Countryhumans Oneshots

A Dead Man's Flag

Bolded words are Swedish (unless it's a Finnish word; I didn't want the formatting to look weird).

Delaware wasn't expecting a package from Tornedalians. While his great uncle and him talked, it was often through letters, and it wasn't super personal. He was a distant family member Delaware had been estranged from for hundreds of years after all. Letters were one thing. Packages were another.

Delaware shifted his coffee into his other hand, reaching down to scoop the package off the porch. It was light, the kind of package that clothes typically come in. Delaware walked inside, setting the package on his dining room table and stopping to pat Reed on the head.

Delaware then sat down at his table, taking great care in opening the package. Normally, he ripped them open with wild abandon, but Tornedalians wouldn't have sent him something for no reason, so Delaware took great care in opening the package, worried he might break something important.

Once the package was open, Delaware pulled out its contents, including a letter and a flag he hadn't seen before. The flag was in a similar design to a Nordic Cross, with the center of the cross itself being defaced by a black rhombus that the stripes of the cross went around. It was a lovely flag, but it did nothing to alleviate Delaware's confusion.

"What? Did he get a new flag?" Delaware questioned, staring at it in confusion. Why would Tornedalians have sent him a flag? Sighing, he stood up to go for his letter opener, hoping the letter itself would have some answers. As he did so, Reed attempted to jump up on him, ever the attention hog. Delaware laughed.

"Hey, boy, I love you too, but I have to find the letter opener. Uncle Tornedalians has sent me a package," Delaware said, walking over to his cabinet of nicknacks, pulling open a drawer, and searching through it. After pushing past old medals and so, so many spare buttons, Delaware found it, closing the drawer with a bump of his hip.

Delaware walked back to the table, opening the letter with the quick precision of someone who had been doing it for hundreds of years. He was eager to see what the letter had to say. He pulled out a letter, his mouth quirking into a slight grin at the neat and familiar handwriting.

Hyvä Ilta Pekka,

I know it must come as a surprise to see a package from me. But I needed to send it to you. You might be an American now and feel disconnected from your heritage over here (aside from your insistence on calling Ruotsi your cousin), but you are also the only child of Otso, and you deserve to have this.

This is the newly created flag of Metsäsuomalaiset.

Delaware gasped, dropping the letter in shock as he looked back at the flag. That was...that was his isä's flag—a flag created for his long-dead father. Delaware picked up the flag again, carefully, as if it was made of the finest silk. Tears were beginning to trace their way down his face as he imagined the blurry mental image he had of his father with the new flag.

Then Delaware pulled the flag close to his chest, hugging it as more tears came down.

People still remembered his Isä. They remembered and cared enough to make him a flag of his very own, a flag he would never get to see or wear.

"Isä, would you have loved this flag?" Delaware asked in his isä's language, placing it back down and wiping the tears from his face as he went to read the rest of his uncle's letter.

It surprised me to hear they were making a flag for Otso. The stubborn man never had one of his own. I'm unsure what he would have thought of it, but Muuna believes he would have liked it.

You should also know the meaning behind the flag. The green represents the forest's importance to slash-and-burn culture. The red represents fire and the Rowan tree, just like the one Otso had on his face until the day he died. I wonder if that's part of why they added it on there. The yellow represents the rye from slash-and-burn farming, and the black represents the soot of it. The color scheme is also meant to match the flags of the regions of Savonia and Tavastia, where Otso and his people were from.

Delaware smiled, looking back at the flag, a new appreciation growing in his chest. They didn't just half-ass a flag for his Isä. They put effort into giving it meaning, and now Delaware was crying again.

It was just so sweet, and it reminded him...it reminded him...

"Isä! You promised!" New Sweden pleaded. Isä's mouth quirked into a small little smile.

"Did I?" he asked, sounding slightly amused.

"Isä!" New Sweden exclaimed, causing his isä to laugh.

"Okay, okay. I know, Karl." Isä said, sitting down at the chair by the fire as New Sweden went to sit at his feet. New Sweden opened his mouth, but then...but then...

Delaware snapped out of the memory, realizing that he had managed to drop to the floor, Reed licking the tears off his face.

"Reed, off," Delaware said, looking back down at the letter still gripped in his hand. He didn't remember that before. It had been a long time since something triggered a new memory of him and his isä. Since he had gotten any of his memories back.

It was nice to have another hole in his life's story be filled, small as it might be. Fragmented memories were better than no memories. Enough fragments helped him track down his uncle, and helped him know his isä better, and helped him give Sverige some insight on their father.

Delaware was happy with fragments.

Looking back down at the letter, Delaware read the last paragraph, smiling.

It's nice to see people care about Otso so much. They flew the flag at the Oslo City Hall recently as well. Otso never thought he would be more than a footnote in anyone's history book. It's nice to see that he was wrong, that more than just us care about his existence and passing.

I hope this provides some comfort to you.

Sincerely,

Arttu

Delaware then stood up, placed the letter back on the table, and grabbed his isä's flag. He walked outside to the flagpole he had hand hanging off his porch. Right now, it had his flag on it, but Delaware quickly took down his flag, throwing it over the porch railing before hanging up his father's flag.

Looking up at the flag hanging there, Delaware felt an overwhelming swarm of emotion. Laughing wetly, he wiped his eyes. Maybe no one else would ever know the flag's meaning or even recognize it, but that was okay with him.

Delaware still got to have a tangible peace of his isä, proof that he really did exist.

No flag could have a more important purpose.