To see the world through human eyes.

It all started the day when I first met him. He got in a fight and I had to rescue him from being punched in the face. This is no ordinary story about a friendship that was formed by two people where the one saved the other from being punched in the face. No. This was entirely different.

~

{Hedeby, 800 AD.}

The air in the early morning was fresh, not like we’re used to in modern times. This air was non-polluted and it smelled like flowers and grass, a smell I recognized all too well. The sun was just coming up against a soft orange sky when I walked past the bar I normally went to. It was merely an exception that I didn’t go last night, I had to hunt for food and when you’ve eaten dry bread all month, the choice to hunt on deer or boar was easily made.

Out of the bar was coming a lot of commotion and I heard screaming and yelling. A string of drunken profanities came out the overly-crowded place. This sounded like a bar fight and it definitely was. The old tavern by the harbour was heavily crowded and was normally visited by regulars and otherwise by fishermen and traders who were selling their merchandise overseas. The traders were mostly coming from mainland Europe to trade wool or linen.

I slowly walked into the bar to see where the source of the commotion. When I looked into the bar, that’s when I saw him for the first time, the one wo would change my life and the lives yet to come.. He wasn’t from around, I could see it from his features. Whereas people from around this area mostly had blonde hair and blue or green eyes, his hair was dark brown and he had eyes with a colour of insanity. It was a colour I couldn’t quite explain. I think it was a perfect mix between dark brown with specs of green. i decided to watch him for a bit, awaiting the situation he was about to get himself into. Within a split second he grabbed a guy by his collar, totally standing in the position to punch some of the poor guy’s front-teeth out. And to make it even worse, he did.

People were yelling for him to punch him again and to make the fight even worse, but after challenging some of the other men to fight and even giving a couple of more punches, his hand got broken and he wanted to stop. By this time, it was already too late and he was too weak to hand out or take more hits, and that was the point where I came in.

Within a split-second, I decided to do something that was going to turn out really good, or horribly bad. Either way, I didn’t care much. He was fascinating and he pulled me to him like a magnet.

“Hey there, buddy!” I yelled at him.

Everybody turned silent and you could hear a pin drop. Everybody turned around to look at me. Even the people who were playing music stopped playing and turned to look where I was. Well, this was awkward.

The guy I shouted at, was looking around him, confused. Asking me with his glance if it was him I was talking to. For one second, I had no clue what I was doing or how the hell I should proceed. I decided to just go with the flow.

“H-hey man! It has been a long time!” I shouted again, waving awkwardly. Still not knowing in what situation I’ve helped myself this time. Everyone was looking confused at me, not paying any attention to the guy I was talking to. He carefully pointed at himself with a questionable look in his eyes. He didn’t understand what was happening either.

“Me?” he mouthed inaudibly while looking at me.

“Y-yeah man! How are you? It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?!” I tried even harder to let him play along with me. I tried not to let my nerves show, but that didn’t work out really well. My stuttering turned out to be very noticeable, not even starting about the drops of sweat that were starting to form in my forehead. Oh Lord, I have not thought this through properly.

He remained silent. I looked incisively at him and thankfully he got the hint.

“Oh! Oh, yeah, i-it has been a long time!” he looked like he finally understood what I was trying to do; saving his ass. A grin spread across his face, probably very happy he wasn’t going to lose his teeth by some drunkard.

I walked towards him and took him by his arm. I pulled him outside maybe a bit harder than was necessary, but hey, I wanted to get him out of that situation so I did what was needed.

Finally outside, things were awkward. He didn’t know what to say and he was also fidgeting on the hem of his shirt, his grin long gone. The way he looked at me and then looked away when I looked at him, said enough. He wasn’t comfortable, that was for sure.

“So, ehm. What were you doing inside?” I couldn’t help myself and I just asked.

“I was drinking my mead and suddenly some guy came up to me and started insulting me. Then I punched him and when he wanted to punch me, you came in.” he answered. He was really worked up, his body language gave that away pretty clearly. He had his arms folded over his chest, his fingers were digging in his arms with such strength his knuckles turned white and he was avoiding eye contact with me. This guy might be hard to dig in.

“Are you sure you didn’t say anything to provoke him?” I asked him again.

“I may or may not have said he should mind his own business and to go back to the hellhole he came from. Nothing more than that.” He murmured, accompanied by a nervous giggle.

“Why did you try to get me out of there anyway?” he continued to ask.

“I-I don’t know.” I answered. And it was true; I really didn’t know why I did that. I just had a feeling I needed him one way or another.

“You just look very familiar, I don’t think I can explain why or how.” I continued speaking. The familiar feeling still nagging at me like it was screaming for an explanation.

I decided to just let it go. I changed the subject and it turned out that he was actually a really awesome guy.

~

The funny thing is, even though we had an awkward start, we eventually became the greatest friends. I could pour my heart out to him and he could do the same to me and we never looked different at each other. Although, that was what I thought. As far as I knew, he never looked different at me, the way I saw him, was a whole different story.

He was my best friend, that was absolutely true. But next to that he was so much more. As our friendship grew, the trust we had in each other grew with it. We became like brothers, we shared the same humour, the same interests and we could finish each other’s sentences.

Yes, he was like family, that’s why losing him every lifetime was so hard on me. To meet him over and over again and making him trust me every time was crushing, I had to admit that, but in the end it was all worth it.

Notes