He longed for the old days; for days when he simply was but wasn't.
He longed the days when he was simply the land and not entrapped in this immortal flesh.
In the beginning he was simply a spirit who danced in the wind, travelled through the waters, spoke through the mountains and slept in the earth. Fire and ice allowed the people of his land to see him; ask of him his blessings and wisdom and give their love and thanks. The creatures of his land, human or otherwise, lived in a contented balance, each providing comfort that warmed even the coldest of nights and the many spirits thriving as they were meant to.
Long before he was ripped apart and trapped in this immortal flesh.
Then the people of the sea came and he was ripped apart. He became Helluland, Markland and Vinland; young triplets all of separate mind and body but all of the same being. Despite being cast into chains and no longer as free as he once was, as they once were, it gave a new sense of being. It gave him an understanding of what it was to be connected with his people.
Unfortunately, this did not last long and soon he felt fragments of himself begin to die.
Flesh chains turning to rot.
A once immortal coil turned terribly mortal.
Never was he able to forget the deaths of Helluland and Markland; of his brothers, of himself, dying alone on the stone plateaus of Helluland and deep within the forests of Markland, weak and mortal.
Of the crushing and terrible fear he felt upon discovering that, just as Helluland and Markland had experienced, all his people were gone; naught but empty houses remained. Trembling at the thought of first handily experiencing what it was to feel his body dying all around him.
He fled south, hoping to find his people, only to discover that they too had left.
He sought to return to what he once was, only to be chased away. Those who once summoned him through sacred fire, sought his guidance and wisdom, thought him to be a child of the sea people.
A danger.
An evil spirit of a child who was forgotten and left for dead.
And soon he began to forget. Time passed so much more differently than when he was nothing more than the land. Without his people, without those who identified with what Vinland was, time had become utterly skewed and he had found himself lost. This land, it was him but it was not. Where he had traveled to was not Vinland but it was him.
He found himself unable to connect as intimately to the land and its people as he once had as a spirit. For a long time he wandered, desperately trying to become what he once was but bound by the flesh of Vinland.
Eroding from the sea of time, but never truly dying.
Soon it came to pass that he simply did not wake. Hundreds of years passed without his knowing within a land of spirits. They welcomed him home and he was able to dance in the wind once more until the spirit of absolute ice and snow bid him that he wake and return to the living world once more for he never was truly free from the flesh and could not remain.
He awoke alone with nothing but snow and sleeping trees to greet him. His body felt renewed, he could feel people, his people. No longer was he Vinland but something else. That part of him had died too.
His time as the spirit of this land, as Helluland, Markland and Vinland had been reduced to nothing but a distant memory.
He followed the sea-river for a time until he was discovered by a strange man. He bore a resemblance to the sea people but spoke and acted not the same. This man was a strange creature, a spirit like himself, trapped within flesh and yet the man thought nothing of it, thought nothing of being so separated from his land.
He was New France, colony to France.
His cage was called Mathieu Bonnefroy and eventually it would become Matthew Williams once New France was forcibly forgotten.
Even to this day, he could still feel the phantom pains of being ripped apart and caged into three separate beings and dreamt of death, the feeling of it eating the rotting flesh away. The memories served as cautious reminders of what once was and what could inevitably occur and it made him long for the days in which he was every part of the land, a spirit that moved unhindered amongst the other spirits of the land, never fearing what would happen should death claim him.