“I assume you’re an experienced gardener, if your harvest is what you’ve been relying on?”
“Mhm. And it’s only mine, my neighbours are doing fine,” Idun said. She paused, -“Someone has even suggested that I might have angered one of the hidden folk,”
“Hidden folk?”
“Huldras, trolls, spirits. Well- people like you,”
“I’m not hidden. I’m right here,”
“It’s a way of- never mind,”
“We don’t want anything to do with you. One would have to be particularly vindictive to go all the way to a human town just to bother them. Have you ever talked to one of these ‘hidden folk’?”
“…Not that I can remember. Except for you,”
“so it is,”
Idun let out a sigh.

“Honestly, you don’t seem so bad. I was halfway expecting you to rip me to shreds as soon as I arrived. Seems you aren’t the man-eater everyone thinks you are,”
“And you’re oddly civil for a human. Now I want to know whats wrong with your gardening,”

“I’m not a bad gardener, it’s something else!” She argued. The Jotun nodded.

How strange,” he purred, reclining slightly, -“now explain, why do you act like a person and not a beast?”
“because I am one,” she blurted out. His palm splayed out just behind her, his claws tapped rhythmically against the stone floor.
“You’re drenched in fear, thats quite unusual for a human,”
“Yes?”
He closed in on her, she took a step back. He bared his teeth.
“Did you come here thinking I was going to kill you?” He asked, grinning slightly.
“You’re one of those friendly forest creatures, aren’t you? You wouldn’t hurt me?”
He pondered to himself, tracing circles in the sand with a talon.
“Time will tell,”


#######

Idun finds an unlikely alley in her quest to fend off starvation. A misanthropic Jotun that just barely trusts her enough to pity her. Here he is seen telling her that she can get donations once a week, with some stipulations. From my silly little project.