The land was all he had ever known. The land, his land, rushing rivers and towering mountains, forests of pine and dew, a vibrant rush of green shot through with ice-white. He felt it in every rock and leaf- home. There were people as well, the people who had first taken him in and given him his name. Sverige, he told them. But they shook their heads and laughed. Sverige was not a name, they said. Sverige was this, these fields and hills he saw in front of him. So they called him something else, something he liked to forget. But that was before. The children of the village grew up and moved away. Their mothers and fathers returned to the dirt, and he felt each and every death like it was his own. He was a freak. An outcast. The child who never aged. And so he ran, from his false friends, back to the forests where he had first come to be.
In the village they gave him food, bread and meat. But now there was no need for food. The trees filled him with life and air, carried him laughing between their branches, and the earth beneath his feet made him feel fuller than ever. Here, Sverige meant something else. It was not only his name, but this place's name; a name they shared. He knew he was different. Yet he and the land were one and the same- Sverige.
One day, the forest came to a sudden end. A glistening mass of blue spread out before his eyes, perfectly flat...and yet it moved, swaying up and down in a rhythm he could not find. He found himself afraid- an inhuman fear of the unknown. For this was not Sverige. It was something else, a wild, untamed thing that he sensed no bond with. Not mine. The words appeared in his head, unbidden. He opened his mouth, as he had seen the people of the village do to communicate.
'Not mine.' It was like nothing he had ever felt before; like the most wonderful rush of being. A tightness at the back of his throat he had not known was there released suddenly. More words flooded forward, and he longed to say them all, to yell them to his skies and his stars.
'Sverige. Sverige. My land. My forest-'
Another voice cut him off. Hundreds of years from now, after countless wars and battles and deaths, this would still be the moment that frightened him most.
'You're like me.'
The speaker was a young boy, like him. His blond hair was wild and stood up in all directions, as though he had just crawled through a thicket of brambles. His eyes were blue- the same colour as the shining waves that were so strangely frightening. And they saw. They were not innocent and dull like those of the village children. They shone with clarity, understanding.
'Yes. I am like you. I am Sverige.'
The other boy frowned, mouthing the unfamiliar word.
'Sverige? Yes- you are.' He seemed to know, just as Sverige himself had known. And when he said his own name- whispered 'Danmark' with the same meaning that Sverige held- they both knew this was something different.
'What is this?' said Sverige, waving a hand at the blue waves. His new companion smiled.
'The sea, my people call it.'
'And it is yours?' Yours meant- do you feel it too? The irresistible pull to something that is truly your own.
'Yes. It is mine. And these forests are yours.'
They sat in silence for a while longer, staring at sea and sky. Sverige felt that pull all around him- to the trees, the pine needles scattered everywhere- to Danmark. A new word presented itself in his mind.
'Bror,' he said. It felt right somehow.
'Bror.' They looked at each other; nodded, smiled. And turned back to gaze upon the land that was theirs.
