There are many campfire worthy stories etched into The Heart of Freljord.
Stories of his strength, his courage, his compassion...
Many would muse and say to one another, "This is the man's life and what a grand one it must be!" but the stories that truly do make up his life, aside from the bold and brash, aside from the glorious and golden, aside from the famous feats which the multitudes could only fathom, the stories that truly did make up the life of The Heart of Freljord were beckoned and called upon by by concern. Each word mingling in near silence with its kin of the same sentence to be heard only by the strongest muscle and the inquisitive listener.
Such stories so precious that this was the first and quite possibly the last story to be told of Braum that no bard would minstrel and no elderly would pass on.
Aside from maybe him of course.
-
A lord with a feline-ish feel about knowledge goes about his business seeking information concerning the business of others today.
Mind you, it's not a special day for it is like any other. It is tomorrow that will be different; the Varicose Rains start tomorrow.
Anyhow...
Not so stealthily stalking, the crowned cat approaches in hopes for clarity.
"Braum, ohejjo!"
"Ohejjo, comrade! What is it that is bringing royalty to be seeing me today?" A shink was the Earth's only warning (if that counts as one) that it would be stabbed thrice at once as the farm hand set down his pitchfork to address his superior.
"Eh, this is probably going to seem really trivial but, that door, er...shield thing, that you have... That was the door you couldn't break down right? Like the door that you essentially had to back door to get through the uh...the door?"
"Heh-heh's" and "Hm-hm's" with a fluttering wisp of embarrassment (on the cat's side) were exchanged and followed up by a light chuckle from the Northern winds themselves before the factories started producing conversations again.
"Vei, you are being correct, comrade."
"Ah, so..." a MacAfee scan of mental images from the folder "Braum's Shield/Door/Dieldr" to ensure to propriety of the question, "If the door was indestructible, and nothing could as much and scratch it, how did the horn break?"
"Heh! That is being good question, comrade. When the mountain was being fallen down on Braum and the young troll-kind one of the rocks must have chipped it off. Braum had not broken it," will say no Braum ever in any of my fanfictions.
The hairs that made the bushes that camped above Braum's eyes read the man's emotions and adjusted their positions accordingly to, at the very least, make it appear that he may have been focusing so that his silence would not be questioned.
Was he really focusing? No. He simply never figured that The Barbarian King would be the first to ask him.
Ashe must be pretty boring.
"Well, it was a time ago when Braum was with his wolverenia," he cleared his throat, the sound serving as a light house to guide him through the fog, the images of his beloved, her scent, the one time she had smiled at him, possibly the first time she had smiled in her entire life and the pride of that moment. A tad ashamed that he could whisk those tasty tidbits away so easily but knowing that she would rather be put aside than serve as a distraction, he gathered himself, his words and his senses and focused on using them for the real world set before him instead of the realm of wishful thinking.
Past the smoke and mirages now.
"Wolverenia is a term used by men of my generations to be describing a woman that he loves very much but she comes a goes in and out of his life on a whim and is like a ghost to him. My wolverenia she... we were arguing at the time. Braum cannot recalling what it was about or why it happened but there was a great fury between us that maybe only you, comrade, might know for being yourself."
The visions were shadows, one in the form of The Heart an one in the form of her, in the form of her wrath. Each shadow brandishing their adapted forms across the walls projected by fire shaken at its core and forced to burn on between the landmines, the napalm and the rapid strikes brought down on one side from the other and rebutted by verbal command.
"It took a lot to anger wulvy. Braum could not be imagining what he might have or done said to hurt her so."
Glazed, biological vision trinkets looked upon his shield wielding arm with eyes of suppressed inner torment. As easy as a lack of memory revolving around key details made it for him to forgive himself and as much as he knew his wulvy still loved him, it was a deep hurt that could be treated but not quite cured.
"After yelling at each other for what seemed to be being forever there was a calm but," a swift gale from the north broke past Braum's skin encasing his spinal column in ice. A tremor rippled through him signifying the migration of body heat to anywhere but his backbone, "But Braum just could not keep his mouth quiet. He couldn't. She had been walking away and though Braum does not remember what he said til this day Braum is sure that he could be saying something else then.
"She was so mad at that moment that she lashed out, she had thrown her kepi and Braum had raised his shield," and The Heart of Freljord raised his left arm in defense, turning his head form the collision as he did that day, "and when Braum had put it down," lowering his arm, "the shield could not be touching the ground because there was something being underneath it. Two things actually. When Braum had been looking to see what was being under his shield he lifted it up and saw what he never figured he would ever be seeing. The edge of the left horn had broken and so had the right horn of my wolverenia's kepi."
A silence fell over the two man crowd.
"Braum was scared, but when Braum was looking at her she was more scared. More scared that she wanted to hurt Braum so badly that she was able to be breaking the door to do it. But when she wanted to be going away this time Braum said nothing and went to go hold her, like Braum should have been doing the first time."
A sigh of relief left Braum as the ice melted off his vertebral and the barbarian's muscles relaxed, relieved of what seemed to be an up and coming happy ending.
But really, could you imagine how bad you would feel if you made Braum cry?
Anyhow~
"My wolverenia and I have made things up that night and when she was due back to her home again she took the horn from the shield and I have kept the one from her kepi. And that was the last fierce argument we have had."
Still shaken by all of the puppies he felt he kicked bringing up this history, "Well, I'm glad everything worked out between you two," Tryndamere uttered with a nervous laugh.
"Me too! And maybe one day you and Ashe and wulvy can be the best of friends! Ohoho~"