A penny gets you in, but it won't get you out

[scarred_grin]

...so long story short, Loki had nothing to do with that chalk graffiti in the hallway upstairs, doesn't even own a pair of roller skates, and in any case will not be going near the tequila again anytime soon. Mistakes were made. Jeez, that was like ten hours ago. Can't we all just move on?

In any case, here she is stretched out on the couch in a look that radiates 'off-duty goth barista, probably also an art student': twentyish, crayon-red streaks in otherwise black-dyed hair, lip-rings through her old scars, big headphones, a t-shirt that never fails to amuse her, tiny shorts, and platform boots that if she were standing would make her six and a half feet tall, but right now just help her take up the whole couch. Oh, and fishnet, since after all she'd invented it TRUE STORY

So yeah, there she is, half-drawing half-writing in a notebook, now and then singing along to the music on her headphones, totally botherable if you're feeling brave.



[tinytags: loki (that norse one)][open forever, though slows will happen at some point]

Comments

[ostro_goth]

"Yggdrasil," Teja says. "The world-ash tree. I know of all these old tales, even though most of my people were Christian, at my time."

Pause.

"Amazingly done."

[scarred_grin]

"I used to date the guy who did that," she says, returning her shirt to its proper place and herself to her earlier lounging position. "He did beautiful work, but mostly skulls and pin-up girls and things. That wasn't his usual style, but he said I inspired him, so..."

She shrugs lightly.

"He did other scenes too, but I can't show you those here. That one's my favorite. Makes you wonder how things could've gone differently."

[ostro_goth]

"I think the tales about Loki came about to explain why the world is so much less than perfect and fair," Teja says, "and even the gods not all-powerful. He was set up by the story-tellers to take the blame, like the scape-goat of the Jewish and Christian tradition. Those stories were set to ever go that way."

Pause.

"Apart, of course, from those worlds where Loki is real. I have met Weyland the Smith, and Ska­­ði, in this place; so you should not be amazed to meet Loki some day, and perhaps not 'fangirl' him too much, as those from the future call it."

[scarred_grin]

...oh fuck.

Weyland's one thing; he's uptight but really easy to manipulate, if you know how. Skaði, though--she's hot but she's crazy. Scary crazy. The sort of woman who'd... okay, being chained up with the entrails of his own dead son with pointy rocks poking him in the back is bad enough, but the snake? That's the kind of ex Skaði is.

She hopes her reaction comes across as surprise that she might meet her idol here someday.

"I blame the Christians," she says. "Before then, you could have shades of grey. But after that? All black and white. And Baldur is Jesus, and Thor is Action-Figure Jesus, the stories got corrupted. You've really met Weyland and Skaði?"

[ostro_goth]

"I know not what an Action Figur is," Teja says, "even though I know what a fangirl is; information in this place is eclectic."

Pause.

"I do not know Skaði very well, having only met her in passing; but Weyland I would count as a friend, even though he was gone for a long time."

[scarred_grin]

"Action figures are... you know, these cheap plastic toys of soldiers, or characters from some movie or TV show. They're like dolls for boys, they've usually got tiny toy guns or swords or whatever so they can play war."

They're not her thing, but she's a little outside the target age range for them.

"It must really be something, you know, meeting actual gods here. I haven't had the pleasure, but I sure hope I do."

[ostro_goth]

"They are gods," Teja says. "But they are also people. There are monsters and demons, also, that make good friends. Nothing is as expected, and you cannot count upon good and evil in the same way as you find it in a world's story. Evil is often set up to be so, I suspect, just like Loki in my world's old tales."

The way he says the name now is somewhat softened, more Gothic than Norse, Loge or perhaps Lauga, as the Goths spoke.

"I do not believe in them any more, even I know they are real in this place; but so are many other things from tales old and new. Or rather, there is only one god here that I believe in."

[scarred_grin]

"I don't know," she says. "I've often wondered--usually around four AM, after I've been drinking, but I wonder all the same. What about free will, and what about fate? The Christians say their god gave everybody free will, but Judas had to do what he did in order for the rest of the picture to fall into place. And for gods, do they have to be what's in their nature or do they get to choose? If the people in your world have free will but you as a god don't, that would suck."

[ostro_goth]

"Many things that I have pondered upon at night, also," Teja says. "It depends upon the world, and the way you look upon it. If it is a world of tales to you, then there is fate at work, so that which happens will make sense, and thread like pearls upon a string. But reality has no such meaning: - in the real world, is just that what happened, and stays happened, and one must deal with it. Free will only applies to the future; railing against the past is ever useless and disgraceful."

[scarred_grin]

"I've never really been the kind to dwell on the past like that," she says. "I don't believe in regret. Sure, I've done things that other people might not like, but I had reasons at the time, and if you're going to do something, you may as well stand behind what you do."

Which probably explains how she ended up in that cave, with the rocks and all. She can't work up any remorse.

"It's appealing to think that the world's a bunch of stories, but who would want to read most of them? The thrilling arc of somebody getting up, going to work and going home again. That's not fate, that's just drifting."

[ostro_goth]

"Only those things are picked as tales that people wish to hear or read," Teja returns. "All else must consider themselves scenery."

[scarred_grin]

"I'd hate to be someone's scenery," she says. "But can you imagine--to somebody else, we all are. There's people over there having coffee, and right now we're their scenery. We could be, I don't know, planning the end of the world, but it doesn't matter because we're not in that story."

[ostro_goth]

Teja looks at the random people with the coffee, and nods.

"Theirs is an utterly different story, that they are taking a time-out from in this place, and were we planning the end of the world, it would likely not be their world."

[scarred_grin]

"It could be," she says. "We could all be from the same world, just different times. And we could very well be planning to destroy it."

She waves a waitrat over, orders herself a cherry Coke.

"Where do you stand on the old fire-and-ice debate?"

[ostro_goth]

"Either kills," Teja says. "And no, we are not from the same worlds. There are those here from almost the same tale, but subtly, painfully different."

Pause.

"The world is not only moderation, but extremes."

[scarred_grin]

"What if there's only one world?" she asks. "What if there was only ever one world, but we all walk around with our own worlds in our heads and we never notice the world next door. There are people who wake up one day and don't even recognize their husband or wife anymore, even though they've known each other for years. We never really know anybody."

Which makes her job a lot easier.

[ostro_goth]

"That is a strange philosophy, and not an observation many make," Teja says. "Indeed, most that fall through a crack in their own perception thus, will be thought crazed and addle-minded by those that know them."

Pause.

"But indeed, if we peer underneath that which me think we safely know, there is not much we know. But it is neither safe nor practical to do so. It might help with magic, though."

[scarred_grin]

"I know I know a lot of things," she says with a grin. "I know rock beats scissors, I know a good cure for hiccups, I know the best diner in New York for when you wake up with a bad hangover, and I know I like a man who can discuss philosophy even when sober. But there's at least one thing I know I don't know."

She offers a hand. "Name's Pyrrha."

[ostro_goth]

Teja takes her hand, and shakes it, as people from the future do.

"I am Teja, son of Tagila," he says. "I was the last king of the Ostrogoths in Italy and died in battle upon the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, in the year 552 of Christian reckoning."

[scarred_grin]

When she's right, she's right.

"An honor to meet you, Your Majesty," she says. "And I'm sorry for your loss, though you seem to be handling it well. It's strange meeting somebody from a time so different than the one you came in here from, though. It's almost fifteen hundred years later than that back home."

But she remembers that age. She'd been a lot busier then.

[ostro_goth]

Teja gives a brief huff that might even be the beginning of a laugh, not taken further, as he does not laugh.

"I have been here for four and a half years, to count the time in this place," he says, "and I have grown used to my loss. Indeed, those of my people that survived, were allowed to leave the battlefield and go north to where we had come from, and are flourishing well into your time. Knowing they went free and lived made my death more than worth the while."

[scarred_grin]

"I've been here a while," she says, "nowhere near that long, and I couldn't tell you just how long since I've been home because I haven't exactly been sober for all of it. No door though, so I have to find other ways to stay busy."

Not including drawing on walls. That was totally not her.

"I can tell you though, my contributions to the world won't be anywhere near that big. Even if I ever get back."

[ostro_goth]

"You leave a song, or a few children, or a new way of preparing strawberries," Teja says. "A work of art or craft that will be treasured for some generations, or a joke that people tell after you are no more. Is that not all we wish for, in the end?"

[scarred_grin]

"I... make a webcomic," she says, flipping through her notebook to find a good page. "It's about robots that fight demons."

In fairness her drawings of robots fighting demons are pretty good, if done in a cartoony, retro style. But it's far from her best work.

Her best work, her most memorable, she never gets credit for.

[ostro_goth]

Teja inclines his head, and looks.

"These look good," he says. "They might be comical, but I see no web?"

He has been here four and a half years; but there are things he never needed to catch up on.