an age of wolves (_fimbulvetr_) wrote in forgotten_gods, @ 2010-08-24 22:34:00 |
|
|||
Current music: | (mogwai, friend of the night) |
Who: Hati, mentions of Sköll, Susannah (NPC) and Hel & open
When: Wee hours of the morning, 8/25.
Where: The streets of Manhattan, Hati's taxi
Warnings: TBA.
Hati picks his brother up at the small double-studio Sköll and Susannah live in some way from the city, and they drive, without speaking. When they finally do share words, and the words are in no language of man or myth but something more primal, it is of many things, many gods - they speak of Thor, of his apparent discomfort, of Hel and of her brother Fenrir - their father, of Mjöllnir-bearer's talk of the white god's thievery - but of what?
They speak of many things, and all of them pertain to one thing: is it time yet? During all of this quiet discussion beneath the din of death metal, Susannah sleeps soundly in the back seat, continues sleeping in her father's arms as he pulls her out of the cab, and won't wake until the door opens and her "auntie Annabel" answers. The little girl thinks it's dress-up, make-pretend time, for her aunt wears a veil and black lace to hide the black decay beneath, Helja's true face. Susannah squeals and bounces (after tearing herself away from her father), throwing herself into the hallway to find something equally lacy and fun to dress herself in. Incidentally, queen Hel has many things for the little girl to play with, frills and lace and pink. Skoll settles in the living room. Hours later - after much ice cream and games of "princess Susannah", when Susannah sleeps once more, he and Hel speak of many things, in dead languages, of the dead and those with worse fates than death.
Hati pulls away from the curb after paying his respect to his aunt, in his erratic and slightly dismissive way. The night is calling him, and he follows. He drives nightly, every night, seven days a week, chasing the night and the stars but not in the sky, on the streets, in the eyes of the drunk and the bewildered. As he glances in the rear view mirror at the empty seat, he muses on who will be (un)fortunate enough to slip through those doors next. Many hours and many customers later, he is still driving, with his weary but hungry eyes roving the streets and side-streets, alley-ways and bars. The heels of his palms thwack the steering in tune with the inhumanly fast pace of the drums of the music that growls through the speakers, his lips constantly moving and muttering in the language of wolves and dead or soon-to-be-dead gods. Moonstone pendants that dangle from chains on the mirror clink together as he swerves and veers through late night traffic and bypasses buses by passing on the wrong side of them.
It is sometime after 3:30 AM, and he is flagged by someone at an unlit corner, somewhere on the edge of Central Park. He reaches for the meter to activate it as the back door is thrown open, and he smells the air change as they collapse into the well-worn leather of the back seat. He flashes his gaze to the mirror.
"Where will it be?" And who? Like a bartender asking what's your poison?