faderift | open | nine ways till sunday

"Are you used to making questions into statements and ignoring the possibility of rejection?"

Loki frowns at this girl, before making a decision and lifting the books on top of the one she's trying to pry free. "Don't move the bookmarks." If she dog-eared her page, she'll find it's been replaced with a piece of blue ribbon. "And bring it back when you're done."

Abby grunts, because it's not a question that actually needs an answer, and flips to the spot in her book. There are quite a few spots marked but she remembers the number, and finds the thin blue ribbon in place of her dog-eared page. It's quite pretty, actually. She rubs her thumb against it, before she tucks it into her pocket.

"Will do." What else does he have there, in his stack? She glances down the spines, walking her fingers along them.

"How soon are you gonna need this?" She's eyeing another, at the bottom.

Loki sighs, sounding highly put-upon before he pries the book she's interested in out from the stack and presents it to her in a flourish. He noticed her pocketing the ribbon; there's more of them in this book, too, in green and blue shades. "Probably not for a few hours at least. Are you going to remain in the library or should I hunt you down elsewhere when I need them back again?" He's doing a lot of cross-referencing and would rather just have them all available but it is a library, not his library, and so he's going to make concessions for other people. "Also do you have a name or should I just call you —" He imitates her grunt from earlier perfectly.

"I'll be here." She's going to find a corner and tuck herself away for a bit. Finish this book, probably start on the next– the one he's just handed her. Abby flips it over, scanning the back curiously, and makes a mental note of the familiar green glow she'd noticed during the transaction, settled into the back of his hand.

His echo of her grunt makes her snort. "Abby. Good to know you."

She isn't wearing gloves. She's thought about it, but it seems like it would draw the same attention either way, so her shard is just as visible as his. "What do I call you?"

"Well met, Abby. Loki, Laufeyson, as there is another who was here once but no longer at this time." Weird stuff, the multiverse, and its strange timelines.

He also doesn't wear gloves, but that is mostly because the gloves offered him were not to his tastes. Perhaps he will later once he has a wardrobe of his own that isn't quite so pitiful.

"Anyway. What is it you're trying to learn first? Don't say everything," he intones, "because we both know that isn't true."

Everyone prioritizes information at some point. Even people who find themselves in strange new worlds.

Another person called Loki, he means? Abby shrugs a shoulder, tapping her fingers on the spine of the book. "I've only been here a couple weeks," she confesses, glancing up and over him once more, "You're the first Loki that I've met."

Because she thinks she'd remember a name like that. Laufeyson. Interesting.

"Geography, mostly," she continues, deciding he's going to know anyway based on the book that she's borrowed from him, "Since I have no idea where the fuck this place actually is. And magic. There isn't any, where I came from."

A beat, and then a slightly rueful smile. "Been going through the fictional section too. They hide the trashy romance serials up the back."

"In case that changes I'll ask you to recall me as the eminent Loki of the multiversal effect, thank you very much." He's joking, but only a little bit. If he makes more friends than Loki of House Asgard he will see that as a good sign of his ability to be the best Loki that there ever was. Or something.

She mentions magic, and geography, and he begins rooting around his notes before he finds and unfolds a map covered in what appears to be a Nordic script, nothing native to Thedas language-wise.

Loki spreads it out on the table between them. "Here's where we are," he says, indicating a small castle drawn over the seaside town. "Here's Starkhaven, and where Hasmal was." To give her a sense of how close the opposing forces are.

"Yeah," Abby answers immediately, "Not gonna do that." He gets what he gets. Should have introduced himself that way if he wanted a name as big and as long as that; it's why she didn't say her name is Abigail.

Anyway, the map immediately steals her attention. She's seen it before, crammed in between various lectures given to her by Riftwatch when she first arrived, but it's nice to have a moment to actually look at it. She watches his finger drift about inside the four corners, and is shaking her head before he's even done.

"No, I– beyond that. Is this the whole world?" It seems... small, compared to Earth. Maybe it is?

He blinks at her dismissal and then snaps his fingers. "Drat." Well. He'll settle for being the only one, how's that?

Loki shakes his head too at her question. "These people don't appear to be clear on the fact that they're on a planet or that they're in orbit of their sun; what we know is limited by how far they can travel, but there has to be more to it." He opens his hand in a shrugging gesture. "The Qunari had to have come from somewhere and they may not have just sprung into being on Par Vollen."

It's good enough for her, so it'll have to be good enough for him too.

"Hmm." Same could be said for Earth, in its early stages. Abby's already drawn some comparisons of her own, noting the differences as she goes. Odd, to think that where she came from is similarly limited by a lack of any working technology (though through no fault of her generation's own).

"How do they know how to use magic but haven't realised they orbit the sun?. That barely makes sense."

"Magic and cosmology and astronomy aren't always the same, or follow the same path when it comes to the enlightenment of an entire continent." He doubts that mathematics is studied in the same way as magical theory in Thedas, all things considered. There's the Fade, for one thing, and actual demons to contend with. "Circumnavigating the planet might not be possible, at this point in time. There's really any number of reasons for it."

"Sure." She's not personally looking to try and circumnavigate this place, so it's a pointless topic of conversation, but Abby thinks it would be nice to know... it's unsettling, not finding an inch of her surroundings familiar.

"Where did you come here from?"

"A planet called Asgard, but I've been to Midgard, or what you humans tend to call 'Earth'." Complete with airquotes, that statement, because who names their planet "the dirt"? Humans, apparently. "I presume that's where you're from, as well?"

"You're right, but why do you presume that?"

She's not accusatory, just interested. Also working out how to deal with him being from another planet but looking distinctly human... it's doing her head in.

"Because it seems to be where most humans here come from, if they aren't native to Thedas. Where most humans come from in the universe known to me, also, but that's less important." He waves off this second piece of information easily.

"Really? I haven't met anybody else from Earth yet." She sounds slightly put out about it, too... it would be nice, to have something in common right off the bat with somebody else.

"What is Asgard like?"

"Ah, well. Mister Holden is definitely from there, as is Provost Stark." Hopefully, that helps her, but those are the only ones he knows for certain.

At her question, he rubs his chin. Where to start, and also, how to keep this conversation light? "It's not a planet, like Midgard. It's more... like a disk, I suppose, flat as opposed to any sort of spherical shape." He shrugs. Don't ask him how, he doesn't know. "It was beautiful, with a mountain and a city at its center. Unlike Midgard, it was much smaller, so there weren't multiple cultures or histories, just one people, one place. The center of peace within the Nine Realms."

Neither are names she recognises off the bat, but Abby will file them away for later. It's nice to know, that's all. She doesn't expect either of them to ally with her based solely on that.

His explanation is interesting... kind of reminds her of the old world, but way back, right back when they thought the Earth was flat. That you could sail off the edge of it, if you went far enough to one side.

"What happened to it?" She asks, after a moment's pause. He used the word 'was' too many times in there for it to go unnoticed.

Hm. He does keep making that mistake, beginning with is and ending with was. Something about the distance between the reality of Asgard's fate and his own experience causing a cognitive dissonance, perhaps.

"Ragnarok." A beat. "An apocalypse. Nothing pretty, I assure you."

Hmm. Same hat.

Abby chews on this new bit of information for a quiet moment, letting her attention fall toward the book in her hands. "I've read about it before."

Stories. Fictional ones, easy to lose an afternoon to: the end of the era of gods, as they walked among men.

"I'm sorry. Is it gone completely?"

Loki makes a non-committal noise, not meeting her eyes at all before he sniffs and then shrugs. "It was predicted; foreseen, even. The reality of it was a bit different from the stories, however."

Her question does get him to raise his eyes again before he nods. "Yes. Surtur and Hela saw to that."

She doesn't try to look at him, while he speaks. Abby understands all too well the pain of losing a home, even feels slightly uncomfortable as she stands there, the books in her hands.

"Do you think you'll stay here, instead?"

"Considering the fact that the last thing I remember was being erased from time, I don't particularly feel that I have much choice in the matter." He shrugs a little; what can you do. "Though I'm told that we are either dreams or whims of this world's 'Maker', so perhaps my choice has quite a lot less to do with what happens than I would like." Distasteful, honestly.

"Oh," Abby says, startled, "Fuck."

Like, in that case–

"How... does that even happen? The getting erased from time thing, I mean."

"Where I'm from there's something called the Time Variance Authority, which erases people from time when they meander too far from what they call 'The Sacred Timeline' through the liberal use of free will or random happenstance. I don't think they've gotten this far, however."

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armd - 2021-08-24 22:36 (UTC) - Expand