Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A Snufkin is many things, independent, creative, solitary, intuitive and curious among others. These are all things that Snufkin has learned about himself after the years of journeying and discovering. It is important to know oneself and Snufkin has never had anyone to ask what a Snufkin ought to be. Through in his travels he had been told what it meant to be a Snork or a Hemulen or a Moomin and any number of other things, with defined rules and understandings.

Yet no one had been able to tell him very much about himself and what it meant to be a Snufkin. He found he rather enjoyed the process of discovering without having to be told. After all, a Snufkin, as he has also discovered, hates rules and being told what to do.

Life is sweet, he thinks, when one has all the space in the world to become acquainted with themselves. 

Once, a very long time ago when he was just a small boy, he remembers someone had told him that he was found on his own in a box someplace and that was the reason he’d never had to fuss about with things like home and family. He isn’t sure who had told him this, as he remembers as little of them as he does of ever having resided within a box. Maybe it was whoever had found him in that box who said it, or maybe he had never lived in a box to begin with and it was all just a story. In the end, it doesn't really matter how he got here because he's here now and that is that in the end.  

A family is a whole lot of inconvenience anyway.

The interesting part of being as closely involved with the Moomin family as Snufkin has become since his first meeting with the Moomintroll some time ago, it that it is a very typically domestic family. That may seem like a needlessly obvious observation but to Snufkin, who until that point had very little hands-on experience with families, it's an important one. He had always assumed as he passed by softly lit homes and parents with their kiddies playing in the yard, that he had understood what a family was he quickly learned otherwise under the gentle touch of the Moomins. For better and for worse.

Today Snufkin has been sitting on the front veranda of the house of said family, perched upon the aging yet sturdy beams railings with his mouth organ. He isn't playing anything in particular, no songs coming to mind. Instead, he plays loose, disconnected bars and notes that come along in the wind- wind which is blowing particularly harshly for this time of year.

(It's still summer, in technicality, but the bite in the air is distinctly autumnal. It seems that the colder seasons will come early this year, but for now, the sun is still hot and the days are still long so he won't likely be going south in too much of a hurry.) 

The family isn't home, it seems, as when Snufkin had arrived no one had answered to his call. Where they might be he hasn't a clue, but he doesn't mind the waiting too much. If he were there for more important matters he might go searching for them, less important and he might have given up. As it is he is perfectly content to sit by the front steps with his hat safely secured by the weight of a garden rock on the ground beside him as to not blow away in the chilly gusts. It's not awfully different from what he might have been doing anyway, just in a different place.

It's probably some hours later that Snufkin sees one of the Moomin on their way back home. He hasn't been keeping time but his back has become stiff and his head a little achy from the constant sound of wind and his awkward position. Not so much as to be a problem, but a minor discomfort none the less and it stands to show how long his patience has been.

It's Moominmamma who he sees crest over one of the hills and down towards the home. He does not immediately move to greet her, working out the same impulsive bar of music repetitively as the wind seems to insist with its melancholic whispers. He does, however, nod at her when she waves from atop the hill. At this distance, his gesture probably goes undetected, but he knows that by now she much know his acknowledgments. So he watches plainly over the top of his instrument as she comes closer, eventually letting the music slip and his hands move to his lap as she arrives at the step.

"Oh dear, Snufkin, what are you doing here?" She asks in a form of greeting.

"Just waiting to deliver a message to Moomin," He answers simply from his perched position. "It seems I didn't come at a very good time. Everyone is out!"

"That's all good and well," She begins with an odd inclination of worry in her voice. "But it's quite windy today, aren't you cold?"

Well, he can't say that he isn't feeling the cold snap in the air, nor that he hasn't noticed his fingers moving slightly more stiffly than they usually would. It is quite cold for a day in summer. "Yes, I suppose I am a tad, but I thought it best to give this message as soon as Moomin was home."

"Is it really so important?"

"Important enough." 

"Well anyway, come down from there. It's much too cold for those of us without fur to be sitting about in the weather." She says with a surprisingly stern undertone that has Snufkin a little miffed.

Oh, how presumptuous, to police a persons warmth and comfort. It could be that he should like to be cold from time to time. How would she know what he best not do? Without even thinking of why he's so irritated he insists rather testily. "I'm quite fine where I am, thank you." 

"None of that, Snufkin. It would be terribly unfortunate if you caught a cold, I'd feel just terrible if I'd known I'd let you sit out and freeze" Is Moominmamma's far too easy response.  

How troublesome.

Snufkin stows his mouth organ away in his pockets and slips down from the banister with only a touch of grouching. How odd of her to order him around like this, Moominmamma of all people. He'd feel just as terribly though if he were to make her feel terrible. It's a minor sacrifice to comply. Without a word, he gathers his hat and follows her into where it's warm and cozy and quiet without the constant hum of wind. Some dirt from his hat crumbles on the floor and he misses the music of it all but, if he were to be honest, the warmth is quite refreshing.

Perhaps too refreshing, Snufkin wonders as his face begins to burn in the warm, still air of the room.

"I think you may have let the stove burn too hot today, Moominmamma." He says moodily as he rubs his stinging cheeks. 

Moominmamma looks over to him from where she is setting down her purse with confusion for a moment before drawing nearer with a frown. "Let me see." She instructs, gently swatting his hand from his face.

For an odd moment in time, Snufkin feels like someone else, with a chiding smack on the wrists and a mother's gentle paw on his chin to guide his face towards hers. He feels, for maybe even the first time in his life, like a young child being looked over by his mother. Of course, Moominmamma isn't his Mamma, he reminds himself needlessly. After all, he hasn't got a real Mamma, nor had he ever wanted one. Distractedly he tries to rub at his face again, the burn returning to his undisturbed skin almost immediately. Moominmamma takes his raised hand in hers and guides it back down with disapproving tutting. Snufkin doesn't mind this instruction so much as he thought he would. 

A soft, furred paw brushes the bridge of his nose and he winces at the sting of it.

"Oh dear, poor thing." She coos. 

"What is it?"

"You've a terrible windburn, Snufkin dear. Don't you worry I have just the thing." She sits him down at the kitchen table and immediately begins searching cupboards. 

Watching her go about, Snufkin feels again the urge to fuss over his agitated skin but ultimately resists. Beyond the burn of the wind, his cheeks are hot with a very immediate sense of embarrassment. How childish of him, really, to be made so irritable and immediately proven wrong. 

"You should have just waited inside." Says Moominmamma, still looking through shelves. 

"No one was home," 

"You know that the door is never locked."

"I wouldn't want to impose. This isn't my house so I best respect it."

"Nonsense." Moominmama turns back around with a jar in her paw, a little jar half filled with something lumpy and opaque yellow. Probably something akin to woolfat. "This home is as much yours as you want it to be, dear. You only have to decide that you want it."

Now, A Snufkin is not always an especially talkative thing. There is much more value of silence to a conversation than many people know, however it isn't entirely common for one to be completely without a word to say as Snufkin finds himself now. His mouth remains closed and he remains obediently still as Moominmamma applies the soothing cream all about his face. He can't even bring himself to think about the uncomfortable oily sensation it leaves in its wake. His mind is blank. Like there are too many words all trying to squeeze through the corridor of his mind and none of them can fit through. It doesn't make sense. Snufkin does not have a home, anywhere that isn't someone else's home becomes his own. To be invited into another's home- him, in his dirt and lack of social graces- is unimaginable. 

"I've never wanted a home." He blurts, much too late to be in reply to anything, but Moominmamma seems to understand him anyway.

"Yes, I didn't imagine that you had." She soothes, voice sweet and gently caressing him. "But perhaps one day you will, and this home will still be here if that happens."

"I might never want one, or I mightn't want one until I'm a very old man."

"It might be so," Moominmamma laughs sweetly, dabbing a dot of cream on the tip of his nose teasingly. "But so long as this house is still standing, there is a space for you in it."

There was something deeply worrying about that. Snufkin felt a chill of anxiety as the words came to full effect in his mind. He wasn't sure why, but the concept of some intangible space allowed to him, waiting for him through all his years in one singular place- it felt so binding. More than that it felt warm and comfortable in a way that was too much for the wanderer in him to stomach. He doesn't want a place in this home, not because he doesn't like MoominValley or the Moomins, but because he does and the promised warmth may someday tempt him. All this and he still doesn't understand why.

In the midst of Snufkin's worries, the motherly figure presses the jar into his hands and takes a careful step back. "I'm sorry, I know you find these sorts of conversation troubling. I try not to bother you because I know that Moomin gives you enough trouble over your comings and goings. The last thing I want to do is scare you away, but I suppose I'm just stuck in my old ways and I can't help wanting to fuss over you the way I do with all my children. I know you'll be okay on your own, but it's in my nature to think of you as much as it's in your nature to be alone." 

my children.

my children.

"It's alright," Says Snufkin, preferring not to address the subject. "Thank you. For the salve, that is."

"Of course." Moominmamma smiles casually, giving the impression that she has dropped the serious discussion. "Now, I have to get dinner together. Just make yourself comfortable and tell me if it starts hurting too much."

"Are you sure you didn't want any help?"

"I'll manage fine on my own, I'm sure. But if you wanted to, some music might be nice while I cook."

And just like that things returned to a state of normalcy. Moominmama went about putting together a vegetable soup and Snufkin found the bar of music that the wind had been bringing him all day and he turned it into a tune. A song to do with something Snufkin doesn't really understand. But it comes easily to him like it was waiting for him to find it and bring it to fruition. 

His cheeks did continue to sting, be it much less after Moominmamma's remedy. To himself, he wondered if that was just the way that mothers were. Filled with recipes and remedies and soft touches. his own mother, as he reasonably must have had one since small children don't just appear from nowhere, was she kind and wise also? or is it just Moominmamma?

He has no need to long for a mother, none at all, but there was some amount of curiosity to it all. About what pieces he was made of and why it is that some children grow up with families and why others don't. 

It's beginning to get dark when Moomin and Moominpappa return to the house and they all stop for dinner. Moomin fusses about Snufkin's reddened skin for a time until Moominmamma shoos him off to get cleaned up for dinner. Upon request, Snufkin remains behind for dinner and once the worry is gone Moomin takes to teasing him for his unusually disheveled appearance. All in all the teasing is much more palatable than the worry. By the end of the evening, Snufkin has almost forgotten what it is he had waited out all day for. 

He thinks, later that evening once he's passed the note off to his friend and he's walking down towards his tent, that the autumnal wind might be a sign after all, and perhaps he should move on sooner rather than later. 

Chapter Text

Gentle is a simple word, only six letters- two syllables in its entirety. A simple word as should be for a simple concept, one would suppose.

Sometimes, Snufkin would fancy himself a poet, as much as he was a musician or a painter or anything else he decided he could be. When he does, and he thinks about words and all the feelings they related to, he found himself drawn to it.

Gentle.

The word, it started with warm tinglings in his fingers, progressed to the weightless sensation of joy in his joints and ended with the dull ache of sadness in his chest. Snufkin liked the words which ended out the happy with just a little sad. Gentle was his favourite lately.

He fancies when left to wonder at the nature of words and of understanding them that perhaps it is that he never learnt what this one meant until now. Now being- in the broad sense in that Snufkin categorises the stages of his life, since he came to know Moomintroll and the land which bared his family name. Something about it had changed him and took a word he had known once in a practical sense and made it into something intangible.

The thaw of ice into water that would nourish the spring grass, the touch of dandelions against one's ankles while strolling barefoot through the springtime, the sound of rain late on a summer afternoon, and the first soft breeze that swept through the valley to replace summer with Fall.

Those were the first things he saw anew with his new vocabulary. The easy, simple things that he came to know so much better beside him.

The touch of a paw lightly coaxing him forward, the knowing look that can only come from someone who is trying their best to know you through and through, the whip of another's tail at the back of your legs when you linger too close.

They were more complex yet still the same. Simply- though not simple at all in the way the moments danced behind his eyes at night- gentle.

"Snufkin." Calls the Moomintroll from his place beside Snufkin and his ponderings. "What are you thinking of?"

"Not very much at all. Just a word." Says Snufkin on a sigh. The night is growing older with every minute as they sit together beneath the stars. The both of them avoiding the inevitable moment when they will return to their respective beds and be rid of it for good.

"Is it a good one?" Moomintroll hums.

"One of the best. Aren't you going to ask me which one?"

Moomintroll smiles, in the off-centred way that a Moomin smiles underneath that big snout of theirs, and he says. "No, I think I'd rather imagine it for myself. Your face tells me some of it."

"Care to venture a guess?"

Moomin thinks, just for a second and says. "It must be love." He decides. "That's the only word I know that feels the way that expression does."

"Close enough, I say.