✔ The Way We Burn || Kol Mikaelson (Complete)

Chapter 2

Kol watched as the red berry flew to the sky before it came down. It banged into the nose of Nora who had been trying to catch it with her mouth wide open and fell on the ground. It rolled, only stopping a few feet away.

The young, foreign, peculiar, and really strange woman had to try a few more time to catch one. When a berry finally landed into her mouth, she let out a cry of joy and turned toward him. She was delighted and beaming., her eyes sparkling. Her smile only became bigger when she saw him staring at her.

Unwillingly, Kol felt his face getting warmer. Something which, he was sure, would happen again in her company. Besides not having any modesty or notion of personal space, she tended to smile and look at him as if he was something, someone precious. A thing he was far from being used to. Actually, he had more fingers on his hands than he had people regarding him as someone worthy of being cared for. To be a man and still do magic didn't make him someone well respected in the village. Quite the contrary.

Not that he cared. Magic and Mother Nature were far more important than the approval of some simpletons. And though his parents disliked his lack of interest in the ways of war, he still could rely on the support of his siblings. Henrik and Rebekah, especially, loved seeing him do magic.

Still... It wasn't completely unpleasant to be looked at the way Nora did. He would even go so far to say it felt good. Somehow.

His lips quivered when, still beaming, she run to him and sat cross-legged on the ground beside him.

Her acts never failed to surprise him, especially as they were always far from being proper. The distance between them was too short. She was wearing men's clothes, a tunic and a pair of pants which belonged to him. Despite being too large for her frame, they still revealed the shape of her legs and crotch. The way she sat didn't help. Never before had he seen a woman posing in such a way, letting the space between her legs in plain view.

And he had seen her naked, which didn't help either.

He really needed to find her women's clothes. The problem was, he couldn't ask his mother. He had no desire for the information to reach his father. For the same reason, Sigr and Ruth couldn't help him. As for Rebekah, her dresses would undoubtedly be too small for the curves of Nora's body. Also, he couldn't ask for her to buy some dresses to an artisan. His younger sister was too curious and would insist on meeting Nora. That was absolutely out of the question. Even though the young woman hadn't given him any reason to be suspicious, he wouldn't forget the power running in her veins and had no intention of endanger Rebekah.

Nora dropped a berry in his hand, unaware of his dilemma.

"A berry," she said with a smile in her foreign language.

He repeated the word, his tongue positioned in an unusual way. The sounds leaving his mouth felt strange, different, and he had to concentrate for each syllable.

"Two berries," she continued as she added a second fruit.

Once again, he repeated. Their game continued until she had dropped each one of the berries she had picked earlier under his watchful eye. Indeed, after he had left her the first evening with a fire, wood for stoke it, a dead squirrel and a knife, he had understood that the woman was simply incompetent. Even the simplest task, something that even a child would be able to do, she couldn't accomplish it. She didn't know how to skin animals, recognize which plant was edible or even hydrate herself with sap. Instead, she could smile, eat, and speak several languages, none of which he knew. She had entertained herself by telling him the word tree in three different languages. Which was completely useless. Especially when none of those languages would help her to integrate the village in another way than as a bed-warmer.