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Social interaction was second nature to most all creatures Snufkin had encountered. It was the nature of people to be social, and to exist was to exist together- that’s what his mother told him and his many, many siblings when he would grow desperate for a peace not found in such a busy household.
Snufkin would never complain, even if he could- it wasn’t like he could hear how chaotic it all was, though he could always feel the rumble of pitter patters and scuffles around him, alongside him, against him. If the house was loud, it was of no issue to him, though he did have issue with the house in all. It was crowded and small, enclosed and structured, messy and vibrating with life after life after life.
Life was a thing of great gift, he supposed, but he could not help resenting his own. He felt trapped, even when he wasn’t in the home, for he knew he’d have to return and would never a way to say against it. He couldn’t even understand why he was the only one who seemed to feel like this- none of his siblings seemed to stop smiling or their eyes to stop twinkling, their tails always in constant motion and their bodies dancing with energy.
Snufkin felt nothing like them, and could not understand why.
Nobody, not even his mother, knew sign language. Only he and the nanny hired to manage him knew it, and she taught him from a young age. She acted as a stand-in mother, though his own was far kinder, even through the silence.
He had nobody to talk to but his nanny, and felt even that too much. She would often tell him what others around him were saying, as she herself was not deaf and merely worked to interpret what was being said for him. He learned rather quickly on he couldn’t care less what they had to say. He’d no way of knowing if this was rude or not- all he knew was that nobody here was lonely, with so many together and cluttered the way they were. Nobody was lonely, and he was included in this right, for he wasn’t sure if lonely was the right word. No, he wasn’t sure he could get lonely, for that required a grasp of commonality to begin with, a connection with even one of the swarm of young around him for him to feel that loss and then replace it with loneliness.
It wasn’t that he was lonely, for he hadn’t anything to lose and make him so. He had his family by his side, but they were all eyes and faces and tails and fur and nothing more than social creatures that existed together, without him. He wasn’t sad by this, and came to learn that even with his nanny explaining the instructions of games they’d play to try and include him, he felt he’d no desire to be included.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Snufkin isn’t sure when he makes a decision, but it leads to a rush of finality that one day- or night, for it could have been- leaves him overflowing with joy.
For many moons after, he studies the world. He reads whatever he can get his paws on, learns to cast a line and prep a meal, begins to move of his own accord rather than with the flow of his siblings. His mother helps him simply by going about her life, and Snufkin watches and learns as she fishes and cooks and cleans. She’ll catch him watching and continue on with a smile, which Snufkin returns. She’s the only person whose smile he’ll return as more than a pleasantry or a thanks, for she’s the only person who makes him want to smile.
Snufkin isn’t a social creature. He’s not sure what to call himself- he thinks a snufkin should be whatever he feels like, and if that meant alone, he found no reason to be otherwise. He was a mumrik, as his mother had been translated to tell him once. He isn’t sure what a mumrik is or should be, but he knows he’s also a mymble; a mymble is social and rowdy and care-free. He didn’t feel much a mymble, and he’s learned little of mumriks.
“A mumrik is free,” his mother explains a day he asks. His nanny translates, fingerspelling the word ‘mumrik’, for there was no sign for such a creature. “They go where they please, and they come back when they find joy in doing so. One cannot tie down a mumrik, and can only be loved in their return.”
Free, he thinks to himself, a hum in his heart.
Mind made up, Snufkin follows the song. It’s freedom. Well, not quite, but close.
“Go?” his nanny repeats in hands, blinking in surprise. She looks around, almost nervously, though nobody there- no, not a single one, for none had bothered that much to try- could understand his request.
“Yes. Go,” he indicates to the window, flicking his tail around anxiously. He feels it’s urgency, then wrings it in his paws, releasing it only to continue signing. “Go. Out there, where it doesn’t matter if I can’t hear, for I won’t have anybody to listen to.”
She shakes her head feverently, moves her mouth in a way that was probably a groan- he’d felt his own throat make the noise, and been told it sounded like how frustration felt. Was she frustrated with him, already, so early in the morning?
Usually, she’d start to act annoyed with him around dinner, when he’d insist on eating away from his family or even cooking his own meals. You’re too young to bother being independent, she’d tell him in many ways over many evenings, eyes always in a roll and mouth in a tight line. She was strict, and would usher him to sit with the others and eat what his mother had prepared despite his quiet protests.
None of the other children were coddled like so. For the most part, Mother Mymble would leave them to be- often, she’d break up fights and upkeep her curfews, yet her parenting was lax and each child could do with themselves as they pleased. This usually resulted in bustling and unyielding energy of each individual child hopping, climbing, and playing where they shouldn’t. His nanny had called this freedom, and Snufkin could not bring himself to agree, though he understood her use of the word. Perhaps they were free- yet, they were still tied down by one another and by the rules made for them. They seemed happy, but it was because they managed to find their own happiness inside of it.
It was not freedom. At least, not to Snufkin. He wanted to be independent of rules and expectations from others, to live life as a breath of air or a ripple in a river.
In a family as big as his own, Snufkin would like to think that his independence would make things easier on his mother, and could not see why he’d want to continue being another mouth to feed. It couldn’t be easy being a single mother with so many children, after all. There were no fathers to care for them, though Snufkin had come to learn through the stark differences in some clutters of children that there must have been a few different fathers in question. No difference did it matter, he supposed, since he’d met none of them and didn’t find himself caring too, though it would have been nicer on his mother to have a helping paw, and can’t help feel some resentment for that. No, perhaps not for the company would he have cared to meet a father- he could not find himself concerned over it being his own or the father of some of his siblings, but for that of his mother. She never looked overwhelmed, never looked tired, never looked stressed; to Snufkin, these were signs that she was all of those things, and he thinks it best if there was a little less Snufkin for him to worry over.
After all, if he left, she wouldn’t have to pay his nanny to translate. She never helped his mother in any way except to bother with the children, and they were all unbothered with her as it was. He finds he does not care for her much, either. She was always insistant he play with the others, which tended to make everybody less affectionate to each other. He found talking with her was something that had to be forced of him, and something he wouldn’t mind the absence of at all.
Perhaps, then, he was more unsociable than his siblings, or anybody of the sort- maybe, it was just the company he had. He’d need to leave to know, he supposed. If he left, there would be nothing to translate, and his mother could spend the money elsewhere on new bedding or molds for her other children, as well.
She probably knows this, as well, and looks alarmed at his dead-set expression. “Now, now, you cannot leave. You are deaf, and at times sound will be the only warning of danger to show itself. You’ll have no way to defend yourself. You are very small and very unprepared, and will die a day on your own,” she signs angrily, paw motions far more aggressive than need be.
Snufkin feels annoyance rise in his chest. Of course, he had considered, but he’d not bothered it much. He’d read the novels left around the house, many of which told of adventures and the sea. He wanted to see it- the water, the frothing blue and gorgeous vibrations it brought. He wasn’t going to let a silly thing like silence stop him from the pull he’d felt reading the words, edging him to the window, heart soaring out.
“I can take care of myself. I’ve read plenty, and I know what I may be getting into. Danger, perhaps, but happiness, too,” he signs readily, no hesitance in his answer. She looks angry, and he looks strong. “I want to go. To stay anymore is to feel worse than I do.”
She blinks. “Are you that unhappy here? You can’t be, you’ve not said a word until now. You’re too young to be that upset,” she huffs, visibly upset herself. “You young people think your problems are so dire! Wait until you’re older to be distressed; until then, you’re in my care, and you do not have my permission to do any such thing.”
“It’s not unhappiness, I don’t think,” he admits, ignoring her jabs. He doesn’t feel issued with explaining himself to her, since arguing with someone whose mind is so made up was like cooking soup with nothing but the vegetables. “I feel… contained, here. My heart is pulling me forwards, and it has been for a while. I’ve tried to ignore it as long as it took to read all the books in this home, to learn what I can before I go. I’ve watched mother cook, and fish, and wash. I remember how to do it, and I will learn on the way. But I have learned all I can here,” he finishes, crossing his arms. He must look like a petulant child, and he thinks he may be acting like one, but he does not care. This is the most he’s said in one space of a time, and he means every word of it. “Now, I must go there.”
His nanny processes this, mouth open dumbly. If it’s just an expression or she’s making a note, he could only guess. “There?”
“The sea.”
“Why there?”
“I read it and my heart twisted,” he replies, honestly. There was no point to lying, after all. He’d felt a tug, and urge to leave immediately and go there; he could not explain it away, or shrug it off.
It felt like instinct. It felt like nature, a part of him, something more than what he must do and close to who he must be.
His siblings all are social by nature. He thinks this fine, but not his own.
His nanny crosses her arms, mimicking his pose, and looks more than frustrated. “You will not leave this house. I will make sure of that. You will die if you go, and I will not let your mother feel that sort of pain. The sea is far away, so very far, and you’d never survive to get there.”
The mumrik wants to laugh. Mother Mymble was full of love, of course, but she would not find the time to be hurt in his absence. She was too busy as is, and he knew that his nanny figured this as well. “What will happen if I go is you will lose your job. Another deaf person may be far away, so very far, and you’ll miss your paycheck before you find them. That’s the real issue, and it does not stop me. I do apologize, but I will be gone by morning.”
He thinks its positively nasty of him, but he is young, and has not yet learned true patience. He spins on his heels and calmly walks up the stairs, crawling into bed.
He rests for the night, more soundly than ever. By morning, he pulls the backpack he’d found in the basement out from under his bed.
Inside was not much- no, not much at all. He’d taken a brewing pot, some spices, two bowls (incase he breaks the first) and two spoons (incase he bends the first) from the kitchen after dinner one night. Breathing deeply, he tears the thin bedsheet of his comforter and folds it nicely, places it inside the pot and closing his pack up, weaves his fishing pole in between, and straps it onto his shoulders.
He heads down the stairs and grabs a piece of bread at the kitchen table, munching on it quickly before he heads out. His siblings stare at him weirdly, since he’s carrying a large bag with no explanation. Yet, he clearly can’t offer one, and they haven’t the means to ask, so they all just watch as he chews and swallows before turning to leave, just like that.
Only, his nanny is blocking the path. Mother Mymble is, too, as a matter of fact. His nanny is beat red, clearly having registered he was serious by now, but his mother shows no expression.
She kneels down to his height, and Snufkin blinks slowly at her. He loves his mother, no doubt- she’d cared for him and fed him and treated him like one of her own, even though he could not hear. She might never have learned sign language, but she always seemed to know when he needed space, and helped him learn to cook by slowing the process and gesturing clearly to what she was doing. He’d never even asked her to do that- just stared curiously, and she’d understood, lifted him up in her arms, and got to work. She’d taken him fishing, and taught him to read until he could teach himself. She’d always been so busy with her many other children, but she’d never forgotten a child or ignored them when she could have been there for them. Snufkin, to her, had never been an exception. She could never understand him, but she’d loved him just the same.
His mother hands him a bundle of green, folded over with poles and stakes atop the pile, a hat atop that. She smiles gently, and shakily writes T-O-M-T with her left paw, the letters bouncy and uncertain. Snufkin looks over the bundle and realizes it’s a pitchers tent, by the fold where the pole would go. Tent, then, is probably what she was going for.
Still. She’d… signed. She’d fingerspelled a word for him, something she’d never done before. Something she’d have no reason to do except for him.
Something she’d done for him.
Snufkin takes the bundle just as shakily as she’d signed what it was, then puts it into his bag. He’s still got room for a few more things, though he’s not sure what else he could want. The hat she’d given him, instead, he pops on his head. It’s big on him, but its soft inside, and it’s brim is long enough to guard from sun and rain alike.
His mother, suddenly, pulls him into a hug. It’s quick, and she pulls away just as swiftly as she’d initiated it, making him feel almost dazed.
Her mouth moves, and he turns his gaze to his nanny, who seems to debate doing her job for a moment. The nanny’s eyes flicker over the two, and eventually her posture loosens and she signs what his mother said; “‘Stay safe, darling. When you find the sea, breathe in deep.’”
Snufkin feels his heart flutter at even its mere mention, and he nods slowly. His mother brushes his cheek with her paw once, then stands, granting his way.
His nanny steps out of the way as well, but doesn’t have the grace to act polite about it. She pouts, and Snufkin smiles. Not because she was pouting; no, that would be needlessly rude. He smiles because he has no reason to pout himself, anymore.
He exits the house he’d never find himself return to in all of his life, and doesn’t regret a single step away.
“Y’know, I don’t get how you can carry around all this stuff and still be lookin’ like a twig, Snufkin,” Little My observes, watching from the rocks. Snufkin stares up at her sudden appearance, then scoffs and tugs away from her, continuing to wring out his shirt. He’d been merely trying to wash them in a creek from the sea when Little My had popped her head over the rocks and announced her position abruptly for the sake of a scare.
She giggles at his flustered reaction, her laugh a roll of waves as she hops closer to him and sits alongside the water. It’s a sound entirely unique to her, if he had to guess, but he could never be certain. He’d only gotten his hearing aids some years ago- perhaps others before then had laughed around him, sounding just like Little My did now.
Perhaps not, though. Nobody could ever really be anything like Little My, and that’s just what made her Little My.
“I’m not that skinny. I eat plenty and I walk plenty,” he retorts.
“You burn off everything you eat by walking away every five minutes after!”
“Little My!”
She giggles again. It’s more of a cackle, really, and Snufkin forces himself not to find it contagious. “Oh, come on, then,” she wipes a laughing tear from her eye, “you’re no skinnier than me. I’m only joking, you know!”
Snufkin sighs. No, he’s fairly certain he was skinnier than her, but he appreciated the drawback. So, he smiles at her. “Of course, Little My. You and I are very much built the same. It must be genetic.”
Little My blinks. “Genetic? Whadya mean by that?”
Snufkin waves his shirt around, standing and resting it on a flat rock he’d cleared earlier. He grabs his discarded scarf and moves back to the water, dunking it under and working the fabric through his fingers to clean it properly, as Mother Mymble had done. His pants, undergarments, boots and hat are already drying on the rocks. He chose the stream he was in to wash his clothes since it was more seculed than most, yet the water was still fresh as the sea itself. Though, he wasn’t one to mind nudity- every part of him, from the rib cage trailing down was covered in fur, after all. It was no different from Moomin, really. Still, Snufkin valued his privacy where he could have it, and liked the seclusion the creek offered. “Well, we’re related, aren’t we?”
Little My stares at him like he’d lost his mind. “We’re- what, since when?”
Snufkin pauses his paw movements momentarily, taking his time to stare at her in surprise. “Little My… did you not know? Mother Mymble is my mother. She’s yours, too, is she not?”
At this, Little My stands, her pose indigent. “What! No way, we look nothing alike. You’re all furry-” she kicks at his legs, which were covered in fur- though his arms were nothing more than fuzzy and his mop of a head more actual hair than fur, compared to his lower half, “-and you’re far to still and quiet, you know! All of Mother Mymble’s children are rowdy and never shut up.”
Snufkin takes a moment to process if it would be rude to laugh, and then does so anyway. “That includes you very much, then.”
She crosses her arms. “Yes, but not you.”
“No, not me. Perhaps my father was someone of still and quiet nature as well, and I inherited it from him. Perhaps one’s nature isn’t hereditary at all.”
Little My scrunches her nose and sits back down, pointedly looking away. She fiddles with the sand between the rocks, then blurts out, “Well, why didn’t I know we were related? I can guess you knew about me because I’m sisters with Mymble,” she asks, and Snufkin continues to patiently wash his scarf.
“I could smell it, actually. Even after all your time away and the fact of you being older than me, you still smell like Mymblehouse,” he explains, pulling the strands of his scarf gently in the water. “I imagine you simply can’t smell as well as I, and neither could Mymble, so you’d have never known by that.”
“Ha! Your sense of smell is that good, Snufkin?”
He wiggles his pointy nose for effect, and Little My watches with interest. “It is,” he confirms. “Perhaps that is hereditary, from my father, presumably just as my fur and tail are. Or,” he fishes the scarf out of the water, smiling in satisfaction of a good wash, “since I’m born deaf, my other senses may have increased to assist me.”
“Do senses do that?”
“I suppose so.”
She laughs. He can’t help but laugh, too.
Since then, Little My hung around more often than she used to. She’d crawl in his hat every once in a while and rest amongst his nest of a head while he walked to anywhere, so long as it was where he chose himself. A few times he’d find her in his hat after he takes it off for the night or for a wash, and he’d have forgotten most occurrences when she’d crawled inside to begin with. She was very light and very good at stealth, after all.
At times, she’d even sleep in his hat while he slept under his cover, both sheltered from the wind by his tent. It didn’t matter much to him if she slept in his hat, so long as she didn’t crease it, and she’s yet to. The night was rather quiet, even with her around, and he didn’t feel any differently in her company.
Mainly, he supposed, because he didn’t have to change anything to accommodate for it, as she knew him well enough to stay out of his way or mind her own self.
One night, however, the pattern shifts. Small paws are shaking him aggressively, and he groans in his sleep, fluttering an eye open. He wasn’t a heavy sleeper, but he did wake with the sun, and his body was positive that shouldn’t have started to rise for a while yet. Yet the paws persist, and he forces himself up to find the cause, mind groggy.
Little My is there, sprung from his hat on one of the odd night she choose to sleep in it, discarded to the side as it was. She’s talking, clearly, but no sound reaches Snufkin’s ears.
He blinks, too tired to process as quickly as usual, but after a moment of dead air he paws at his hearing aids and slides them into his ears.
“-no clue what it is but I’m sure you do, can you hear yet because it’s crazy, Snufkin, can you hear it yet? Are those things working? You didn’t put them in wrong, eh?”
Snufkin stares at her in confusion, and his expression is an answer, for Little My rolls her eyes and points out the tent. He follows her finger with his eyes. “I can hear now, but I only hear you, Little My.”
“I swear, just a moment ago, I heard the funniest sound! I went out to find it and couldn’t, so I came back and heard it again!”
Snufkin rubs sleep from his eyes. “Little My, I doubt I’d recognize any noise this early in the morning. I’m hardly ever up this time to hear it, and if I am my aids are usually out so I’d miss it anyway.”
Groaning, his older half-sister stares back to the tent entrance. “Stay up, then, and hear it with me when it sounds again! I’ll make you dinner to make up for it.”
“... I don’t believe you can cook, Little My.”
“Can too! I’ll make you fish stew, just as you like, with a touch of Little My.”
He’s about to worriedly ask what that implies when he hears whatever noise she’s been referring to sound loudly in the distance. It’s a warbling sound, though one pitch and it goes on for a while. Little My freezes as it starts, then starts bouncing around the longer it goes on, overjoyed to share this moment with Snufkin. Despite how early, he can’t help but fondly smile at her. The note finishes just as quickly as it starts, and Little My’s movements fall short with it.
Snufkin chuckles lightly. “That would be an elk, Little My. They come around once in a while, to drink from the stream before people like me come out to fish in it. They’re large, but don’t like to be seen, which is why you might not have seen one.”
“How come you know, then?”
“I happened upon one, once. It made that very same noise, and another burst out of the bushes, and they ran away together. This one must be calling for another, too.”
“Gross,” she comments, folding her arms and sinking back to the floor, crawling over to Snufkin’s hat and making herself at home once more. “Think it’s love?”
Snufkin shuffles out from under his blanket and picks up the hat, still so remarkably light, despite the body inside. “Perhaps,” he concedes, though his voice sounds odd. “I think love is more than just a call to be together. Love can be space spent apart, too. Don’t you think?”
He fluffs out the hat and puts it atop his head, feeling Little My’s feet land softly on his hair. Settled like so, he grabs his fishing rod and a bucket of bait, then pulls the tent flap open and breathes in the fresh morning- well, not quite- air. It’s crisper than usual, but he rather likes the change. Perhaps the change in pattern would catch some fish unawares, and he could start on a proper breakfast. He didn’t often eat breakfast, and would usually settle for an early lunch and later dinner, unless someone else was cooking. Moomin would invite him over sometimes, but he’d often decline, preferring the cackling of his own fire and it’s heat on his paws, as well as the reward for his own work of catching the fish or picking the food he’d eat.
His hat tips up slightly, and Little My’s face appears at his forehead, upside-down. “Where are we going, then?”
He hums. “Not far.”
“You gonna fish this early?”
“No, but perhaps I’m going to fish this late.”
She blinks, then snorts. “Y’know, I never realized how funny you were until I was able to see you acting how you do when nobody is watching,” she announces. He raises an eyebrow at her, and she continues, “I’m gonna get going as soon as the sun comes up.”
Snufkin sits on the grass and begins to feed his line. He sits and relaxes as the sun properly rises, and as it does, he catches a few minnows and Little My leaves as she said she would. Snufkin’s head is colder where she’d gone, but the sun soon is high enough to warm it well enough, and he feels a purr of contentment wash over him.
Snufkin wasn’t a social creature. That wasn’t his nature, as his nature was to follow the sun as it falls beyond the treeline, or his heart as it tugs him out to sea.
He’d followed his wandering mind many places and met many people. Some, when he could hear- a few, when he could not.
The ones that were around for both were most special to him.
The sea was not far from Moominhouse, from the residents of so that he found he loved being around, when he felt up to being around anybody. On days where he’d want to alone, they’d leave him be; on days where he felt just a little longing, he’d go to them, and they’d include him like one of their own . No, it wasn’t far, and neither was his family. Not the Mymbles, but something close, and something new yet not quite different at all. Life for him now was open and free, but he’d still find the time to be spent in proximity, and he’d let it come to himself as it should.
He’d leave when the snow would turn the air frigid, for the snow left no song in his steps. Once more, he’d follow the tug in his heart that tells him to leave- and, when the time comes right, he’d follow the song in the wind back to the sea.
Though, not the sea exactly. No, the sea was a place to breathe deeply, to listen to the roll of the waves or to not listen at all, and just breathe alongside them. Finding the sea was exactly as he’d read it would be, though he’d found something much more fulfilling in his heart than the sea itself could offer.
He’d found Moominvalley. Moomintroll, Moominmamma, Moominpappa, and Little My. He’d found others, too- people who would wave in greeting rather than call out, just incase today was a day where he choose to walk in silence, without his hearing aids in. This didn’t happen often, but he liked the break from sound every once in a while, when he felt overwhelmed or needed to be alone with his thoughts. He’d found company that left him alone when he needed it, and offered shelter if he ever asked for it. People who might not understand him, not really, but who loved him anyway- people like Mother Mymble.
He’d found a place- a people - his heart would ask him in song to return to once the cold winter air turned to warm breeze over Moominvalley. And, when he plays his song on the first day of spring- a new one, filled with vibrancy and sorrow at once, written as he walked and the rush of everything was translated note by note on his harmonica- watching Moomin run and shout and wave his greetings as he always does is suddenly worth every moment of silence he’d make of the world.