Open-ish, for Nexus_crossings

[coldsong]

There is a sensation that Loki knows, for which there are no words in any language he has ever heard. It’s a feeling particular to a shapeshifter, the sense of something caught, pinched or wedged or wrong-side-out. He felt it in his earliest days, when he was first learning to shift—true shape-changing, not illusion; there is no such risk with illusion—and he would get the bone structure slightly wrong, or some thin, obscure internal membrane would get tangled. Pain, deep-inside pain, and restless agitation that cannot be ignored. Wrongness.

It happened more and more rarely as he aged, grew to understand his body, what it could do and what it needed. Mostly, for the last few centuries, the deep-inside pain only happens if he keeps a shape too long without shaking out his body and unspooling his seidr. Like a cramp. Like a reminder he is not beholden to one body. He doesn’t really even belong in a single body.

Today, he feels the discomfort. He is out of joint, bent up inside, and shifting doesn’t seem to help.



It’s too warm for the Jotun shape. Another few weeks will be the time of year he used to get summer fevers, as a child. Age has made him hardier, but he’s still not looking forward to the beat of heat on his skin, the sear of angry sunlight. But he’s missed stalking the snows in this shape. Ironic how the form he hated and eschewed for so long is so much a part of him now.
Even oversized, eight feet tall and wandering barefoot in the woods, it feels like him. But the pain only eases for a little while.

He steps into the water of a little lake in the Wilds, sinks to his knees in it, and the coolness washes over him, but there is still something inside him that will not ease.





She is a good shape for the Plaza, a pretty woman, dressed in flawless, tailored dark clothing, green-eyed, with inky hair that lies straight and smooth around her face only to ripple and coil into waterfall-waves as it nears her shoulders. She walks from shop to shop, peering in windows as if she’s looking for something.

More often than not, it’s her own reflection she’s looking at, gauging the stress and tension around her own eyes. Her skin feels like it wants to shiver and writhe and peel away from her body.





Loki has never tried the shape of a Jotun woman before, and in the quiet by his frog fountain, the ruined playground where he has made a safe house, he tries.

Bare feet slip into the green water, heedless of the algae, circling around to touch the frogs’ heads each in turn. North, South, West, East. It takes several cycles around the stagnant water before the algae clears, and the surface lies dark and clean. Another moment before it stills.

Loki was not expecting the face that looks back at her. The skin is not cobalt but white, white as bone, the eyes shadowy and dark, the long, thin fingers tipped with dark claws. It’s not a normal face for a Jotun woman. Loki has seen few of them, but she knows that much. There is something else here. This, this is the face of an aberration, a predator, a blade.

She likes it.




The pinch inside is unfading, the agitation maddening. An animal shape is a last-ditch effort, and Loki chooses the Mare because all she can think to do is run and run and run until she exhausts herself, shakes out the pain through sheer force of will.

She is magnificent, as close a match for Sleipnir as Loki could devise, a dark blue-dun fjord horse with a white face and mane shading near to black. She is small, not much larger than a pony, but when she runs the ground trembles, and she roars and neighs out her frustration at the edges of the meadows beyond the Plaza. The sound cuts through the air, stings the ears up close, and from a distance it sounds like a woman screaming in rage. In way, that’s what it is.





The sun sinks. His energy fades. The pain inside does not.

Loki brings himself to the yard beyond the cottage where the children dwell, sinks into the grass, and calls for Fonn. She brings him a hot drink, painkillers liberally poured into it, but he knows it will not work.

“I’m tired,” he says softly. “I’m so tired.”

But he will not come inside. The idea of being kept, boxed in, trapped under a roof, makes him sick. The grass shivers around him.

She brings him a blanket. “Can you rest?”

He doesn’t know the answer.



[[Loki is Loki in every form, but they may respond differently to other characters depending what form they're in. The Mare, especially, may be aggressive and wild. Tags may be slow.]]

Comments

[chiron_survivor]

It is a nice day, the kind of day that begs for a picnic. A solo picnic, in Adia's case, as Caspar has been called back to Atlantis unexpectedly. She spreads her blanket out on the soft meadow grass and sets down the simple lunch she purchased from a café in the Plaza, content to soak up some warmth before returning to her errands.

The woman's scream has her jerk her head up in alarm.

But that is no woman. Instead, her vision is greeted by a wild horse running in distance. A horse like no other she has ever seen. A horse like one from an ancient mythology, and strangely familiar to her, besides.

She watches silently, in awe, her lunch forgotten.

[coldsong]

The last time Loki wore this form was long before Thor's failed coronation. She wore the Mare for tricks and games, but more than that she wore her for the sake of running alongside Sleipnir. Odin's mighty horse only tolerated Loki in his Aesir shape, but in the Mare's shape he wold play and run and show her how to leap distances too immense and harrowing for any normal animal.

In retrospect, Loki wonders if Sleipnir knew that beneath the Aesir skin was a Jotun body. It was hard to tell what that majestic animal was thinking.

It's less hard to tell what the Mare is thinking. She's racing up and down the meadow at a stunning speed, kicking and bucking as if trying to throw something off of her back. One pass, two passes, and then the third pass brings her close enough that she either catches Adia's scent or sees her where she sits.

She pauses, sides heaving. The eyes that focus on Adia are pale, green. A strange color for a horse. There's a moment of silence, and then the horse neighs again, loudly, a wild sound that makes the grass shiver.

[chiron_survivor]

Though Adia would not call herself an expert on horse behavior, she spent enough summers riding them that she can tell that this one is agitated. Restless. It makes it no less magnificent, but it does alight a spark of concern in Adia's heart. What has this wild horse so frenzied?

When the horse turns its attention to her, she freezes, an instinctive response. Her gaze drops when the horse neighs, not wanting to stare directly into those pale green eyes and provoke it further.

You know her, her moon rune whispers. Not so much in words as in a feeling, and it gives her the courage to speak.

"I hope I wasn't intruding," she says apologetically, wondering belatedly if the Mare had perhaps wanted some privacy. "I've never seen a horse like you before."

[coldsong]

The Mare recognizes Adia; of course she does. Loki is always Loki. But there is something different about this shape; it's got a wild consciousness of its own, and it's more prone to impulse and instinct. Avoiding her eyes was a good move on Adia's part. The woman seated in the grass is no threat; the Mare can tell that much.

Intruding? Only a little, and on ground where that sort of thing is to be expected. This isn't Loki's territory; she doesn't own it. The Mare snorts and tosses her head, trots a few steps in one direction and wheels in the other, looking around as if to make sure it's just them here. Her sides are shivering as if there's something on her skin irritating her, but at length she wanders a couple steps closer.

Her mouth doesn't move as she answers, but the words seem to hang in the air, meaning more than noise: I won't hurt you.

[chiron_survivor]

Though she keeps her gaze down, she keeps watching the Mare out of the corner of her eye, unable to hide her awe, although she remains concerned over that restless shivering. Adia doesn't see any flies plaguing her, or signs of mange. Whatever is irritating her, it must be coming from within.

Only when those words filter into her mind does she look up, still not quite meeting those sharp green eyes. She smiles, reassured, and says quietly, "Thank you."

You know her, the moon rune insists. Adia fusses with her lunch on the picnic blanket. Just a sandwich and an apple. "Would you like to join me?" she asks shyly. "You can have the apple, if you're hungry."

[coldsong]

The Mare's voice is soundless, and as such one could not say it sounds like a woman's, but it somehow carries a silent connotation of femininity, in the way an apple tree might, or the waxing moon. She snorts again at the thanks, an equine noise not a human's sound of derision, and stands where she is as if wary.

The offer of the apple sinks into her consciousness in an appealing sort of way. She is not hungry. The Mare rarely is, even after running wild for hours, but fruit is a sort of tribute. Tribute is attention of a kindly sort, and after considering for a moment, she walks toward the blanket and kneels in the grass alongside it, side facing Adia so the green eyes look toward her. The Mare is not a large horse, but she is solid and sleek, almost shimmering.

Yes. I would like the apple. There's a pause, and then: Do you recognize me?

[chiron_survivor]

Adia's offer comes from the heart, as do nearly all her acts of kindness. When the Mare moves to kneels next to the blanket, she holds her breath a moment, hands folded in her lap. This close, she can see that subtle shimmer in her coat and the bright shine of her eyes. She is beautiful and otherworldly.

And so, so familiar.

Slowly, she leans forward to place the apple at the edge of the blanket, so that the Mare may reach it. Then she sits back, legs folded beside her, just watching. The question nudges at her mind and brings the answer to the surface as clearly as the reflection of moonlight on water.

"Loki? Is that you?"

[coldsong]

Awe is nice. It's always enjoyable to sit in the presence of someone who finds you impressive, beautiful, worthy of worship. She holds her head up, posing a bit for admiration (Loki is always Loki), but the green-eyed gaze is calmer now.

She may not be able to sit for long, but for the moment she is under control. She turns her head away as if pretending not to notice Adia putting the apple within her reach, but once the young woman withdraws to her corner of the blanket, the Mare turns back and bends her head down, taking a bite at the fruit with moore coordination than a horse normally has. No nuzzling, no velvety-lipping, just a snap that takes a half of the fruit and leaves the rest sitting on the blanket.

Crunch, crunch, crunch. The wind blows her forelock into her eyes.

Yes. It's me. Hello, Adia.

[chiron_survivor]

How funny that her moon rune doesn't have much to say when Loki is in one of his humanoid shapes, but is all but singing to her while she is in this form. It does fill her with a healthy dose of respect -- not that she's ever disrespectful, but she can actually talk to Loki casually without constantly second guessing herself. (Sometimes.) This is different, and she proceeds accordingly.

That not noticing the apple and then taking a sudden crunch does make her smile, though she hides it with a bite of her own sandwich. No big deal, nothing to see here, just sharing a meal with a magic horse. "Hi," she says after swallowing. "I didn't recognize you at first, but..." She taps the back of her head. "My moon rune did. How are you? You seem, um..." Wild. "Restless. Anything I can do to help?"