Its 2023, You Know What That Means!~

It’s 2023, You Know What That Means!~

>:D Prompt Ideas are open from now until the end of the month. The weeks for Germano weeks have been set~!! The prompts are welcome and eager and will be voted on in the month of Feburary!!! I’m so excited!

Reblog and put in the tags when it’s acceptable to start watching Christmas movies or listening to Christmas music.

Vive la France!!!

allez les bleus!!! good luck to france today in their match against morocco! I’ll cry if they lose 😭🇫🇷

I knew I loved you before I met you

Prompt reminiscing about old times for @aphfrukweek.

Talking about their childhood and how they first met.

Credit for the transparents goes to @transparentalia

I planned to fill more prompts but I didn't finish those on time, they'll show up eventually though. Probably during halloween. Sorry, Hetaween.

Once upon a time in a far, far away world, there was a large country and in that country there were many cities and many towns. Some big and many small ones. This story will be about one of those towns and in particular about one boy that lived in that town and about .

The town this boy lived in was a small town and all the people and children knew each other. So everyone knew the boy lived on the farm at the far edge of the town, were every year the snow would always linger the longest after winter turned to spring and the rest of their small town had already turned green. It made the boy’s family farm feel like it was from another realm altogether and its proximity to the large lake of which no one knew what was on the other side of.

The unknown was what made the local people afraid of the lake and that’s how the stories about it had started. How beings from lands of the other side would come to visit and stories about those visitors not being human. Those stories led to the people of the town telling stories about how the farm and even the family who inhabited it attracted these strangers towards their little community.

The condition of the only son of the family, the young boy was called Ivan, didn’t help with the gossip the people whispered when they thought no member of that little, isolated family wouldn’t be able to hear them. The boy, Ivan, had the strangest condition to his heart. It had started when he had been really young and it had worried one of his sisters. His other sister still very little at the time.

As for his parents, his father rarely showed any emotion and had so much work to do on the farm Ivan rarely saw the man even though they lived in the same house. Ivan didn’t have any recollection of his mother, but he liked to imagine that he remembered her voice and that the tune he would often hear hummed just before he fell asleep at night was what she sounded like.

Despite the all the stories and the harsh thumbing of his heart that was sometimes so strong the Ivan felt like his heart would break out of his chest and one a few accessions even the other boys of the town could hear it, they still played with him. They thought was strange, but they did not fear him.

Until the day it happened for the first time. Some of the children had been saying mean things about his family and Ivan loved his family. His heart had started beating harder and harder, louder and louder like he was used to it acting like that sometimes and suddenly the beating stopped. It felt odd that the beating stopped so suddenly, but he thought nothing of it until the other boys started screaming and pointed at him.

As Ivan looked down at the ground he saw a heart and while that scared him, it was the hollow feeling in his chest and as he raised his hands, the hole he could feel there that truly frightened him. As the children ran towards their homes, the boy scrambled to grab the beating heart on the ground and ran in the opposite direction towards the farm.

As he arrived there, he scared his sisters and his father, emotionless as always simple took the heart in his only son’s hands and shoved it back into his boy’s chest. After that, the man wrapped bandages around his son’s chest. Then he had to go finish the day’s work.

At least he has his sisters, who hugged him and accepted him even though his heart could fall out and be put back in like it was nothing.

Ivan didn’t leave the farm anymore and simply played with sofia and Natalya or helped their father while he worked the land around their farm or took care of their animals.

Eventually the boy who played on the farm grew into the teenager who worked on the farm. Even if he had less time now to spend with his sisters as their father grew older and couldn’t do as much work as he had been able to when his children were younger, he was grateful for any time they could spend together. Together they were happy.

The teenager who worked on the farm grew into the man who owned the farm. Ivan grew up to be a tall, strong man despite his heart suddenly falling out of his body sometimes and the his father came to pass. Or was it the other way around? The story is not clear on that one, but in either version the only son inherited the farm from his father. On his deathbed the man still seemed to lack emotion, but he told him to take care of his sisters and to protect his own heart. For the first time he spoke of his wife and how his son had always reminded him of her. How it was not as bad to meet someone from outside of their little town as the people said it was.

He wondered how he had reminded his father of the mother he didn’t know. Did he look like her or was it that he acted like she did, maybe both? Sofia told him he was gentle like she used to be. She always cared about him and he loved her for it.

Like his father before him, Ivan worked very hard and earned little for his effort on the farm but at the end of the day he was proud of the work he and his sisters had managed to do and was happy to simply have a meal with them and talk about anything they could think about. The work they had done that day, the work waiting for them the next day, how nice it would be to spend a day playing on the farm instead of working like they used to do as children or together they would imagine stories about the people on the other side of the lake. Unlike the scary stories the townspeople told, their stories were happy and hopeful.

Yet hope can only do so much. When difficult times came to the town, so did they come to their farm and no matter his hard work he could not make enough money to take care of the farm. He send sofia to the town to find work and when she came back saying there was no work, Ivan send her away from their family home to find work in another town.

She was angry at him and left without saying goodbye while Ivan and Natalya stood side by side and watched her until she was so far away the wasn’t visible to them any longer. Life continued, for two of the siblings it did so at the farm and for the other one it did in her new home. She managed to find work and send home money for the farm, but she would not send home letters.

It hurt him to do this and it hurt even more when it proved useless as the money his sister send still wasn’t enough. Ivan asked Natalya to go to the town and find work. The youngest sibling went on her way and Ivan stood by the farm as she left. When she returned, Ivan stood by their home awaiting her return and as she came closer he could see the fear in her eyes.

He hang his head low, knowing what he would have to ask her and she hang her head low, knowing what her brother was going to ask her. Ivan asked her to leave and Natalya begged him to let her stay with him. The brother denied the sister. As she told him she didn’t want to leave him all alone, he hugged her and begged her to write home. The sister promises to the brother.

Natalya found her way to another town than there sister, she wrote him. She had asked around and the people there didn’t know sofia. In her letter, she also let him know she found work and would send money to him soon. That she wished he didn’t feel too alone back at home, that she missed him and hope to go back to their farm soon.

Ivan loved the letters Natalya wrote him and she did write him often, but he was alone as she had feared. The children from town he ones played with had grown up like Ivan had, but they still feared him and the way his heart would escape him. The new children had all heard their stories and would not go near the old farm.

As the days went on without company, Ivan would walk by the lake more and more often. Staring at the land on the other side of it, so far away it couldn’t be seen except on the clearest of days. Imagining his own stories about what the people from there would be like in the same way he used to do with his sisters before he turned them away from their home. How emotionless he must seem to them and how he wished for warmed that even the fire in the fireplace couldn’t provide him in the absence of his siblings.

A moment of movement, a bright flare like a bonfire caught in the corner of his eye brought him out of the thoughts that made his heart beat so loud he had pressed his hands against his chest the push his heart back in the moment it left him. The man turned to see what had caused that light, but saw nothing no matter what direction he looked. With a sigh he went back to his home and forgot about the light.

The next day, he went to the lake and again that bright flare occurred while he was deep in thought and wishing to have his sisters by his side to alleviate his loneliness. Again, he saw it from the corner of his eye. Only this time it was much closer, still at a distance yet on his side of the shore. The light had moved across the lake. Frightened, the man ran home.

On the third day, Ivan refused to leave his house. No work was done on the farm that day. There was no flare on any shore that day, but a small flicker did occur.

The fourth day work on the farm was resumed, but the flare or flicker was left alone on the shore to wait as Ivan wanted to stay away from the lake.

Yet on the day after that, when his fear has subsided and his curiosity had grown, that Ivan had returned to the shore and this time he did see something after seeing the flare in the corner of his eye. When he turned, he noticed a young man.

“You left.” He accused.

Ivan ignored the accusation and looked at the other man. Somehow he looked bright like the flares he had seen. Hair the colour of the wheat on his land and the sunflowers he tried to grow and eyes as blue as the sky was on the days the shores on the other side of the lake could be seen.

He looked normal at first glance, but as Ivan looked long enough he noticed sparks and small flames forming around the body. This man so bright was made of fire. Somehow Ivan knew this and nods.

“I left.” He agrees. “Where are you from and why did you here?”

The blond simply points across the lake. “I want to see more than just the place I come from.”

Silence falls between them for while, but it’s comfortable. At least to Ivan, because the man of fire starts speaking again. “Don’t you want to see other places? If you leave you might find a friend, I know you long for company.”

It startles him and he almost runs away again, but his heart start beating loud and harsh again so he focuses on pushing his heart back before it can even get out.

“No, I send my sisters away from home and they wanted to stay and I can’t have friends, I only scare them away.”

It’s was the man of fire’s turn to be surprised.

“How can that be? You’re so tall it’s a little scary, but you seem nice enough.”

“I’m cursed. My hearts falls out of my chest when I feel too strongly. It scares people away.”

“That scares away people, it doesn’t scare away friends.”

“Then what would friends do?”

“They would catch your heart and return it to you, of course.” The man of fire smiles like the sun as he explains this to someone who never had a friend before. And as he looks at the taller man besides him he realizes he did just that. “Show me your home?”

Ivan takes the man of fire from across the lake to his farm and while they talk the sparks get bigger and brighter and warmer. His friend feels like the sun.

“Call me Alfred.” The sun says.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They work together on the farm and things get better. So much better that the sunflowers have started to grow and Ivan writes his sisters to come home.

Natalya writes a long letter home immediately and will return soon as she can. Hoping to meet this friend that kept her brother company in her absence and that didn’t fear to hold his heart after it broke free from his body.

Sofia takes her time to send a note back and keeps it short. She met someone in her new hometown and will not return to his farm. She will continue to send money.

Ivan tells her there is no longer any need for that.

Even the people in town are kinder to Ivan, because they have taken a liking to Alfred who is charming and bright. He just needs to remember to keep his sparks and flames down because these townspeople are easily scared of things they do not understand.

Alfred adores Natalya and the quiet girl, young woman really, seems fond of this bright fire that walks around their home. Only the sun turns restless and wants shine his light on other things, places, people. He asks Ivan to travel the towns on this side of the lake, maybe come with him across the water.

Ivan hesitates.

Natalya tells him to go. She’ll take care of their farm that she missed so much while she was away. She’s happy she got to see other places and she wants that for her brother as well.

Ivan just has to promise her to return home.

Ivan and Alfred promise to come home to the farm.

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For huggiebird5017 for the rusame exchange @spaceracedates

Using the prompt Fantasy AU that kind of turned out like a fairytail with human!Ivan and fire being!Alfred.

Interest Check!

I've been busy, so I wouldn't be ready by December, but January or February can be done if there's enough interest! Maybe I'll open spots for moderators, as well.

I'd appreciate your ideas and feedback!

@hetalia-happenings @heta-on-the-books