(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

[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?"

[ostro_goth]

"I have it with me, but I know not if you'd wish to try it on in another place, where there are no people watching," Teja says.

[scarred_grin]

"...yeah, that... that might get some weird looks. Not that there hasn't been stranger things going on in here, but it's something I've never seen in here anyway, and I don't know how it is for you but I don't like people seeing things until everything's done and they get the full effect. I don't know that I'm looking very demonic today, except maybe my hair."

[ostro_goth]

When she stops speaking, Teja has taken a break and is ready to slide in a question edgeways.

"In the forge, or upstairs?"

[scarred_grin]

It's either talking or fidgeting with her, especially when she's nervous. If she can't do one, she's doing the other, and if she can't do either... well, she can usually do one.

"Either one," she says. "Unless by upstairs you mean my room--I didn't clean today, so I can't let anybody in."

[ostro_goth]

"I would not mind an untidy room; mine is full of designs and cat things, also," Teja says. "Just say which you prefer."

[scarred_grin]

"The forge is probably best," she says. "Anyway, I like it in there, and any excuse, right?"

[ostro_goth]

"Then let us go there," Teja says, standing. He looks around just to see if his cats are here, and if they are coming; but they are not.

[scarred_grin]

Pyrrha zips her little zombie-backpack closed again and stands to follow.

"I've never had anything made for me before," she says. "This is pretty exciting."

[ostro_goth]

Teja holds open the back door for her. "You bought all the ornaments you wear in those holes upon your face and body -- presumably your body, from what you said -- from some shops, ready made?"

[scarred_grin]

"Yeah, none of them are custom," she says, stepping outside. "I mean, my tattoos are, but that's different, that's more like getting a haircut. It's part of you, so of course it has to be done to you."

[ostro_goth]

"And someone made the holes in your flesh, also, one would assume?" Teja says, leading the way down towards the forge.

[scarred_grin]

"I did a couple myself, but most of them I had other people do," she says. "People with training, and proper tools. You know, I thought about getting into that as a career--that or doing tattoos, I'm pretty good at drawing--but I don't think I could handle the pressure."

[ostro_goth]

"I had a hole upon my right breast, for awhile," Teja confesses. "I had it done when I was with somebody; but then, I was killed over, and when I came back from my first death again, it was not upon me any more, as I came with that which I had taken into my last battle. The someone left me, also, and I saw no point in doing it again."

[scarred_grin]

"I'm sorry to hear that," she says quietly. "That things didn't work out--it's always awkward, when you've had work done and it's linked to somebody you loved and, well, it's why I don't get tattoos for living people. Known too many people who had to get their exes' names removed.

"And I didn't know you could die more than once. That must--that must be awful."

[ostro_goth]

"Awkward, also," Teja says, stopping in front of the forge, "as I remembered nothing after my first death, for awhile, did not know those dearest to me, and angrily denied ever having taken a lover. The goddess Demeter managed to remind me."

He starts unlocking the forge door.

[scarred_grin]

"Memory problems really suck," she says, an understatement if ever there was one. "Does it happen a lot? I mean, more than just that one time?"

She's been awkward enough at making friends here, and for all she knows he'd just think she was annoying if they had to meet all over again.

Not to mention, having been through a few things that should by rights have killed her but didn't... well, she doesn't want him to have to go through any of that.

[ostro_goth]

"Twice so far," Teja says, opening the forge door and walking inside, expecting her to follow.

He throws open the shutters, and feeds and pokes the dormant fire.

"I am trying to not do it again -- truly because of that, as I would not wish to lose precious memories. I cannot tell if there is anything I do not remember, if it was secret, never spoken about, and I have forgotten?"

He would not wish to forget Loki in the cells, ever. Or the moment of the apocalypse, with Kate, in the stables, when all the horses were alive again. Memories he would not speak of, but that are very precious.

[scarred_grin]

"I forget things sometimes," she admits, following along, setting her bag down on the floor by the workbench.

"At least I think I do. Like you say, how would I know for sure? It happened back home, it--"

She shakes her head. "But I'm okay here."

[ostro_goth]

"Good," Teja says. "This place is a respite for many."

He fetches a mirror, and a small box; and then, he brings forth a thing wrapped in thin leather, from his belt pouch.

[scarred_grin]

She starts taking her jewelry out. She's pretty quick about it, at least--lots of practice.

"Yeah, it's like--I think it may be the most stable place I've ever lived. Of course, I missed the apocalypse."

[ostro_goth]

"It was truly memorable," Teja says, offering her the leather-wrapped ornament, and a mirror.

Kate. The horses. The moment of pause, when all was made anew.

Teja had changed deeply with that. He would not sit here with Pyrrha, the unwitting avatar of Loki, without it.

[scarred_grin]

"I think it's for the best I wasn't here," she says as she pockets her jewelry and starts unwrapping what he has made for her. "I think you only get something like that once, and it's not my time yet."

[ostro_goth]

It is the one that she had chosen, that will look like barbed wire gripping her mouth shut, made of surgical steel (as all such things are), but artfully corrodes in grooves and corners so it appears like rusted barb-wired.

"Do you see how it is meant," Teja asks, "or would you wish for my help, putting it in the right direction, and putting it in, for the first time?"