I took two stereotypical ways of portraying Norway and Denmark, mashed them together in a weird setting and added zombies.
There you go, poetry. Or, rather, crack.
BTW, when I say weird setting... well, you'll find out. It's rather explicit.
Bubble world
SLAM.
All he saw before his world went black, was a gigantic wooden spatula.
.
.
.
The first thing he saw when he blinked his eyes back into the real world, fighting his way through a distinct light-headedness, consistent dizziness, and numbing headache, was the head of a common, albeit large, wood-chopping axe resting dangerously close to him.
Then he acknowledged he was lying on his back on the floor. Then he noticed a pair of feet that came and went around impatiently.
Then he took in the monstrous howling that came from outside, he panicked, and was sooner than planned sitting up. Nausea took over him and he really, really wanted to throw up. Or got back to the floor and fall unconscious again. The latter may've been more appealing, too.
"YOU!" a voice then called, and his throbbing head guessed somebody was referring to him.
"NO ONE TRIES TO STEAL FROM ME!"
He groaned. All he could come up with as a reply was, "Shut up."
"You're not in a position to boss me around, you cowardly lowly thief!"
A thought vaguely crossed his mind. He was becoming more lucid and more oriented as the dizziness faded and a sense of hushed urgency lingered in the sidelines. The thought in question was, shouldn't his clothes give him away? That, whatever it was, he was not there to steal anything?
But that was making too much thinking all of a sudden. He fixed a blank look on his face, which didn't cost him much trouble, and scanned his settings for the first time, really.
Evidently it was a shop of sorts- the roof was good hay, tied in an efficient, resistant fashion; the walls were also in an acceptable condition given the fact that they were the most ordinary kind of adobe-brick walls. Right, the typical place you'd find a commoner doing… commoner stuff. In this case it appeared to be a… bakery, if his eyes didn't fool him. His nose was too preoccupied with smelling his own blood and sweat to mind anything else, but he might smell bread too. Bread, mmm… he was kind of hungry… where was he?
Right, checking out the setting.
Speaking about commoners, there she came into view, and he most certainly didn't like the way she was holding that wooden spatula. For one thing, it was huge, for another, damn him if it didn't look like she was holding a weapon of mass destruction. If there even existed those kinds of things in the Middle Ages.
She was a peasant, evidently, wearing sturdy skirts and a patchwork apron over them, a rowdy cotton blouse, coarse shoes, her hands white with flour. Nothing too remarkable except for the little detail that she was one of the goddamnedest pretty commoners he'd encountered thus far.
Not to mention the only one that'd managed to knock him unconscious with an ungodly baking implement.
"Well? What are you waiting for? Get out of here!" she commanded, but he fixed her silent with a death glare. Damn right he was getting the hell out of there, but not before getting some particulars straight:
"I'm not a thief," he announced evenly, from his rather undignified position sitting down on the floor.
He was still too dizzy to stand up, not to mention that damned armor weighed a ton.
"Not a thief, huh?" she repeated, "Maybe I'll knock you out again and get you outta here myself."
"Try that, damn you," he growled, and a sudden rise in volume from the ruckus outside made him grit his teeth.
"By the way," she said, grabbing a wooden chair and pulling it near him, to sit where she could talk to him without shouting too much, "What's with the wild party outside, huh? Your friends trying to come raid the place or somethin'? 'Cause if they get this close to my pastries, I'll tell you, that axe next to your head ain't for show…"
…he wasn't going to doubt that.
"Look, I don't know what you fabricated in your head about this situation," he began, evenly, testing if he was steady enough to stand up, "But those are black-magic created undead out there. They've eaten half this village already."
He stood up. Victory.
"Oh," she said, her cocky smirk fading many degrees, "That's why I got no customers today…"
He deadpanned. "You're dense." But he had to lean against a nearby table for support… why did the floor feel soooo far away?
"So you mean that's happening out there and you come to steal from me instead of be lending a hand? Man, I'm so knocking you out again now…"
He facepalmed. Honestly. Honestly. It was just his luck, was it? To end up in the hands of the person with the thickest skull in the kingdom?
"I'm not damned trying to steal from you, woman!" he said, losing for a second and a half his pristine calm. "I'm the prince. I don't need to steal from you."
She blinked and eyed him from head to toe. "Shitty luck, huh?" she laughed, "If it's tax money you're after, you can take a cake instead, since no one's gonna eat 'em now…"
… what was it about her? She had this incredible ability to make him want to screw the agonizing world out there only to reach over to her and strangle her dead.
"You don't realize, do you?" he asked evenly, trying to suppress his annoyance, "You're this close to dying. We all are."
She stayed silent. He felt the need to clarify.
"No one's going to collect any tax for a while now."
"Oooh…" she beamed, "Well that's awesome! 'Cause tax collectors suck!"
…why did he even bother?
"M'name's Mathilde," she announced, stretching out her hand for him to shake.
He eyed her with an odd mixture of wariness and condescendence, and did not complete the handshake. He introduced himself, however:
"I'm Prince Norge. Although probably the 'prince' part is, as of now, irrelevant."
Outside, a pack of undead creatures howled in subhuman ways and chased after innocents and pounded on the (thankfully closed) door of the bakery.
"Well, oh! Then wait, …since it doesn't matter anymore…let me rephrase that!" she said with misplaced excitement, "I'm Mathilde, Queen of the North! And it's awesome to meet you, now that I know you're not gonna steal my pastries."
He shrugged. Right. It was just his luck.
"Want one…?"
He shrugged again. Why not? Wasn't this situation turning out to be even crazier than originally assessed?
…
Half an hour later saw them drinking mead and finishing some (very very very very) delicious pastries.
On the house, naturally. It was the least she could do to make up for that large bump on the back of his head, from the spatula, before.
"So, huh, what were you doing before you barged into my shop wielding that sword like crazy? Oh, about the sword, it's hidden behind the counter, so you know."
He downed the remainder of his mead. "Protecting the kingdom…"
She tilted her head, clearly meaning, 'expand?'
"… killing zombies," he added, reluctantly.
She oh-ed. "So that's what they're called?"
"Apparently," he said like one states a weather condition, "I think it's the workings of Arthur the Drunken."
"You mean that loser wizard that's always saying he'll spread the plague (whatever that means) some day?" she asked, remembering the guy dressed like a gypsy parading the streets of the village cursing the passers-by. Drunk.
"Yes," he answered, poker face,"… the royal magician says it's people that get sick from eating rotten eggplants. But I don't think so."
"No, obviously it's not the eggplants," she commented, "We'd all be pretty fucked up if it were the eggplants."
Contemplative silence ensued.
"Well, let's go kick some ass!" she announced cheerfully, wriggling out of her skirts and apron to stay only in her breeches. Which was quite inappropriate for the time period, and earned her a disapproving stare from the (possibly former) royalty member.
"Come on, Norge!" she drawled sensing his stare, "They're dead! No one will mind!"
…he couldn't argue with that logic. So he shrugged. "Fine. Whatever."
"Yess!" she exclaimed, and whyever was she so excited? Seeing her happily grab the axe and handle it like it weighed nothing, Norge was seriously starting to question the workings of fate. That, and apparently he'd transformed from 'lowly thief' to 'undead-ass kicking buddy' in less than an hour. Maybe it was something in the mead. Or maybe it was just her seemingly innate insanity.
And meanwhile, all the while, there was inhuman crying outside and pounding against the door and barred windows. They armed themselves, braced themselves, and went outside to slay zombies in the name of justice.
Yeah... They did.
…
It was the dead of night when they later short of crawled back into the bakery, sweaty, tired, and still high on the thrill of the hunt.
"Man they were a lot," Mathilde commented, catching her breath as she leant against the adobe wall next to Norge.
"Damn," he only said in confirmation, also pretty much exhausted.
She still managed to pluck energy from somewhere enough to ask, "Wanna do it again tomorrow?"
Norge didn't find anything appealing about the thought of the spring sun rising lovingly over his to-be-ripe medieval fields the following day, only to uncover dozens of mangled rotting bodies lying around the streets of the village. And who knew what his castle looked like. He shuddered. But he agreed.
"Yes. Until it's done."
"Yay!" she exclaimed with the enthusiasm she could muster, before finally slouching down to the floor and resting her head against the wall, to look up at him, and say "It's gonna be the most kick-ass date ever."
Norge eventually slouched down to the ground next to her, too worn out to care if it was a proper pose or what the hell, and he groaned at the wording.
She kind of beamed. "Get it, Norge? Kick-ass. The most kickass date ever, I tell you!"
A/N
I have no explanation for this, guys.
I went to the Argentine equivalent of the NYSE or something today, and my braincells are all dead. I'm almost sure of that.
The title came from a random picture in dA, no ulterior meaning whatsoever. The file in my computer is called "cracky dennor crack". SO yeah.