| Clean [Open! Come and get her!] |
[01 Oct 2008|12:33am] |
Orange was the most wretched color on the mortal plane.
The trip to see the authorities once she settled Harmonia in her London flat had been well-meaning. The last time she'd been in England, she and her Greek friend had ended up incarcerated... but not for long. That was the problem. When Nergal pulled them out of that cell, their departure had been... speedy. Speedy, that was a good word for it. But having returned again to London and knowing that her friend needed peace, there was only one thing Nanshe could do. Return to the scene of the crime. Try to explain.
The authorities, however, had been none too pleased with her explanation. Neither had the magistrate. When it became clear that not only would she return to prison for leaving with Nergal in the first place but also serve some multiples of the amount of time she was placed there to begin with, Nanshe set her mind to make the best of it. But there could be no repeats of the last time, which absolutely meant that no well-intentioned rescuers could know where she was. All through these long six months, she'd shielded her divine presence from her family, her friends, all her pantheon... Enlil never need know that his daughter had spent time in a mortal prison! But if it cleared her name and gave Harmonia a sanctuary when she needed it, it was not so bad a thing.
Except for the orange jumpsuit. The bad food, the hungry looks, the loss of freedom - she could cope with that. Orange was the color of a sunset, the dying of the light, and it wasn't too difficult for her to understand why she reacted so poorly. It made Nanshe wish for the sweet darkness of Irkala all throughout the long term of her imprisonment. When she was finally released, the first thing she did was change into her normal clothes and go straight back to the apartment with its peeling olive paint and chipped tile halls. She went to find Harmonia.
But there was no Harmonia. Her home didn't look to have had an occupant for some time. A quick visit to the island paradise where, in happier days, she and her Greek friend had decorated a tiny home... and that trip, too, was futile.
Now Nanshe lay sprawled on her lumpy couch in her chilly home in London, her eyes staring at the ceiling. Harmonia could be angry with her. Harmonia could be hurt. Swallowing hard, Nanshe rubbed at the center of her forehead and tried to figure out where such a simple plan had gone so terribly wrong. Almost as an afterthought, she finally let go of the shielding of her divinity. If Harmonia were looking for her, there'd be no mistaking where she was now.
If anyone else were looking for her, she realized belatedly, then they, too, would find her. Her head came up from the couch and she looked toward her warped door, almost expecting a knock. Half of her hoped it was Utu. The other half hoped - with its familiar, slow ache - that he'd found what he'd been looking for all along. With one last, long squint at her entryway, she dropped her head back on the couch again.
What a mess.
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| Civility [tag: Freyja] |
[01 Oct 2008|08:13am] |
There were something about regional novelty shops that amused Frigg. It could be the ridiculousness and sheer over-the-top nature of some of the products, it could be that it reminded her of when she bumped into Sigyn, or it could be a morbid curiosity as to what the locals considered to be a taste of their region.
It was a gift shop in Oslo that caught her initial attention. It was one she hadn't been to before, which seemed a bit off since Frigg made a point of keeping tabs on all the shops in her homelands. That curiosity aside, she made it at once her destination.
( What she found inside filled her with mirth. )
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