imdb flu continues

[never_promised]

Loki (forget Harry Monmouth, this is Loki and he's going to keep on being Loki as long as he can) has set up a fortress of...something...at a table near the bar. A fortress of sciencey magic? Special-effectsy junk? Hot drinks and a growing pile of tissues? He wouldn't do this in public if he didn't have to, but this body is sick enough that going back and forth just a few feet between the table and the Bar is exhausting. Definitely not going to be hauling things upstairs to his room.

And what are all these things? Besides the hot drinks and tissues, it's odds and ends that are as close to Asgardian magic tech as he can get out of the Bar. (Sometimes he gets the feeling she's just being stubborn. Come on, what does she mean she can't give him a thoughtmirror crystal? It's a simple request! Ugggh, he doesn't have time to reinvent millennia of technological research.) But even for someone well-versed in Asgardian tech it might be a confusing jumble. That's...probably because he's working on two or three things at once, most of it camouflage for his real project.

Oh. And he's found time to upgrade his style. Can't do much about the hair, but he's gotten rid of the beard. And he's in green and black. It's funny how losing your ability to cast illusions makes you that much more attached to looking like your true self.

Comments

[never_promised]

"Oh, you'll blush." He picks up the mug he's been drinking from, squints into it and shakes his head. "And it's not my bed, is it? It's Harry Monmouth's bed. I have much better taste in interior decoration. Could you get me another drink?"

[livinginmyglass]

"If I wished to serve a moody lord, I might return home, and 'scape being sneezed upon," Viola says dryly. "I am too poor, sir, to cast away my trade unrecompensed. Tell me what you labor here to build, and then will I fetch your posset."

[never_promised]

Ooh, posset, zing. He licks his lips and laughs. "I labor here to build a thoughtmirror, at the moment, because the Bar couldn't give me one. Couldn't, wouldn't. Possibly shouldn't... Are moody lords your specialty?"

[livinginmyglass]

"I think rather my plague," Viola replies. "And what is a thoughtmirror?"

[never_promised]

"Ah-ah-ah! You said you would get me a drink if I told you what I was building. I told you, now it's time for your end of the bargain. Just ask the bar for another of what Loki's been having."

anyway a thoughtmirror is a thoughtmirror, duh, what kind of question is that

[livinginmyglass]

Ugh, fine. She goes, and moments later, returns with cup in hand. Whatever Loki was drinking, it probably wasn't this: a posset, as promised, milk curdled by ale and spiced.

[never_promised]

...no. No, that's not what he was drinking. He takes the cup, makes an ew yuk face, and tries it anyway. "That's vile. You are evasive, persistent, and cruel."

You'll go far in life, Cesario. Except for the part where you're a pathetic mortal, doomed to live no longer than a heartbeat and then be forgotten. "A thoughtmirror is a basic component in about fifty different useful every-day devices."

[livinginmyglass]

"My nurse ever said 'twas the only thing for a cold in the head," she says innocently.

If his notion of every-day devices is anything like the objects here, she has no hope of understanding. But she ventures, "Doth it... reflect a man's mind, as your ordinary glass shall his face?"

[never_promised]

"No wonder you turned out the way you did." Ugh. He drains it in one long gulp. Presumably it'll help as much as bleeding--bleeding!--and he's in no rush to get better. "Gah. I might die. --Yes, you could say it does that. With a dozen other components which I don't have." (And which, if we're being honest, he isn't actually sure how to make. He's not an engineer. But maybe he can fake it.) "I'm trying to do magic without actually doing any magic. It's like being handcuffed. And blind and deaf. --What do they have in your world? How do you power your--your ships, say?"

[livinginmyglass]

"With a strong wind and a stout sail, sir-- or else the might of a sailor's arms."

She suspects this answer will irritate him, and cannot pretend that thought doesn't bring her some pleasure.

"And arm of sailor and mind of captain alike are granted strength by sleep," she adds hopefully. "And all the more when in ill health."

[never_promised]

It irritates him. At any rate, it makes him roll his eyes and look disgusted, but there might be something a tiny bit performative there. "Have you ever heard of electricity?" He's pretty sure the Allspeech will translate that into something, but who knows what. "--And I don't need to sleep. I'll sleep tomorrow. You keep polishing that disc."

[livinginmyglass]

She gives the disc a last half-hearted scrub and tosses it onto the table, sending a few tissues tumbling to the ground.

"I have learned of it since coming here. I know it doth cause the lamps to glow. And I tell you, a mortal man must sleep-- and whate'er you may be in spirit, so are you now in form."

[never_promised]

He passes over another disc. "Causes the lamps to glow. Yes. Although..." Now that he thinks about it, however this place works, the lamps almost certainly work by way of something he'd probably call magic, if you dig deep enough. But if you dig deep enough, it's all the same. Let the old Academy men argue the definitions. "Well. Imagine the distance between wind sails and electrical lights, and jump four or five times that distance again at least. That's where I come from."

So like...he's better than you. Duh.

"And I don't need to sleep."

(better than you and also a huge brat)

[livinginmyglass]

Viola can contain it no longer: she rolls her eyes.

"I know you are, in your own form, no mortal man-- your brother did tell me so. And so I care not from whence you hail, nor how powerful that country's devices: I will prove the expert in the ways of humankind, and better know than you what our weak flesh requires."

[never_promised]

He stares at Cesario, eyebrows slightly raised. "....are you volunteering to carry all this up to my room? And then play nurse?"

[livinginmyglass]

"No," she says at once. Really? No. "For my master I would do such a thing, or for a friend, but methinks you are neither. And more, you must to bed to rest, not tinker with thy trinkets."

[never_promised]

"If you're not going to help, then let it drop."

There's a little more warning in his voice than he actually meant there to be, and he forces a laugh. "I'm sitting down. I'm drinking the posset your nurse raised you on. I am resting. --Your master must take a great deal of managing."

[livinginmyglass]

She shrinks away slightly from the warning tone. Right, alright then.

"He is-- much consumed by melancholy. He doth not attend to such things as food and drink, so wrapped is he in his thoughts." Or at least, wrapped in the idea of being wrapped in his thoughts.

[never_promised]

Loki snorts. "What kind of thoughts are they?" It's hard to imagine anyone from Cesario's world with thoughts all that worth thinking.

[livinginmyglass]

"Thoughts of love," she replies. "Which I doubt not you shall say your fine, superior land has altogether done away with."

[never_promised]

"Oh, no. We still have a few victims of that delusion. I think my brother might be one. --I am myself immune, of course," he adds, laughing.

[livinginmyglass]

"Of course," Viola agrees solemnly. "Why, wise men always are, ''tis said."

[never_promised]

"And I am very wise." He says it just as solemnly, with a pompous little nod, before winking.

[livinginmyglass]

It's so very Hal-ish, she's taken aback, and it's a moment before the surprise ebbs enough that she can manage, "O, that is plain, my lord."