Re: [In between: Sif and Hel]
Hel glanced to her side and noticed the smoking paraphernalia. Perhaps she'd noticed it from the beginning, but she turned her cheek and made it quite evident now. It was a pipe, one old and made of wood so dark it was nearly black, and she liked to pack it herself. Which, she did. Long, pale fingers filled the bowl with pungent tobacco, which she lit with a lean toward the fire pit and a twig thrust within the flames and brought to catch and cinder within the bowl. It was a deep, sweet smell, and the taste was rather nice. "Always the perfect hostess," she said, inclining her head to the woman who sat across from her.
The twig was shaken out and tossed back into the flames.
This space, this between, rather reminded her of Vale. It was a place, and it wasn't a place, and Vale had been the same, hadn't it? For all her years of denial, she was older now, wiser, and she understood that fate was a thing engraved in marrow, and it wasn't going anywhere. she could shirk her responsibilities all she wanted, but she was still the ruler of the dead, and so she would always be. Not ruling did not negate who she was, and she still yearned for that worship that belonged to her by right.
"But, rather, yes. I thought you entirely dull. It's nothing personal," she continued, the unused Old Norse silken on her tongue, "you know, the whole thing about motherhood and marriage, it's rather not for me. It sounds like Hel." She grinned slightly at her own quip, cheekbones sharp, even in this younger guise. "Of course, there could be more to you and I'm not yet aware," she said, puffing on the pipe a moment later and leaning further between her own bent knees. "I'll allow you to improve my opinion of you. It's the least I can do, given your generosity."
She sat back, pipe still held between her fingers. "How long have you been separated from your little lightning bringer?" she asked, taking another sequence of tugs on the pipe, and then exhaling slowly above her head.