Chapter Text
Skrimm huffed and rubbed his aching, freezing hands together.
It was cold… it was cold. There were truly no words to describe the biting, savage chill of winter in a land like Drakkar. And he was hungry on top of it all. Starving, it felt like. Even though the party had technically eaten that morning, and he’d gone days longer between meals during their prior travels, all Skrimm could think about was his stomach and how it ached for food more than it ever had in his entire life.
He couldn’t ever recall a hunger quite like this, even if he’d always been hungry, really. Hunger just seemed to be an unfortunately running theme in his life.
When Skrimm was younger, he felt the kind of hunger that came from regularly missed meals. His skin had been a little tight over his ribs in his younger years thanks to losing the fight against dozens of siblings for a night’s supper. He often had to scrounge for what he could - snatch up the snacks his siblings didn’t hide well enough, swipe rations from the few travelers that were stupid enough to travel close to his home.
Maybe hunger was what eventually led him here, to this icy hellhole.
Skrimm had grown a little too good at swiping things from people in his younger years thanks to those missed meals. When he was old enough to set out on his own, he’d made his way to the big city. He wanted a better life than he could get just being the average goblin his parents expected him to be back home. He wanted the finest life had to offer him, and he had a particular skillset that served that desire quite well.
Of course, just like everything else in his life, it didn’t go as smoothly as he hoped, but he learned quickly to talk his way in and out of just about anything to make up for the rough patches. Skrimm learned the ins and outs of city living as a goblin among folk typically much larger than him. He was willing to do anything if it meant finding his next meal and making his way up in the world, and that meant stealth and self-defense and other practices he’d cultivated over much trial and error. Skrimm would con people out of house and home when he could and scrape together a meal from a dumpster when he couldn’t, if that’s what it took. And, quite often, that was what it took to survive as a smaller-than-average goblin.
Then… Well, then came that damned dog and the contract he’d been forced to sign. Skrimm shuddered at the reminder of the beast’s eyes. Endless, blood-red pools of pure hunger had stared him down, that night in the graveyard. The beast had slavered and snarled and opened its maw, and—
Ugh. He didn’t want to think about this shit right now.
Thinking about the red-eyed dog that hunted him and why he himself might’ve been hungry, even after everything, made him ache worse than the cold did.
Really, the problem right now was that Skrimm just couldn’t get the scream of that nightmarish creature they fought on the river out of his head. He couldn’t forget the feeling of its spiny teeth sinking into his flesh, the warmth of his own blood leaving his body. The blood had been the only thing between him and the freezing cold air and water of the river. As terrified as he was, and as much as the thought of it made him sick, Skrimm had actually somehow… found relief in the warmth his own blood shrouded him in.
Skrimm shuddered again. No, no, he couldn’t think like that. It was this fucking place getting to him, getting in his damn head. No way in the nine hells would he ever think about enjoying warmth from his own blood. It was just this godsforsaken frozen wasteland.
But to his displeasure, that creature’s deafening, shattering scream invaded his mind again, and Skrimm just couldn’t stop thinking about the hunger he felt no matter how much he tried to rationalize the shit they’d been through. He couldn’t rationalize how it felt to… to be killed by that damn thing.
Skrimm knew he died on that river.
He not only saw it in Jornir’s eyes when the firbolg checked him over, but Skrimm had felt it, damn it, he’d felt it. Telling Queenie that he’d just been unconscious one moment and awake the next was… partially a lie.
At the moment of his death, he felt aching, cloying fear grip his heart, jackhammering against his once too-thin ribcage, and then an insatiable, omnipresent hunger rose in his stomach. Only then did he go unconscious, his last breath squeezing itself from his lungs as he crumpled onto the ice floe beneath him. He hadn’t even felt it when they went over that waterfall. The next thing he knew, his hunger woke up first. Before he was even fully awake, he could feel that rumbling, dissatisfied feeling in his core - like being starved but only getting a morsel to quell it. Then, all at once, he was awake. Alive. He tasted herbs in his mouth, and he realized Queenie had given him a potion. That must’ve been the morsel he felt.
The potion woke him up, but it did barely anything to sate the hunger he felt. He should’ve known anything close to good in his life came at a cost he wouldn’t like. No way Drakkar - or any other place on Avantris, for that matter - would give him a second chance at life without exacting a toll in return.
“Skrimm? Are you quite alright?”
Skrimm jumped nearly out of his skin with a little yelp he’d deny letting out to anybody who asked. His heart beat wildly in his chest, and then he realized that it was only Taishen speaking to him. The golden dragonborn was looking after him kindly, his ever-warm hand pressed comfortingly on Skrimm’s back. Honestly, with the kindness Taishen kept showing him time and time again…
Skrimm almost felt bad for all the cons and tricks he’d put his friend through during their time together.
Almost.
“Huh? Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, heh,” Skrimm mumbled, tugging his too-thin jacket around himself.
His warm pelt got destroyed during the fight with that monster, and now he was freezing his ass off in the middle of a Drakkarian winter. Of course he wasn’t fucking alright, he wanted to bite out. But his mind was too preoccupied to really snap at Taishen like that - and besides, Taishen was just trying to be nice. Hardly anybody was ever nice to Skrimm, especially after he tricked them as many times as he did the golden dragonborn, but Taishen’s smile never faded even once when he looked at anybody in their party. Honestly, it was pretty impressive. (And a little terrifying. Skrimm didn’t know how to navigate nice.)
“We’re going to be making camp for the night.” Taishen gestured to where the others had stopped a little ways ahead, using a small outcropping of rocks to do their best to shield them from the elements. It seemed like while he was thinking, Taishen already made them a fire and everything.
Skrimm really was distracted right now… that was bad. He needed to be on guard. If there were any more things like that monster out here, if any of the crew of the More Abound remained alive, if they had gone their own way and turned into more of those things…
Skrimm shook his head, mostly to himself. He just needed to be careful.
“If you’d like, I can try to warm you up,” Taishen offered, when Skrimm said nothing in response. Skrimm was still fixated on watching for any unseen threats - a familiar look he’d donned every night for many, many long years. “There are plenty of warming teas we cultivate in Jade Shell, you know.”
Skrimm’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head as he properly registered Taishen’s words. “Hold up, you’ve had secret ‘warming teas’ this entire time and never shared ‘em?!”
“Now, now, I wasn’t trying to hide anything,” Taishen said placatingly, rubbing a friendly, soothing and warm circle along his shoulderblade. “They’re not going to keep anybody from freezing to death, they’ll simply make the cold a bit more bearable while we camp out. I’ve tried to tell you about my teas before, but, er…”
Taishen was trying to spare his feelings. Skrimm wasn’t stupid. Well, okay, he could make stupid decisions, and Skrimm would admit he was a bit of a coward even at the best of times, but he was nonetheless an expert at reading people. He kind of had to be, being a conman like he was. Or at least, like he was before they crashed here in Drakkar. (Point was, he knew how to read a mark, especially ones who wore their hearts on their sleeves like Taishen… not that he thought of the dragonborn as much of a mark these days. Now, their group was… something else. He hesitated to use the word ‘friends’.)
“But what?”
“You were fairly surly at first and did not like to listen when I tried to explain what benefits my teas may offer,” Taishen admitted, looking a little sheepish as he stroked his short beard. “But we’re much closer now than we were before, yes? After months of traveling together, I’d like to think so. So, now you know, and I can make you a most delicious cup of warming tea, Skrimm. I’m sure any small comfort out here would do you wonders. All of this must’ve been… trying. Especially for you and Barnabos.”
He was talking about the river. About the monster. About how he and Barnabos had… died. Was it some sort of pity for them having gone through what they did? Sympathy? Skrimm knew Taishen didn’t have a malicious bone in his body, so where Skrimm would typically bristle and take offense to anything even resembling pity, right now he just felt… touched, he supposed.
It had been a long, long time since he had somebody looking after him like this, so genuinely, if he ever truly had. Skrimm had been on his own for as long as he could remember before ending up with this strange group, and now he wasn’t even alone in the act of dying. Barnabos had been through it, too.
Skrimm glanced over to Barnabos at that thought. Their cook was singing a shanty and pouring an ungodly amount of Ancient Estuary into the stew pot for the night’s meal. Queenie managed to track some small game and find some edible plants to take back in this near-dead forest, which was something of a miracle, especially after they thought that monster from the river had killed everything else in it. But here they were, prepared to eat their first serious meal in days. That morning’s breakfast - barely more than some of Barnabos’ spices dumped into a pot of water - was nothing compared to the mouthwatering smell of what was currently cooking.
But as Skrimm’s stomach rumbled, he knew his normal rations weren’t going to be enough. None of the meager scraps since defeating the monster had been. That… thing had cursed him with this hunger he just couldn’t get rid of.
Perhaps because the monster, too, could never sate its own hunger. Not… not after what it had become. What it was born from. Thinking about what that monster was born from, though… who it was born from… made Skrimm sick to think about. (The monster’s eyes, though different, reminded him a little of the starving, slavering beast that hounded him at every turn. Was the dog hungry, too? Would Skrimm, too, become the dog or the monster one day, if his hunger went without satisfaction?)
Yet no matter how sick he felt, or how much the thought of becoming like the monster made him afraid, that damn hunger still wouldn’t leave!
“Yeah, sure, I’ll… I’ll take a cup of tea,” Skrimm finally grumbled out a response to Taishen’s offer. He rubbed at his eyes tiredly, trying desperately to stave off the sound of a monster’s scream and a baying hound rattling in his skull. He hoped the dragonborn wouldn’t comment on how tiredly his entire frame sagged at the thought of a little warmth… and at the thought of a distraction from his hunger.
Taishen, to his credit, just smiled, his scales glittering where they scrunched up. “Wonderful, my friend! I promise you, this cup of tea will be the best you’ve ever had. I’m no medicine man like Jornir, but my knowledge of tea is unmatched! It should help at least a little in these harsh climes.”
“I sure as shit ain’t gonna complain,” Skrimm muttered, sticking close to Taishen.
The dragonborn was always just a little warmer than the rest of them - it wouldn’t have been the first time their little group had crowded around Taishen at night, huddling together for warmth under the wolf pelts they’d skinned not long after becoming icebound. Their pelts were nonexistent now, but they had better winter gear from that house they found, and they could stick close to the fire and crowd around Taishen again. He didn’t seem to mind - he told them plenty of times with a smile how he was used to his niece Mei Li crowding his space all the time back home, and to him, it was no different.
Skrimm followed closely behind as they joined the others, and then his thoughts wandered. Normally, he wouldn’t care one iota for tea. Taishen wasn’t wrong when he said Skrimm didn’t like to listen - but this time, he found himself a little curious. The others already handled most of the camp setup, and frankly, Skrimm didn’t want to do any of that shit right now. He would always be the type to shirk work. He didn’t think that would ever change. If listening to Taishen talk about tea could get him out of setting up the rest of the camp…
“Hey, Taishen,” Skrimm sat down next to the dragonborn, where he was already setting up that magical teapot of his, “would you tell me about the tea you’re making?”
Taishen lit up like a star. Skrimm didn’t think he’d ever seen the dragonborn smile like that before, except perhaps in the memories of each other they’d all seen. It was kind of… strange.
“Skrimm! You’re finally taking a proper interest in tea? Why, I’d be happy to tell you all about it! You see, there are many roots and herbs that hold warming properties, both magical and non-magical, and when you know how to combine them…”
Skrimm at least tried to pay attention at first, but Taishen very quickly devolved into the history of tea cultivation, tea brewing, and herbal medicines from his home, and he could barely follow half of it. If it weren’t for the mental image of that damn monster still haunting him, Skrimm probably would’ve nodded off in the middle of the meandering lesson.
But he was able to make it look like he paid enough attention, at least, asking a question or two about the bits he did manage to catch, and each time he showed even the slightest interest, Taishen smiled that incredibly bright smile of his all over again.
Of all the things, that, at least, managed to distract Skrimm from his own hunger for a moment or two.
“May I also have a cup, Taishen?”
The deep, rumbling voice of Jornir startled Skrimm. How the giant firbolg with a staff and fucking mammoth tusks on his back managed to sneak up on him sometimes was beyond Skrimm, frankly, but it always annoyed the hell out of him. Jornir was looming over him as they spoke - Skrimm liked to proclaim he was tall, but even when he wasn’t sitting like this, Jornir’s massive stature still made him feel completely dwarfed.
Taishen, of course, didn’t seem to notice Skrimm’s startle, too happy and involved in his discussion about tea. “Of course, Jornir!” the dragonborn gestured for him to provide his cup. “I made plenty, but be aware, I added a few new things to the mix this time to appeal to Skrimm’s palate. I hope you enjoy it regardless.”
“I’m sure I will,” Jornir murmured, letting Taishen pour him a hot cup. “Thank you.”
After Jornir had his own cup of tea, Taishen poured one for Skrimm. The goblin held his cup in his hands, watching the steaming liquid pour down into it. His fingers, already chilled from their walk in the snow, tingled as the burning warmth of the fresh tea seeped into every inch of his skin it met. Skrimm let out a soft, quiet sigh and took a slow sip of the hot drink, grateful for any measure of relief from this godsforsaken cold.
When the flavor hit his tongue, though, he was surprised.
Normally, the tea Taishen made for them wasn’t his thing. He’d drink it, of course, hot drinks in Drakkar were a luxury he could not afford to pass on, but Skrimm drank incessantly. He was used to alcohol. Any chance he’d get to beg off from having to drink tea and find his way into some kind of flask was a chance he’d take, quite frankly. (He missed the constant drinks Barnabos sent up to the bucket while they were on the More Abound… even if he didn’t miss the bucket itself…)
But this was… surprisingly good? Skrimm took another sip, drinking deeply and trying to identify what he was tasting. It didn’t burn like alcohol, but it almost had a similar flavor profile to some drink he once tasted in some seedy bar in the far reaches of Barghest. And when he drank it, it settled in his stomach much the same way that drink had, and he felt a warmth spread out from his core.
His stomach rumbled in protest to the meager offering - it would take more than tea to sate the hunger he felt. But, for now, it did just what Taishen had offered: it staved off some of the cold, and it tasted great to boot.
“Shit, Taishen, this is amazing,” Skrimm’s eyes went wide and he greedily drank down the entire cup in only a few gulps. “Thanks for this. Think I could have some more?”
Taishen nodded pleasantly. From the way he rocked from side to side, it was plainly obvious how thrilled Taishen was to have made a cup of tea that appealed to Skrimm’s… particular palate. “Of course, of course! As much as you like, my friend. Drink up.”
“And to go with that tea of yers, mister Fireblossom, I’ve got stew!” Barnabos cried out in that booming voice of his. He stared at Skrimm, some dark look in his eyes that Skrimm might’ve recognized in his own face, if he’d ever looked in a mirror during his hungriest moments. “I’ve made plenty, mister Stabbaskotch, so have as much as ye need.”
Need… not want.
When Barnabos was feeling generous with rations, it was always ‘have as much as you want.’ But this time, he’d said need, and suddenly Skrimm had a sinking feeling he wasn’t the only one cursed with this awful hunger. After all, Barnabos died to that monster too and had to be pulled out of the frozen river by Jornir. No words needed to be said between them, but they both understood in that moment: with the hunger that plagued them after their deaths, their usual rations would not be enough to sate them.
“Thanks, Barnabos,” Skrimm swallowed, his mouth thick with drool as he smelled the gamey stew being ladled into their bowls. That hunger in his stomach threatened to consume him entirely, his own eyes growing dark with some sort of mania now. Barnabos’ willpower must’ve been one hell of a thing if he felt even remotely like Skrimm and had kept himself from eating the stew this entire time.
“Did my ears deceive me, or did Skrimm just thank two people in the same night?” Queenie wondered, hands on her hips.
Daisy was quick to reply with her hand signs. No, I’m pretty sure I heard it, too.
“Oh, shut your traps! I’m capable of thanking people I’ll have you know-” Skrimm snapped back, shoveling a spoonful of stew into his mouth and interrupting himself. But whatever he’d been about to say died in his throat the second the stew hit his tastebuds, because all he could think about was the food. Before he realized it, the spoon had fell from his mouth and bounced off of the bowl with a clatter, finally landing in the snow beneath him.
The gnawing chasm of hunger in Skrimm’s stomach opened up, demanding more.
More food.
More.
More.
Eat.
Eat.
EAT.
HUNGRY.
“Uh… Skrimm?”
Queenie’s voice snapped him out of the trance he’d been in, and he came to to realize that he devoured his entire bowl of stew without registering any of it, practically pouring it all into his mouth in one go. It was like all he could think about was getting food into his mouth by any means necessary, getting it all over himself and even eating the bits he’d spilled right off of his own filthy clothes.
“Wha… What?” Skrimm asked, shaking himself completely out the dregs of whatever hunger-driven stupor he was in. His hands were trembling where they gripped his bowl. He needed more. He was still hungry. He was still hungry. Hungry…! “What is it? I’m tryin’ to eat, here.”
Queenie raised her eyebrow skeptically. “Yeah, we can see that. Y’alright? You went right at that bowl like a pig in slop. I ain’t never seen you eat that way before.”
Skrimm lowered his bowl, hands covered in stew, and looked a little frustrated. He felt like a young goblin in a human city for the first time all over again. He used to get chastised by humans who told him he ate like a wild animal with no manners. Well, excuse him, he had never eaten with a fork or a spoon back then! In his mind, food was food, there was no need to be fancy about how it got in your stomach. He didn’t say that to Queenie, though - it was clear her words were born more of concern than disgust.
And besides, he wasn’t the only one who felt that way, if Barnabos was any indication.
Skrimm stole a glance over at their cook, seeing that the triton man had carved off a quiet spot in the camp for himself to eat while out of the view of the others. He was guzzling stew with reckless abandon in much the same way Skrimm had been, eyes glazed over as he ladled it into his mouth by the bowl full. Skrimm just had the unfortunate circumstance of eating where everyone else could see him.
Taishen, bless him, just smiled like nothing in the world was wrong, and passed Skrimm a second cup of tea and a warm, damp strip of cloth to clean himself with. “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. A healthy appetite is a good thing, isn’t it? Here, Skrimm, something to wipe your hands with. I’ll wash it later.”
Skrimm gratefully cleaned his hands and drank down the cup of tea. He really did feel bad now for tricking Taishen so many times… Taishen was the only one of their little group (sans Daisy, who only just joined them) that hadn’t yelled at him or chastised him for ‘skrimming something up again.’ Even Queenie, positive as she could be, had gotten cross with him a few times. Taishen, on the other hand, always saw some mote of good in Skrimm, even when Skrimm couldn’t see it himself. Knowing one of them believed in him unconditionally… it was warming in a different way than the tea he’d shared earlier.
Are you sure you’re okay, Skrimm?
Skrimm blinked owlishly, trying not to let his surprise show when Daisy crowded into his view, signing words in his face. He just nodded slowly.
“I… I’m just… hungry.”
He was telling the truth, and yet it felt like the biggest lie he’d ever told. There was no way to truly describe the hunger in him, one which had yet to be sated by his single bowl of stew. He recalled Jornir’s words after he’d been pulled up from the bank of the river; he recalled how Jornir looked at him like he was a monster for just a moment until he realized that it was the real Skrimm and not some reanimated corpse.
But with hunger like this… was this really him? Or was it some twisted other version of his soul, cursed as it was by the monster they burned to ash? It wouldn’t surprise him; his soul was already cursed to belong to that horrific hound, so sure, why not double curse it?
Hungry? Daisy clarified, eyebrows furrowed. Just hungry? That’s it?
“Aye, mister Stabbaskotch just has a goblin’s appetite! If yer hungry, lad, have some more! There’s plenty left to go around,” Barnabos said gruffly, hurrying back over to ladle another heaping portion into Skrimm’s bowl before Daisy could pressure him any longer. Once again, Barnabos said nothing of the hunger they both felt, but Skrimm felt understood in that moment. Neither of them wanted to admit what it might mean for them, but neither could they ignore the rumbling in their bellies.
Skrimm nodded shakily and tried to eat a little less like how he imagined the fiendish hound that stalked him might eat him if it ever caught up.
His life really was one bout of hunger after another.
Perhaps not so literal at times; Skrimm had also been hungry for life, a better life in the years before the hound gave chase. He hadn’t signed that godsdamned contract because of that desire, that had been purely out of fear, but he could admit that the powers he had now did serve a use. And once that hound began to follow him no matter how far he went, he felt a different kind of hunger.
It was the hunger of a different kind of missed meal that chased Skrimm after the hound had begun to follow. More than once over the last many years he had to abandon camps, whatever meager scraps he’d gotten together willingly left behind in favor of living another day. He had to look over his shoulder for the hound at all times, the thought of food abandoned in favor of a single night’s sleep or a place to take shelter from those burning, hungry eyes that appeared in every shadow. (Looking back, Skrimm wanted to kick himself for leaving food behind so many times. Maybe this was some sort of karmic punishment after all.)
And then, of all things, Skrimm ran into the group he was with now. And because his life was one disaster after another, their first meeting ended up with them in prison together. The Golden Egg was a nightmare and yet another instance where Skrimm had to contest with hunger. They barely fed their prisoners enough to keep them working and never a drop more.
Of course, he knew what came after the Golden Egg. What seemed like, at the time, a free ride out of that hot pit was actually an express delivery straight to a frozen circle of hell. He and the others ended up here, on Drakkar, icebound and starving and scrounging for warmth and the barest of resources. They fought for their life at every turn against starving beasts and monsters made from fear and desperation and hunger. Two of their little group died and woke up with a supernatural hunger of their own they couldn’t overcome.
Skrimm sighed deeply to himself. What a life.
The others seemed to give him some space after dinner, sensing he didn’t really want to talk. Skrimm was grateful for it, really, because there was no way in any of the nine hells he’d be able to articulate literally any of the feelings he had since he came back to life on that riverbank.
The evening stretched on regardless of his feelings, though.
The sunset gave way to the darkest of nights, and though Skrimm volunteered for first watch because he couldn’t sleep, he wasn’t alone. To his surprise, Jornir stayed awake with him, quietly carving something out of a piece of thick bark he’d picked up on their journey. Skrimm silently watched the firbolg work, Jornir’s fuzzy hands carefully and patiently wristing a rune into it and shapes out of it.
Skrimm wondered if Jornir had led a life of hunger, too. Perhaps not so literal a hunger, as Skrimm had thought about before, but he wondered if Jornir was ever hungry for a life different than the one he led. The hunch to Jornir’s shoulders and the grim set to his features painted the picture of a man who’d lived a bleak life - did Jornir ever hunger for it not to be?
They’d seen bits of Jornir’s life in their shared visions. Many years were spent alone, traveling, bearing the weight of the massive tusks on his back. His duty and his burden were often his only companions, and though he bore them silently, Skrimm wondered if he ever hungered for a life without them. Did he ever wish for the visions that haunted him to ever be passed on to another, or was it another silent weight he simply accepted?
Had Jornir ever hungered for the companionship of somebody he could see beyond his visions of the apocalypse, beyond their purposes in the grand design of fate? Had he hungered for something much simpler - the companionship of somebody who could even live as long as he did in the first place?
Jornir was already hundreds of years old, and he would go on to live for hundreds more, assuming they made it off of Drakkar alive. Whatever the firbolg felt about them, none of their party would live as long as him. Barnabos was already an older man, a well-lived sailor probably past middle aged. Taishen… Skrimm had no clue how old Taishen was, actually, or how long dragonborn even lived for. Same with Queenie, really. But he had to imagine that neither of them had the longevity of a Firbolg - Skrimm certainly didn’t.
Skrimm wondered, briefly, how many people like this party Jornir had met. How many Jornir traveled with. How many he watched die. How many he buried and left behind in the name of duty and burden and fate. How many he even cared about in the first place, given his disposition and visions of a grander scheme. Was this group like that to him, Skrimm wondered? Simply those destined to die because fate willed it?
Was that all Skrimm was? A disposable asset on the road to preventing the apocalypse?
Jornir was just… an enigma. Skrimm didn’t understand him, perhaps because of their difference in lifespan and lived experience.
Jornir seemed completely oblivious to all of this, though, silently continuing to carve away through Skrimm’s internal thoughts on the nature of their resident medicine man. When he was finally done, though, Jornir tied a thin leather strip he’d saved around the small wooden shape, turning it into some kind of necklace with a simple talisman dangling from the end.
To Skrimm’s great surprise, Jornir silently turned and handed the talisman he’d crafted to him.
“Jornir?” Skrimm asked, in lieu of a proper question.
The medicine man seemed to sway a little where he sat, continuing to silently hold it out until Skrimm accepted it. When it was safe in the goblin’s hands, only then did he speak. Jornir murmured, his deep voice rumbling out of his chest like it always did.
“For you. To help.”
“Wh… what do you mean?” Skrimm asked, confused and bewildered by the suddenness of it all.
“You do not have to hide it,” Jornir hummed. His one good eye bore down into Skrimm, though not with the accusing gaze it usually did when Skrimm messed something up. “Your hunger - it is not natural, that much I can deduce. But unnatural or not, I believe we can manage hunger. Death or becoming one of those things, on the other hand, we cannot. And while I do not yet know what brought you back to us, I am grateful it was fated to be so nonetheless. This seems the least I can do when I cannot truly help your hunger.”
Skrimm stared at Jornir like he’d grown a second head.
Never in his life would he have expected Jornir to do something nice for him like this, just out of the goodness of his heart. Skrimm honestly expected to overhear something disparaging out of Jornir’s mouth half the time, given he was pretty much Skrimm’s exact opposite, but here they were, with something so personal being handed over without expectation of repayment. Jornir had just… given him a gift.
And then there were the words. ‘Brought you back to us.’ ‘Grateful.’ Jornir talked like he was… glad to have Skrimm back. Like he would have actually cared if Skrimm remained well and truly dead.
The thing Jornir handed him was simple and small, a rough-hewn shape of some animal Skrimm didn’t recognize, with a rune carved into the front-facing side. But despite its simplicity, the fact that Jornir had even thought to… to give him something, it welled something up in Skrimm’s chest that he didn’t want to think about. He was never great at confronting tough emotions even at the best of times…
“What does the rune mean?” Skrimm asked, turning the talisman over and over in his hands as if to try and remain aloof, distant, when really his heart was in his throat. Changing the subject was the easiest way to push past emotions he didn’t want to touch.
Jornir hummed again, either oblivious to or uncaring for Skrimm’s internal mess, and pointed to one of the stone-carved runes he kept braided into his long, red hair. It was the same as the one on the talisman. “It is the rune for ‘whole’ or ‘complete’. It will offer you no real benefits… but perhaps a peace of mind, if you believe in it. I know I was not kind when we left the river, but I trust you understand I had to be sure you were you. Now I know you are, that you are whole, even if it may not feel like it as of yet. I would have sensed otherwise. This… is all the reassurance I can offer you for now.”
Skrimm felt his throat get tight and his eyes sting as the emotions threatened to overcome him despite his best efforts. Jornir had read him like a damn book, apparently.
With a muttering of swears in the goblin tongue under his breath, Skrimm tied the talisman around his neck and said nothing, turning to face the campfire so the firbolg couldn’t see how much the small gesture had affected him. Skrimm had been afraid, terrified of the hunger he felt after leaving that river, and here was Jornir, coming along and bolstering him against everything that he’d been too scared to say out loud.
“I will take watch now,” Jornir said unceremoniously, stamping his great walking stick. “You should sleep. We must wake early to continue moving north.”
Skrimm stared at the fire, then opened his mouth to speak, voice barely above a mumbling whisper.
“Should… for Barnabos…”
“Hm?” Jornir tilted his head, ears twitching. “What did you say?”
“I said you should make one for Barnabos,” Skrimm forced the words out, mortified to be showing concern for Barnabos of all people, somebody who was far from needing the concern of a goblin with way too many issues of his own. Fishing partners or not, Barnabos really didn’t need Skrimm looking out for him - he could handle himself. Still… this was a little different than fishing or killing a monster. “He’s got it, too. The… the hunger. Even if he ain’t showin’ it like I am.”
Jornir’s expression was considering, then, as gentle as somebody like Jornir could look. It shook something in Skrimm, who gripped the carved talisman he’d been given with shaky hands. I do not yet know what brought you back to us, but I am grateful it was fated to be so nonetheless, he’d said. Jornir was grateful that Skrimm was alive.
He didn’t think anybody ever had been grateful to see him, not that he could remember.
“I will make one for Barnabos as well, then,” Jornir said. “Now sleep, Skrimm. I will keep watch.”
Easy for Jornir to say, Skrimm thought. He wasn’t the one having to choke back thoughts he’d locked away a long time ago. But… it was the thought that counted, right? And Skrimm certainly had a lot of thoughts to comb through that night, clutching the talisman in his sleep.
At the very least, he wasn’t thinking about his hunger any more.