(Subverting gender since the world was born)

[scarred_grin]

[OOMs: Night One, in which Loki plays bingo and Weyland decides to stay for a while (which is a euphemistic way of saying the story's nothing but sex and drugs), followed immediately by Loki's School for Wayward Girls, lesson one: gender and strength (no warnings there, much to Skaði's disappointment), and immediately following that: action is go]

But Pyrrha doesn't know about any of that, and she's the shape in which Loki comes down to the bar tonight. She's more subdued than usual, but you wouldn't know it to look at her--between her ridiculous boots and the crimped-and-teased-and-AquaNetted big-goth-hair she's got going on, she hits just over seven feet tall today, and that's not counting the feathers she's got stuck in her hair (that admittedly look a bit like a bird lost a fight with her hair, but she's okay with that). She's also got her usual tiny shorts, a faded Love & Rockets shirt (band not comic) and a small backpack she'd made to look like a cartoonish cute stuffed zombie doll (the zipper's in its neck).

Anyway, she does her drunken-marionette-runway-stomp up to the bar, to order herself a cherry coke slushie (with an umbrella) and a chicken sandwich with fries. She's very hungry for some reason.

Botherable.

[open until forever but slows are <3]

Comments

[scarred_grin]

"I--"

She glances around quickly, to make sure nobody else is close enough to overhear, but even so, she speaks quietly.

"I kinda have a demon. But he's nice, he's not one of those baby-sacrificing or puppy-kicking kinds of demons. He looks out for me. But don't tell anybody, please--I don't want people to think I'm some weird girl with a demon."

[ostro_goth]

"I have spoken to many people from many worlds here," Teja says, "and that is by far not the weirdest thing I have ever heard in earnest."

That would be the Nobodies.

"There are others here with demonic affiliations. I would assume they exist in your world, only the general populace does not believe in them, just as there are magic worlds where almost all of the inhabitants are unaware of the magic."

Pause.

"What is the demon like?"

It would be interesting to see how much she can tell about Loki and his part in her un-life.

[scarred_grin]

"He saved my life," she says. "I was in a really dark place--I don't want to talk about that right now, though--and I was just working up the courage to end it all, and then all of a sudden there was this guy up on the fire escape with me, and he was really beautiful. Like, you know he can't be human, he's just that beautiful. And he's looking at me, and he says 'I can help you, if you let me.' So I said yes."

[ostro_goth]

"It must be an interesting world that you inhabit, indeed," Teja says slowly.

Pause.

"Of course I believe you -- in hindsight, it is almost hilarious what length people in some worlds go to to deny the reality of demons, magic, and the like."

He smiles to himself, remembering both Loki in the cells, and the very, very late knowledge of having met the goddess Demeter while alive, in his world.

[scarred_grin]

"It's just funny," she says. "My folks got me an exorcism when all I had was teenage hormones, and now I have a demon. But I'm okay with that."

She continues eating. The food here is better and more reliable than diner food back home, any day. Also the dishes are cleaner.

"I always believed in that stuff, magic and everything, I just figured I wasn't important enough for it to happen to so I'd never know for sure. You know?"

[ostro_goth]

"You are important enough to be here," Teja points out.

Even without the avatar-of-Loki aspect, that should give her pause.

[scarred_grin]

"I don't have a self-esteem problem or anything," she says. "I think I'm pretty great. But I have perspective--there's probably millions of people out there just like me, and if you're in a world where not everybody can know that magic exists, what are the odds that one particular ordinary person is going to know? You'd pick somebody important, somebody in a position to do something."

[ostro_goth]

"But by knowing it exists," Teja argues, "you would become one that can do something, and make it count -- as if by a magic of its own!"

[scarred_grin]

"Probably," she admits, "but I haven't really done anything with it. I mean, I have a demon in my head, and I think I'm actually less productive than I was before. I had a job and everything--well, not right before, I was kind of a mess then. But now I just... wander around and talk to people."

[ostro_goth]

"You are Bound in Milliways," Teja points out. "Whatever else would you do?"

[scarred_grin]

"No, I mean back home," she says. "I've had my demon for... almost eight years now? And that's all I do. I can't hold a job, I just... I keep moving. And I've seen and done things I probably wouldn't have otherwise, but that includes good and bad things."

[ostro_goth]

"It is a demon of wanderlust, one would assume," Teja says, "that wishes to keep moving, and see things and places, good and bad?"

For that is, apparently, what Loki is using her for. Wandering the world while he is bound until Ragnarök.

[scarred_grin]

"I think he's a demon of just plain lust," she says. "He never said why he's fallen, and I never asked--maybe he'd take it personally, I don't know, I don't know how demons think. But he doesn't make me do anything, and we were always taught they've all got a particular sin, and..."

She shrugs, and finishes her sandwich.

"Maybe it's just a change in thinking. Maybe my thinking that being easy's not a bad thing is just demonic enough. But I'm not hurting anybody."

[ostro_goth]

"You are not," Teja says. She should not worry so.

Pause.

"But sex is not evil in and of itself. So it needs not have demons to drive you to it."

[scarred_grin]

"Oh, I know," she says. "I was like this before the demon, so that didn't really change. But I--I had somebody, before then, and I haven't really had that since, and maybe that's what makes all the difference."

That and having to live her life in between venom-interruptions and Fina wanting her turn in charge.

[ostro_goth]

"This is Milliways," Teja says, again. "None needs to stay alone if they do not wish to, it sometimes seems."

There are people who would rather have the Pyrrha avatar than the Serafina one, actually. Teja among them.

[scarred_grin]

"You'd think so," she says with a quiet chuckle, "but you'd be surprised. This is the longest I've been without somebody in the past ten years. And I mean--Fina's room is right on the other side of my wall, and it gets really awkward."

Poor Pyrrha won't likely get to go back up to the room for a while.

"I got a standard now, though--just one--and maybe that makes it more difficult."

[ostro_goth]

"And what is that?" Teja asks.

[scarred_grin]

"I'm not getting involved with anybody who doesn't care about me as a person," she says. "I'm done with that--I don't have to do it here, I got somewhere to stay. And I think I'm pretty great, and I got a lot to offer, and I'm not gonna waste my time with some guy who only wants somewhere cute to stick it and something to spice up his life. I'm done being a muse for people who won't return the favor."

[ostro_goth]

Teja bites back saying 'I can do that', because that would be far too plump and plain.

He does care about Pyrrha as a person, not merely an avatar of Loki. The other thing doesn't even enter into it.

"That is not an unreasonable demand to make," he says instead. "None that does otherwise is even worth your attention."

[scarred_grin]

"I like doing things for people, I like being a part of things, I like helping inspire people--but you can't just give all the time, you need to recharge sometimes."

It's very draining sometimes, and part of why she has to trade off being the active avatar.

[ostro_goth]

"Indeed you need to," Teja says, "so this is as good a place for it as any."

He would offer his bath to relax in, remembering Xaldin and all his piercings, from long ago -- but that would sound so slick and forwards, Teja cannot just say it.

[scarred_grin]

"That's why I've been up in my room so much," she says. "Just doing my own thing, working on clothes, working on my wall, making presents. I kinda got worn out, at home, and I'm still working my way back from that."

She takes the paper umbrella from her drink, dries it off on a napkin and affixes it to her hair, among the feathers.

[ostro_goth]

"Would you like to see the ornament I made for you now?" Teja says.

She seems ready.

[scarred_grin]

"I'd love to," she says with a nod, followed by a quick scramble to catch and replace the umbrella that her nod has dislodged.

"Do you have it with you, or... somewhere else?"