Jade Fern Grove checkmate

Some of Jorunn's quietness and antisocial behavior was in part Bazi's creation with her threat of returning him to the bear ever present in the forefront of the young pre-teen's mind, but also of his own manufacturing. He wanted to be good for Scimitar and Bazi — he didn't want to be a bad kid and loud and bossy and ignore everything the adults told him like he was before the bear incident. It wasn't a lack of comfort around them anymore; but because he wanted to repay them for saving his life and for taking him in. So he did what he thought was what they wanted: helped out (attempted to at any rate), and focused his time and energy on training and on earning trades. To claim that his near death experience hadn't changed him would be a lie. It had changed him into someone who wouldn't be recognizable to his birth pack. Into someone who really wasn't Jorunn Lodbrok son of Ragnar. He really didn't know who he was; having entered that stage of finding himself a little earlier than nature had likely intended him too.

“Good,” Jorunn responded to his adopted father's question, fixating his eyes upon the Grove's patriarch. “I really like it here,” He offered sincerely a few seconds afterwards. He did like it there; though in truth he was happy as long as he was with them and not all by himself. Despite how much Jorunn enjoyed his independence he was still just a child and still desired the comfort of knowing that he had a pack and ..and a family to belong to even if he was adopted. For a small measure of time the young boy had gotten a taste of the cruelty of the real world and had came face to face with the real meaning of the word alone. 

Jorunn had made the connection that technically he'd been with Scimitar and Bazi longer than he'd been with his biological family, which probably explained why he couldn't remember much about them anymore. “I don't think I ever thanked you for taking me in,” Jorunn spoke, wanting Scimitar to know that he appreciated it and that if he hadn't it was extremely likely that Jorunn would have died out there, too young to hunt and fend for himself. In many ways, this made Scimitar a hero to Jorunn. “So, thank you.” Because the last thing Jorunn wanted was for his hero adoptive father to think that he was ungrateful.