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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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.

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