So it goes with saying that only things I own with any connection to MARVEL I bought on Ebay or Etsy. MARVEL COMICS & MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE are their own creatures and I have nothing to do with either of them aside from the fact I enjoy reading or watching them, and am grateful for the ability to play in their world. I claim nothing, and I receive nothing for this, expect the pleasure of putting something out into the world.

This story is part of several prequels leading up to That Which Wanders is Unaware. The sequel to TWWiU will be updated every week, but the prequels will be updated is I get to them.

You can also find this story on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN under the same title and pen name.

CHAPTER TWO

FRJÁDAGR, HAUSTMÁNUÐUR 1ST 1415

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15TH 1415

1001 HOURS

VESTFOLD, NORWAY

SANDEFJORD

ARNORA

The next enemy to claim victory over me wasn't a 'God' or a King. It was a bear, squatting in my 'house'.

I didn't know their language in the beginning, but the Allspeak is a marvelous ability. Like many of Asgard's other accomplishments, the Apples of Idunn, for example, which alter the rate at which we age, the Allspeak is another enhancement granted to each of its citizens, though that is one we are born with. Its been part of Asgardian life for so many generations I can't even recall who created it, but is a highly refined example of nanite technology, capable of being passed on through the genetic code, which allows us to quickly learn a language, written or spoken, through exposure alone.

They called me Íviðia in their tongue, 'she who dwells in the wood', so that is what I set out to become.

I walked until I thought I could stop, hopeful though not entirely confident I'd found a place beyond the humans reach. I did not know enough of this land, of Midgard to dare at such confidence. In truth I knew almost nothing at all. Midgard may have been part of the nine realms but it held little interest to most in Asgard. Adventures, young warriors and hunters would frequent her soil for the taste and pleasure of the exotic but as for me, a healer destined to serve the royal family, the realm of the mortals was not a subject I ever thought I needed to put much study in. I thought so many things, I made so many mistakes.

Listening to them had taught me their language, but there was no magickal ability to teach me the rest. I was stronger, smarter, longer lived then these people, yet so much less skilled.

I took DNA once, from several species. I separated them, isolated pieces of them, and blended them. I engineered into them a new species, and yet I could not figure out how to dig a hole that would not collapse.

The winter was settling in, the cold, that even I of Asgard couldn't help but feel. I needed shelter, a place of enough permanence to let me outlast the season.

It was nothing like Asgard, like my memories of camping. There were no spells to erect shelters, to summon lights and set up perimeters, I had none of these skills except my minor knowledge of temperature manipulation, the only good thing Loki left me with, that let me make fire.

I'd desperately hoped I could find some kind of cave or tunnel to take possession of, what little I knew of this place I thought that they should have been plentiful, but I should have known fate wouldn't allow that luxury. I finally gave up that search when I woke to the first signs of frost ahead of the dawn. If I couldn't find a shelter I'd have to start making one.

I never thought digging could be this difficult. Our tools made it so much less taxing, so much less frustrating. I lost count on how many times my efforts ended up collapsing in on themselves, mocking my bloody fingers before I figured out I needed to take additional steps, another skill I had to learn on the spot.

I would have to reinforce the walls and ceiling to prevent further collapse, and that meant I'd have to teach myself another skill yet again. There were fallen branches and trees I could use that were still strong enough to bear the weight I asked of them, but the problem was cutting them. I knew how to identify the plants and properties in them, but manipulating them was not a skill a healer needed to know.

I needed to find a way to chop and carve them into the size I needed, without a blade, or at least a decent one. I found a jagged rock strong enough withstand the abuse I put it through, stronger then the abuse I put my own flesh through. It didn't take long for the white interior of the wood I revealed to start turning red as I wore through my own skin, nothing but rags to protect my hands, and my own ability to heal, time and time again.

Eventually I had a hole big enough to fit three of me sitting down, and a door. Though the door was more of a movable wooden wall I made of planks, and skinny branches that I boiled until they were soft enough to use as rope.

It was drafty and cold, and if I needed to rely on solid fuel for all my fire it would have been smokey too. Thankfully I could make fire through magick to keep warm during the coldest of it, though I couldn't maintain it indefinitely. For things like cooking I needed to use wood. For things like cooking I needed food, I needed to venture out into the frozen world around me.

I was so hungry in the earliest days. There were no berries, or crops for me to pick at my leisure. I had to search, and rely on what pittance luck might offer me. Occasionally I'd find a feast, the stash of nuts the squirrels had hidden in a low hole on a tree. I always hoped for that, though more often I relied on what nutrition I could get from boiled tree bark, plants that were frozen under the snow, and what roots I could dig up on days when the sun was strong enough to thaw the earth just a little.

Thirst was just is much an issue. I had no cups or kettles. My only source of water, other then when I ventured across a stream, was what little snow I could melt and heat and the dip of a rock that was bowl, basin, and pot depending on my need.

Things improved when I realized I could kill the animals. I was no stranger to meat or hunting. I ate it often on Asgard, and is a Vanir hunting was not something I was unfamiliar with. However this was different, this was cheating in a away that bordered on cruel.

I noticed that animals when they were around me, how could I not when the sight of them made my stomach pangs grow, and the knowledge that I lacked the weapons to hunt them re-enter my mind. I still found there presence beneficial. Often if I followed them, they could lead me to their stashes, or kick up the ground far better then my soft fingers could.

Foreign as these animals were to me though, my familiarity with animals in general allowed me to pick up on it rather quickly. These animals may have been unfamiliar with Asgardians, but they had to be familiar enough with man to know wariness of my shape. Indeed I could see that in them as they maintained distance at my approach, but I also couldn't help notice that they didn't scatter entirely.

They were curious about me, comfortable, and if I tried I realized they could be coerced. Hunting was honorable. There was respect in the patience and pursuit, there was honor in allowing and accepting the challenge. When you hunted, when you killed, you were on equal terms even if you won. You and your prey both had the freedom to preserve their own life. This, was luring innocence to their own doom, and I wept.

It was a deer, a buck, a fawn with stubs for horns, and we found each other in a clearing both wanting the dandelion roots I planned to eat for supper.

Something had kicked up the snow rather thoroughly, and I took that as a hopeful sign I might find something under the ground. I had to heat my water and wet the soil to make it soft enough to dig through, doing my best to pretend that the cold and damp wasn't making my fingers painfully stiff. Ignoring that got easier when felt my fingers trace the edges of the prize I hoped for, a better one then I hoped for given how large dandelion roots grow.

I already had one out of the cluster when I saw it inch timidly out of the trees, its copper fur and spots making me truly confused as to how it got so close and stayed so unseen. It was skinny, even for winter, and the desperate fixation in its eyes told my why. It must have been separated from its herd or mother.

It didn't run when I lifted my hand. It should have. It didn't run, only retreated a step as I slowly stood from my knees in the dirt. It should have. It came closer until its nose was close enough to sniff the root in my hand, to nibble on it when I wouldn't surrender it completely. It didn't run as I carefully put my hand on its fur. It didn't run as I let my hands slide to caress its neck. Its hunger overcame its curiosity, and it trusted me because I fed it.

It couldn't run when I wrapped my arms around its neck, pulling it tight with my other arm and locking it in place. It couldn't run as I dropped all my weight on its neck, forcing half its body down against the dirt while enduring its struggles. It screamed as it kicked for purchase at the earth, and against my flesh. I snapped its neck, and held it, petting it in pointless comfort, crying an apology as I felt its chest collapse onto itself.

I gained food from that fawn. It was difficult, and far from expertly done but I skinned a pelt from it with the sharpest fragment of stone I could, and carved the meat off its bones, knowing enough to leave the organs and carcass where it lay to keep predators from following.

I kept its fur too, using a smooth stone to buff off what meat reminded from when I skinned it before drying it near the fire. It turned out stiff and I had to beat it to soften it enough to use as a cloak, but it was a means for warmth, and I did better the next time, and the time after that.

I didn't want to die, I didn't want starve, cold and alone in a hole in a hill. I wanted to live. I had to do it to live. I told myself that every time I lured an animal, improving on that too with practice, when I realized they were attracted to the sensation of my magick.

I survived the winter that way, and when spring came again, my hole in a hill was lined in furs and filled with bones.

Things became easier when things began to get warmer. All winter long I felt much like what I imagine winter did itself. I was just surviving, subsisting on what was necessary to continue my existence, but with the first signs of spring I felt myself coming back to life right along with the land around me.

The land grew around me, and I grew the land around me. I found what I recognized, are realms separate but not so different in many ways. The plants I knew by texture, taste, sight and scent I dug up and replanted near my hole. I watched some of them take root again with joy, and many more wither. I mourned their loss, but I learned from it.

The ground was hard, the soil shallow and poor, the seasons short. I learned my magick made them stronger. It took quite a few plants before I noticed. The more holes I dug the rawer my skin felt, the longer I dug, the more the earth scratched and scraped, and soaked up the blood from my knuckles. The holes coated in blood, in magick were the plants grew the best.

I strengthened roots at first. Then I learned I could break things down to improve the soil. And eventually I realized I could grow. I took a branch, fallen and rotted. Out of it I grew a sapling, a sapling that grew into a tree, a tree that bore a seed, and shed its leaves and died, a seed that grew a bigger tree. I did that first in a week, then following spring an a day, then the next an a hour. I had learned how to master the land.

I learned, but there were other things I knew. I knew how to cook in an earthen oven, and though I did not know how to build one, I knew what they should like, and how they should work, so trial and error perfected its construction. I knew that bee's would flee smoke, and that if I watched the birds carefully, I could find eggs. I knew that with patience, and good work I could even manage something that passed for flour. I wanted bread, I spent five years without the taste of it on my tongue, and I thought I deserved it, but then the land taught me the price of my arrogance.

This was not a land of magick, magick had a price here, and I had used too much too quickly. I exhausted myself using magick to grow hazelnut trees on a hill of pines, and I feel asleep gathering firewood. I told myself it would be fine, just to rest for a while in the shade. I gave nature, and fate an opportunity, and they taught me a lesson. No one deserves anything, and least of all me. It taught me that lesson with a bear.

I came back home, still tired but rested, dreaming of warm soft bread and honey, only to find the honey, and everything else lost to me. To preserve what I didn't eat right away, I wrapped it in hide, and buried it in my hole, which is why when I returned I was greeted with the sight of a bear's back peaking past my door, and the sound of it rooting out my stores with the pleasure that should have been mine.

When it notices me it was only my ability with fire magick, and the branches in my hand that stopped its charge and saved my throat. But not my life. My life was in that hole, and this stupid animal tore it from me as surely as if its claws finished their intentions. I could not defeat a bear, I lacked the tools and the abilities. Even as strong as I was its claws would rip through my flesh, in my lack of a blade or an arrow, and my failure to compel its trust and calm. She was a hungry predator and no amount of magick would change her opinion of me.

I lost everything, again. I would have to start over again. I would learn this lesson, again. I told myself it was fine, I knew what to do, I knew it better now, and it was Spring, not Fall crawling into Winter. I would do it better this time, and I would find what I needed for my damn bread still. Then I came across men again, and I came across the darkest pits inside them.