milliways_bar | (no subject)

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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"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.

"It's silly still, goddess or no."

He tilts his head at her.

"But it is perhaps good to know that you can be silly sometimes."

How could he have? He didn't know her. He died.

If she told him, though, he'd angst. So she's not telling him, it was an almost slip of the tongue.

Hel would really rather never have to backhand him again, you know? It isn't friendly.

"It has been known to happen."

She informs him gravely. Usually it happens when she's talking to Baldur.

He would rather she never have to backhand him again either. Mostly because she's much bigger now than she was last time she did so. He grins and stands impulsively, leaning up to kiss her on the cheek. The one she can feel.

"Still, it is reassuring a bit."

Or perhaps not, as the thought of a death goddess with a sense of humor may strike terror into the hearts of some.

Hel strikes terror into the hearts of many. Ask the gods!

She blinks at him, then dips her head a little bit.

"Is it?"

"It is. After all that time. It speaks of remarkable preserverance, my dear."

He settles back in his chair with a small grin.

"Not to mention the fact that it's hard being friends wit someone that doesn't let themself be silly once in a while."

It took Horatio years to let himself. And that was with almost constant exposure to Archie trying to get him to loosen up.

"I am not good at friends."

It isn't that she didn't let herself be silly. She just didn't know what it meant.

"But I try."

"It's all any of us can do, I think. Try."

She is out of things to say, so she simply nods.

Archie's feeling rather good about the conversation, having been fairly successfully distracted from her earlier near-slip, and is perfectly content to simply sip his chocolate. Hel has a sense of humor. Who knew?