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

[scarred_grin]

"Are you ever in luck, then," she says. "I tend to put a lot of spices in things when I cook for myself, but for you I'll tone it down. Most of what I know how to make's pretty simple; it has to be, 'cause I got it all memorized."

Cooking is a very useful skill for somebody in her position.

[ostro_goth]

"I am sure you will find good things to make for me," Teja says, amused.

Ultimately, it does not matter much to him. But she might enjoy to get him to care.

[scarred_grin]

"You know how it is," she says. "There's no real reason to go to any trouble if you're just cooking for yourself, and Fina doesn't eat solid food, and if you bake cookies or something and bring them down to the bar to share people look at you like eating them'll turn them into frogs or something. But I mean, really--if I could do that with food, I'd have a lot more money than I do."

[ostro_goth]

"Fina doesn't -- what?" Teja asks.

[scarred_grin]

"I've never seen her eat anything," she says. "I get that some people don't like cooking, so they eat all their meals downstairs at the bar, but if you have a kitchen, you'd figure you'd at least keep bread so you can make toast or something. Something you can eat if you get hungry but don't want to go anywhere, you know? But there's nothing, just orange juice and alcohol. Maybe she's on the model diet."

[ostro_goth]

"How would any live like that?" Teja says, shaking his head. "In my time, starvation was a weapon, not a thing people would incur of their own free will."

[scarred_grin]

"There are people who don't eat, voluntarily, or they make themselves sick so they lose weight. They say it's a control thing."

She shrugs lightly. "I don't know. I got problems but that's never been one; I eat all the time and I don't like throwing up."

[ostro_goth]

"I have heard of Romans that starved their pleasure-slaves because they wished them to be slender," Teja says, "but it was a rumour only, and one to show quite how decadent they were, from our point of view, in a time when enough food was never a matter of course."

[scarred_grin]

"You'd be surprised what goes on back home," she says. "Basically there is no size or shape a woman can possibly be that's good enough. She's too short, she's too tall, she's too fat, she's too thin, her hair's too straight or too curly, anything you can think of, it's wrong. So they get surgery, they get fat taken out or they get things injected in places to make them bigger, or they get their faces carved up and reshaped. It's crazy."

She shakes her head. "Me, I'm too tall and too boy-shaped, I'd need to get breast implants and wear flat shoes all the time if I want to be considered attractive. But fuck that. I like me."

[ostro_goth]

"I do, also," Teja says, and then blushes bright red when he realises what he has said.

[scarred_grin]

"Mmm."

She smiles. "And you haven't even seen all my ink and metal yet--I'm a real work of art. You ever want a private showing, you just let me know."

[ostro_goth]

There will ever be a deeper shade of crimson that Teja can blush.

He does so now, saying nothing.

[scarred_grin]

"...I'm not gonna say what I was gonna say," she chuckles quietly, "'cause I don't want to make you more uncomfortable. But let's just pretend I did say it, and the offer stands. I apologize for my blunt streak."

[ostro_goth]

Teja gives her something approaching a rueful, tiny smile.

"And I apologise for my sudden attack of bashfulness," he says. "At times, I am still an old-fashioned Goth at heart."

[scarred_grin]

"Don't apologize for that," she says. "I think I like it. Definitely not what I'm used to--but I get tired of the guys back home and the way they treat me. Nothing wrong with old-fashioned."

[ostro_goth]

"I do not wish to impose upon you, in any way," Teja says. "Are assume things, one way or another. My people, my world: - the believed that once touched or once broken is forever shamed, a door once unhinged shall forever be open. It was a belief I found myself having to question, so I might go fighting, and becoming what was needed in the end."

Teja would not think that Pyrrha is trying to curry his favour, by her offer: - the only thing about her he does distrust is the way she perfectly mirrors his own darkness in a modern small-g goth way. The way she is easy to speak with, easy to understand, and easily gets underneath all his defences. He is used to some antagonism in opinion from all he meets.

[scarred_grin]

"My folks were fundies, like I said," she says. "Really hardcore about it--your parents pick who you're going to marry, and you don't even get to kiss the person until the wedding. But when they threw me out I threw all of that out, got rid of shame, and I've never been happier."

She looks down at her hands. "So I'm easy. But that doesn't mean I don't have genuine feelings; it just means I do what I feel like doing, and I don't let other people put their issues or their shame on me. I don't feel any of that."

[ostro_goth]

"Among my people," Teja says, "I ever ever stuck to our customs; doing otherwise never seemed worth risking estrangement from those that would later need me. But here, I have" -- pause -- "tried and tasted that which they thought forbidden, or lewd."

[scarred_grin]

"See, that's a society thing," she says. "They have rules and customs. Yours did, my parents' did, but when you're out of that--I sat down and thought about it, about what I'd been taught were sins and virtues, and some of it was universal but a lot of it there's really no reason for. But again, it helped that I didn't have anybody else to look out for."

[ostro_goth]

"It took me a long, long time in this place to relax that far," Teja admits.

Her approach seems so logical!

[scarred_grin]

"It takes time," she says. "If you want to do it right, if you don't want to just have to redo it all over again a little way down the line, you need to take your time and really think about it. And then I had a lot of time, to do nothing but think."

[ostro_goth]

"That is what being Bound is good for," Teja nods, wondering once more what there is that she would not speak of. That 'lot of time' sounds like a lot more than just one spell of Bound-ness.

[scarred_grin]

"Oh, I had all that figured out years ago," she says with a grin. "My time here, I just--you know, make things. You should really see my wall sometime, it's pretty good."

[ostro_goth]

"It is a place that is good for making things," Teja says. "And indeed, I would gladly see what you made."

[scarred_grin]

"Anytime you want, I can show you," she says. "And I can promise I'll behave myself, too, and not, like, lure you up to my room and... not be good."

She can behave when she wants to.

"Lately I've been working on clothes, though. I didn't have much when I came in, and I get bored, you know?"