Chapter Text
Wood Man never used to mind the rain.
Used to be he had about as much cause to complain of a light drizzle as a tree.
Which is to say, less than no cause at all.
Water is one of the few forms of nourishment he needs, and rain’s an easy way to get it. He ought to appreciate it more, he thinks, seeing as most other things he wants don’t have the decency to fall out of the sky for free.
He hasn’t gone city like Hilda. He’s still perfectly happy to lay down in a dead sleep under the stars, with nothing but the desiccated forest floor for a bed. He doesn’t need a mattress or a pillow, or a quilt or comforter to keep him warm. Even when he imposes on the hospitality of others, he prefers the floor.
He’s not a creature that requires many creature comforts, is all.
But somewhere along the way Wood Man’s woodsy, fey tranquility had transformed into a sort of homey, languorous mellow. It wasn’t a big outward change, but a subtle inner one, wherein he traded one love of quiet nonsense for another: his babbling brooks for bubbling kettles; his shifting leaves for scraping pages.
He got to like sitting by a fire. Curling up with a book of long-forgotten histories and supernatural bylaws. The comfortable silence of a peopled home, over the tenuous silence of the wilderness in the dead of night.
It’s not that he doesn’t like sitting on hollow logs or grassy hills or strange stone formations any more. He just also likes cozying up to the fireplace and kicking back on a soft rug—or maybe a nice hardwood floor, if the mood strikes him. And when Wood Man considers where he’d most like to enjoy his daily repose while it’s raining— well.
It’s inside, no question.
So it’s damn unlucky that the sky kicks off a crashing cascade of the stuff just as Wood Man has cleared the Trolberg city gates.
He looks up at the weeping sky and sighs.
His home is quite a ways from Trolberg, which hasn't yet been an issue on his prior visits to see Hilda and sightsee the town, owing to his aforementioned indifference to roughing it in the woods. He could take a nap any-old-where if he didn't feel like making the whole trip in one go.
But not in the rain, he thinks.
Also, cloud cover as dark and heavy as what they've got now is just the sort that can block enough sunlight to wake the local troll population.
The raindrops pitter patter on his hollow head and solid body. He sounds like a homemade wind chime.
Wood Man stands in the road until he’s properly lamented his circumstances. Then he turns about in search of the nearest porch light. There's one just outside the gate, as it happens.
The porch light glows above a door set into the base of one of Trolberg’s ubiquitous bell towers. Hardly a home, Wood Man muses, nor a terribly hospitable place to wait out the rain. His head continues to swivel, and Wood Man is pleased to discover, across the road from the bell tower, a narrow, one-story cottage with a small attic or loft, squatting against the ramparts of Trolberg's defenses.
Wood Man steps into the squelching grass toward the cottage. He climbs the porch steps in the dimming light of dusk, to the hollow percussion of rain falling in his eyes, and he pushes open the door.
–
The wood stove is practically calling his name.
"Nice," Wood Man says, rubbing his palms together in anticipation. A thorough inspection of the wood pile almost impresses him: dry, hardwood logs—ash, in fact. Low resin content. Good for building a steady, long-lasting fire. "Very nice," he amends with warm, woodsmoke satisfaction.
He lights a fire and sits in front of the stove, basking in the warmth of the hearth.
But, of course, there is something missing.
Just from where he's sitting, Wood Man can see several dozen books he'd be pleased to get his hands on for a bit of light reading. Unfortunately, most of them are perched on several floating shelves by the entryway. Wood Man could probably reach them if he climbed onto the storage chest sitting below the shelves, but that seems like an awful lot of effort to go to when there are three alternatives shoved into the space between the microwave and the portable electric stove:
An issue of Trolberg Digest several weeks out of date, a nature book espousing the virtues of Exploring the World of Woffs, and what appears to be a paranormal romance and/or high seas adventure novel titled Dawn of the Draugen.
The last of these is, perhaps, entirely too revealing of his unwitting host's taste in literature. Wood Man passes over the boring Digest issue and settles on the slightly more middling and infinitely safer decision of Exploring the World of Woffs.
There. A warm fire and a nature book. What more could he ask for?
A cup of tea, maybe. But Wood Man's favorite brew is soily water and twigs, and while there's plenty of that outside, the rain has really started to pick up and it kind of puts him off the idea of ever going outside again. He even had to close the door himself—unusual for him, he knows, but since his unwitting host wasn't around to do it, Wood Man supposed he had to take this thankless task into his own hands.
Anyway. He's not keen on braving the downpour for mud now that he’s all warm and cozy.
Maybe tonight he'll settle for human fare. It doesn't need to have any nutritive value, he supposes. It just has to be warm.
–
Wood Man's gracious host makes an appearance at 6:05pm exactly.
Punctual. A shift worker, maybe.
"Blasted rain," the man curses softly, knocking his boots on the doormat as he hurries to shut the door. The outside air whispers in for a moment regardless, making the leaf atop Wood Man’s head cringe inward to guard it from the chill. A shiver travels down his trunk.
Wood Man hums noncommittally, taking a sip of his tea and turning a page. "You can say that again.”
The shuffling sounds of his host doffing his outerwear comes to a sudden halt.
“... And just how did you get in here?”
Wood Man looks up.
The man is halfway out of his yellow overcoat, staring hard at Wood Man sitting in front of his wood stove. “Well, I didn’t come down the chimney,” Wood Man says wryly. Honestly, what a silly question. How else would he have gotten in but the door?
“The door was locked,” the man says, though his dark eyebrows furrow like he’s not as sure of that now as he was a minute ago.
Wood Man turns back to look at an illustration of hibernating woffs with a dismissive hum. “Was it?” he asks conversationally.
The man stands uncertainly in his own entryway, making no reply except for the speechless working of his cat-caught tongue. The lull goes on long enough that Wood Man finishes the page he’s on and turns to the next, the shiff of paper sighing over the wood stove’s crackling grumble.
Of all the questions Wood Man can hear rattling around in the man’s head, the one he chooses to voice is a bewildered demand of, “Are you wearing my scarf?”
Wood Man lifts his arms, over which is looped the peach-and-orange striped scarf he liberated from the coat hook. He regards the article as if the fact that he is wearing it is brand new information. “That depends,” says Wood Man. “Is this your scarf?”
Wood Man watches the man’s face, where his confusion fights a losing battle with his simmering ire. He glares at Wood Man with something like resigned enmity as he wrestles his overcoat from his person and deposits it on a coat hook—the very same from which the orange scarf had hung, earlier. “Yes,” the man says flatly.
Wood Man lowers his arms to retrieve his mug of tea. “Huh,” says Wood Man. Sips his tea. “Then I guess I am.”
The man scrubs a hand down his face, over his dark mustache and scruffy, unshaven jaw. He walks further into the house, ignoring his uninvited guest in pursuit of some evidently more imperative purpose.
But.
“You’re tracking mud,” Wood Man informs him.
The man stops dead in his tracks, turning his gaze back to Wood Man with a look of absolute stupefaction. But he does look down at his boots, lifting one leg to inspect the filthy sole. He casts one last baffled look at Wood Man before returning slowly to the storage chest by the door, where he sits and removes his boots. His fingers fumble with the muddy laces, because he keeps glancing up at Wood Man with a guarded sort of fascination.
Wood Man stops paying attention, going back to his book and the dregs of his tea as the man goes about his business for the next several minutes.
Wood Man's host ends up in the kitchenette—and suddenly music joins the din of the fire and his host’s quiet, domestic movements. A pleasant thrill passes through the grain of Wood Man’s sapwood. “Oh,” he says, and it comes out like a sigh. “What’s that?”
His host doesn’t answer, and Wood Man turns his head 180 degrees. The man’s eyes widen, and he tenses where he leans against the kitchenette sink. “Uh. Radio,” he answers, and he tilts his head minutely—like he doesn't want to take his eyes off Wood Man completely—toward the tinnily singing device on the countertop.
Wood Man hums contentedly, turning his head slowly back around. The gaps in the wood stove’s grate shift and glow with the healthy heartbeat of the fire. He looks back down at his book. “It’s nice.”
The man doesn’t respond to that, but Wood Man doesn’t necessarily expect him to. Having expectations just seems like a whole lot of bother. You’re either disappointed or vindicated, and for what? He’d rather live in the moment. It is the thing Wood Man is constantly curating to be as comfortable as possible. Be a waste to put in all that effort and then not live in it.
Like a sad, empty house, Wood Man reflects.
The man clears his throat, and Wood Man’s attention is captured again, though he doesn’t look up. “Did you… make tea?” the man asks, mystified.
“... Calling it ‘tea’ might be giving me too much credit,” says Wood Man. “I wouldn’t recommend it for human consumption. But could you top me off before you dump it?” He lifts his mug and waves it to get the man’s attention, without ever shifting his gaze from the book. It’s actually pretty interesting stuff—and now that he’s deep in the proverbial weeds of its contents, he sees there are quite a few handwritten notes in the margins.
Seems like his host is a bit of a naturalist.
The mug is lifted so gently from his hand that Wood Man barely notices it go.
The quiet noise of his host's gainful activity floats through the air, carried aloft by the droning radio and the crackling fire. Interspersed with the sound of pages turning, overlaid with a blanket of hearth-warmth and the smells of woodsmoke and mud and clean linens and over-steeped tea… The atmosphere nourishes Wood Man as well as water and sunlight. It sinks into his sap, carrying that vital spiritual sustenance to every part of him.
Wood Man nestles into the orange scarf with a satisfied sigh.
A choking sound distracts Wood Man from his bask, and he looks up to see his host grimacing and wrinkling his nose at the pair of mugs in his hands.
"You over-steeped it," the man grits out, working his jaw like the bitterness is stuck to his teeth. The man’s suffering palate roughens his voice, drawing his accent out further. What is that, Scottish? Northern Irish, maybe? Wood Man can’t quite place it.
"... I also recommended you not drink it," Wood Man feels the need to remind him.
The man's face goes through something like the five stages of grief over his mug of dubious tea. And then he drinks it again. "It's… fine," he eventually decides. The strange thing is that he doesn't even seem to be lying about it. It's just that his sense of taste seems to only be slightly more sophisticated than Wood Man's—a creature that eats mud on a regular basis.
Wood Man is transfixed.
The man leans down to proffer the other mug to his uninvited guest, and Wood Man accepts it, peering into its ink black contents. It's only steeped more since he brewed it. An oily sheen floats on its surface. He takes a sip, and it's awful—but tea leaves are just plant matter, after a fashion, and Wood Man tells himself this can nourish him, too.
If he convinces himself well enough to believe it, it might actually come true.
His host pulls out one of the mismatched chairs at the dining table, the scrape of its legs muffled by the round, sunshine yellow rug beneath it. He slumps into it, sipping his tea in quiet contemplation. Wood Man takes advantage of the man's pensive state and gets a full three pages finished. He finds a doodle of a woff pup hatching from an egg in the blank space at the end of a chapter, and he chuckles quietly.
"Do you prefer the floor, then? Because I’m not in danger of running out of chairs, if you’d prefer to sit at the table."
Wood Man looks up. The man is peering at him speculatively as he nurses his wretched beverage.
"I don't know how you can drink that," Wood Man admits. He also closes the book and tucks it under his arm, rising to his feet with his mug in his opposite hand.
"You're drinking it," the man points out. He watches Wood Man pile his diversions onto the dining table before clambering into one of the mismatched dining chairs himself. The chairs are angled more toward the wood stove than the table, which is fortunate—if they were sitting around the table like civilized folk, Wood Man’s head would barely clear the surface to make eye contact.
Wood Man considers pulling the book back open and into his lap, now that he’s resettled. But for some reason he doesn’t feel like doing that.
He turns his head toward his host. "I also drink mud," Wood Man tells him.
The man looks down at his mug with fresh concern. The drink is already half gone, so it's not like that concern does him much good now. Apparently the man comes to the same conclusion, because he drinks again and does an admirable job concealing his disgust. He looks a little disappointed in himself, though.
The oil lamp at the center of the circular dining table is lit now where it wasn't before. Wood Man finds this an adequate substitute for the dancing inferno of the wood stove—a lonesome little glow performing solo.
The man sets his awful tea down on the table. "So. What are you?" he asks. He's got wariness in the tense line of his shoulders—but not, interestingly, much at all in the way of hostility.
Wood Man strokes his chin, and his host glances down at the gap between his head and shoulders, looking faintly unnerved about it. “Is that usually how you break the ice with strangers? ‘What are you’?”
Abashedness joins the bewilderment on his host’s face. “No, I suppose not… Right, then,” he says, and he straightens in his chair and clears his throat as if restarting a scene, from the top. “I’m the bell keeper. And who might you be?”
“I’m the Wood Man,” says Wood Man.
The bell keeper snorts, his dark mustache twitching at the corner of his smile. “Aye, I can see that well enough.”
“I didn’t bring any wood this time,” Wood Man admits. The bell keeper’s eyes flick up and down Wood Man’s body, as if suddenly given cause to wonder whether Wood Man is not, in fact, made of wood. Then he follows the angle of Wood Man’s head with his eyes—to the wood pile by the wood stove.
“Got plenty,” says the bell keeper, a bit uncertainly.
“I’ll bring some next time,” says Wood Man, as if the bell keeper had not spoken.
The bell keeper peers at Wood Man. His expression of consternation seems to smooth out at this proclamation—like he was waiting for some kind of catch. He even favors Wood Man with a bewildered smile. “... Huh. Fair enough, I suppose.”
A sip of tea slurry extinguishes his smile just as quickly as it comes.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Wood Man says lightly, with no small amount of his own bewilderment. He almost feels bad for making the stuff, with how inexplicably determined the bell keeper seems to be to quaff it.
“Eh, I’m not picky,” the bell keeper insists. “You can’t make tea worth a damn though, Wood Man.”
Wood Man lifts his mug. “I’ll drink to that.”
The bell keeper’s shoulders jerk forward with a laugh that takes him by surprise. He swipes a hand over his smile and composes himself, though the crow’s feet by his eyes still wiggle their toes. His shoulders slacken with the ease of some private decision made, and he picks up his mug to tap it against Wood Man’s.
“Cheers,” says the bell keeper, and he swallows the rest of his tea in a single gulp.
Wood Man is tempted to leave the man hanging. Oh, that would be too funny. But he did say he would drink to it, and there’s.
Something.
The spirit of the moment, maybe. The tenuously cultivated warmth of the bell keeper’s hearth.
Ceding to the gentle instinct, Wood Man quaffs the last of his tea in solidarity with the bell keeper. It’s just as disgusting now as it’s been all evening. But when they set their mugs on the table in unanticipated unison, it feels significant somehow. Not like a deal being struck—Wood Man has gambled in enough hovels, dives, grottos, and back alleys to know the uncertain tension of that particular feeling—but more like a bet being placed. Eager, anticipatory. Almost playful.
“I think I’d better go back to drinking mud,” Wood Man decides.
The bell keeper shakes his head and huffs out a laugh, standing with their mugs and bringing them to the sink. “If I’m around next time, I’ll make the tea myself.”
That’s a surprise. “I’d be much obliged, bell keeper,” Wood Man drawls.
Wood Man is used to behaving as if his welcome is presumed, though he’s well aware humans don’t tend to see it that way—most humans, anyway. The bell keeper’s back is to the dining table as he washes their mugs in the sink, and Wood Man takes advantage of the inattention to observe his peculiar host at his leisure. The slope of the bell keeper’s shoulders is relaxed and open. There’s no sign of the tension or mistrust he displayed earlier. With how deeply at ease the man acts, Wood Man could almost believe he comes here every evening, for tea and quiet music and a good book—and the warmth of a roaring hearth.
Maybe if he believes it hard enough, it’ll come true.
Wood Man did not account for the small window above the sink, when he decided he could observe the bell keeper while remaining unobserved himself. And he realizes, in the reflection of the glass, that the bell keeper is watching him right back, with equal curiosity and interest.
It is… not something Wood Man knows well enough to put into words.
Explanations aren’t his strong suit.
He pulls Exploring the World of Woffs into his lap and turns his attention there instead.
The bell keeper is a peculiar fellow, Wood Man thinks. Peculiar for his tacit acceptance of Wood Man’s intrusion, and the casual equanimity with which he conducts himself in the presence of a home-invading stranger. But this is not a thought Wood Man can voice without belying his confidence and self-assurance of his own welcome. Which is just as ingrained in him as—well, as his wood grain.
The bell keeper makes his way to the portable electric stove for the kettle. His eyes land briefly on the literature Wood Man had foregone earlier: Dawn of the Draugen and Trolberg Digest. Glances at the book in Wood Man’s lap.
It’s then that Wood Man knows exactly what he wants to say.
“You have quite an… eclectic collection of literature,” he tells the bell keeper, his tone light and idle.
The bell keeper blinks and glances back down at the literature on the countertop. Realization comes over him like a bucket of water. He clears his throat, and his cheeks pinken under his stubble, and he feigns casualness when he retrieves Dawn of the Draugen from the countertop; but his grip is far too tight for it to be anything but furtive, and he dithers indecisively for a moment before placing it atop the fridge.
There are not any other books atop the fridge.
Wood Man turns to the next page, and doesn’t really mind that he hasn’t absorbed anything from the previous one.
Yes, the bell keeper is a peculiar host.
Wood Man can’t say as he minds all that much.