Thorfinn x reader, A Vinland saga romance

The trip

1013
East Anglia
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He walked just beside me, holding the knotted ropes he had prepared so that he could carry me if I was still down from my fever.

    'Why is he so nice to me? He's gone out of his way to help me ever since the day we first met; he allowed me to sail with him, and he's taken care of me all those times I was in trouble, he's helped me hunt many times... And he's even kept my secret since the beginning!

    'We have been together for six years, and not once has he left me. Not even when I was in the middle of the sea and Thorfinn was already struggling to help himself.
   Nor did he leave when the blizzard struck two days ago, and I got a heavy fever... And instead of going on ahead, he brought ropes so that he could carry me if it was necessary.

    'Any reasonable person would just leave, this could also get him killed...'
   I kept pondering, why was I stupid enough to never notice how kind he actually have been to me all these years. I only noticed the annoying sides of him.

"Des" Thorfinn looked at me with his usual expression, but I could see there was a tiny hint of relaxation. Around Askeladd, his face would've been more tense and mad, and although it looked the same he wasn't as tense as usual.

"What?"

   He was about to talk but hesitated for a second. And instead of saying what he thought of first, he pointed at my luggage and asked if I needed help. The subject was quickly dropped as I declined the offer.

We continued to walk over the mountain. The snow was a lot stiffer than before, so we could easily walk on top of it without slipping and stumbling.

     The weather had also become a lot softer: Light and big snowflakes were floating. The kind of snow that melted when it hit you, and water would run into your eyes and blind you for a short moment. They would land onto your eyelashes and stay there until you blinked them off. They would fall into the deep dark well, the one that not even the bucket could reach the bottom of.
     They would fall onto the pig's dinner and make them dissatisfied because wet food was the worst.
    They would cover the whole garden, so the grownups had to shovel it away or the kids would get buried in it. And the forest wasn't ever green. It was a forever white forest, where it could snow even when there were no clouds. It would be dark even though the sun was shining, but it was easy to see at night as the crystallized snowflakes worked like amplifiers for the bleak moonlight.

   The snow would gather itself on top of the grownups' hair, but never on the children's as they were always moving around. The snow would fall on top of the ice in the river and make the Ice a layer thicker once it combined.
It would gather on the big stone that was placed on top of the mountain, and it would be wiped away when warriors were sailing alongside the river. They wiped it to make space so that we could place drums there and send messages to our neighbouring villages.

    This was 's my childhood. The snow was the most memorable and precious thing in my mind. The different shapes reminded me of different times and different worlds.
     Hard snow, soft snow, hail-ish snow, big snowflakes, blizzards. It was all part of it, and every time she saw a new snow type, she memorized it so well that it would be burned into me like a burn mark to a tree. Even those days I forget It can easily be recovered by thinking of the snow.

*        *        *

I and Thorfinn sat down for a break when we reached the top of the mountain. It was a high spot with an incredible view covering miles and miles of landscape and water.
     It was all lightly covered in snow; the trees were getting married, the long grasslands were aggressively flaunting their perfect and untouched newly laid glitter.
     The sun was peeking up from certain white tops, making the snow shine more brightly back at us..
   It was a magnificent sight, we couldn't help but sit down and enjoy it for a while.