(no subject)

[mergich_singer]

Honestly, what a mess.

The woman in the long, long rosette-spotted fur coat surveys the destruction left by the Balrog, her hands on her hips. Even among the Pari, this level of damage would be considered somewhat excessive: she's in two minds about whether or not to try to fix the worst of it, but little will grow in winter - not even for her.

She taps her foot, vexed. Around her, the snow falls harder and harder, dizzying the world in tiny flakes of ice.

Finally, she turns on her heel and goes back inside, where she can be found at the bar drinking green tea from a thin stone mug, as outside the snow blankets the scars of the battles in pristine white... leaving the earth to sleep and heal for the spring.

Comments

[alec_swamp]

"What happened out there?" Alec feels the trees in some pain (though it's healing fast) even before he looks out the window to see the woman survey the damage. He waits till she's back inside (since the cold does not agree with him) to ask.

[mergich_singer]

"That is an excellent question."

No, she's not impressed with whatever went on out there.

Bright, unearthly blue eyes survey him over her cup of tea.

"It looks like the aftermath of a forest fire - but a forest fire with arms and legs."

Such a thing is possible, she supposes. Well, if someone like her can come here...

[alec_swamp]

"Like guided magic, perhaps? Someone perhaps animating a fire and setting it forth?" He could name at least six...no, seven...mages and wizards who can do that, though four wouldn't without good cause. "I think it was definitely a fire. The pain the trees felt is in line with that." Not being outside to see up close, he has to take the trees' "word" for it.

[mergich_singer]

"Or it was a person. A person made of fire... and, I think, rage."

[alec_swamp]

"Sentient fire. A fire elemental?" He thinks his predecessor encountered such a being. A protector of the earth in some fashion, but it's fuzzy. The memories he took from that last Swamp Thing often are. "It could be. But who would send that here?"

[mergich_singer]

"You assume it was sent, or made."

She raises an eyebrow.

"What if it found its own way in?"

[alec_swamp]

"It is a possibility. The bar is not particular about who or what it lets in. I think it could be called 'wild magic,' I suppose.

"But it's been my experience that when there is a malevolence on the loose, someone has let it loose with a purpose." He is clearly something of a cynic.

[mergich_singer]

"And it's been mine that a lot of malevolence tends to happen of its own volition."

[alec_swamp]

He ponders this. "It would seem, perhaps, that we have both fought various kinds of evil. And, as the fire is out, so did some others, here."

[mergich_singer]

She shrugs, the rosettes rippling on the thick fur of her coat.

"I have dealt with it, certainly."

'Fought' implies, perhaps, that it was any kind of fair fight.

[alec_swamp]

"But perhaps you come here to rest from that fight?" And perhaps take offense at such dark things coming here as well?

[mergich_singer]

Another shrug; she isn't particularly accustomed to being second-guessed.

"I came here because I was curious."

She has been told that it kills the cat. Somehow, at least in this particular case, she doubts that.

[alec_swamp]

"Curious about the fight, or about the Bar?" Either way, he wonders if she sensed it from her reality, which would be something different.

[mergich_singer]

"Curious to know why the world changed in my mountains."

She could have turned back, but why would she want to do that? So she walked on.

[alec_swamp]

Her mountains?

He decided that silence might be the better part of valor this once.