milliways_bar | (no subject)

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It is possible to embroider with only one eye. If you have enough practice at it, it is possible to do stunning embroidery with only one eye.

It is also possible, if you know exactly what to ask for, to get the softest and most fragile of materials from the Bar, which is why the...well, in her hands it looks like an over-large handkerchief, but is actually a small blanket...seems to be ready to nearly float away but for the stitches set into it.

It isn't a tapestry. Its...a pictorial Edda. Or bits of one.

Hel's choice of baby gifts may be weird.

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A young auburn-haired lady in medieval dress - forest green velvet with silver ribbons along the hem and waist, which is really too short for the girl - looks over at Hel with interest.

Mostly at Hel's embroidery. She looks quickly away from Hel herself.

He's clothing is also medieval, although hers is in russet and orange; warm colors.

"It is for Helgi's baby."

Her voice is slurred.

Sansa notices and approves. "Oh, I hope you forgive my staring, but it is ever so lovely, my lady."

"I am used to staring."

She is half dead, how could she not be? Her gloved left hand steadies the work her right hand creates,

"Thank you."

Uhm. "Of course," she says inanely, more for something to say.

To make up for that, she begins chattering. "I've never been able to do anything so small. What a gift you have! Pray tell, what are you designing? "

The narration would like to take this moment to note that "large handkerchief in Hel's hand" is the size of a baby blanket due to the fact that Hel is fifteen feet tall. Half-giant.

"It is a baby's blanket, with scenes from the lives of the child's parents."

This narration will read people's userinfos more carefully.

"Oh," Sansa says, sincerely impressed, "what a wonderful idea!"

"I hope so."

The living side of her face looks at the blanket dubiously,

"It is hard to edit on the fly. They don't remember all of the last life, you see, and I don't want to tell them too much."

"Forgive me, my lady, but I'm unsure how a babe could have a former life. Unless it is like a..." don't say unnatural, there has to be a pleasanter word! "...beyond-human baby you speak of?"

"Svava and Helgi...Archie...had past lives."

She says with something like amused serenity,

"Svava was a mortal princess, and then a Valkyrie, and is once again human here. Helgi was a warrior, and then a Hero of Valhalla, and then a human named Archie Kennedy, and as Archie is here. Svava remembers only being Valkyrie, Helgi remembers bits and pieces of being a warrior and a Hero.

I have known them in all of their incarnations."

Sansa makes an effort at comprehending all this - files away names for later - and comes up with, "I'm glad you have friends here, my lady. And a friend soon to come," she adds with a fond look at the baby blanket.

"And it seems you will have a lot to embroider."

"I have time."

She says with a content sigh. Hel has lots of time,

"And the work goes quickly. I do have friends, and family, here."

Family chosen. It is...insane, but wonderful. The side of Hel's face which works has a beautiful smile.

Sansa's expression is more wistful, now, though she can't help smiling back.

"May you keep them always," she murmurs. She then looks back at the blanket.

"I'm sorry, I've taken up so much of your time. I only wished to say that it was a most remarkable piece of work."

Sansa is eyed from one stormy-blue eye,

"Little Man-woman, you haven't taken up any time at all really. I have enough time in Niflheim where there is no-one to speak to, even if you talked without breath for an hour it would be welcome."

Sansa is silent for a while. She's not used to people being so direct about things - and she's also not used to hearing what was said, either.

"Niflheim sounds a terrible lonely place," she hesitantly comments. "Is that your land?"

Hel has about as much tact as an anvil dropped from a great height. It comes from geologic ages stuck with dumb dead people. Dead people too dumb to blink,

"It is where I rule, yes, and where I am exiled to as well. It is very lonely there."

The sentence takes a moment to work through the girl's head.

"How wonderful that you would come to rule the land of your exile," Sansa exclaims, but the words are said falteringly. Because...there's no one there. Seriously. That sucks.

"I beg pardons - I knew not that I spoke to a queen, Your Majesty," the girl replies with a deep curtsey.

Oh, dear me. She pauses for a bit and then says, carefully,

"I am not a queen, little one. I am a goddess. I rule the realm of the unchosen dead."

The girl does not rise from her curtsey as quickly as one should.

But rise she does, and her knees are somewhat stable. Her gaze is focused on the floor. "In-- in my land we call you the Stranger," she murmurs quietly. "You take us to the Father to be judged."

'Goddess ruling the realm of the unchosen dead' quickly becomes 'god of death like the one in my world'.

Hel gets the idea that trying to explain farther right now wouldn't be a good idea. Sansa seems a little fragile,

"Your Stranger may be similar."

She says quietly,

"I am bound to Niflheim, so I can not be your god."

Again, Sansa takes her moment.

"The Stranger wanders the Earth," she says finally. "The godsworn give no mention of any realm of his. Or hers. No one knows the Stranger's gender," she explains abashedly. "So, no, you most certainly cannot be my god. But similar. Perhaps.

Her gaze - slowly - inches nearer Hel's face. "There must be more like you. If not in your kingdom, then...." Sansa gropes for the appropriate phrase, but fails.

"There are other gods."

She just hates them. Again, she's keeping this out of her voice. She would be very distressed if Sansa freaked out,

"And there is my family."

There's a lot of Hel, so it takes Sansa's gaze quite some time to find its way up.

"We have other gods in Westeros, too. The Father, the Mother, the Smith, the Maiden, the Warrior, the Crone and the Stranger."

Sansa opens and closes her mouth again. It was easier to talk to Hel when she was just 'supernaturally large deformed woman doing some sewing'. But 'death goddess sewing'? This league of weirdness Sansa had not anticipated. Even from Milliways.

...It isn't like she can buy clothing that fits, you know?

"The gods in my world are just known by name...and sometimes title. Like Baldur, the Beautiful. Sometimes Odin is called Father of the Gods, but he is my uncle. Loki is my father...he is the Trickster."

Sansa also has trouble with clothing fitting her recently. ...Which is totally not the same thing.

"It seems a proud lineage," Sansa comments. There's a tiny urge to exclaim 'the blood of the First Men runs in my veins' but she quashes it.

"They are very proud."

She agrees with the words, although not the intent behind them. Hel would only be amused if Sansa piped up with that,

"And what of your family, little one?"

Sansa freezes. She takes a short breath in, holds it a while, then lets it out through her mouth.

This isn't her god. But...you can't lie to gods. That's wrong. It's that chord of wrongness - what hubris would it take to lie to a god? - that strikes past Sansa's customary defenses.

""

Her family, her father and brothers, are going to die, and she can't do anything about it.

Her face will probably look like that when the first of them falls.

So her hand (the living one) moves in a small way and the faintest of lights glows for an instant,

"Bleßun, little one, I am sorry."

A small blessing, with what peace Hel has to give in it;

"I understand. I am sorry."

The girl bows her head. There's a slight hitch in her next breath.

"Thank you." Her voice is meek, grateful, pained and quivering, all at once.

If Hel were the slightest bit maternal, she'd offer the child a hug. She...really isn't, and is awkward and apologetic because she didn't mean to hurt the girl.

So she nods, and puts another stitch in the baby's blanket.

Sansa could speak of all that's in her heart, but she's too busy feeling it to think of putting it into words. She looks back at the blanket, her eyes blinking rapidly, an awkward smile on her face.

Eventually she curtseys once more. "It will be a wonderful blanket," she murmurs as she leaves.

The Transcendent Pig wanders over, sticking his nose just close enough to the embroidery to see it. "Dai sti'ho. That's beautiful, Cousin."

"Greetings."

She blinks down (way down) at Chao and then smiles a little bit,

"Thank you. I have a lot of practice."

"I'm sure," agrees Chao, admiring a scene of a hero finding a sword. "Not having opposable thumbs, I can only watch in amazement when beings make things like that."

"Jormundgand used to watch me, too."

She says with amusement, and she turns the blanket a little bit. She's big enough that she needs to sit on the floor these days,

"He doesn't even have limbs."

"Limbs are overrated," Chao laughs. "There are beings out there who can do wonderful things with two antennae and some telekinesis."

"Jormundgand mostly just ate things."

Again Hel is amused, and she sets her needle down long enough to gently scratch behind Chao's ears with her living hand because with her brothers she long ago got over the whole "Maybe a sentient animal won't like the same pettings" thing,

"I think I would miss not being able to sew, though. I am used to it."

The Pig flicks an ear happily and settles back to be scratched. "Nothing's wrong with eating all the time either. You can have excellent quality of life that way."

"This is true. And for a giant snake, it is at least amusing."

She can scratch for hours, really, and is good at picking up cues like the "a little to the left" head tilt,

"And what do you do, little Cousin?"

"Avoid telling people what the meaning of life is, mostly," Chao says. "And look mysterious. I like looking mysterious."

"I think you do very well at looking mysterious."

Number of pigs Hel has seen in her life: two. Counting Chao. The other one was a wild boar.

"Thank you," Chao says, beaming transcendently at Hel. "It's a difficult art. One has to practice."

Must...not...cuddle...tiny...adorable...beaming...piggy...

She nods, laughter dancing in her eye,

"The practice shows. You also have a good inscrutable."

"And an excellent smug, I'm told," Chao says, demonstrating the expression for Hel's benefit.

In so much as a nearly-full-grown half-dead goddess of death can look like an emoticon, Hel looks like this: :D!

"Yes, I would have to agree. That is an excellent smug."

SO CUTE!

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