closed | Busy old fool, unruly sun,

[icasm]

WHO: Loki Laufeyson and Abby
WHAT: A demigod and an apocalypse survivor paint some sun motifs in a foreign town, for reasons. Shenanigans ensue.
WHEN: Mid-August
WHERE: Antiva City
NOTES: OOC info

Comments

[armd]

"Yeah," Abby says casually, glancing out across the water as the boat continues to pull them closer to the harbour. "It mutated, and infected a human for the first time around about... um, five years, before I was born.

If you're bitten, it gets in your bloodstream, and attacks the brain. Makes you hyper-aggressive. Takes over the host in a matter of hours after infection."

She gestures at her face, using her hand to indicate something– sprouting, out of skin. "You get this fucked up, fungal growth all over your skin, and then it completely destroys your eyesight, and removes all logic and reason. Makes you angry, and fast, and mean. It spread fast. Destroyed everything."

I love how I mixed up our threads and had him in a chair for like one tag. now, POOF no chair

[icasm]

"Everything about that sounds like an absolutely shit horror show," is stated pretty flatly, because Loki had somehow managed to completely miss Midgard's cultural obsession with zombies and would equate the word with the lacking of free will in rather dangerous people who are in turn being magically puppeted by much more dangerous people.

You know. The classical definition. Or something.

"Gods, and they bite people?" He shudders. Sounds terrible, Abby. "Is there a cure, or a vaccine, or anything?"

he's a magic man OK sometimes he has a chair!!

[armd]

"Tell me about it," she mutters, staring resolutely forward. Loki doesn't know the half of it. Abby hasn't explained even half of what the infected really are, how they move, like they're drunk, like they're in pain, or the sound of them. What it feels like when you're trapped in a dark space and you suddenly hear a volley of high-pitched clicks, and whistles ring out over the top of the spore-riddled air.

Absolutely shit horror show is a great way to describe it.

Her expression doesn't twitch out of place at his second question, but a muscle tightens up in her jaw all the same. Her voice is clipped, when she answers. Flat, matter-of-fact.

"No." And it's clear she's not about to elaborate, either. "There's no cure."

a deck chair and an umbrella drink, just for a brief, shining moment

[icasm]

He notices that tightening in her jaw and wonders. He's not going to wonder out loud, however. Loki can have some sense of when it's best to just shut up instead of poking at something.

"Do you want to go back there?" That is what he asks instead. It's not a better question, on its face, but he remembers her asking him in the library if he was going to stay. At the time he presumed that she had nothing keeping her in Thedas, emotionally or whatever, and now? He's not sure he was wrong, per se, but it's an important question.

god, good for him!

[armd]

"Yes." It's easier to answer if only because Abby's completely sure in her conviction, but it does nothing to ease her tension. "I left somebody behind."

Her person, the only person that she has left, and every day spent here doing nothing feels like time ill-spent. She should be figuring out how to get back to him. The library in the Gallows had books about magic, but none of them had information on travelling across worlds. Even if they did, she wouldn't know how to use it.

Before she's able to think twice, it bursts out of her. "Does everything back home just... go on, without us?"

[icasm]

"I don't know," is Loki's honest answer, and he feels a little bad that most of what he has; he doesn't know anything for certain here, and it's very frustrating.

However: "It seems doubtful, really; for instance, I know some things about the future of someone here, things he didn't seem familiar with, though I don't know what year it was for him before he ended up here. If it is possible for two separate people to arrive from two different points on one specific timeline then it would make sense that there's a sort of... stasis effect, when a person gets pulled from their own reality into this one."

[armd]

Abby can't decide how to feel about it: pessimistic, perhaps, because wouldn't they be reassured about this upon arrival if it wasn't true? Riftwatch needs people for their fight, and it might benefit them to keep the truth of the situation a secret. Hard to focus on a war when you're dedicating your time to trying to get out of it.

On the other hand there's hope. Hope that everything is fine, and that life back home is hanging in the kind of stasis that Loki describes. It's the same kind of feeling she gets when she allows herself to consider the existence of the Fireflies, something so sweet she can hardly bare to let herself taste it just in case it isn't real.

Abby sighs, and rubs her neck. "I know which one I prefer."

But she isn't keen to discuss it any further than that. "What's the first step, for when we get there. Split up?"

[icasm]

Loki would imagine those that run Riftwatch are in a strange position, wherein they can't confirm what actually happens to Rifters, and also, as Abby has surmised, they need bodies in this war.

At her question he nods. "I'll find us a place to stay while we're in town and will ask after painters in the area. We'll need to reconnect to figure out how best to get the trademaster out of his office, and sort out when makes sense for the other two locations."

[armd]

"Kids," Abby says, because she's got an idea, "I'll see if I can find a couple kids who will help us out." Who else could get around without being paid a scrap of attention to. Who else is typically annoying like no other, and good at being distracting without that coming off as suspicious. Children, every time. Low stakes enough that they're not being put in any danger, either.

"Want to take an hour or two and then meet back in the middle."

[icasm]

"Street children would probably be best," he agrees. Granted, he doubts that Abby would go and find, say, a boarding school or some upper crust household and ask there.

Her plan is sound, for as thin as it is, but they're both in the same place regarding that so Loki nods again. "I'll find you."