APH - Nordics

So uh, croissant man 🇫🇷 my love

round 

Britannia Prima

My first submission for the Historial Hetalia Week 2021! I’ve never participated in an event like this and am super pumped to share my ideas with you all. Thanks so much to the @historical-hetalia-week​ team for organizing this event! (I’ve tagged this to the best of my ability, please forgive me if I’ve done something improperly and let me know how I can fix it!)

Title: Britannia Prima

Summary: The Roman Empire arrives in the soggy northern reaches of his emperor’s domain and meets the young boy he’s been hunting for decades. 

CONTENT WARNINGS:

Brief but distressing physical roughness with a child (who in this case is also an immortal eldritch being/far older than any adult human)

Some vulgar language.

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Londinium, Britannia, Roman Empire

4th Century, C.E.

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It was raining when he arrived in Londinium. Of course it was. It was always raining in these gods—God—forsaken parts. The very edge of the earth, or so they said. Julius stalked up towards the villa as though he himself were a storm cloud descending to punish the landscape, ignoring how the mud splattered onto his calves and the hem of his tunic. He’d travelled all the way from Hispania as soon as he’d received word from the praetorian prefect, and the long journey through the tidal waves of spring had done nothing for his mood.

We found him. That was all the message had said. Him. That detail was news. No surprise, really, there had always been more males than females, when all the lands of the world were accounted for. Julius had already met one of her brats, after all: a son, already making his turns into manhood. But then, he’d seen her pregnant. Now, decades later, there was only left to see what kind of bastard she had produced.

He did not have to knock at the front door, for which he was grateful. As soon as he was over the threshold he threw off his hood, showering cold rain down onto the tiles.

“Where?” He asked, and the servant sent to receive him kept a demure look on the ground.

“In the cubiculum,” he reported, carefully extricating Julius from his cloak and offering him a linen towel for his hair. Julius ignored it, brushing off his hair with a hand and slinging the water to the ground. Without a further word, the Roman marched out of the fauces and through the atrium, where on both levels, there were not a few servants, soldiers, and other assembled house members waiting like buzzards to dissect whatever scraps they’d be able to hear from their perches. Julius ignored them, and hardly waited for the guardsmen to raise their spears before he entered the cubiculum.

“Master Romulus,” greeted the prefect, sounding at once relieved and terrified to see the empire, “I’m glad to see you’ve made it through the storm unscathed.” Julius ignored him.

Jesus Christ and all his disciples, it was a boy. Not a child, hardly more than a woodland wisp like the ones the barbarians spoke of, it was an infant. Decades of searching, Julius fumed to himself, decades. For this. The child was facing away from him, staring out the window into the rain, flanked on either side by guards and a tired-looking Breton nanny. The torchlight caught on his tangled mop of hair, which was far lighter in color than his mother’s, and made it seem as though the strands themselves had caught flame. So light of hair. There is no way he is mine.

Keep reading

I'm so sorry if I'm bothering, but reading "The Captain" has seriously floored, contaminated and infected me and I'm making a playlist inspired by it - But I was wondering if you had thoughts on Alfred and his people in that context? Because I... Like cowboy Alfred and I can't emphasize enough how many stories would emerge from Alfred losing a dual, lying dead on the ground, just to be gone by dawn and seen again in the next town over on death row to be hanged, just to be seen alive again some time later?

Like, it gives campfire stories and western-tales! 🥹

The Cowboy

Characters: America

The Captain (England)

The Artist (France)

The Cleaner (Scotland)

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Some say there are monsters out on the plains.

Unholy things. Dangerous things. Things that no man should see, and that would drive him mad if he ever did.

The cowboy does not believe all this. He believes in truth, cold and bitter. Life is hard out here, that is true, and sometimes a hard life does things to a man. Turns him inside out with wanting and regret. Makes him yowl for his momma at night like a child from loneliness. Cold nights, bitter winds, and dust choked skies- miles and miles with nothing but the hot sun and ghosts of old lives nipping at your heels.

Because to choose a life on the plains alone is to have come from something. To go far into the desert and stay there means that there is sanctuary in the sands that cannot be found in a town, or a village. And that life changes those who live it. Makes them see their fears manifested in order to understand them. Forces them to acknowledge their wrongs and mistakes by trapping them alone.

The cowboy is no different. He’s seen many things he wishes he hadn’t. Has done many more besides.

There’d been a boy. Many summers ago.

Bright blue eyes, golden hair. Rough broad hands of a working man, but the expensive clothes of a comfortable one. He’d rolled into town with fear behind his wide smile; twitchy fingers and a need for work with no questions asked. He’d been running from things, that was clear, and the cows don’t ask no questions. Nor do cowboys in need of able hands.

He’d been good. Been quick. Great with horses, could calm even the most spooked or rowdy with just a touch. A real gift for them, and a real love for the plains. He grew tall under the wide blue skies, expanded his chest outwards as he rode in a way that made you look at him. Talked much, talked often, but without saying anything at all.

When he’d died, the cowboy didn’t know who to send for. The boy had never mentioned his father, hadn’t spoken of his momma, not even in passing. No family and not even a family name to claim him. He’d had to leave him out there to the sun, nothing but a bright red blanket over his face to offer him shade and the cowboy’s own rings on his eyes to pay for something he didn’t quite understand. It had felt right. It had felt inadequate.

He’d been too young.

The memory of the boy haunts him. The cowboy sees their final ride in his dreams, sees the herd change direction and sees the boy react too late. Sees him realise across the cattle that he was pinned- rock of the canyon on one side, and the stampede the other. He caught the cowboy’s eye and that, that moment of knowing, seared something into him that the cowboy knows he will never forget.

Over the thunder of a thousand hooves, the boy’s scream is an unanswerable battle cry he still wakes to, even now.

The cowboy keeps moving. The herds do not stop. Rides must be finished. Life goes on.

He goes it alone. Wrings out his soul in the dust, lets it boil over with regret. Then he gets another partner. Then another. The cowboy is older, too old these days to head on out to watch the cattle without someone he trusts at his back. The world is changing around them but this life does not change, does not grow easier. Only harder, as his bones begin to hurt and his eyes can no longer spot unfriendly shapes moving in the shadows.

One night and a shared fire like any other- three men and a dog in the middle of nowhere- the cowboy looks up to see a face he knows all too well. It has been years, decades, but the boy’s face is unchanged. Still milk smooth, still full and whole.

He has a chain around his neck that glitters in the firelight. Thin gold links that hold up familiar rings, unused payment for a journey not taken. He catches the cowboy’s eye over a whisper of long ago screams and nods.

There are monsters out on the plains.

Things that creep around campsites, things that stir in the night. Things that wear the faces of long dead men, that put on old skin like clothes and come to sit quietly by your side.

The cowboy cannot look at him. He hears him breathing as the men around them talk, feels the warmth of the boy’s arm through this jacket.

‘Well met,’ the cowboy manages, and offers his old friend his flask to drink from.

The boy does not take it. He looks up at the stars, bright and endless above them, and holds the cowboy’s rings in one hand.

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ he says softly, ‘What things we can sometimes think we see.’

The cowboy’s heartbeat beats loud in his ears, ‘Too much sun does things to a man.’

‘It does.’ The boy turns and looks back. His eyes are old, hard things, ‘I’ve heard people tell all sorts of tales. Drunken ghost stories no sane man would believe.’

The cowboy’s gut screams a warning, that he is but prey in front of predator. He knows to listen, has enough sense not to question, ‘I’m too sane to believe most things.’

He meets the boy’s eye and does not look away. The fire before them cracks, and the boy breathes. There is no other sound. Then, he smiles, teeth emerging white and gleaming. It doesn’t reach his eyes. Maybe, it never did.

‘Well met, friend.’ the boys says. He claps the cowboy’s shoulder and settles back. The cowboy’s chest feels lighter, ‘I think we’ll get along just fine.’

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I couldn't help myself Sunny, I was instantly inspired and it's all your fault

As it was written so quickly this may well change, but the idea wouldn't leave me alone and I had to get it out there

If this story is to have a song, it's 'Ghost Rider's' by Johnny Cash which is, and always will be, an utter banger.

bunnies

Can we see Australia please? (sorry if it’s a bit out of your range)

he’s kinda scary

Bonus actor au content :0

it’s THAT time of the year again

poor things can’t escape from this forest since 2020 smh 😔

could we see a tender rusame smorch bls,,,, 👉👈

I’ve never drawn something tender in my life what does that mean

potato