This AU started life with me wanting to play around with a Tove Jansson inspired visual style, with very little thought given to any wider lore, but over time it has grown well beyond that and become my most beloved AU! Other than the style, some of Ardbert's metaphysical state of being is inspired by the story The Invisible Child, but it doesn't otherwise cross over with the Moomins or require knowledge of the books.

In this, wol is a guardian of and against a strange, mystical forest encroaching on a little town and what passes for the Echo in this universe is what allows him to safely traverse the forest without getting lost or otherwise entangled in the magic laced throughout. He used to live deeper in the forest, but after the passing of the previous forest keeper, he moves closer to the town and gets pulled more into the sun by its residents.

Ardbert entered the forest, perhaps very long ago and perhaps from another world entirely (he doesn't know), lost his friends and his way entirely and as the years went by without anyone else finding him either, he became more invisible and detached from the world itself. He couldn't say how he found the house or how long he spent sleeping there, but at some point he was pulled back into vivid awareness of the world, by wol's presence.

They start off on an antagonistic foot, as Ardbert, startled by this new person after years spent alone, lashes out in ways only a ghost can. But eventually, tired of his furniture getting rearranged in the middle of the night, wol makes an attempt to reach out to Ardbert and this little act of kindness snowballs into more. To begin with, wol can't see or hear Ardbert at all, but little by little, through love and attention, he becomes visible and tangible again, not just to wol, but everyone else too.

As a big fan of Superman, I've been rotating the parallels between Superman and the Warrior of Light in my mind for a while - like how the intrusiveness of the Echo feels very similar to being able to hear everyone, everywhere, or their statuses as outsiders, but loving the world they're in all the same - and somehow it became a whole AU. I think you can draw parallels between Clark and Ardbert too (and I love to do that too), but in this Ardbert is a regular human. It also doubles as a modern AU, kind of, but almost everyone remains what they are in canon (e.g. elezen are still elezen etc.), except the dragons and Hydaelyn.

Wol's backstory trajectory is the same as Clark's - he is sent away from his home planet as a baby, to escape its doom, and winds up in the care of Midgardsormr and Hydaelyn. He has a normal childhood until he starts manifesting his abilities in his late teens, cutting short his promising hockey career and leaving him feeling a little lost, even as he decides to put those powers to good use.

Unbeknownst to him, he winds up saving Ardbert's life, as Superman, after everything in Ardbert's life has crashed and burned.

A few years pass. Ardbert is doing marginally better, though some days he still clings to his dog, Seto, as a reason for getting out of bed. One early morning at a park, they run into each other - quite literally - this time with wol in civvies. As an apology for knocking wol over and Seto giving him slobbery kisses, Ardbert offers to get wol a coffee. Though they have a pleasant chat as the world wakes up around them, Ardbert thinks that will be all there is to it, but when he sees wol again the following week, he makes the choice to say hello again.

This one is not really an AU, but it didn't really fit in anywhere else, but I also didn't want to leave it out completely, since I love to draw their bearsonas a lot.

While sometimes the bearsonas are a way for me to experiment or make silly stuff, like meme recreations, my favourite thing to do with them is drawing glimpses of these little private and domestic moments between them, that nobody else really gets to see. Which would happen in canon too!