milliways_bar | (no subject)

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It has been...a time, since last she entered. As the mortals count it that time may have been long. It is a blink of her bad eye, in a way. For her, it is easier to stay outside, to walk with Baldur the Beautiful as the season turns from warmth and light to the bone-aching chill of winter.

She ducks as she enters from the lakeside door, golden-blond braids scraping the floor and skirts tangling around the left leg, which fails to step cleanly or easily counter time with the right.

She has, again, fallen out of the habit of speaking much; only to Baldur and only when they remember to. For her the fact that he is there is enough, and Hel has never been grand with words.

She straightens, and allows the living eye to skip across the patrons. Fifteen feet tall, this half-dead goddess, and like a willow-tree battered by the ages; the one side slender and supple, the other side withered and rough.

Her left hand, gloved, she trails over Bar and in return a mug of appropriate size filled with a spicy scented cocoa appears. She nods, slightly, in thanks and then makes her way to a spot near the fire with rolling, mis-matched steps.

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"I haven't really been gone."

She points out in her turn,

"But the woods are lovely, and it is nice to not need to duck."

"The woods are a big place, as often as I was out there, I never saw you, so though you were not precisely away, you were not here, and so you were missed.

He grins again.

"I can imagine that would be a definate lure for a lady such as yourself."

She shrugs, a little bit awkwardly, and nods once,

"I was not here. Baldur was there, as well. It was good."

Far, far better than Men and their oddities.

"I spoke with your Baldur some time ago."

Idly, they'd gotten along quite well enough.

"It is odd the things I can remember, and then the things I've forgotten entirely."

"Men are only supposed to remember one life."

And most gods only have one to remember.

"I suppose that's it then. I should count myself fortunate that I can remember any of it."

He really, really doesn't want to think about her not having another, simply ceasing to exist. He'll hold on to hope for as long as he can.

"Yes."

She agrees after a while, and then shrugs,

"Do you want some chocolate?"

He grins up at her again.

"I think I would like nothing more, my dear."

She glances down at a rat, which nods and scampers off after a drink for Archie. The fact that she doesn't talk to them doesn't seem to bother the rats as Hel tips very well.

Mostly because Man-sized coins are hard for her to handle with her good hand, let alone the dead one.

Archie admires her patience and fortitude in such matters. Then again, gods and goddesses have an entirely different perspective on tme, and therefore an entirely different scale of patience. He's not quite sure what to say, and he knows she's not much one for idle chatter, and really, he doesn't mind just keeping her company.

"The christmas is in a few months."

Statement, not question,

"Do you and the Valkyrie have enough warm things?"

Hel's sewing is beyond exquisite, after so many centuries, and warm clothing is something she's very good at making.

"I... we..."

They have enough themselves, surely. He treasures the gloves she made him last year. Still...

"There is something... We've adopted a little girl, more or less. And Svava... Svava is going to have a baby."

"Good. You should,"

she pauses and turns her statement around as she realizes that this...would probably be a Bad Thing to continue down the path of,

"make good parents."

He blinks at her for a moment, knowing full well that what she ended up saying was not precisely what she'd started.

"Most people seem to think so."

She gives him what can best be described as a "god look". Something that says "Of course I know more than you do, it doesn't matter because I'm a god and I'm not telling you so don't even bother asking little Man".

"Mmmm."

is all she says.

He fights the urge to roll his eyes at the Look, and glances off to the side instead. Oh look, chocolate! He reaches into his pocket for a few coins for the rat (he has some proper currency since going Pirating with Jack).

She drops a coin first, and says;

"Sometimes if I tell you things it will hurt you. They are over, and dead, and of another life."

He blinks at her again, thinking for a long moment before speaking.

"Perhaps. BUt sometimes even things that hurt can prove beneficial with time. They say that what doesn;t kill you makes you stronger."

He shrugs.

"I've died enough to know, I suppose."

"This wouldn't help."

She's very firm about this,

"Raise your baby. Spill alcohol to me at the birth."

Hel...knows that they'll have to go back. Herself and Baldur; it isn't something they talk about but they know.

Sometime. Maybe not soon, but...

sometime.

"I'll always wonder now though."

Softly, then he raises his chin, a promise in his eyes.

"I will do that Hel. For you."

"You won't have time to wonder. Because you'll have a child, and you'll love her and raise her well."

She doesn't know if it will be a daughter. She just picked a pronoun.

"Perhaps."

Raising a child can't take all of his time, can it? Possibly?

"We will love her well, certainly."

They don't know either, and one's as good as the other.

She can't ever have one, but she does know about children. This should explain the little smirk at his "perhaps".

"I know that."

The corners of his mouth turn up impishly.

"Then why did you say it like it was an instruction?"

He doesn't know much about children, even with Laerke, since she's such a tiny grown up, for all she likes to jump on their bed in the mornings.

She gives a right-shoulder only shrug and says,

"Because I'm a goddess and sometimes I say things like that?"

but she means because I'm distracting you from the fact that I nearly mentioned your other daughter that you didn't raise.