(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]

"No," Teja says. "No fierce creatures unless it be the full moon; and if you wander ever out, you shall be brought back to the lake at last, as the space out there turns back in upon itself."

[scarred_grin]

"I think I should go out there, then," she says. "Not right now though--it's nice in here, and I don't think these are really wandering-the-mountains shoes. Somehow I'd end up in the lake, I just know it."

[ostro_goth]

"That might be quite a surprise for the mermaid," Teja says.

[scarred_grin]

"Especially since I can't swim," she says. "There's a mermaid here? Is she nice?"

[ostro_goth]

"No," Teja says. "She is not always there; and she would eat people if Melaka Fray had not persuaded her that it is very, very unwise to do so here."

[scarred_grin]

"I don't think I'd taste very good," she says. "And I'd be crunchy from all the metal. I still don't want to be eaten, though--maybe nature isn't the place for me after all."

[ostro_goth]

"I do not think she would eat you," Teja says. "She has been very intensely told not to eat any people in this place."

[scarred_grin]

"That's good," she says. "Being chewed on by puppies is one thing, but actually chewed up and eaten, that's another. Most people don't like being eaten like that."

[ostro_goth]

"Indeed," Teja says, "mankind often seems to think it has a right not to be eaten."

[scarred_grin]

"Some people are into that, though," she says. "Not me--I may be weird, but not like that. I mean, maybe if I were in some sort of survival situation with somebody I really loved and the only way one of us could survive would be for the other one to die, I'd probably volunteer, but the odds of that happening--"

She shakes her head. "Anyway that's why I usually keep snacks in my bag."

[ostro_goth]

She got herself an actual laughing Teja here -- despite the fact that there had been rumours about some citizens of Rome, when the Goths laid siege to it that one last time, under Totila...

"That is much better than anthropophagy," he agrees, still laughing.

[scarred_grin]

"Also I can always refill the snacks in my bag if I find a vending machine. You can't really do that with people--like, if you ate somebody's arm, you're not just going to find an arm vending machine. Or maybe you can, but I don't think I want to see one."

[ostro_goth]

"Indeed not," Teja says. "Even in simpler times, there are markets and inns and the like."

Pause.

"And here, there is the bar."

[scarred_grin]

"Do you know--"

She stops, trying to think of how to phrase her question.

"Like, there's got to be people here--not human-people, but other kinds of people or creatures or whatever, from worlds where humans are their main food. Can they get human meat at the bar? Or vampires--or, like, you have people coming here who are cows or chickens or whatever, but you can get that at the bar."

[ostro_goth]

"I know not about the man-eaters," Teja says, "but the vampires will get blood from the bar, without any problem. Some will offer to feed them voluntarily, also."

Which he has actually done, also -- but only for Asher.

[scarred_grin]

"That's weird to think about," she says, "but I guess if that's all you can eat, it wouldn't really be fair to say you can't. If you were Bound you'd pretty much starve."

And if people volunteer, well, that's even less strange than the idea of just going up to the bar and getting a nice hot cup of blood. Or cold? Maybe they drink it cold.

[ostro_goth]

"There are many kinds of blood-drinkers," Teja says, "and some of them will not kill, they will drink of those that give willingly, and their bite brings great unearthly pleasure."

[scarred_grin]

"I used to date a guy," she says. "Well, I say date--it was only like a week. And he pretended he was a vampire and he did the blood-drinking thing, only since he wasn't really one and didn't have fangs or anything he had to take it with a needle and a tube, like they do at the hospital. He was weird, though."

[ostro_goth]

"So your world does not have those," Teja says, "or they are in deep hiding. There are enough here, of all kinds, however."

Pause.

"I took a vampire for a lover, in this place, for awhile."

[scarred_grin]

"I don't really know what we have in my world, aside from demons."

There's plenty of variety just among humankind though, so it's not like she gets bored.

"I've seen a lot of vampire movies and things, and it's always seemed--I don't know, really sweet to me. When it's consensual, I mean. Here you love somebody enough to give of yourself like that, literally."

[ostro_goth]

"Sometimes, it is just done for the pleasure," Teja says, "but it was not such, in my case."

[scarred_grin]

"Or do they sometimes--have a separation or something, lines they don't want to cross, like not wanting to feed from people they care about just like other people wouldn't take a knife and grill up a boyfriend or girlfriend steak? I guess it might depend on the person."

[ostro_goth]

"There are as many ways of reasoning for vampires, as they are worlds that have them," Teja says. "I have seen quite some variety, in this place."

[scarred_grin]

"I bet you've seen pretty much everything there is, being here as long as you have," she says. "Do you get surprised much?"

[ostro_goth]

"Oh, upon occasion," Teja says. "It would be a pity, were I utterly jaded. It would be such a waste of great miracles."