Written for Kiraly for the 2018 Trick or Treat exchange on AO3

It was a quiet afternoon in the tank. The morning had been spent ransacking an old library with a surprisingly well preserved collection, and now Sigrun was lounging on her bunk, and Emil in his, while Reynir played with Kitty and Tuuri and Mikkel sorted through that day's finds. Lalli was hidden beneath Emil's bunk, taking a quick cat-nap before going scouting that evening.

"This is interesting," Tuuri said, leaning back in her chair. "People were scared of weird stuff in the Old World."

She'd thought Sigrun was asleep, since she hadn't moved in at least ten minutes, so it startled Tuuri when she raised her head. "Like what?"

"Well, this one's about something called a Dracula," Tuuri said, holding up the book so Sigrun could see the cover. It was a sturdy book; the cover had once been bright red but was faded now to a lusterless pink, and the title was printed in large sprawling letters across it. Sigrun squinted at it only for a second before letting her head drop back onto the bunk.

"What's a Dracula?" Emil asked.

"Um…well, he lives in a castle, and he can make wolves do what he wants, and the main character in this book is really kind of stupid—everyone around him knows the castle is scary, but he won't listen to his instincts, and keeps blaming his feelings on paprika."

"What's paprika?" Now Emil was truly baffled.

"I think it's a seasoning?"

"Dracula isn't a what, he's a who," Mikkel said placidly, dropping one book into a pile to his left and picking up another from the pile on his right. "He's a monster called a vampire." He glanced up and raised his eyebrow just a fraction upon finding everyone—even Sigrun—staring at him. "What?"

"How d'you know all that?" Sigrun asked. "Should we be worried about vampires? Is it a kind of troll?"

"My great-grandmother was very fond of scary stories," Mikkel said with a shrug. "She used to tell them to my grandfather, and he told them to us. Dracula is a very old story—I don't think we need to worry about someone sneaking into the tank to suck our blood." Emil made a strangled sort of noise, and Sigrun sat up, her interest finally caught and held.

"What's this about blood sucking? How do you kill one of these things?"

Mikkel did not roll his eyes, but Tuuri suspected he wanted to. "They are not real, Sigrun."

"They thought lots of things weren't real back in the Old World," Sigrun countered. "I wanna know if I gotta be prepared for one of these things!"

Tuuri held up the book again. "Maybe we could just read this?" Sigrun made a disgusted noise at the thought of reading. "I could read it, maybe. It'd be like telling stories, except I'm reading it from a book!" The thought made her perk up. "That might be fun! Hey Lalli, do you want to hear a story about vampires?"

Lalli blinked at her from beneath the bunk, catlike, his hair falling across his face, before making his mrr sound and curling up again. Oh well, he would have to leave soon anyway. And she couldn't really read out loud in Finnish and Danish at the same time. And Reynir and Emil looked interested. Well, Reynir did. Emil looked a little like he wanted to join Lalli under the bunk, but he was listening.

They got through the first couple of chapters, Tuuri going carefully so that everyone could more or less understand her, before Lalli got up to go scouting and Mikkel had to start dinner. But Tuuri counted it a success; Sigrun, Reynir, and Emil had been engrossed, and even Mikkel had stopped pretending to do something else while he listened. Sigrun kept complaining that there wasn't enough fighting, but Mikkel promised that would come later.

It turned into a ritual over the next week or so, fitting a chapter or two into their downtime while Lalli napped or was out scouting, and after Sigrun and Emil had ransacked whatever old building they were supposed to ransack that day. Tuuri put aside a couple of other Old World books for when Dracula was done. War of the Worlds sounded promising, she thought.

She felt bad about leaving Lalli out of it, though. "Do you want me to try to translate it for you?" she asked one morning, after he finished telling her what he'd found scouting the night before. She told him a little bit of what the story was about, and he looked thoroughly unimpressed.

"That sounds stupid," he said.

"Well, I'm maybe not telling it right…"

She thought Lalli would just go straight to bed, having dismissed the story and finished his job, but he hesitated, looking a little uncertain. "Could you," he said finally, "tell me one of Onni's old stories? The ones he told us when we got to Keuruu?"

"Onni's stories?" Tuuri repeated, surprised and a little confused. Onni wasn't much of a storyteller. "Oh! From the Kalevala? Sure, I know those." All the Skalds had to learn the Kalevala. "Um, which one do you want to hear?" He shrugged; any one would do, apparently. Tuuri thought for a minute, before deciding to just start at the beginning. She and Lalli retreated to the bunks, and she sat down on the floor to start reciting the poetry as Lalli got ready for sleep. It felt good to be telling stories in Finnish for once, she discovered, and by the time Lalli fell asleep his expression was relaxed, less pinched and unhappy.

That turned into a ritual, too—a more consistent one than reading with everyone else, and most days Tuuri ended up hoarse from so much talking, but it was worth it. Even when Sigrun and Mikkel got into a surprisingly-heated, days-long argument about whether vampires were really real.