reappeared. Was he doing something behind the scenes? But where?
He said, “It's just... it means everything to know that there are others like me.”
“Other elves?” she said, playing along.
“No. I knew that. I mean that there are other people who want to go to far places just to see what they'll find there, just to know what would happen. People who want to find joy in exploring the world. And that Jón is studying to make this his life's work-it sounds nothing short of wondrous. The legends didn't prepare me.”
“It does sound a little legendary when you say it like that,” Jón said.
But the stranger wasn't done. “You don't know what it was like to grow up among my people,” he said. “Living in this dark, stuffy room under the turf roof-this one single room where the whole family and the farm hands slept and ate...”
“No, I know how people lived in the olden days,” Fransiska had to point out. “I, too, have read the introduction to Hildur, Queen of the Elves. Anyone with a library card can get that.” He'd done just a tiny bit of research, and he thought he could make them believe anything, didn't he.
The guy raised his head and looked her in the eyes. “It was like being buried underground. I thought I'd never see anything else.”
He only met her eyes for a second as his gaze weirdly slid across her face and settled around her ear, but, for the first time, it made Fransiska think, right, I'm invisible to him, rather than, his equipment for the illusion isn't very good. There was no scheming in his eyes, no edge of steering her towards a particular reaction. Just earnest desperation-and hope. Fransiska was half-sure this would come back to bite her in the ass, but in that moment, she finally believed him. Whatever the deal was with the whole elf thing, whatever the natural explanation for the invisibility and stuff, the guy wasn't lying to them. He really thought he was an elf. He had really just found out about humans. And he probably wasn't planning anything bad... probably. “So what are you planning to do?” Fransiska had to ask.
“I just want to live, to do something with my life that feels right. Not to spend my whole life on the farm, where, if I was very very lucky, I might be able to study to become a doctor or a lawyer or a priest. Fine professions, I'm sure, but all three make me, personally, queasy for various reasons. I always wanted to see what else was out there in the world. And now I've found out there's so, so much more. I think I want to study tourism, just like you, Jón.”
Reluctantly, because she wasn't a monster, Fransiska started to open her mouth to point out all the practical difficulties of studying at the University of Iceland while being invisible.
But before she got that far, Jón was already saying, choked up with emotion, “Of course we'll help you follow your dream. Of course we will.”
Fransiska looked at Jón in exasperation. He saw the look on her face and leaned closer. “Look. Siska. This whole year has felt too much like losing who I am. Going to lectures just because I'm expected to, learning how to be a businessman and make people pay money for feeling a certain way. It's all so hollow. I feel like Blær finding me is a sign.”
Oh no. Nothing would stop him now.
Jón continued, “It's a way to, almost... be who I was when I knew Blær. Regain a part of me that I'm losing. I need to know I'm someone who would help my friend when nobody even believes he exists. Someone who wouldn't walk away from a sliver of this entire amazing magical world that most people don't see. You get that, right, Siska? Will you help us too? At least a little?”
She wished she could say no to Jón and his big heart and his puppy eyes, but she didn't have it in her.
“I reserve the right to say I told you so when this ends in disaster,” she said. “But deal. Let's go for it.”
CHAPTER 2
[ Chapter 1, Chapter 3, bottom of post]
“I think I'm getting the hang of being visible,” Blær said back at their rented room. “I just have to remember that I really want to be seen-and heard, I mean.”
Jón tossed his boring coursebook aside again and stared at the ceiling, falling back onto the bed. “What if... you got a really cool hat that you wanted everyone to see? A little extra motivation, you know? To make sure you mean it, the wanting to be seen. Or a new shirt or something.”
“Well, I don't have any human money,” Blær said and went out like a light bulb.
“That's okay. We can afford that much, as long as we don't go in the tourist shops. Hey, what money do you have, then? Do you guys have your own economy?”
Blær reappeared, faint like winter daylight, and showed them some Danish rigsdalers.
“Nice antiques,” Fransiska said, sewing a fake flower to a fairy wing. “Where'd you get them?”
“Well, back home.”
Siska was right, these could sell as antiques. “Yeah, see, it's all going to work out fine! You'll get your own money,” Jón said, went to pat Blær on the back, and wobbled a little as his hand went straight through. “And in the meantime, you can live with us if you like. I mean, unless you have that sorted, but what with having no money...”
“I mean, if you have your kind of money,” Fransiska pointed out, “then you can't use human shops, but theoretically you still could buy stuff from other... god, I can't say it.”
“Actually, it would be so very generous of you,” said Blær, “and I would appreciate it so much if I could live here for a while. I did find a campsite last night, but I shouldn't occupy it permanently.”
“Campsite? You mean over in Laugardalur?” Jón knew the place well. In the city camping area, anyone could rent a space and live in a tent for a few days. He'd made some great friends there.
“Nah, just a rock, I suppose you'd say. It had a little dry heather insider for sleeping, and a place for fire.”
“You slept... in a rock.”
“Uh huh. It wouldn't look big from a distance,” Blær gestured to indicate the general size and shape of a watermelon, “but it was big enough on the inside.”
Jón let this sink in. “Well, maybe you're set if you can just sleep in rocks-which, by the way, is super cool, and you've got to show me! I would love to have you here, but I don't want to tell you what to do.”
“Nah, it's going to be really uncomfortable in that campsite if the weather gets any colder.”
“All right, so welcome to our room, Blær! The lady who rents these rooms out to students won't let us keep visitors for long, and we pay per person, so I was thinking we could just sneak around and not have her see you. I mean, you don't want her to see you, right, so that should work out. She mostly keeps to herself, anyway.”
Fransiska added, “Yeah, we're not allowed to have guests stay overnight, but I think the landlady has kind of given up on keeping track of who comes and leaves, because Jón's well of friends never runneth dry.”
They gave Blær the tour of their little rented room, the bathroom, and the tiny kitchen.
“That's Fransiska's sewing equipment and her fabrics,” Jón said. “You want to leave those alone.”
Fransiska joined in, “This is a terrible pun poem Jón wrote on a page of secondary school notebook after losing a bet; I framed it so its presence will mock him forever. Though honestly, it kind of is a thing of glory, in its own very wrong way.”
“Fransiska? So's your face,” Jón said, smiling.
“Be warned that he snores,” Fransiska told Blær seriously.
“No, I do not. What you've got to be prepared for, Blær, is that our Fransiska is a creative soul. Sometimes she will enter a trance and wear a bedsheet for three days as she subsists on coffee and inspiration.”
“That was one time, Jón. And, in my defense, the washing machine was broken. Do you want me to tell him about your lucid dreaming phase? Blær, this guy here spent weeks writing down all his weird dreams and trying to communicate with dream beings. Every day, he would grope around for a his pen and notebook first thing in the morning like a fish out of water.”
“Washed ashore on the dry sand of daylight, that's me,” Jón said wistfully. “It was a fun time working on remembering my dreams, even if I never learned to use them to talk to other people.”
“That's odd. Communicating in dreams is really not that hard,” said Blær. “It's how we always talk when we don't have an opportunity to walk over to someone and talk face to face. It's as easy as your 'phone' thingy. Possibly easier.”
“You can sleep... hmmmm, we will have to move some furniture around, I think. And we'll have to take care so the landlady doesn't see the third bed, but I think we can manage...”
“Let me just bring a rock inside,” Blær said, “and I can keep my bed in the rock.”
“Like a secret room inside the room!” Jón was thrilled. “Hey, can you put a rock inside that rock again and then another rock in the second rock so you get endless rooms?”
“I don't know. I've never tried. My ancestors built our house back at home, and we've never needed... well, that is, dad wouldn't exactly be happy about experimenting. He's all about preserving the authentic lifestyle. Even if grandma does say people back then were just trying to live as comfortably as they could, and when they could build bigger houses, they did, or even had human enchanted items in them. She herself used to have this box with a little invisible orchestra inside.”
Blær went out in the garden and picked up a large smooth pebble that fit snugly into his palm. “This will just have space for a small bed and that's it, but that's all I need. I think I'll sleep with the door open-that way I won't need windows for air or a lamp or anything. I'm not much of a builder.”
“Pfft, of course you can have a lamp! Here, have mine! I can buy a new one tomorrow.” Jón gave his desk lamp to Blær. “Oh well, no more studying today. Guess I'll just have to go to sleep.”
***
Blær liked Jón and Fransiska's home.
The house was the width of two rooms as big as the common room at home. There were some fir trees on the other side of a fence and a lawn that had been much walked upon. The windows were bigger than Blær had ever seen-the window started at ground level and came up higher than his waist if he stood outside. It was as wide as his arm was long, and marvelously transparent. The window panes at home were no bigger than his palm. And part of the window could open?! What sorcery.
The space-bending part of this building was poorer. It wasn't even a little bigger on the inside. Possibly smaller, he couldn't tell. And it had no camouflage at all. The doors and windows would be visible from a mile away-no elf house looked like that from a distance. But the rest more than made up for it.
Inside, there was no smoke , but there was so much white. Candles that burned eternally until someone switched them off with human magic. There was a sort of tiny root cellar that was just in this enchanted cabinet, and another enchanted box that could make a small maelstrom inside, where Jón and Fransiska explained they put their clothes to wash themselves. Their bathroom had an enchanted thingamajig that could pour water on you of its own accord. No sauna, though, nothing's perfect. All sorts of mysterious items in the bathroom. White ribbed boards near the walls, burning with heat without smoke, without flame. Even their toilet seat was enchanted with vanishing water magic, like the thing that washes the clothes, which must be vanishing the dirt.
Fueled by his wish to talk to his new friends, Blær became pretty good at being visible over the next couple of weeks. A friend of a friend of Jón's knew a collector who bought Blær's elf money as antique coins. However, Blær still had no human documents, and he couldn't register for studies in the middle of winter anyway. He could come along with Jón to the lectures, though-nobody would see him if he didn't want to be seen, and he listened in.
One time, Jón couldn't make it to a workshop, and Blær went in his stead. Although he didn't like using magic, it wasn't hard to convince the people in the room that he was Jón, the guy they expected to see. Wearing one of Jón's shirts helped a lot. It was really nice how he could ask questions this time and make some points in the discussion. He felt he had learned more than previous times.
“So how were my lectures?” Jón looked up from a notebook with a lot of crossed-out lines of verse when Blær returned.
“Well, some of it was pretty rough. This one professor spent twenty minutes talking about how elves are a metaphor for nature. I had to nod and look thoughtful.”
“You probably could have argued that you really exist. Some of the profs here are pretty chill. They won't get up in your personal beliefs as long as you get the coursework done.”
“But overall I learned a lot, I think. You know, if you have to be elsewhere again, I could cover for you anytime. I took notes, here you go. And I only disappeared once. I think it's cool, though. The prof thought I had crawled under my desk to look for my pen.”
“Sure, I'm not gonna say no,” Jón said. “I'm pretty sure I'm going to drop out anyway after this semester-maybe give that creative writing thing a shot instead --, but it will look bad if I don't finish the semester okay, and that might affect my parents' willingness to give me sweet money. So I'm down with having you be a me-puppet, as long as it's not too weird for you.”
“Well, the whole impersonation thing is... it's one of those things that dad always said were not part of our ancient ways. It's more of a foreign fashion. So I think about how much he'd hate it, and I feel good. It's spooky, of course, the whole talking to an empty classroom echoing with disembodied voices thing, but I'm used to it by now, it's not like that's a school thing specifically.”
The semester went on with plenty of minor incidents but no major ones. One time, Jón's professor in the “Landscape, Views of Nature, and Land Use” course gave Blær back his paper saying he probably submitted the wrong assignment. This one looked like it was for creative writing or maybe folkloristics, and the respective professor would no doubt be missing it. It was charmingly written and showed good knowledge of folklore, though. He was willing for Blær to go home and fetch the right assignment, which Jón wrote in four coffee-infused hours.
They got a fellow student Annika-Jón's friend from the student council-to lend them her notes from the previous semester. Jón said his own notes were useless and he had this friend, an invisible elf friend to be perfectly honest, who was struggling. Annika didn't believe in elves, but did believe in helping people out. After the initial surprise, she didn't even mention that there was anything strange about the request and played along with good humor. She even agreed to say she wished elves could see her, when Jón and Blær went to give the notes back.
“So did your elf friend get what he needed from the notes?” she asked, smiling softly, her feathery disheveled hair meeting with a tendrily wool scarf so her face looked like it was in a nest.
“Oh, yes, sure,” Jón said. “Thank you so much.”
“No problem, good for you,” Annika said. “I read somewhere how magical thinking is psychologically healthy. Having an open mind, being flexible, you know-it can help people overcome obstacles and have better relationships. Or at least that's what this therapist lady wrote.”
So studying started to be manageable. But all too often, Blær felt like he was being watched. He shrugged the feeling off most of the time-really, it was only to be expected in these whispering cliffs full of so many people who didn't particularly want to be seen-but he started asking Jón and Fransiska to keep the door of their room locked when they weren't in a position to watch it.
Then, as spring went on, he started having this recurring dream, like someone was knocking at the door. He woke up out of spite every time, but he knew what it meant.
His family had come looking for him.
CHAPTER 3
[ Chapter 1, Chapter 2, bottom of post]
“Okay, guys, it's like this. My grandma came by a couple of days ago, and she made me promise I'd give you a gift. And I see she has now sent the gift.” Blær gestured at the sheep through the window. It was tethered in the garden, grazing on the sad lawn. “She didn't take no for an answer.”
Blær's grandma had always been his favorite relative, not least because she had little respect for his dad and didn't hesitate to say so. Seeing her again had been like a breath of fresh, fragrant mountain air-he hadn't allowed himself to dwell on missing anything from home, but it had felt like a part of him could finally stop suffocating. She hadn't asked him to come back home-though she had talked at length about the value of learning to get along with people even if you didn't agree with them on everything-but she had been outraged at this lack of manners towards the humans who had helped him.
“The fuck?” Fransiska said. “I guess that's sweet of her, but what are we supposed to do with it? Where are we supposed to keep it? We aren't even allowed to keep a cat.”
“I tried to tell her, but I don't think she understands our living situation.” Blær sighed and stood up straighter. “Sorry, she's going to ask me if I said it right.” Coughed a little. “Thank you, humans, for the kindness you have shown me this past winter. Accept this sheep as a token of my gratitude.”
“And I'm guessing we can absolutely not give it back?”
Blær considered. “She'd be sad. And it would be very rude too.”
The sheep was ambling vaguely towards one of their landlady's flower beds. Jón winced. “Okay,” he said, “we can figure this out, no worries. I'm sure I know someone who could use a sheep...” He snapped his fingers. “That's it! Annika from the student council-you've met her, Blær, she let you borrow her notes-her family farms sheep.”
Blær's grandma couldn't fault him for transferring the gift to another human who had helped him, part of the same organization Jón belonged to... that would work.
“They're a ways up in the countryside, though,” Jón said. “Now, how best to get it to them...”
“How did your grandma get it here in the first place?” Fransiska asked, narrowing her eyes at Blær.
“I have no idea.” His grandma had no reservations about using human technology when she could. She'd probably just rented a van.
Annika was amenable-she found it delightfully quirky that Jón thought his elf friend had given him a sheep. But her car wouldn't fit an animal.
They took a trip past the Bónus on the way back and met Marysia smoking out back again. She said thoughtfully that one could probably borrow one of the delivery vans of the supermarket over a weekend with no fuss.
And so it happened that they set out that Saturday. Marysia had the day off from Bónus, and she had arranged to skip the day at her second job as a dance instructor. As she said, this she had to see.
Marysia and Jón were in the van, with the sheep set up in the back with plenty of hay and water-they had bought some hay from a pet shop, but because that was meant for rabbits, Jón had fretted until he took a trip to the outskirts of town to yet another acquaintance who kept sheep, and took a little bag of hay.
Annika drove in front with her car, and Fransiska and Blær were along for the ride with her.
“Come on, Blær, show yourself to her,” Fransiska said. “You're making us all look like idiots.”
“Oh, not at all,” said Annika. “I think it's charming. Preserving our national traditions is a good thing, and of course everyone should be free to believe what they like.” She beamed.
“I'm begging you, Blær,” Fransiska said.
“I don't think I should, though,” Blær said. “She might crash the cart-car-if I spooked her right now.”
“You're enjoying yourself way too much.”
“It's nice that you and Jón share this special friend,” Annika said, smiling into her scarf.
***
“I thought about it,” Marysia said, “the whole deal about the invisible person that we met. And, really, it makes sense.”
“It does?” Jón went.
Marysia nodded. “One of my colleagues mentioned something about elves, so I looked it up, and apparently they're kind of like fallen angels. In between fallen angels and your basic unfallen ones. They're not always evil, so being friends with them isn't a bad thing.”
“I think Blær is just a guy, though.”
“Well, that's the other theory. That they're children of Adam and Eve, like us, but God made them invisible. Which works as well, you know. That's really all we need to know.”
***
Blær winced as the car took all the same turns it would take to go back to his home-former home.
The road wound lazily through a grand if shallow mountain valley. Shadows of clouds and snatches of snow adorned the mountains. The sides of the hills and the ground closest to the road was green. From the road, the ground looked flat and empty, but Blær knew that if you got close you could see small things growing-moss, grass, some flowers even-and rivulets of water running through. And if the car wasn't making noise, he would hear the ocean from here.
Could he hide forever? Maybe Grandma was right-he would have to talk it out with his parents sooner or later. Make a clear cut.
The car turned and went past a terribly familiar group of hills.
***
Annika's parents didn't receive their gift quite as anticipated.
“Wait, that's our sheep!”
“Yeah, all yours, it's a gift.”
“No, it was already ours. The tag is still in its ear, see.”
Jón and Fransiska exchanged a worried glance. “Oh, damn, we didn't know. It was given to us in Reykjavik, we don't know where the people got it.”
They turned to Blær. “Where did you...?”
“I don't know, my grandma gave it to me. I assumed it was one of ours.”
“This is the sheep that died last spring. The exact same one. See, we'd been mowing near this hillock on the edge of our property that always has this creepy feeling like we're being watched.”
Blær knew exactly what hillock they were talking about. He turned and wandered towards it. He had come all this way, and he had done so many incredible things this spring, he could manage to drop by and say hi to his family.
The human's voice faded gradually behind Blær. “And we had some dreams even, telling us not to go near it and not to touch the grass or anything. But we mow there same as anywhere, and now I'm wondering if there are really people living in there. Because one hears about cases when the hidden people take cattle-because they feel like it or as punishment. One hears a sheep a year just walks up to a certain rock and falls dead. But it turns out it merely left its mortal body and went on to be an elf sheep.”
The voice grew fainter as he walked away. He heard snatches. “Well, it's a bit decent of them to give it back... we're sure not going to be mowing right outside their...”
Blær stood before his former home. There were new wildflowers on the roof. The house itself looked even smaller than he remembered, now he was used to human buildings. Some socks were drying on pronged branches at the door.
His mom opened the door. “Kleinur are on the fire, come in,” she said. “Had a feeling today might be the day.”
The conversation over pastries and tea was like he had imagined-the awkwardness, the stale air, dad's distrust of most things Blær told him about new-fangled city life. But it wasn't all bad-one of the new lambs had one black ear, and he found himself having a conversation about jazz with his grandma and feeling surprisingly at ease. For all that some parts of him didn't fit here, maybe some parts fit here better than anywhere.
Blær's grandma insisted the family had to thank the folks who had helped Blær out, so he went out and persuaded everyone to just touch the stone and imagine a door for a moment and see what would happen. In between Marysia and Annika's exclamations of surprise, Dad did grumble that he'd lost a worker when Blær wandered off and he could, you know, curse one of them to be unable to leave the house except one night a year, like the olden times, because someone had to look after the farm. But Blær was almost positive he was kidding. And when Marysia mastered the vikivaki dance in ten minutes and started teaching Blær's mom salsa, while Jón was explaining the concept of an open-air history museum to Blær's captivated dad, Blær felt more at peace than he had the whole semester. He would find a way to keep studying in the fall, in his own name now that he was better at being visible. Maybe he would travel the wide world as a tour guide, or maybe, with the help of Jón, he would finally make dad see reason and they'd preserve his precious authentic farmhouse as an exhibition and live in a normal house instead.
Things would work out somehow. Now that he knew even humans were real, nothing was impossible.
THE END
That was the end of the story. In my mad scramble to get the thing readable in time, I cut 2 K words of Blær wandering around Reykjavik before he met Jón. This had to be done because it was NOT functional as an opening chapter, but it meant reducing the coolest and most fun part of the prompt (an elf who does not believe in humans!) to a couple of lines of indirect references. So I felt bad about it, and I posted the draft of the cut chapter as a bonus feature on AO3. If you expected to see more about an elf who doesn't believe in humans, it might be entertaining. It hasn't really been edited, but should be mostly intelligible if you've read the story first.
Further reading on Icelandic elves (hidden people) in case someone's curious, because I researched a ton for this and thus accumulated a bunch of hyperlinks, and we all know how I feel about hyperlinks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzGmwlXirC4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulduf%C3%B3lk
https://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2014/08/15/hidden-people-theyre-just-like-us-kind-of/
http://www.highonadventure.com/hoa17nov/vicki/hidden-people.htm
https://cultureunplugged.com/play/8224/Hulduf--lk-102
I always appreciate feedback, including about things that aren't working so well.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
This entry was originally posted at https://thenewbuzwuzz.dreamwidth.org/201126.html.
Fandom: Original Work, Norse Religion & Lore
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, might need a blasphemy warning or something? Characters crack a couple of jokes about believing or not believing in Jesus.
Relationships: Christian who doesn't believe in elves & Icelander who does & Elf who doesn't believe in humans
Additional Tags: Iceland, Mythology - Freeform, Urban Fantasy, no Norse gods - sorry, Male-Female Friendship, Invisibility, Clairvoyance, Sheep, and other relatable college experiences
This is what I wrote for that original works exchange on AO3 based on a fabulous prompt by Rosemarycat5. It was edited in a hurry, and obviously I've much to learn about writing, but the story seemed to turn out all right in the end. People have described it as "sweet" and "a delight" and even "good". :) Might be fun if folklore floats your boat.
I'm going to put it here under the cut as well, all 7 K words of it in one post if Dreamwidth lets me, so that I can practice making internal links.
I owe more than ever to the patient and ingenious last-minute help of
thewiggins.
Pronunciation hints for the tougher character names if you'd like:
Blær
Jón
Sometimes a Family Is Two Roommates and Their Invisible Elf Friend Who Lives in a Rock
CHAPTER 1
[ Chapter 2, Chapter 3, bottom of post]
“Do you believe in elves?”
“No. Do you?” This was the second time in a week that Fransiska had heard this question from some exchange student. Please. She got that they were basically tourists and tourists like exaggerated stories, but did people have to assume she was naive? Yeah, we never grew up and we believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy too. We are, in fact, unable to tell fact from fiction. It's very cute of us. Make sure to buy a T-shirt when you go to elf practice. Or whatever Magnús Skarphéðinsson calls his tourist trap.
The exchange student stammered.
Fransiska's colleague laughed, walking to the counter with a reheated tortilla pizza. “Are you befuddling the customers again?” he asked in Icelandic.
Usually, the student bar of the University of Iceland was pretty low on the kitchiness. Most of the tourists tended to end up in the fancy downtown restaurants where they could get a whole sheep's head, so traditional, so Icelandic. And Fransiska served the students and locals who just wanted a nice burger.
Fransiska's mood brightened as her best friend Jón walked in, bringing a whiff of rain and wind to dilute the beer-and-nachos aroma of the bar. He looked more lost in his own world than usual. Light glinted off the droplets of rainwater on his glasses before he took them off to wipe them and greeted everyone on his way to Fransiska.
Fransiska eyed him in between serving customers. Jón hadn't just dropped by because he was bored, she could see it. He was fairly vibrating with some unspoken purpose. Fransiska wondered what idea had captured his beautiful imagination this time.
“Elves,” he blurted out. Switched to English out of courtesy to the foreigners. “Hi, Siska. The hidden people. Remind me what your opinion on them was, again?”
This had better be an overture to telling the exchange students tall tales about how Icelanders dance with the elves when they're done wrestling polar bears in their igloos. But, somehow, Fransiska doubted it was gonna be that.
“You know what I think about them. They're a lovely story. Much like the Mothman and Jesus.”
“Fransiska, please. Of the two of us, who just had some quality time with Jesus over the Christmas break?”
Was Jón still bitter that she hadn't made it to his pagan Yule party? “Fine, I went to church to hang out with my family,” she told him. “There's a difference.”
“Okay, sure. Let's leave all that alone. Do you remember Blær?”
Fransiska had to think. “Someone we knew in kindergarten?”
“Kind of.”
And then the other shoe dropped. The shy look on Jón's face, the question about the hidden people... “You're talking about your imaginary friend Blær? Blær who lived in a rock?”
She smiled despite herself. Jón had always had an active imagination. And a passion about the things he believed in, so compelling that Fransiska herself somehow remembered a little boy in old-fashioned clothing coming out of the rock on Jón's parents' farm, as if she had seen him with her own eyes. An impossible little boy, right there in her childhood memories by the grace of Jón's larger-than-life, technicolor dreams.
“Yes!” Jón smiled, so happy that Fransiska got him. She always had. He continued, “Can you imagine? I think I met Blær today.”
Cripes. This was going to be like that time Jón spent a fortune on fortune telling, just to have someone cold read him and abuse the Barnum effect and spew generalities at him. Fransiska loved her roomie, she did, but sometimes he believed things too readily.
“How... how about we continue this conversation in private,” she suggested.
Her shift was almost over anyway. In the drizzling rain, they walked through the center of Reykjavik.
She didn't waste time on reminding Jón that he had made Blær up personally. That it had been just a cute childhood game. He had to know, right? He'd been there.
Oh god, was that it? Was Jón trying to reconnect with his inner child or something?
“So. Tell me what brought that on, about Blær. You haven't mentioned him in years.”
“Well, I was dumpster diving behind the Bónus on Laugavegur...”
Fransiska nodded. They regularly got free food. With the prices jacked up to tourist levels and supermarkets throwing out perfectly good fruit just because it was a tad overripe, a little freeganism never hurt anyone.
“Marysia saw me-the sales clerk, you remember-but that's fine, she's chill. She agrees that wasting good food is stupid and probably a sin in some way. So, as I was chatting with Marysia, who was out having a smoke... the lid of the dumpster just lifted on its own-we thought wind? Or birds. But then, after a little bit, some food started to just float out of the dumpster. Look, I don't mind someone getting to the dumpster before me-even though those raspberries looked good and did they have to get all of them-but we didn't see anyone there! I walked all around the dumpster-nothing.”
“Somebody was pranking you. Must have tied some wires to the lid or something. There are ways.”
“That's what Marysia said, but then we checked and there was nothing. So then she said, just in case, and she was making the sign of the cross, saying out loud how she didn't want any trouble with any spirits. I was having a good time, I said, maybe it's elves. Half-joking, as you do. Marysia went on about how they should ignore her, whatever they were. Then I said something like, no way, if elves were dumpster diving here, I would want to say hi and shake their hand for boycotting consumerism. And I wondered if we'd be invisible to elves just like they're invisible to us, and I said, that would suck. Because I would want the dumpster elves to see me. Then this bag full of food dropped to the ground from where it'd been hovering. Very spooky.” He grinned. “You should have been there. And after a moment, I saw Blær clearly. He'd grown, obviously, but I remember him well. And he said it was him.”
“Oh, your hallucination said it was your imaginary friend. So it must be true.”
They had been heading in the general direction of home, but Jón turned towards the Bónus supermarket instead and gestured to Fransiska to follow. “You really have to see him yourself,” he said.
They walked up to the dumpsters. There was nobody there, but something sent a shiver down Fransiska's back. Probably the weather. Her shoes were starting to get soaked through.
“Blær?” Jón called out. “He's got to be around here somewhere, hold on.” He raised his voice. “Come out, I want you to meet someone!”
As Fransiska was looking around, she thought she caught a glimpse of someone out of the corner of her eye, but there was nobody there when she looked.
There continued to be nobody there for a couple of seconds. Then, the air flickered, and a guy their age seemed to appear-Fransiska wasn't sure how this image was being projected. The image had almost shoulder-length dark hair that shimmered in the light, and he was dressed up in historical costume, like he was cosplaying a 19th-century peasant.
“Do you see me now?” the projection seemed to speak. Jón went to hug him and stumbled right through.
“We see something, all right,” Fransiska said and walked around the image, hoping to interrupt the beam of light so she could see where the projection came from. No such luck. She swished her foot through the illusory sheepskin shoes in case the whole thing was being projected from ground level. The image didn't disappear. Hmm.
“I can hear your footsteps,” the apparition said, smiling happily. “And I can still see you, Jón, but I don't see your friend. To think, I always thought it was superstition when my family talked about the hidden people-the “humans” who live in another dimension. I always tried to ignore the voices I hear. I thought for so long that you had only lived in my imagination when I was little, Jón.”
“I'm still pretty sure you're pranking us somehow,” Fransiska said, “but you're really good at it.” If she didn't think this was being done by some kind of scammer with shady intentions, she'd ask whoever was behind the scenes to help with special effects for the student theater.
“Why don't we go over to our place and catch up?” Jón said, clearly trying to smooth over the awkwardness.
“By all means,” Fransiska said. She wanted to see how whoever was controlling the image would make it move away from the place where the equipment was set up, presumably.
As they walked over to the small house where they rented a basement room together, the image of Jón's so-called elf friend flickered and disappeared, and Fransiska thought that was it and good riddance, but then Jón said, “Blair, where did you go? I don't see you!” and it appeared again. Portable equipment, then, huh.
At home, Blær flickered into existence long enough to tell Jón how his family had moved from the farm when Jón's parents moved to Reykjavik, and how they had been living in a mountain in the east of the country since then.
“That's fantastic-in a mountain? And good job, you've been visible all this time!” said Jón excitedly.
“Oh, I have? That's a relief,” said Blær and disappeared.
“Not anymore. ...Now I can see you again, yay. So what was it you wanted to say? Hang on, you disappeared again.”
“It's worse than Skype,” Fransiska said over her sewing machine. She didn't understand how this was being done, and it made her cranky, but at least Jón's seeming friend hadn't made any demands to give him large sums of money or anything, yet. She would keep an eye on this. In the meantime, she did have a set of costumes to make for this spring's performance at the student theater.
“You don't seem very keen on reading that book,” the alleged elf addressed Jón. “What is it?”
“Yeah, it's boring. It's for a statistics course we have. See, I'm studying Tourism Studies, which seemed as good as anything, but I don't know, man. I'm not really feeling it.”
Fransiska had been concerned about Jón's lack of motivation before. He was doing fabulously at all parts of the university experience except for the actual studying. His priorities were his own business, but she didn't think he'd be continuing with his current studies for long. Maybe next time he'd listen to her and pick what he was really interested in. And with people skills like his, it wasn't like his university diploma would be the thing that would get him a job in the end.
“I mean, I'm in the second semester,” Jón went on, “and I swear I spend half my time on stuff that is just common sense or something I learned in high school, such this statistics jazz. Or economics and how to make more money, which, ehhhh.”
“I understood some of those words,” said the elf impersonator. “What's jazz?”
“Right,” Jón said, pacing around the room. “It's not your fault, you've really been living under a rock, you poor thing. Fransiska, he doesn't know what jazz is. So sad. Wait, aren't Karl and his friends playing at Múlinn tonight? Let me check.” He pulled out his laptop and clicked around for a minute. “Yeah, they are. Let's go, Blær, I'll show you what jazz is. You wanna come along, Sisk?”
Normally, Fransiska only joined in on a few of Jón's endless social engagements when she had more free time, but this situation needed watching. She put her sewing project away and followed them out.
The jazz was nice. Fransiska could always trust Jón to know where all the good events were happening. As the sounds of synthesized pipe organ, drums, and singing tumbled over one another like waves in a warm summer river, Jón explained to this Blær fellow about semesters and how he was thinking of dropping out and studying something else instead (so Fransiska's hunch had been right!)
“Just go for that creative writing program,” Fransiska said. “Just do it. You know you'll end up there in the end anyway.”
Jón blushed a little. “You really think I'd be any good at it?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, you doofus.”
Jón was quiet for a moment and then started explaining to the other guy what he was currently studying. The elf person acted like the concept of tourism was some sort of holy revelation. Fransiska watched him like a hawk. It was high time for the conman to make a move for what he actually wanted from Jón, and she felt like this bit of weirdness might be setting it up.
“Why are you so interested in... tourism studies?” she asked.
The guy faded out of sight and reappeared. Was he doing something behind the scenes? But where?
He said, “It's just... it means everything to know that there are others like me.”
“Other elves?” she said, playing along.
“No. I knew that. I mean that there are other people who want to go to far places just to see what they'll find there, just to know what would happen. People who want to find joy in exploring the world. And that Jón is studying to make this his life's work-it sounds nothing short of wondrous. The legends didn't prepare me.”
“It does sound a little legendary when you say it like that,” Jón said.
But the stranger wasn't done. “You don't know what it was like to grow up among my people,” he said. “Living in this dark, stuffy room under the turf roof-this one single room where the whole family and the farm hands slept and ate...”
“No, I know how people lived in the olden days,” Fransiska had to point out. “I, too, have read the introduction to Hildur, Queen of the Elves. Anyone with a library card can get that.” He'd done just a tiny bit of research, and he thought he could make them believe anything, didn't he.
The guy raised his head and looked her in the eyes. “It was like being buried underground. I thought I'd never see anything else.”
He only met her eyes for a second as his gaze weirdly slid across her face and settled around her ear, but, for the first time, it made Fransiska think, right, I'm invisible to him, rather than, his equipment for the illusion isn't very good. There was no scheming in his eyes, no edge of steering her towards a particular reaction. Just earnest desperation-and hope. Fransiska was half-sure this would come back to bite her in the ass, but in that moment, she finally believed him. Whatever the deal was with the whole elf thing, whatever the natural explanation for the invisibility and stuff, the guy wasn't lying to them. He really thought he was an elf. He had really just found out about humans. And he probably wasn't planning anything bad... probably. “So what are you planning to do?” Fransiska had to ask.
“I just want to live, to do something with my life that feels right. Not to spend my whole life on the farm, where, if I was very very lucky, I might be able to study to become a doctor or a lawyer or a priest. Fine professions, I'm sure, but all three make me, personally, queasy for various reasons. I always wanted to see what else was out there in the world. And now I've found out there's so, so much more. I think I want to study tourism, just like you, Jón.”
Reluctantly, because she wasn't a monster, Fransiska started to open her mouth to point out all the practical difficulties of studying at the University of Iceland while being invisible.
But before she got that far, Jón was already saying, choked up with emotion, “Of course we'll help you follow your dream. Of course we will.”
Fransiska looked at Jón in exasperation. He saw the look on her face and leaned closer. “Look. Siska. This whole year has felt too much like losing who I am. Going to lectures just because I'm expected to, learning how to be a businessman and make people pay money for feeling a certain way. It's all so hollow. I feel like Blær finding me is a sign.”
Oh no. Nothing would stop him now.
Jón continued, “It's a way to, almost... be who I was when I knew Blær. Regain a part of me that I'm losing. I need to know I'm someone who would help my friend when nobody even believes he exists. Someone who wouldn't walk away from a sliver of this entire amazing magical world that most people don't see. You get that, right, Siska? Will you help us too? At least a little?”
She wished she could say no to Jón and his big heart and his puppy eyes, but she didn't have it in her.
“I reserve the right to say I told you so when this ends in disaster,” she said. “But deal. Let's go for it.”
CHAPTER 2
[ Chapter 1, Chapter 3, bottom of post]
“I think I'm getting the hang of being visible,” Blær said back at their rented room. “I just have to remember that I really want to be seen-and heard, I mean.”
Jón tossed his boring coursebook aside again and stared at the ceiling, falling back onto the bed. “What if... you got a really cool hat that you wanted everyone to see? A little extra motivation, you know? To make sure you mean it, the wanting to be seen. Or a new shirt or something.”
“Well, I don't have any human money,” Blær said and went out like a light bulb.
“That's okay. We can afford that much, as long as we don't go in the tourist shops. Hey, what money do you have, then? Do you guys have your own economy?”
Blær reappeared, faint like winter daylight, and showed them some Danish rigsdalers.
“Nice antiques,” Fransiska said, sewing a fake flower to a fairy wing. “Where'd you get them?”
“Well, back home.”
Siska was right, these could sell as antiques. “Yeah, see, it's all going to work out fine! You'll get your own money,” Jón said, went to pat Blær on the back, and wobbled a little as his hand went straight through. “And in the meantime, you can live with us if you like. I mean, unless you have that sorted, but what with having no money...”
“I mean, if you have your kind of money,” Fransiska pointed out, “then you can't use human shops, but theoretically you still could buy stuff from other... god, I can't say it.”
“Actually, it would be so very generous of you,” said Blær, “and I would appreciate it so much if I could live here for a while. I did find a campsite last night, but I shouldn't occupy it permanently.”
“Campsite? You mean over in Laugardalur?” Jón knew the place well. In the city camping area, anyone could rent a space and live in a tent for a few days. He'd made some great friends there.
“Nah, just a rock, I suppose you'd say. It had a little dry heather insider for sleeping, and a place for fire.”
“You slept... in a rock.”
“Uh huh. It wouldn't look big from a distance,” Blær gestured to indicate the general size and shape of a watermelon, “but it was big enough on the inside.”
Jón let this sink in. “Well, maybe you're set if you can just sleep in rocks-which, by the way, is super cool, and you've got to show me! I would love to have you here, but I don't want to tell you what to do.”
“Nah, it's going to be really uncomfortable in that campsite if the weather gets any colder.”
“All right, so welcome to our room, Blær! The lady who rents these rooms out to students won't let us keep visitors for long, and we pay per person, so I was thinking we could just sneak around and not have her see you. I mean, you don't want her to see you, right, so that should work out. She mostly keeps to herself, anyway.”
Fransiska added, “Yeah, we're not allowed to have guests stay overnight, but I think the landlady has kind of given up on keeping track of who comes and leaves, because Jón's well of friends never runneth dry.”
They gave Blær the tour of their little rented room, the bathroom, and the tiny kitchen.
“That's Fransiska's sewing equipment and her fabrics,” Jón said. “You want to leave those alone.”
Fransiska joined in, “This is a terrible pun poem Jón wrote on a page of secondary school notebook after losing a bet; I framed it so its presence will mock him forever. Though honestly, it kind of is a thing of glory, in its own very wrong way.”
“Fransiska? So's your face,” Jón said, smiling.
“Be warned that he snores,” Fransiska told Blær seriously.
“No, I do not. What you've got to be prepared for, Blær, is that our Fransiska is a creative soul. Sometimes she will enter a trance and wear a bedsheet for three days as she subsists on coffee and inspiration.”
“That was one time, Jón. And, in my defense, the washing machine was broken. Do you want me to tell him about your lucid dreaming phase? Blær, this guy here spent weeks writing down all his weird dreams and trying to communicate with dream beings. Every day, he would grope around for a his pen and notebook first thing in the morning like a fish out of water.”
“Washed ashore on the dry sand of daylight, that's me,” Jón said wistfully. “It was a fun time working on remembering my dreams, even if I never learned to use them to talk to other people.”
“That's odd. Communicating in dreams is really not that hard,” said Blær. “It's how we always talk when we don't have an opportunity to walk over to someone and talk face to face. It's as easy as your 'phone' thingy. Possibly easier.”
“You can sleep... hmmmm, we will have to move some furniture around, I think. And we'll have to take care so the landlady doesn't see the third bed, but I think we can manage...”
“Let me just bring a rock inside,” Blær said, “and I can keep my bed in the rock.”
“Like a secret room inside the room!” Jón was thrilled. “Hey, can you put a rock inside that rock again and then another rock in the second rock so you get endless rooms?”
“I don't know. I've never tried. My ancestors built our house back at home, and we've never needed... well, that is, dad wouldn't exactly be happy about experimenting. He's all about preserving the authentic lifestyle. Even if grandma does say people back then were just trying to live as comfortably as they could, and when they could build bigger houses, they did, or even had human enchanted items in them. She herself used to have this box with a little invisible orchestra inside.”
Blær went out in the garden and picked up a large smooth pebble that fit snugly into his palm. “This will just have space for a small bed and that's it, but that's all I need. I think I'll sleep with the door open-that way I won't need windows for air or a lamp or anything. I'm not much of a builder.”
“Pfft, of course you can have a lamp! Here, have mine! I can buy a new one tomorrow.” Jón gave his desk lamp to Blær. “Oh well, no more studying today. Guess I'll just have to go to sleep.”
***
Blær liked Jón and Fransiska's home.
The house was the width of two rooms as big as the common room at home. There were some fir trees on the other side of a fence and a lawn that had been much walked upon. The windows were bigger than Blær had ever seen-the window started at ground level and came up higher than his waist if he stood outside. It was as wide as his arm was long, and marvelously transparent. The window panes at home were no bigger than his palm. And part of the window could open?! What sorcery.
The space-bending part of this building was poorer. It wasn't even a little bigger on the inside. Possibly smaller, he couldn't tell. And it had no camouflage at all. The doors and windows would be visible from a mile away-no elf house looked like that from a distance. But the rest more than made up for it.
Inside, there was no smoke , but there was so much white. Candles that burned eternally until someone switched them off with human magic. There was a sort of tiny root cellar that was just in this enchanted cabinet, and another enchanted box that could make a small maelstrom inside, where Jón and Fransiska explained they put their clothes to wash themselves. Their bathroom had an enchanted thingamajig that could pour water on you of its own accord. No sauna, though, nothing's perfect. All sorts of mysterious items in the bathroom. White ribbed boards near the walls, burning with heat without smoke, without flame. Even their toilet seat was enchanted with vanishing water magic, like the thing that washes the clothes, which must be vanishing the dirt.
Fueled by his wish to talk to his new friends, Blær became pretty good at being visible over the next couple of weeks. A friend of a friend of Jón's knew a collector who bought Blær's elf money as antique coins. However, Blær still had no human documents, and he couldn't register for studies in the middle of winter anyway. He could come along with Jón to the lectures, though-nobody would see him if he didn't want to be seen, and he listened in.
One time, Jón couldn't make it to a workshop, and Blær went in his stead. Although he didn't like using magic, it wasn't hard to convince the people in the room that he was Jón, the guy they expected to see. Wearing one of Jón's shirts helped a lot. It was really nice how he could ask questions this time and make some points in the discussion. He felt he had learned more than previous times.
“So how were my lectures?” Jón looked up from a notebook with a lot of crossed-out lines of verse when Blær returned.
“Well, some of it was pretty rough. This one professor spent twenty minutes talking about how elves are a metaphor for nature. I had to nod and look thoughtful.”
“You probably could have argued that you really exist. Some of the profs here are pretty chill. They won't get up in your personal beliefs as long as you get the coursework done.”
“But overall I learned a lot, I think. You know, if you have to be elsewhere again, I could cover for you anytime. I took notes, here you go. And I only disappeared once. I think it's cool, though. The prof thought I had crawled under my desk to look for my pen.”
“Sure, I'm not gonna say no,” Jón said. “I'm pretty sure I'm going to drop out anyway after this semester-maybe give that creative writing thing a shot instead --, but it will look bad if I don't finish the semester okay, and that might affect my parents' willingness to give me sweet money. So I'm down with having you be a me-puppet, as long as it's not too weird for you.”
“Well, the whole impersonation thing is... it's one of those things that dad always said were not part of our ancient ways. It's more of a foreign fashion. So I think about how much he'd hate it, and I feel good. It's spooky, of course, the whole talking to an empty classroom echoing with disembodied voices thing, but I'm used to it by now, it's not like that's a school thing specifically.”
The semester went on with plenty of minor incidents but no major ones. One time, Jón's professor in the “Landscape, Views of Nature, and Land Use” course gave Blær back his paper saying he probably submitted the wrong assignment. This one looked like it was for creative writing or maybe folkloristics, and the respective professor would no doubt be missing it. It was charmingly written and showed good knowledge of folklore, though. He was willing for Blær to go home and fetch the right assignment, which Jón wrote in four coffee-infused hours.
They got a fellow student Annika-Jón's friend from the student council-to lend them her notes from the previous semester. Jón said his own notes were useless and he had this friend, an invisible elf friend to be perfectly honest, who was struggling. Annika didn't believe in elves, but did believe in helping people out. After the initial surprise, she didn't even mention that there was anything strange about the request and played along with good humor. She even agreed to say she wished elves could see her, when Jón and Blær went to give the notes back.
“So did your elf friend get what he needed from the notes?” she asked, smiling softly, her feathery disheveled hair meeting with a tendrily wool scarf so her face looked like it was in a nest.
“Oh, yes, sure,” Jón said. “Thank you so much.”
“No problem, good for you,” Annika said. “I read somewhere how magical thinking is psychologically healthy. Having an open mind, being flexible, you know-it can help people overcome obstacles and have better relationships. Or at least that's what this therapist lady wrote.”
So studying started to be manageable. But all too often, Blær felt like he was being watched. He shrugged the feeling off most of the time-really, it was only to be expected in these whispering cliffs full of so many people who didn't particularly want to be seen-but he started asking Jón and Fransiska to keep the door of their room locked when they weren't in a position to watch it.
Then, as spring went on, he started having this recurring dream, like someone was knocking at the door. He woke up out of spite every time, but he knew what it meant.
His family had come looking for him.
CHAPTER 3
[ Chapter 1, Chapter 2, bottom of post]
“Okay, guys, it's like this. My grandma came by a couple of days ago, and she made me promise I'd give you a gift. And I see she has now sent the gift.” Blær gestured at the sheep through the window. It was tethered in the garden, grazing on the sad lawn. “She didn't take no for an answer.”
Blær's grandma had always been his favorite relative, not least because she had little respect for his dad and didn't hesitate to say so. Seeing her again had been like a breath of fresh, fragrant mountain air-he hadn't allowed himself to dwell on missing anything from home, but it had felt like a part of him could finally stop suffocating. She hadn't asked him to come back home-though she had talked at length about the value of learning to get along with people even if you didn't agree with them on everything-but she had been outraged at this lack of manners towards the humans who had helped him.
“The fuck?” Fransiska said. “I guess that's sweet of her, but what are we supposed to do with it? Where are we supposed to keep it? We aren't even allowed to keep a cat.”
“I tried to tell her, but I don't think she understands our living situation.” Blær sighed and stood up straighter. “Sorry, she's going to ask me if I said it right.” Coughed a little. “Thank you, humans, for the kindness you have shown me this past winter. Accept this sheep as a token of my gratitude.”
“And I'm guessing we can absolutely not give it back?”
Blær considered. “She'd be sad. And it would be very rude too.”
The sheep was ambling vaguely towards one of their landlady's flower beds. Jón winced. “Okay,” he said, “we can figure this out, no worries. I'm sure I know someone who could use a sheep...” He snapped his fingers. “That's it! Annika from the student council-you've met her, Blær, she let you borrow her notes-her family farms sheep.”
Blær's grandma couldn't fault him for transferring the gift to another human who had helped him, part of the same organization Jón belonged to... that would work.
“They're a ways up in the countryside, though,” Jón said. “Now, how best to get it to them...”
“How did your grandma get it here in the first place?” Fransiska asked, narrowing her eyes at Blær.
“I have no idea.” His grandma had no reservations about using human technology when she could. She'd probably just rented a van.
Annika was amenable-she found it delightfully quirky that Jón thought his elf friend had given him a sheep. But her car wouldn't fit an animal.
They took a trip past the Bónus on the way back and met Marysia smoking out back again. She said thoughtfully that one could probably borrow one of the delivery vans of the supermarket over a weekend with no fuss.
And so it happened that they set out that Saturday. Marysia had the day off from Bónus, and she had arranged to skip the day at her second job as a dance instructor. As she said, this she had to see.
Marysia and Jón were in the van, with the sheep set up in the back with plenty of hay and water-they had bought some hay from a pet shop, but because that was meant for rabbits, Jón had fretted until he took a trip to the outskirts of town to yet another acquaintance who kept sheep, and took a little bag of hay.
Annika drove in front with her car, and Fransiska and Blær were along for the ride with her.
“Come on, Blær, show yourself to her,” Fransiska said. “You're making us all look like idiots.”
“Oh, not at all,” said Annika. “I think it's charming. Preserving our national traditions is a good thing, and of course everyone should be free to believe what they like.” She beamed.
“I'm begging you, Blær,” Fransiska said.
“I don't think I should, though,” Blær said. “She might crash the cart-car-if I spooked her right now.”
“You're enjoying yourself way too much.”
“It's nice that you and Jón share this special friend,” Annika said, smiling into her scarf.
***
“I thought about it,” Marysia said, “the whole deal about the invisible person that we met. And, really, it makes sense.”
“It does?” Jón went.
Marysia nodded. “One of my colleagues mentioned something about elves, so I looked it up, and apparently they're kind of like fallen angels. In between fallen angels and your basic unfallen ones. They're not always evil, so being friends with them isn't a bad thing.”
“I think Blær is just a guy, though.”
“Well, that's the other theory. That they're children of Adam and Eve, like us, but God made them invisible. Which works as well, you know. That's really all we need to know.”
***
Blær winced as the car took all the same turns it would take to go back to his home-former home.
The road wound lazily through a grand if shallow mountain valley. Shadows of clouds and snatches of snow adorned the mountains. The sides of the hills and the ground closest to the road was green. From the road, the ground looked flat and empty, but Blær knew that if you got close you could see small things growing-moss, grass, some flowers even-and rivulets of water running through. And if the car wasn't making noise, he would hear the ocean from here.
Could he hide forever? Maybe Grandma was right-he would have to talk it out with his parents sooner or later. Make a clear cut.
The car turned and went past a terribly familiar group of hills.
***
Annika's parents didn't receive their gift quite as anticipated.
“Wait, that's our sheep!”
“Yeah, all yours, it's a gift.”
“No, it was already ours. The tag is still in its ear, see.”
Jón and Fransiska exchanged a worried glance. “Oh, damn, we didn't know. It was given to us in Reykjavik, we don't know where the people got it.”
They turned to Blær. “Where did you...?”
“I don't know, my grandma gave it to me. I assumed it was one of ours.”
“This is the sheep that died last spring. The exact same one. See, we'd been mowing near this hillock on the edge of our property that always has this creepy feeling like we're being watched.”
Blær knew exactly what hillock they were talking about. He turned and wandered towards it. He had come all this way, and he had done so many incredible things this spring, he could manage to drop by and say hi to his family.
The human's voice faded gradually behind Blær. “And we had some dreams even, telling us not to go near it and not to touch the grass or anything. But we mow there same as anywhere, and now I'm wondering if there are really people living in there. Because one hears about cases when the hidden people take cattle-because they feel like it or as punishment. One hears a sheep a year just walks up to a certain rock and falls dead. But it turns out it merely left its mortal body and went on to be an elf sheep.”
The voice grew fainter as he walked away. He heard snatches. “Well, it's a bit decent of them to give it back... we're sure not going to be mowing right outside their...”
Blær stood before his former home. There were new wildflowers on the roof. The house itself looked even smaller than he remembered, now he was used to human buildings. Some socks were drying on pronged branches at the door.
His mom opened the door. “Kleinur are on the fire, come in,” she said. “Had a feeling today might be the day.”
The conversation over pastries and tea was like he had imagined-the awkwardness, the stale air, dad's distrust of most things Blær told him about new-fangled city life. But it wasn't all bad-one of the new lambs had one black ear, and he found himself having a conversation about jazz with his grandma and feeling surprisingly at ease. For all that some parts of him didn't fit here, maybe some parts fit here better than anywhere.
Blær's grandma insisted the family had to thank the folks who had helped Blær out, so he went out and persuaded everyone to just touch the stone and imagine a door for a moment and see what would happen. In between Marysia and Annika's exclamations of surprise, Dad did grumble that he'd lost a worker when Blær wandered off and he could, you know, curse one of them to be unable to leave the house except one night a year, like the olden times, because someone had to look after the farm. But Blær was almost positive he was kidding. And when Marysia mastered the vikivaki dance in ten minutes and started teaching Blær's mom salsa, while Jón was explaining the concept of an open-air history museum to Blær's captivated dad, Blær felt more at peace than he had the whole semester. He would find a way to keep studying in the fall, in his own name now that he was better at being visible. Maybe he would travel the wide world as a tour guide, or maybe, with the help of Jón, he would finally make dad see reason and they'd preserve his precious authentic farmhouse as an exhibition and live in a normal house instead.
Things would work out somehow. Now that he knew even humans were real, nothing was impossible.
THE END
That was the end of the story. In my mad scramble to get the thing readable in time, I cut 2 K words of Blær wandering around Reykjavik before he met Jón. This had to be done because it was NOT functional as an opening chapter, but it meant reducing the coolest and most fun part of the prompt (an elf who does not believe in humans!) to a couple of lines of indirect references. So I felt bad about it, and I posted the draft of the cut chapter as a bonus feature on AO3. If you expected to see more about an elf who doesn't believe in humans, it might be entertaining. It hasn't really been edited, but should be mostly intelligible if you've read the story first.
Further reading on Icelandic elves (hidden people) in case someone's curious, because I researched a ton for this and thus accumulated a bunch of hyperlinks, and we all know how I feel about hyperlinks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzGmwlXirC4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulduf%C3%B3lk
https://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2014/08/15/hidden-people-theyre-just-like-us-kind-of/
http://www.highonadventure.com/hoa17nov/vicki/hidden-people.htm
https://cultureunplugged.com/play/8224/Hulduf--lk-102
I always appreciate feedback, including about things that aren't working so well.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
This entry was originally posted at https://thenewbuzwuzz.dreamwidth.org/201126.html.