Veln had not realized before how much effort came to skinning and cutting large game when limited by a single short blade. He helped Runwyn with the skinning, pulling the hide away from the flesh and holding the limbs down as they were chopped off. He even assisted with the removal of parts of the antlers. He was soon panting and groaning, his thin but wiry arms and shoulders straining with the effort, and the sweat that showered his face was painted red as he wiped its salty sting away. By the time they were done, he was struggling to keep up with the rest.
Later, as the wood snapped and burned and fire tongues ravenously licked the cooking meat and the hot embers were cooking the sweet chestnuts from brown to charred, he found time to rest his weary body. He had not put his body to so much hard work for almost a year now, being passed chained from one stern seller to the next. He also lacked some simple survival wisdom, but he soaked it from the others. Like the large Gaelic man, he had followed his example and dug himself a bed in the earth and collected dirt and leaves to cover himself. Now he rubbed his throbbing palms lost in silence and feels the warmth of his new skin shoes that Talorc passed to him, find it difficult to spark a conversation until Beorn spoke his heart in a speech like poetry.
"I am grateful to you all for allowing me to stay with you. Alone, I would not have made it." His own words falter in comparison but they are honest, and he meets each of their glances before adding to the conversation. "I know little of these lands, I was captured north and west of here, near Mawrgam." He cannot contribute much to the conversation and he knows it, and he waits for others who hold a far more firm grasp of the situation to speak their mind first. Then, when Talorc and Beorn switch to their native language he does not understand, he goes silent again until people lay down to rest, one after another.
"I can stay and make you a company?" He asks Alric as though he is tired, the events of the day still can't let him close his eyes. He was wary of large men but this one was the reason he joined the group and he cannot help but compare what he feels like warmth like of hearth fire. "I see well in the dark, and my ears are sharp. I can rest later."