Entry tags:

~loki odinson, ~ysa

Who: Loki and Ysa
What: "It's a playground," Sif tells him. "You have to play!"
When: Late, late at night, after Loki's arrival (5/8/12 realtime)
Where: On the playground
Rating: Loki and a PTB are talking; what do you think?
Status: Complete.

He waits until the middle of the night, of course – waits until his senses tell him that everyone is asleep, or at least otherwise occupied in their apartments. He waits until he knows that no one is out on the grounds, and no one will notice his presence there. He waits a few minutes longer, just to be sure, because with Thor as an older brother he has long since learned patience.

And then Loki steals out into the playground, wary to the last, dressed in silent, soft clothes instead of the armour he was wearing when he first arrived in this strange half-realm; he has not been so careful in keeping his presence unnoticed simply to spoil his plans with the creak of leather or the jingle of metal against metal, after all. He steals out into the playground, and surveys it thoughtfully, silently, before carefully settling into place on a swing – one in a row of them, at the end – and remembering how swinging works.

It's a little fun. Perhaps.

He just won't be able to let Sif know that.

Oh, of course it's fun. It has to be fun. The greatest ever lover of the swings possible will not allow him to think any other way!

A mostly smooth wing, just slightly flecked with fuzz, gives Loki a little push.

Because suddenly, there's a girl on the swing next to him. An adolescent girl attached to a pair of slightly-fuzzy wings, otherwise notably draconic in nature. (The wings, not the girl as a whole; she mostly appears human in nature.)

Loki has very fast reflexes, honed by battle – not least, merely last, the battle on Jotunheim immediately before arriving here – and so it's understandable, of course, that he should react promptly when someone appears suddenly where no one should be, especially when that someone chooses to push him.

It's really quite a miracle of those reflexes, in fact, that Loki doesn't fall off the swing, in the wild gyrations that follow his attempt to quickly turn to face his attacker – or rather, swing-pusher.

Eventually the swing settles; he is staring at her, only slightly irate, because most of his ire has been forgotten in wonder. "You are not Jih," he observes, wary and tentative.

"No, we don't look anything alike," the girl replies, starting to swing on her swing, pinning her wings back behind her. 

Except for being female, winged and similar in skin tone, they really don't.

"I don't know anyone else with wings," he points out, hands held tight around the chains of the swing. "Yours don't look very much like hers, but then again – her appearance has changed, from time to time, hasn't it."

That is not a question. Therefore, it is not graced with an answer, either.

"Now you do," is what she says, instead, and fans her wings out, only once. It's hard to swing like that, so they're pinned back again before five seconds pass.

"Only if you have a name," he points out. He remains wary: she came from nowhere. She snuck up on him, and he was being very, very careful to keep from being seen by anyone at all.

"I have a name."

He didn't ask for it, she's not giving it.

"Well, so do I, aren't we lucky." This is, in fact, beginning to annoy Loki. Any time someone acts more obscurely mysterious and obfuscatory than him, it's bound to happen.

Irritated, he pushes off the swing again. It's probably a better way of letting out some tension than taking a swing at her, since he doesn't know who or what she is, anyway. "Pity there's no battlements," he mutters to himself, under his breath, letting the wind of his passage snatch it away.

She catches up to him, even though she didn't properly hear what he said, just to pipe up with "You're Loki." A beat, just to let that set in, "And I'm Ysa." Another beat, where she spreads her wings.

"And," she continues, "I don't know what you said, so you should say it again."

Does it matter, really, truly, that she so readily keeps pace with him? Or is it simply ... moderately obnoxious? With an effort of will, Loki ignores it, choosing to consider it as a convenience to him, that he no longer needs to be concerned with her hearing him. "I said," as he nods to the playground equipment around them, "that it's a pity there aren't any battlements here. There's no place to properly defend, or attempt to seize."

Technically, she's a couple steps behind, but either way, it is her specialty to be moderately obnoxious. 

"Oh, well. You should suggest it," Ysa says boldly, smile playing across her face. "Just write little notes for the Powers, you know, and they'll -- evaluate it. You might have to write the same thing over and over again, but maybe you can make a copy. You're powerful enough."

"Why would I have to write the same thing over and over again?" he asks, eyebrow raised – on the bright side, if he times his swing just right, she can see his expression of disbelief, warring with curiosity.

"Because then everyone would get their own notes." Duh, says Ysa's expression. "And it wouldn't appear as if you were playing favorites."

"What, they don't have some sort of centralized suggestion for those who don't have a favorite Power?"

"Not -- right now, though I always thought there should be one," Ysa replies, toying with her hair, twirling it around her finger and not specifying, exactly, how long 'always' is or was.

"Another thing to suggest to all the Powers individually, then," Loki suggests wryly, rolling his eyes.

He'd forgotten how much he liked swinging, when he was a kid, for all that the shape of the swing is a little odd. (There's no tree, for one thing.)

Also, when you go really fast, the chains go 'clang' a bit; one of Ysa's favorite things about the swing, in fact. She's certainly enjoying herself, and it's -- well, it's almost clear in her eyes. Almost. Because she's not all that clear about what she's feeling.

"Yes, you could do that." She hasn't.

"Do you think, if someone simply made a box, and left it in the middle, the Powers would realize it was a – call it a donation, I suppose?" he asks, a little more thoughtful. There was a pause in there, after all, first.

"Possibly if you made some sort of public notification of the fact." Ysa shrugs, as her swing chains go 'clang' a little bit and her wings shift. "Everybody watches the network. But if you just sort of left a box, I -- don't know that it would really not be noticed, but everybody would assume it was someone's box and leave it alone. Well, Té might play with it. Or turn it into something."

"What sort of something would a box be, if it weren't a box?" Does Loki know he's asking that out loud? Is that, in fact, the point of him speaking at all? – Or is it, instead, that he isn't speaking aloud, and is simply thinking it to himself, and yet she can hear it anyway? His conclusion, for whatever it's worth, is: likely a tortoise.

Ysa doesn't have any sort of psychic ability except draconic communication; she isn't hearing his thoughts if she can't actually, well, hear them. She can do a great job reading body language, better than most, but -- that one's beyond her.

"A beanie baby, likely," is her guess, with a fond smile. She likes Té.

"So if it has a small sign on it, that's its best bet," Loki concludes, wary, not knowing what manner of creature a Beanie is, and therefore what its babies would look like. "Quite the pity I couldn't simply build it myself, to spare the lot of them the trouble, but I'd likely find they would prefer it in a different location anyway."

Still, there's paper in his hands, now, and a pen, and when Loki abandons the swing (temporarily) for a picnic table, soon there are bold black lines sketching out what a playground's castle might need to resemble.

All of this 'they.'

Far be it from Ysa to out herself if he didn't know, though! Feel free to remain oblivious, Loki: she's all for it. She is also watching you draw, very closely, sitting up on top of the table and squinting down at the paper.

Ysa's sudden on-the-table presence maybe causes Loki to start, for a moment, but there's little enough to show that – just a slightly tenser set to his shoulders, briefly, and a tight grip on his pen, which could easily be explained away as a grip adjustment. Before long, he has something that has far more detail in it than a mere rectangle ever should; then, and only then, he turns it to face her, so she can read his notations as well.

Assuming, that is, she can understand the runes.

It takes her a minute, but she gets there -- there's some advantage to being in the Playground and not on his home turf when it comes to adapting to what Loki's written. 

Even if she doesn't entirely understand, she knows what it says.

"I like it."

"But is there anything you think is missing?" he probes.

She thinks for a second, and then suggests, "Plant life. Somewhere. Because of Tycho."

Who the Hel is Tycho? Loki fails to say, and instead frowns, and gets off the picnic bench, and walks across the playground to the slightly-hilly section of lawn-and-trees over there. He stares at it intently, for a long moment, and then gestures at it – a sort of curling motion, somewhere between his fingers and his wrist – and the light twists and folds and shimmers until something that looks, actually, quite a lot like the castle in his drawing (as adjusted for not being a drawing) stands, to all appearances, set halfway into the hillside.

"Oh, very nice!" Ysa chirps, and it is, indeed, somewhat chirpy as she follows after him. There's almost the shadowy visible hint of a tail, but only almost -- it's never actually solid. As she gets closer, Ysa claps her hands together once and leaves them there, pressed. "Hmmmm. Neat."

Loki paces, with care, to the edge of the hill, and then contemplates his illusion for a moment in silence. Then, and only then, he gestures again – this time, with the other hand – and a veritable wall of ivy grows up one side of the castle. Still, he looks somehow reticent; something, perhaps, is still missing, judging by the growing frown on his face. A third gesture, and the middle of the clear area forming the 'roof' juts upward into a second floor, a narrow stairway spiraling around its outside the only access to its roof. (At least for the landbound.) The ivy, too, seems unsettled, shifting around again until it covers a hump butting out from the hill-slanted side of the building – a shed, perhaps, for there does seem to be a door, as there is a door in the small room now in the center of the castle's floor.

Silently, Ysa watches. 

Eyes wide.

"Impressive."

"Each side needs space for siege equipment, of course," Loki explains distantly. It's clear enough, after all, that this wingéd girl is unfamiliar with the Artes of War™, or, he does not doubt, she would have made suggestions for a castle to besiege herself, long since. "Assorted weapons – I suppose I should leave suggestions for that to the Powers, however. Balls, Balls, Balls does appear to contain, in its armoury, an assortment of weapons meant for relatively peaceful encounters in which someone might wish to vent his anger, such as the weapons that result in brightly-colored mock injuries at high velocity, or those made of the strange material so reminiscent of my brother's brains." By which he means: Nerf.

Ysa caught on to that one, at least. She laughs, and it's a laugh that seems far older than her physical form might indicate; hair tossed back over her shoulders, face belying a strange maturity that is also a lie. Ysa is really no older than she appears to be, but her mind works differently than a human's might. Maturity has little if anything to do with age, after all.

"They are called 'Nerf,'" she explains, "and if your brother's brain is made of foam I worry for his future."

"I stole some of his brains, once," Loki confides – and if he is telling the truth, one might hope he means it in a metaphorical sense, and not a strictly literal one. "I rather expected him to notice, to assume it was my fault, and demand their return... but it's been nearly eight hundred years, and he still hasn't. I thought of returning them, but it's dreadfully amusing to poke fun at him like this."

Sometimes, of course, it backfires, as when Thor accidentally restarts the war with Jotunheim – but that's hardly Loki's concern at the moment, is it?

It's not likely to be ever again, either, because Ysa is not giving Loki back.

Or else, she has no plans to anytime soon.

"That's a long time," she says, instead, twirling her hair around one finger. "I guess he didn't need that part."

"I suppose he thought he had me around for it, instead," is his thoughtful answer, as he carefully tromps around in the grass, leaving nary a footprint, examining his work. The shed under the ivy is large enough to hold ladders, although – if Loki is the one designing them – they'll never be particularly easy to climb. There is not, in fact, any other way of getting up to the main level of the keep from down below without either flying or climbing the wall, either. Back up to the playground's side of the illusion, he studies the keep from this angle as well; here, it's easy enough to cross the narrow stone bridge connecting land to battlements, although it will also be just as easy for a single talented fighter to bar the way for invasion from such an angle.

"Do you care to fly over, milady, to examine the illusion from above more closely?" Loki invites gallantly.

"Oh! Well. If you'd like me to. Did you have a form preference?" she asks, tilting her head far enough to the side that her ear is on her shoulder.

He didn't think she was just a human with wings, did he?

"If you have another form you are willing to show me, I certainly shan't object," is what Loki chooses to say, because – honestly – he hadn't, so much, considered what other shape she might take.

Hadn't he, now.

Well, that was interesting.

"Don't get any closer, then," she calls out, and then sort of -- fissures out of being present, and when the bounce of light that makes her form settles back in place, there's a white, golden-horned dragon there instead of a girl with wings. 

Without another word she leans back on her haunches and takes off into the air, giving his illusory structure a flyover. Hopefully she doesn't startle it away!

Loki may certainly be startled, instinctively reaching for a weapon that is not, technically, present in the waistband of the soft pants he's wearing – but the gesture is aborted quickly as he regains control instinctively, and his illusions have long, long held the ability to remain steady no matter how startled he may be.

"What think you, milady?" he calls.

« It is, » Ysa's mental voice touches on the tips of Loki's brain, rather than his ears, a cool mist and a calm breeze, « very nice from up here, too. May I land inside? »

Loki frowns, thoughtful, and hesitates a moment before answering. This gesture is, too, more hesitant, as is his response:

« If you have the means to make your weight minimal, I would advise you to utilize them. It is but light, bent, and may not hold long. »

Ysa thinks, as she circles.

And then tries: « I can be smaller. »

« The longer you remain flying, the easier it will be, » he thinks back at her, and trusts that she will hear him, if he thinks it hard enough. It certainly seems to be working so far. « Of course, at worst, if it does not hold you, it will be dark, and you will find the ground beneath it. »

He could even speak out loud, if he wanted to, but at no point is Ysa complaining. She flies higher, and when she circles lower again she's not much bigger than a large dog (excepting the wingspan).

And, ever-so-cautiously, she goes in for a landing on an illusion of a battlement.

It's quite possible she's still thrumming her wings to hold her in a hover, just in case.

That is likely wise; once he can tell where she intends to land, however, he can at least concentrate there, particularly, in order to best convince that particular chunk of illusionary stone to hold up against her weight. From there, it spreads, until she can peer inside the upper room, as well.

Oh, well, that's cool.

Out loud, she makes a chittering sound; mentally, she says, « Yes. I like it. »

Loki looks weary, now, not least because of the late hour of the night; the effort required to maintain a solid form to what is, in truth, nothing but light is telling on him. Still, he pauses for a moment longer, then summons up a last bit of twisted light: now, with another gesture, a flagpole rises from the tower, pennants snapping on a breeze that isn't, truly, there. "I'm glad you like it," he announces into the air, unable, finally, to concentrate on enough different subjects intensely enough to try thinking it at her clearly.

Ysa can tell he's tiring; she takes off, again, but doesn't put much of her thrust on his illusion -- midair she twists and turns the light again and lands looking the way she appeared originally.

"You need to eat," she proclaims.

"I think you may be quite right," Loki answers simply, and gestures one final time – with none of his usual finesse – at the now-rapidly-disappearing playcastle. "But first –"

He retreats to the picnic table, and finishes drawing the corrections to his plans: the secondary tower, the flagpole, the ground-level storage beneath the vines. And then there is another piece of paper, upon which he scribes runes translating (roughly) to SUGGESTIONS AT LARGE, and folds the paper – but not with his hands. He folds it with magic, and it forms a box, and then the box solidifies somehow, until it seems, quite truly, as if it's going to stick around for at least a century or two. Now he glances around for Ysa, once more. "Those statues – which way are they, from here?"

In his defense, he's tired, it's dark, and he's facing the wrong direction.

Oh, was he going to do that now, then? Ysa looks very curious indeed, and then she's grinning as she asks, "Did you want a ride?" instead of answering the question.

Taking him off guard is fun.

It doesn't take Loki, tired as he is, long at all to determine his answer: if she chooses to harm him, there's virtually nothing he can do about it when he has no permanent weapons about his person and his magic is so worn through. Moreover, walking far doesn't sound like much fun, either. So Loki nods, once, sharply, and lets forth a very simple and very complicated: "Please."

If shifting repeatedly like this tires Ysa out, it's not inherently obvious -- she is in that dragon shape before much longer, properly sized. Her dragon's wings flap once, twice, three times, her mane tousled as she shakes her body out, and then she takes a few steps closer to Loki, and kneels. 

« Hop up. Hope you've got good balance! » Every word is a giggle. « I don't have a saddle or anything. »

Hopefully he realizes the base of her neck is the best place to try and sit, because she thinks it's blatantly obvious and won't say anything.

He gives her one long, cool look, snout to tail-tip, and settles on... the base of her neck as the most likely location to be rideable, whether or not it's truly comfortable. He is not wearing the sort of leather-armor trousers he usually wears, here in the dark middle of the night, when his aim had been silence and stealth instead of protection; the lack of a saddle just might leave him very uncomfortable, in the morning. But better that, he supposes, than to fall off her from a great height and splatter into the ground, knocking a crater into being, and being bruised and aching head-to-toe, surely!

"I greatly enjoy riding," Loki says, and then resigns himself to the sure and certain knowledge that her pace is likely to be nothing like a horse's.

It is, well.

It feels rather like wearing a horse without a saddle. 

« So you would rather stay on the ground. » If Ysa is disappointed -- and truly, she is disappointed -- she is hiding it from Loki. People who say that usually mean horses, and horses don't fly. 

"I would rather never be limited," he tells her, correctly, slightly clipped perhaps – but he is tired. "I have only ridden horses, yes, but I look forward to your flight, or I would not have accepted a ride."

That's good, then; that makes Ysa happier, and she takes off -- graceful, and smooth, and yet she never stays any more than ten feet off the ground.

So off they go -- and, eventually, they land. And once Loki has created one last spell, that messages dropped into the Suggestions for All box will duplicate and find themselves spread between all the Powers' mailboxes, individually... Ysa even shows him where to get food this late at night.