Open-ish, for Nexus_crossings
Jun. 14th, 2019 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coldsongThere 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.]]
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.]]
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-16 12:33 am (UTC)It's partly why Bob works with Blair. Blair is interested in sniffing out and studying potential future threats before they get that far. Not that it will probably work, the Nexus is too unpredictable, but it's worth trying.
Lies like that never end well, even if the people telling them don't mean any harm. But I'm a creature who depends on deception by my nature. A Thing is not one to speak about the importance of truth versus lies. I would be honest about what I am if I didn't fear how people would react to me.
It's not only the Guardians and the Fallen Bob's afraid of. The Nexus in general will probably not take kindly to a powerful, dangerous alien in their midst, and Loki's taking Bob under his providence gives the shapeshifter some small comfort..
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-21 01:41 am (UTC)She shakes her head. "I don't know what will happen, but I do know that change is the natural state of this place. Change, and barely-controlled chaos. If the Nexus manages to unify again, it will not last. Nothing does."
That sounds bleak and pessimistic, but she doesn't really mean it that way. Pain and grief don't last, either.
"Well," she smiles a little. "The god of lies should not be the one to criticize, either, I suppose. But I wonder sometimes if I would be the god of lies if I had not been lied to from the outset."
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-21 06:55 am (UTC)I hope the truce lasts, if nothing else, though a ceasefire isn't the same thing as a true peace. Peace may be asking too much from the Eliksni. They'll probably never stoop to joining us. The most we can hope for is not being their prey again, and we're lucky they agreed to that.
Bob doesn't know the Fallen well, but the Overmind encountered warlike species before and the culture type is one he's familiar with. Some of them had settled down, eventually, while others destroyed themselves and usually other civilizations with them.
These things do tend to settle into vicious circles. If you're treated badly by the people around you, there isn't much of a will to do better, and the worse you get the less willing people are to see the good in you. Lies lead to more lies.