milliways_bar | (no subject)

Thor thought he was leaving his chambers for the palace hallway. (He also thought that the only doors to Milliways seemed to be on Earth, and not Asgard.)

And yet: Milliways.

The Thor that casts a look across the barroom looks notably different than anyone here will have seen him before. He's clad in armor, and carries a large war-hammer easily in one hand. And there's a subtle radiance to him that wasn't there before -- not an actual glow, but as if the light is hitting him differently, so that all the colors of his body and clothing are just a tad more saturated than those of anything around him.

Other things Thor looks: weary, and heartsore.

Thor wouldn't necessarily mind companionship right now, but this -- this brightly lit room full of bustle and strangers and curious faces and lives untouched by his brother's life and his brother's (probable) death -- is exactly what he doesn't want. That one look done, he heads straight for the back door.

You'll be able to find him out back, striding alongside the lake, or sitting on a rock some ways away from the bar with his forearms on his knees and his hammer resting beside him.

Or, perhaps, you'll just see a strangely isolated thunderstorm moving rapidly over the lake towards the mountains, with what the keen-eyed might perceive to be a humanoid form in its midst.

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"Well, I...I'm not sure why I had to get around you," Garyn says. "Seeing as how I'm not going anywhere."

Well, this is rather embarrassing. He pulls some hackle-lo out of the outer folds of his jacket.

"You smoke?"

He's not smoking from lightning or anyth-- ohhhh. Right, that thing.

"Not as a habit," Thor says.

The guy is making a clear, if clumsy, effort to be sociable, and Thor has no cause to reject it. He might as well do his part for a while.

It's not as if he has anywhere else to be either. Not at Milliways, anyway.

"But I do not object to it. What herb do you smoke?"

"Hackle-lo," Garyn says. "Imported, right from the motherland."

He begins rolling himself one. "You know how to roll your own?"

Not that manufactured cigarettes exist in his time - some folk only smoke out of pipes.

Thor has no idea what hackle-lo is.

Cigarettes, he does know, but only vaguely. They're not really an Asgardian thing.

So: "I do not," he confesses, and watches Garyn's movements with the distant curiosity of someone mostly distracting himself with the subject.

It looks easy enough, but Thor also knows enough to recognize that at least part of that is the ease of having done a thing a thousand times.

"I can roll one for you, if you'd like," Garyn says.

He finishes rolling it and places the tip onto a ring on his right hand. He closes his eyes and a tiny flame emerges from it. He brings the cigarette to his lips and takes a puff.

"Good for the throat. And the mind, sometimes."

Though given the way most Dunmer speak, you might be forgiven for doubting him on that first one.

Asgardians are impervious enough to most things that it doesn't actually occur to Thor that smoke inhalation might have anything to do with the guy's gravelly rasp of a voice. He just assumes that that's how his people sound.

"Thank you," he says, gravely.

Why not?

Other things it does not occur to Thor to consider: if this hackle-lo is a drug that might have any effects on him. Because, again, Asgardians are impervious to most things. (And Thor is Thor.)

It isn't especially harmful. It isn't even as harmful as Earth's tobacco. (And if you think Garyn's voice is raspy, you should hear the Dunmer who have lived with the ash storms of Vvardenfell their whole lives).

"You can take mine," Garyn says, holding out his hackle-lo. "I'll roll a second for myself."

Thor accepts it, with a slight head inclination of thanks for the hospitality.

Though he'll wait for Garyn to finish his own before he does anything but hold it. Partly out of general courtesy, and partly to see if there's anything you're supposed to do but light it on fire and inhale the smoke. Whatever race Garyn is from, it's not one Thor recognizes, which means he doesn't know what their customs are either.

Garyn inhales deeply, holding the smoke in for a few seconds before breathing out. Pretty much all there is to it.

"Not a bad place for it, I'd say," Garyn says.

He turns back toward Thor. "Must apologize for the behavior. Haven't felt all myself lately. Name's Garyn Balvadares."

Thor can do that! He copies the gesture, and the smoke exhalation.

He's not really sure what the appeal is, but it's harmless, and clearly some kind of comradely activity. So! Inhaling smoke (which doesn't burn Thor's Asgardian lungs) is not really all that different from drinking the flavored water Midgardians call alcohol, when you get right down to it.

"I found no unfriendliness," Thor assures him.

"I am Thor. Odinson."

"Well, where I'm from a name like that would peg you as being from Skyrim," Garyn says. "Though this being Milliways, I doubt you've eve heard of it."

"I thought I knew all the known realms," Thor agrees, a little wry, "but Milliways seems to reach to all Yggdrasil's branches, and other versions of the cosmos besides."

Which is... actually maybe way more handy than it would have been yesterday, come to think of it. The Bifrost is gone, but that didn't interfere with this doorway.

Hmm.

"Skyrim I know not. I am of Asgard."

"It's a province in the north of Tamriel, where the Nords live," Garyn says. "North of Cyrodil, where I live. Though my ancestors, whoever they are, would have come from Morrowind in the east."

Whoever they are is a statement that's so incomprehensible to Thor that he assumes it must be a sore spot not to be asked after. How could it not be? It's your ANCESTORS.

Accordingly, what he says is, "I would ask what realm these lands lie in, but I have seen no people that look like you. So I fear it must be another world entirely from mine, or a realm unknown to Asgard."

"Well, Nords don't look unlike you," Garyn says. "And Asgard sounds like a name a Nord would come up with. But everyone in Tamriel knows what a Dark Elf looks like, so you must not be from anywhere near there."

He takes a long drag. "I come from a world called Nirn, on the mortal plane of Mundus."

"The people called Dark Elves in my home world," Thor agrees, "look very little like you."

"Their realm is Svartalfheim." A lot of the realms are named, uh, uncreatively.

So: different worlds seems pretty certain!

Garyn grunts, taking a long drag of hackle-lo.

"And what do your Dark Elves look like?"