A smell stands apart in the late summer forest.
There's the earthy scents of the leaves and the moss and the fallen trees and the fungi breaking down them all, and the fresh and mushroomy scent of milk cap mushrooms in his basket. There's a different smell there too, an unpleasant one, one that Ivan knows, has come across before in his almost eleven years of life. He can't put a name to it yet, doesn't remember where he knows it from, though it is a smell he would come to know well in the years that follow. Not that he knows it now.
It's a bit like the time he and Papa and Oleg and Oleg's papa Uncle Sergey found that decaying sheep carcass on the field between their houses when wolves had been stealing livestock from the village, Ivan thinks as he crouches down to pick the mushrooms he spotted before noticing the smell. When he picks one off the ground and turns it upside down, runs his fingernail on the gills and the delicate membranes crumble, the breaks weep a white liquid. That's how he knows the edible ones from the less edible ones. Mama and Katyusha taught him.
The smell still lingers, and it brings to his mind their banya for some reason, but Ivan doesn't dwell on that thought for long. With a little hum, the boy stands back up and scans the forest floor very carefully. He doesn't want to miss anything. They have food, but ever since Mama died and Papa didn't come back that one winter a couple of years ago, they've been in a situation where they've never had too much to eat, either, so even a little more of it is good, and... there! There's a familiar looking mushroom there, very familiar, and as Ivan scrambles closer, he recognizes it and can't believe his luck! It's a porcini mushroom! The best kind there is, Katyusha says, and Ivan has to agree. He can't believe he still found one, he thought they and the neighbours had all picked this forest clean, but it seems like no one ever checked this—
A slip of his foot and a branch sneakily buried under some moss ensure that in his haste, Ivan manages to fall flat on his face. It would be fine; his foot didn't get caught badly and the blanket of moss on the ground is soft. Even the mushrooms in his basket, now strewn across the forest floor, can be picked up again, but where he's now fallen, that smell from before is filling his nose with a strength that's so overwhelming it makes him cough. The moment he breathes in the stench he remembers where he's smelled it before.
There was a time, two years ago, the winter he had his ninth birthday, when the ground was too frozen to bury Mama right away. She had to stay in a coffin in the entrance to the banya, and before some neighbours came to move her when the weather finally started getting warmer... That is to say, when Ivan opens his eyes to see two empty sockets staring at him from a grinning skull half buried in the moss—though something grips his insides—he doesn't scream in fear or surprise. He gets up, brushing moss and pine needles off his clothes, and from up here the smell isn't too bad, he thinks even though his every breath shudders, as whoever it is has been here for some time. He can probably fill up the basket, he decides, his face pale, and then go home and tell Katyusha about this poor person, and—
And that is when he sees the sled.
"This was supposed to be your birthday present," Papa is saying, putting on his coat, "But you won't mind me borrowing it to get help for Mama, will you?"
A brand new beautiful sled stands propped up against the door, sturdy and big enough for all three of the siblings to fit on it, with bright, stylized sunflowers painted on the wood and Ivan's own initials carved into the back. He shakes his head the tiniest bit, still staring at it in awe when Papa pats his head lightly and picks up the sled by the rope, and puts his hand on the door handle.
He smiles with a smile that looks wrong when he says, "Thank you. You'll get it back soon, I promise. Be good, Ivanushka."
Papa opens the door and steps out into the storm before he can answer, and the last thing Ivan sees is the gloved hand holding onto his beautiful new sled.
The coat and gloves have partially decayed and partially been ripped apart, maybe by the same wolves that got that sheep in the field back then, and the bright yellow paint has flaked off and moss taken residence in the chipped and rotten darkened wood, but the initials И.И.Б. on the back are as clear day.
Ivan's limbs feel heavy but he feels light-headed, like he could float away any moment, as he steps over his father to the sled. It's smaller than he remembered. The three of them couldn't fit on it anymore.
"You're welcome," he hears a voice say from far away, and it takes him a long time to realize the voice is his own as he detangles the arm bones still held together by something dried from the rope of the sled, and sets the gloved hand to rest on the soft moss.
"I'm taking it back now."
Feeling detached, like in a haze, Ivan pulls on the rope and the rotting sled follows, as if the mossy mounds were the field of pristine snow it was meant to glide on. It's halfway home when the thought of the abandoned basket of mushrooms distantly crosses his mind. He stops and tries to turn, but his feet won't budge, no matter how he tells them to move. The thought of going back makes his feet and his legs and all of him feel like lead. His body physically won't let him return to that place. In the end, he has no choice but to allow his feet to take him all the way home.
It takes him no more than five minutes.
A/N: I may have my hand in a cast due to a broken finger with just my thumb and index finger available for typing, but that won't stop me from giving Vanechka my beloved some more childhood trauma in this verse uvu he sure has crappy luck lol
If it makes you feel better, which I doubt it will! This has always happened, but I'd just not written it down before. I swear good things happen to him too, I just never write those parts asgasdga. And yes! It does seem like the only way I can write this story is via drabble game prompts from Hetalia Writers Discord, but only bonus side stories that wouldn't make it into the main story, at least probably not quite like this. Fun!
I promise the next entry in this series will have some character other than Vanya. I will not promise he won't be in it too! But it will also have someone else. Pinky promise.
As an actual note, I started out the Halloween drabble game with a different prompt - ghost - but it was taking so long I switched to this. I'm going to finish and post the other one too, eventually, so look forward to some mildly spooky stuff very out of season! That one wasn't in the home front fic verse though, sorry if you got excited :D
Also huge thanks to my awesome friend peachplume who was also my amazing beta for this fic!
Anyway. Thank you for reading this far! I hope you enjoyed, even if the subject wasn't very enjoyable. Comments and kudoses make my day, if you'd like to shoot me one. :) Have a lovely day! 3
P.S. I know the mention of the banya is very short, but I feel like I oughta point out that I actually do not know how usual it would be for a Russian peasant family to have a banya at home in the early 1930s, and thus the understanding of their cultural significance and use in everyday life is completely based on how saunas are and were used in Finland, because saunas and banyas are very similar and it's the only point of reference I've got. If someone knows better, please correct me and tell me more! I would love to know!