Once upon a time, in a land not so far away...
You wake to the feeling of being watched. Of a set of unfamiliar eyes, of warm breath on the back of your neck. A jolt back to the land of the living, and it's gone. No matter how quick you are, how sneaky, the source of the disruption has long since disappeared, so you have no choice but to try and ignore it. To continue on with your day and try to set that moment of strangeness aside.
You eat, drink, speak with others. Perhaps you explore a little. Whatever it is you choose to do for the day, that feeling from the morning won't return. And by the time the sun sets and the moon glows brightly above, you've likely set those moments of strangeness aside. It's not like it's anything new, after all.
It's the same again for the next few days. No better, no worse. Something best ignored, right?
A speck of blood on the doorframe. That wasn't there before, was it?
A snap of twigs in the distance. A crunch of leaves.
Claw marks gouged deeply into the door.
Into the wall above your bed.
Scraps of red fabric, turned darker with blood. Pieces of fur. Of flesh.
Do you run and hide? Do you fight? Whatever you choose, it's definitely time to make sure your body parts aren't scattered next...
...what a horribly big mouth you have.
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Since first waking up on the island, characters have been stuck with that feeling of being watched. It isn't a constant. Isn't more than a few seconds at a time, dotted throughout the day. Investigation has never turned up much, and there's never been any sightings of the cause of it all.
Until now.
Throughout the first half of the week, characters will find themselves suffering from that feeling of being watched on a far more constant basis. Rather than it being a one-off, few seconds occurrence each day, that feeling will last for minutes at a time, and on multiple occasions.
However, it isn't until the fifth day that they'll start stumbling across physical signs of their monitoring. There are claw marks on doors. Spots of blood on the paths outside. A crack of twigs in the forests, or the imprint of bloodied paws in the snow.
Ten days in and those signs start finding their way indoors. Wet footprints, tinged with red. Claw marks in the walls, the floor. Torn sheets and the smell of wet...something. Whatever it is that's been watching you, its finally decided to come and say hello.
Two weeks in and characters will begin to have sightings of the creature, its fur dark and its eyes a glowing yellow. At times it looks like a wolf, prowling in the distance. At other times, it's walking on its hind legs, almost human were it not for the muzzle full of gleaming sharp teeth. Get too close, and it slips away like a shadow, gone between one blink and the next. It decides when to reach out to characters, not the other way round.
It's after characters finally get a good look at the creature that it starts leaving...gifts. Characters will start to find familiar items from their home worlds amidst the mess. The remains of a childhood pet, perhaps. Photographs of loved ones, faces torn almost beyond recognition. It's only once it delivers its final gift that the creature retreats to the trees again: a blood-splattered item of clothing that clearly belongs to the person the character misses the most at the time, alive or dead.
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"Asgard's never had much interest in goodwill with Midgard." It's probably a more revealing comment than Sigyn should allow herself to make; it could come from simply a bitter servant, but it sounds far too sympathetic to Midgard's decades of resistance and rebellion to ever say to an Asgardian. Still, this Asgardian is so strange, Sigyn's finding it hard to keep her caution. And something about Loki's manner doesn't strike her as dangerous, yet -- at least, not dangerous in the manner of Odin, of Thor, of the Asgardian upper class she knows.
"I'm sorry, Sir, ah, Loki," and there's a hesitance and a pain that comes with voicing that name out loud, the way her mind can't help slipping to moment after moment shaping her wife's name, before Loki died and left her alone, but Sigyn rallies and keeps going, "and I appreciate your offers, but nothing you've said sounds familiar to me. I've never heard of Ragnarok, or an Allfather, and Thor doesn't have a brother, and would probably punch you for implying he's related to Odin. I don't -- you do mean Asgard the planet, in the Yggdrasil system, don't you?"
1/2 cont in a sec
"The Asgard you speak of, Lady Eir, I have destroyed, boldly. To save it. It may not be the Asgard you know, we may speak of different Asgards. Were you a Sorceress or a Witch, you would ready See."
2/2
Loki's calm shatters. His politeness shatters. His carefullness shatters.
Did lady Eir struck a nerve.
"Thor is my brother! He always was! Our bloods differ, but I'd give all of my blood to extend his life for but two hundred years, if that were ever necessary."
Loki glares.
And then, the glare vanishes, leaving an almost tired look, but full of conviction.
"The fool is my brother. As long as he thinks."
He glares again. Sharp. So sharp.
"My name is Loki Odinson, Lady Eir. Pleased to meet you, for certain.
no subject
"I'm sure it is, but as I don't know of any witches existing outside stories -- not to mention that the Odin I know has no children of her own, and she would never allow Asgard's destruction, no matter the circumstances -- I think you're right that we're speaking of different places." Which means she may as well give him her true name, but she's not sure how the admission of the lie would go over, in the wake of his outburst. She's certainly not broaching the topic of Thor again, considering it seems to have hit a nerve.
"So I suppose you don't hold any duty to me here, after all," she adds after a moment, though it doesn't sound like a dismissal; more like a reassurance.
no subject
As a tiny explanation. Maybe.
"My Lady"
The calm is back. So are manners. Mild. Charming to many a woman and man.
To her? Surely no longer.
"If I am relieved of my duties, let me but stay as your honest admirer, if you be true."
no subject
Then she considers him, and his offer, for a moment, before she smiles. Maybe he's a bit unsteady, but she's dealt with much worse even in the last months, Thor's temper flares and shouting, Odin's cold matter-of-fact cruelty, the demeaning way the social climbers of Asgard treat their Midgardian servants. If he wasn't talking about a world that looked like one she knew through a funhouse mirror, she might dismiss him, but -- she's curious.
And she's hesitant to dismiss anybody in this weird situations; they could be valuable, for information, for a hostage, for whatever she can make use of them for. More valuable than if she let them wander away into the forest, at least.
"I haven't had many admirers lately," she says, a more honest statement than her joking tone makes it sound like, though maybe the way her hand goes to twist her wedding ring around her finger gives away some of the sincerity. "And we both seem to be out of our respective places, so I'd be glad to have some company while trying to figure things out."
no subject
He reaches for her hand, to try and kiss it.
Manners, yes, but if Eir lets him, he may even be so bold as to 'reach', though his soul is yelling at him not to reach her, this Eir, not to reach. Warning.
But God of Mischief would ignore a warning, sane as the warning is. Would probe. That is, if the touch will happen to allow that, then he would weave into. Then.
Then he would briefly look through the window, into Eir's memory. Only if she lets him touch her hand.
no subject
Mindreaders aren't something that exists in the Yggdrasil system, at least that she knows of. She has no way to stop him from seeing her past; anything he looks for is there for the taking. Months of maneuvering herself as a servant, being treated as little better than furniture on the three-month train journey between Midgard and Asgard, as she and the others in the resistance planned quietly amongst themselves; before that, leading the resistance, watching friends and allies slowly dwindle until the bulk of the work was on her shoulders. Back further, years of mourning, grief and pain and rage at the loss of her wife; and then before that, Loki, her Loki, alive, working side-by-side to disrupt Asgard's tyranny, building things, living their lives together with so much love.
It takes a moment to regroup herself, and then she pulls her hand away, stepping back, her face hard and uncertain, her arms wrapping tightly around herself. "What was that?" she asks, slowly, resisting the urge to turn and run straight into the unknown, because who knows what might be waiting there.
no subject
Inhale. Exhale. He's too shaken, just from this, but that is not all, as it brought the reminder of that Loki's mind, disturbing, displeasing, one he very much misliked to see
I was not forced to see it, the decision was my own--- foolish decisionInhale. Exhale. "Eir"'s question registers, barely.
With a shudder, Loki utters, "Glad tidings. Of your life being alive. Two Loki met, without even an end of the world."