Prompt: Tower

Characters: Sigrun, Reynir

Google Transgarble apparently hates Icelandic. So... help?


"Sooooooooooo. Explain this to me again."

"W-well…" Tuuri looked from Sigrun, staring upwards with an eyebrow cocked and her hands on her hips, back up to the tower window and the two arms that were waving frantically out of it, and nervously adjusted her mask. Emil, behind her, who seemed to be favoring the if-I-can't-see-it-it-doesn't-exist route with regards to magic, stood behind them with his arms crossed and determinedly looking anywhere but forward.

"Help!" A frantic cry came down to them from one of the windows.

"Oh yes, and tell him to shut up before he attracts every troll in the city."

"We're working on it!" Tuuri called back in Icelandic before returning her attention to Sigrun. "Reynir had a bit of… a bit of an accident with his magic…"

"I can see that. What I'm asking is why you're down here and he's up there."

"Oh, that." Tuuri tapped her chin with a bit of a guilty laugh. "Well, when the stairs started collapsing I was already on my way down but he was still up there, and he couldn't get to them in time…"

"Yeah yeah, I get the picture." Tuuri breathed a secret sigh of relief when she didn't press for further details. "So there's no way Freckles can get back down from the inside."

"Not that I know of…"

"Forbannet islending. Emil! We got any rope handy?"

"Ummmmmmmm…"

"That's what I was afraid of." Approaching the tower, Sigrun tested out the nearest window ledge, experimentally digging her boot into a decayed pocket in the outer wall. It held her weight, but if she slipped up or hit a single weak spot the result would not be pretty.

Something long and very, very red dropped down beside her.

Sigrun wasted a few seconds of her life just staring at the thing in a state of extreme incredulity. Then, she turned to look back up at the window where the gods-cursed civilian was leaning out, dangling down his magically-lengthened red braid like it was some kind of gift, all the while grinning like an idiot and babbling away in that incomprehensible language of his.

"He says—" Tuuri was laughing so hard she could barely speak; even Emil was watching now, with the air of someone seeing an oncoming train wreck who doesn't want to know how it's going to end, but still can't bring himself to look away. "He says you can use his hair instead of a rope."

Again, she looked at the impossibly long braid. Again, she looked at Reynir leaning out of the window. Reynir grinned and waved.

She gave up. This level of weird was simply beyond her ability to process.

"Tell him to tie it onto something," she told Tuuri instead, "so I don't end up breaking his neck."

Climbing up by human hair was… interesting. Not an experience she'd care to repeat. It was too thick and slippery in her gloves, hard to get a decent grip. Though Reynir had done as she'd instructed and wrapped the base of his hair several times around a protruding hook, he still winced with pain every time Sigrun inadvertently tugged, fingers digging into either side of his scalp.

They both gave a sigh of relief when she reached the window, and Reynir reached out a hand to help her through. After taking a few seconds to get her bearings (unfortunately Tuuri was right; there was half a floor left on one side and a big gaping hole on the other; now way they were getting back down from the inside), she whipped around and grabbed the braid once more.

"H-hey! Hvað ertu að—"

He fell silent, mouth hanging open, as the knife sliced through the thick braided hair. Sigrun held it up by its base.

"This time," she said, "we're climbing down the normal way."