"Bróðir, guess what I found!" Egill had come running to meet his brother, awkwardly stumbling as he held his hands behind his back, obviously keeping what he was holding hidden. He grinned up at the older boy, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

"Oh, I could only imagine what it is, Egill…" Sigurðr jokingly rolled his eyes and threw his hands up in the air in mock defeat.

"A bird! A talking bird!" He revealed a small black and white bird, not yet big enough to be distinctive, who immediately began to squall after having its beak released by the child.

"Hey! Ya can't just keep a guy's beak shut like that! That ain't right!" The bird had a loud, grating voice more obnoxious than a lot of the drunks Sigurðr had been around.

"Shh, Lundi," the child calmly replied. "Be nice when you meet someone for the first time."

Sigurðr had to hold back a laugh. "That's…a very interesting animal you've got there…"

"I know, right?" Egill's grin returned as he latched onto his brother's sleeve. "Come on! I've found a lot more fun stuff to show you!" The boy started back toward the village, tugging full-forcedly on the other.

"Wait-Egill… I brought a surprise for you."

"Huh?" Egill continued pulling, but back toward the boat his brother arrived in instead. "Show me! Give me! Show me! Give! Give!"

"I brought a new friend." He made a motion and a tall, skinny teen, just slightly older than Sigurðr, came into sight, walking slowly, almost cautiously, looking to be quite shy. "This is Bróðir's friend, Bjarni."

Egill stared wide-eyed at the new person before breaking back into a grin and ran to him. Bjarni crouched down in front of the child and greeted him in a quiet voice that matched his look, "Hey… You're Egill? The place's changed quite a bit since I last saw it. Done a good job, kid."

"You came here before?" Egill questioned, not having a recollection of the stranger.

"Before you were born. Some of my people thought 'bout staying here too. I guess I could be kinda your brother, not a real brother, but y'know…kinda…"

"You mean like Ingólfr isn't my real father, but I call myself Ingólfsson?"

"Yeah. Back home, us three – Sigurðr, Malte and me — we're kinda like brothers too, and you're Sigge's…"

The child nodded and was silent for a moment before venturing a new question, his voice quietened significantly once over his initial excitement. "What's Malte like? I want to meet him one day too."

"I guess…he's kinda odd, but he's a good guy. Kinda loud and rowdy though, seems to really like your brother and follows him around a lot. Kinda surprised he'sn't come out this way yet."

"Oh… I can't wait!" Egill grabbed a hold of his new friend's sleeve and reached out again for his brother. "Come on, let's go."

The child grew quickly, for a nation. He was loved among his people, thought of as a protective elf over their island or perhaps a guardian spirit of their identity. Neither were far from the truth, and he loved the attention bestowed on him. When his human caretakers died, he always had someone willing to take him in, as if he really needed a caretaker. The people would feel bad though, if they had left someone of his size alone and so he never personally lacked a thing.

Children, naive and open-minded, were his favorites of the humans. He was their size, and in some ways, mentally similar to them, other than the memories and life that dated past even most of their parents. 'Naive and open-minded' was one place he was getting farther from everyday.

He often joined the children in their games. His favorite was a brand of hide-and-seek with crudely sharpened sticks to form a sort of wooden sword. Last one without a cut was the last man alive. The game could be called brutal, but it wasn't odd to them. The children believed in Valhalla, a place only fierce fallen warriors could feast. Those that 'died' in the game became those noble ones, the winner only looked forward to fighting his best the next time. Many of these boys would grow up to be great men, people Iceland would be proud to call his, maybe even legendary figures, his heroes.

In this game, he would always allow himself to lose. Death wasn't something he ever considered, in reality or child's play. To him, it was better to see the human children survive, because one day he would see them all die, just like all the others.

But also at this time, there were movements to toward becoming something bigger. Very soon, Iceland wouldn't be just a mishmash of settlements scattered across an island, but a sort of unit, an actual, organized country. His temperament grew less youthful and more serious. Upon his brother's visits, and the much less frequent visits of the Swede, Bjarni, Egill's requests and conversations of choice were focused of laws, systematic order, society, etc. Though he hated their monarchies, he adapted from them his own idea of society, nearly classless and with no central power. By 930, a commonwealth of small communes and villages was fully formed, governed by a parliament of men from the different places found fit to rule, but in daily life were no different from the other people, a sort of proto-republic. In no less than a mere sixty years of existence, so short a span of time for a nation, and the parliament, which was known as the Alþingi, was a first of its kind, a revolutionary idea in an age where kingdoms were being established across the continent and sole power in one man or one family was the norm. All from a nation appearing to be no older than eight.

Sure, the boy was terrifically smart, but he lived on ground worthy to drive one mad. After achieving such success, he would soon be struck down by disaster. From his birth he had been acquainted with the mountains and ice fields, the creeks and the canyons. These were his mystical places, unexplainably alive. They never saw anything happen, but would find lands previously flourishing with life, burned and covered in gray, hot dust and black rocks. The first time he saw something happen would always stick out. The ground had trembled for days without explanation, until the fire began. In the distance, a loud noise was heard, and the ground caught aflame, with black clouds and streams of fire pouring from it. Egill ran into the ash, but found nothing to see, nothing worth feeling either. He had an odd comfort enveloped in the searing heat though, and against the will of all who cared for him, he would run back into the cloud. The burns he suffered healed extremely quickly and never bothered him. But this event was far from over. Days, weeks passed as the land continued to vomit out burning rivers and burning clouds.

On the winds of the sea, the ash, as well as the news, was carried. The news had found its way to Norway. Worried sick, he left without a second thought, leaving his own affairs unattended and unwarned. When he found his young brother, covered and sitting in piles of ash he had collected, he nearly lost it, both from relief that the child was still alive and fear that he would just die soon anyway. Sigurðr wanted to pretend to be fearless, the calm one who would be there to cradle and rock the boy to sleep and tell him everything would be okay, but in reality, he was terrified. On the other hand, Egill seemed content, or at least not in any fear of his life.

"Egill, what happened?"

"The canyon caught fire. Obviously." The boy's voice was very matter-of-fact, with just a slight tone of mocking.

"Yes, of course…but…I mean…I… How?"

"The ground shook and then it split, and the red rivers came from underneath. Who knew there's fire under the ground?"

"But…I don't understand…" He shook his head disbelievingly as he gazed east to the very sight his little brother referred to.

"Bróðir, don't think about going to look. There's nothing to see there. It smells horrible and it hurts. It's hotter than anything you can imagine and it throws rocks. You can't see anything coming to duck either because the cloud is so thick and black, and the only light is the little fires everywhere. It's not worth it."

"Did…did you go look? You can't–"

"I went several times. I want to know what's happening."

"You can't do that!" Sigurðr's voice had turned shrill in terror.

Egill stood up to face his brother and held out his arms, sleeves rolled to show his skin. "I won't get hurt, Bróðir. I saw someone die when they got too close, but I'm still fine. Obviously I'm special. See, I don't even have a mark on me."

Sigurðr examined the boy's arms to find nothing, then unsatisfied, began to search the rest of his body for injuries. The boy patiently and quietly accepted it, sure that everything had healed, until his brother spoke up. "Egill, there's a burn on your neck."

"Oh, I forgot."

"And bruises and cuts on your back…"

"I fell."

"You can't go back! I forbid it! You…you can't!" This child was the only person Sigurðr held dear, he couldn't stand the thought of his pain, or worse, losing him.

Egill then brushed some of the ash from his face and gave his brother a small, reassuming smile with a finger to his lips, before wrapping his arms around his neck and speaking even quieter than he usually did. "I can't promise you that I'll stay away, and you can't tell me what to do anyway. I will promise you that I'll be okay, and one day, we'll know what happened here."

Several years passed before the fissures stopped erupting. The reddened sun and sky eventually came back to normal, but the damage would never be reversed. A once beautiful land had been destroyed and a young nation had been scarred by the sight of seeing his people die in great volume with absolutely nothing he could do to help. Famine set in after the disaster and hardship struck a nation still in its youth. It was only the beginning of a vicious cycle.

A/N: I should have had this up a long time ago, but I got horrible writers' block, and when my inspiration came back, it came for all the other plot bunnies.

Lundi = Puffin

I know Norway was pretty ooc in the last part, but srsly. How was a Norwegian never exposed to a volcano before in a time when no one knew really what a volcano was supposed to react? Iceland's pretty chill though, because…he's Iceland. The entire island is a raised part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. He's pretty much a humanoid volcano.

Hidden reference to Egill Skallagrímsson is hidden. Just cuz I love that saga so much.

~Butter~