WHO: Nina Maynard & Quetzalcoatl WHEN: Monday afternoon WHERE: a coffee shop WHAT: Learning more about her heritage WARNINGS: language
Nina had begun meeting with Quetzalcoatl twice a week so he could teach her more about his people - their people - and she had so far learned one very important thing.
Quetzalcoatl really pissed her off.
She didn't even know what exactly it was about him that got under her skin, but just being around the snake-guy made her start to feel antagonistic. Was that all her or was that a part of her father? She thought maybe it was, because as much as he bugged the crap out of her, Nina also found herself strangely drawn to him the more time they spent together. Which she thought probably made a certain amount of sense (at least as much as any of this made any kind of sense). Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl had been adversaries as well as sometimes allies, the representations of duality that the Aztec people had based their religion on.
Still, she kind of wanted to smack him.
But he'd told her stories of the Aztecs and of their Gods and it seemed they at least agreed that slaughtering tons of people was a shitty way to make a religion. Quetzalcoatl had also made sure she was reading the right books, the ones not full of bullshit. Nina figured he'd know better than anyone which ones were just making stuff up.
She spent a lot of time with the books he gave her, becoming more sure of herself with them. This was what she was and she didn't doubt it anymore. She wished their father would make an appearance though. Nina wanted to at least meet this God she had already learned so much (but so little) about.
The afternoon had been another disappointing and bruising training session with Huitzilopochtli's warriors and Nina was pretty sure by now that the sun god really wished she'd just fuck off and quit. But if she did that then she was a failure, and she wanted to make Dio proud of her. So she'd just keep trying until she got forcibly kicked out of the little group.
She went into the coffee shop across the road from Huitzilopochtli's home and curled her sore legs up under her on her usual couch before pulling a book from her bag. At least she was still good at homework.
Quetzalcoatl breezed into the coffee shop a few minutes later, Danny on his heels. He asked Danny to go order them something and then sat down across from Nina.
"You've been at Huitzilopochtli's?" Quetzalcoatl asked, noticing the bruise that was starting to come up on Nina's arm.
Danny appeared then, holding two coffees and handing one over to Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl took an appreciative sip (he loved coffee) and said, "Nina, this is Danny, my T.A. Danny, this is Nina, one of the twins I've been telling you about."
"Oh, hi!" Danny said enuthsiastically, holding out a hand to shake. "Tezcatlipoca's kid, right? That's really interesting, he was definitely a cool god." At the look Quetzalcoatl was sending him, Danny shrugged. "What, he was. I didn't say you weren't cool too."
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[info]awaitingstorms 2011-05-30 07:39 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Yeah," Nina said and raised her head from the book as she pulled back her dark curls to show him the thin gash down the side of her face that was coming up with a deep purple bruise around it already.
Then the Danny guy showed up and started talking about Tezcatlipoca and suddenly he had all of Nina's interest. She ignored the open book on her lap completely and looked up at him. "You met him?" she asked quickly.
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[info]featheredscales 2011-05-30 07:47 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Oh no, never met him," Danny said. "I've just heard stories about him from Quentin. Although I helped excavate one of his temples when I was a senior, and it was really cool. We kept pulling up these little jaguar totems and obsidian mirrors and there were all these carvings of people transforming into animals."
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[info]awaitingstorms 2011-05-30 07:54 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Nina couldn't help but feel a little disappointed at that, because she was desperate to have more connections to the father she'd never met, desperate to have those connections and stories.
"So you any kind of god or normal?" Nina asked him, trying to work out if she could feel anything there. But she couldn't feel most people that she already knew were gods so it wasn't much point. She felt Quetzalcoatl the strongest out of any of them though.
She cast a glance over to the snake god guy. "And are you stalking me?" she asked him. Showing up in the same coffee shop as her, probably checking she wasn't eating the guy behind the register or something.
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[info]featheredscales 2011-05-30 08:18 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Totally normal," Danny said with a laugh. "I hail from the mythical realm of New Jersey."
"And I'm not spying on you," Quetzalcoatl said. "I'm simply-"
"He's spying on the big, carnivorous hummingbird, to make sure he doesn't eat the whole neighborhood," Danny interjected helpfully.
"Don't you have to be getting to the library?" Quetzalcoatl asked, shooting Danny a dirty look.
"Bugging you is more fun, though, Billy's totally right about that," Danny said, grinning. He glanced at his watch. "Yikes, but I do need to go before homeless people take all the empty computers. It was nice to meet you, Nina!" He bent down to kiss Quetzalcoatl on the forehead and was out the door in a flurry of gangly limbs and activity.
"I'm not spying," Quetzalcoatl said after a moment. "Just monitoring."
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[info]awaitingstorms 2011-05-30 08:32 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Nina just raised her hand as a goodbye to Danny and looked back down at her book. Quetzalcoatl kept insisting he wasn't stalking and Nina said "uh huh," sounding completely disbelieving of his claim. She looked up at him again, tucking her hair away from the bruise since even that tickling it was sort of hurting. (How did Amidio do this stuff all the time?)
"Do you want to smell my breath for heart or something? Or check under my fingernails for skin?"
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[info]featheredscales 2011-05-30 08:43 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Quetzalcoatl sighed and took a long drink of coffee.
"I have a plate of heart jerky sitting in the fridge at my house," Quetzalcoatl said, tapping his fingernails against the table between them. "Coyote and I once broke into a morgue to steal hearts. I understand being hungry for them. I just don't want you to do something you'll regret because of that hunger."
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[info]awaitingstorms 2011-05-30 09:01 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Nina looked at him seriously and there was anger in her expression. "You don't want me to do something that I'll regret?" Nina repeated, trying to keep her temper reigned in.
She slammed the book shut on her lap and leaned forward into his space, her voice a quiet hiss. (Both so other people wouldn't hear and because she was pretty sure that otherwise she'd start yelling.) "I murdered a man I knew since I was born. I ripped open his throat with my teeth and drank his blood. I have lost everything that I had, my entire life is gone and we've got the police looking for us. It's a little late for you to get precious about your boyfriend's bastard children." She sat back in her seat, arms crossed.
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[info]featheredscales 2011-05-30 09:29 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select He looked down, hands tightening around his coffee cup. A part of him wanted to react violently, to snarl at her not to even try to talk about guilt and loss with someone who had watched his entire culture sicken and burn. But he knew that was a reaction to Tezcatlipoca's blood, and that she was hurting and upset. He told himself to be calm.
"I apologize," he said, taking another sip of his coffee. "I only meant that I don't want either you or your brother to do something that would upset your lives more than they've already been upset. Such as attacking someone in broad daylight in a public area.
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[info]awaitingstorms 2011-05-30 09:36 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Huitzi and his warriors are taking care of us," Nina said, arms still crossed but most of the anger leaving her. "Making sure we eat before the hunger gets overwhelming." It was still difficult but it was getting easier. Every time someone died so that they could live without the pain, Nina felt less guilty. It should have gone the other way, but it didn't.
She didn't want to talk about the hunger though, because thinking about it encouraged it. So instead she asked, "hey, what do you know about the Christians in the city?"
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[info]featheredscales 2011-05-30 09:50 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Besides that there are too many of them?" Quetzalcoatl said tartly. "Not much, I try to avoid them at all costs. The one Huitzilopochtli is dating, Mary, she's the only one who doesn't irritate me."
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[info]awaitingstorms 2011-05-30 10:15 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "I met Lucifer a couple of weeks ago. He freaked me out," Nina admitted. Even thinking about that meeting made her skin crawl a little. "He said there was temptation and sin running under my skin, told me that I was just a pawn."
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[info]featheredscales 2011-05-30 10:32 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Quetzalcoatl made an actual hissing noise then, loud enough to cause the other people in the coffee shop to start looking around frantically for whatever was making the snake sounds. He ducked his head and tried to look casual.
He especially did not like the evil Christians. At least Tezcatlipoca had a method to his madness, kindness mixed in with cruelty and good mixed in with bad. The things from Hell had no such complexity.
"He's scum," Quetzalcoatl said. "He's a monster."
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[info]awaitingstorms 2011-05-30 10:41 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Nina's skin crawled at that hissing sound as well and even she drew backwards in her chair from him before making herself be calm. Good to know she wouldn't have to worry about Quetz teaming up with Lucifer.
"I worked that out," Nina nodded and then looked a little curious even though she didn't want to. "Is he right though, about the temptation and the sin? Is that what you feel on me as well?"
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[info]featheredscales 2011-05-30 10:59 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "His concept of sin is an ethnocentric, Christian one," Quetzalcoatl said disdainfully, sounding completely like a college professor for a moment. He leaned forward without realizing he was doing it.
"For him, for Christians, the darker sides of humanity are seen as abominations, something to be hated and feared. For us, it was much more complex than that. We saw humanity's dual nature as something natural, something that existed in everything. There was no ultimate good or evil. Your father and I were both creators and destroyers. So yes, I feel sin and temptation when I see you, but not evil. It's as natural as feeling the night approaching."
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[info]awaitingstorms 2011-06-01 10:57 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Nina didn't even know what 'ethnocentric' meant. She sighed when he'd finished speaking though. "Sin and temptation might not be evil to you, but it's not a good thing to start attracting the Devil with it." She stretched her hands, cut and bruised from fighting. "None of this feels natural yet."
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[info]featheredscales 2011-06-01 06:55 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "It's new, new things usually don't feel natural," Quetzalcoatl said with a shrug. He tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, thinking. "The Devil has never had much use for us, which I've never considered a bad thing. It's possibly that he simply wanted to frighten you because you were there."
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[info]awaitingstorms 2011-06-02 12:02 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Well, it worked," Nina said. "He says I'll end up in Hell anyway." She looked at Quetzalcoatl. "But then your underworld, it sounds horrible too. Not hellfire, but still depressing and lonely." Nina sighed. "Why does every single old time religion seem to only have horrible places to go once you die?"
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[info]featheredscales 2011-06-03 07:43 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Mictlan is not horrible," Quetzalcoatl said. "I don't like it, and I've almost died every time I went there, but I don't belong there, either. I've never seen where the dead actually lie." He raised an eyebrow at her. "If you keep up this business with Huitzilopochtli, odds are you'll never see Mictlan. Those who die in battle go to Huitzilopochtli's realm. You'll follow the sun every morning and come back as a hummingbird, eventually."