milliways_bar | (no subject)

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When Thor steps into the bar this time, he's looking much more normal. (For Earth. Not really for Asgard.) He's in black jeans and workboots, and a sturdy brown jacket over a t-shirt -- borrowed clothes again, but this time they mostly fit, and they're suited to the New Mexico winter he's come from.

Of course, humans feel cold rather more acutely than Asgardians do, but Thor is pretty close to human at this point, like it or not. Anyway, he's used to wearing heavy layers of clothing. The jacket's honestly kind of a comfort.

He also steps up into Milliways, because he thought he was getting into a van.

Milliways is unexpected this time too, but his confusion passes rapidly. (And it's much less existential this time. Half a day and a good meal after his first Milliways entrance, Thor has his feet under him much more solidly.) He heads for the bar, although he's perfectly willing to be flagged down along the way.

[Tinytag: Thor Odinson, Darcy Lewis, Leela]

[OOC: Closed to new threads, sorry!]

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Thor half-smiles in agreement, glancing down at himself.

"More like not of my world," he says. "They are of my time as much as any time of Midgard I have lived through, but they are indeed unlike my usual attire. You have keen eyes."

"Midgard," Teja repeats.

He looks at Thor, his face, his stance, and remembers what a friend has told him some days ago.

"You are Thor."

Thor's blond brows lift. That's impressively quick recognition!

It wouldn't surprise Thor in the least, if he were clad in Asgardian armor and a cape of royal rank, with Mjolnir at his side. But to recognize him in this garb and in mortal form within a minute is something else.

"I am," he confirms.

"A friend told me of you; she gave you baked goods?" Teja says. "So when you said 'Midgard', it all fit together. For that is what the human world was called, as in contrast to the Asgard of the gods, in the myths of my people."

"The fair Sunshine," Thor approves.

She brought him delicious pastries, and a welcome to the bar. Thor appreciates both! With the absent-minded carelessness of a jovial person who takes help and gifts for granted, but it's genuine all the same.

"I am of Asgard. And Midgard is what mortals call Earth; your people spoke truly in that, and perhaps in much else."

He's heard of some stories the mortals got really wrong.

But he's also heard of some they got right.

And Thor doesn't think of himself as a god -- he's Asgardian, is all, and a prince and strong warrior among his people -- but he understands why humans, so weak and fragile and short-lived by comparison, thought Asgardians were.

"One would assume," Teja says, "they heard some part of the truth, and the skalds handed it down somewhat garbled."

Thor grins.

He's met others who knew his name, here at Milliways, but no one in familiar arms and garb, with a quick mind and true knowledge (to the level that Midgardians of old had, at least.) Incomplete and incorrect his information must be, but all the same it's amazingly heartening.

(And Thor is proud enough at this point in his life to find it kind of heartening to be hailed as a god by someone who believes it, too.)

"That is it exactly."

"Well met," he adds, and means it. None of the newfangled irony Teja dislikes here; Thor is open and direct, as befits a warrior. "By what name are you called?"

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

Pause.

Then, he attempts one of his rare jokes.

"My people believed -- those that were not yet Christians -- that the afterlife would be feasting in Valhalla, provided by the gods. But they were wrong in that, as I fetched up here, and am making my own way with forge-work. Would you like a drink?"

The afterlife, the Goths and all their relatives believed, should be on the gods. So Teja, an unbeliever in many senses of the word, would of course buy a 'god' a drink.

Thor gets the joke, and laughs aloud. Briefly, but heartily.

"I have heard that in Milliways' feasting-hall, all have guesting rights and host-duty alike. Very well. I will drink of your mead, Teja Tagilason, and provide you drink in turn if you would."

His people also believe that brave warriors go to Valhalla when they die. But Thor has no problem with the idea that a prince of Asgard -- and a king of Asgard in the future, as he still expects to become -- would preside over a table there.

Generosity is the first duty of a king -- it is the Romans who invented taxes. Among Teja's people, it worked the other way around.

"You have heard right," he says, stepping up to the bar to order two large earthen cups of mead, and offering one to Thor. "At times, you may even be asked to step in for an inn-keepers duty, and provide service to all comers. So indeed, that is how we may do it. Hails!"

Before that meant 'all hail' to a king or suchlike, and then darker things down human history, among Teja's people, it simply meant 'health' and was said when drinking.

Among Thor's, as well. The king receives much, of course -- and Odin rules over an urban realm, in its way, and one of great political continuity -- but a miserly king is no king at all.

"Hails!" Thor echoes, and drinks deep. It's not quite the toast of his people, but near enough, especially given the Allspeech to translate. And Thor is a diplomat in his own way.

He's not a very subtle diplomat. But he's really good at the fellowship-and-goodwill part!

...'Drinks deep' appears to mean downing the entire cup in one draught. Thor's table manners are Asgardian, and even in mortal form his metabolism is pretty impressive.

"Is this mead of your homeland, son of Tagila? It is a fine brew!"

"It is mead as the women of my people brew it," Teja says, "especially in the north-lands, where they live now, after my death and our defeat in the south. My home land was Italy, in the south, after we took the Roman heartlands two generations before me; and the drink of my homeland is wine. But the isle of Thule, which is called Gotland, also, is too cold for vines. Apples and honey are what wine may be made of; and of course, there is ale."

But that is different.

Huh. Well, fair enough!

Thor slaps the bar -- gently, more as if backslapping a comrade than with a dish-rattling thump.

"Miss Bar," he announces, which is a title that's slightly strange on his tongue but the one he learned as proper for Bar, "a good wine of Italy next for the son of Tagila, and the same for me."

Bar will oblige with two cups from Teja's era, which is what Thor intends, rather than any modern vintage.

"I thank you," Teja says, taking the familiar-looking clay cup. He has finished his mead, also, and returns that cup to the bar.

Thor remembers Darcy's warning that in Milliways, throwing crockery is frowned upon, and so he lets Bar reabsorb his first cup rather than tossing it to the ground in approval. Especially since Teja does the same.

But it feels weird to do so. He knows it's courtesy here, but it still feels rude.

But no matter.

"Though this is not Valhalla," Thor says amiably, "we may yet drink to a warrior's life and a brave death."

Thor doesn't drain the cup at a go this time -- wine is different than mead, and a drink chosen to mark a companion's nostalgia is different too -- but he still takes a pretty hefty slug of it.

Also delicious!

Teja nods acknowledgement, and drinks. "Indeed," he says, "this is the good wine, as Roman citizens and Gothic nobility drank in peace-time; it would have been fit for King Theodoric to drink."

[OOC: And fade, maybe? I am loving this thread! But I don't have a lot else besides 'they continue to drink companionably, YAY BOOZE AND FELLOW WARRIORS.' But if you do have any other territory you want to cover, I'm happy to carry on!]

[[OOC: Nope, fading is fine! Thor doesn't need to be told he rules any more, and there is no ambition to arrest him, either... Thanks for the thread!]]

[OOC: Heh, well, maybe if somebody pushes his temper inside the bar Teja can add another Norse god to his collection anyway! But X was pretty clear about the 'go outside or go home' rules. Anyway, thanks, and let's totally have them talk again!]

[[OOC: If you ever need him arrested, just send a PM or ping me... **grins** And yep, I'll probably send Teja along to Thor's next EP, or you could bring him when I do a forge post for Teja again.]]

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