There is one small flaw in Ellie's exploration while invisible; the fancy homestead is not empty.
Loki is inside, reading, a different window open to the noises of the streets below, when he hears what his paranoid brain tells him is definitely someone crossing the balcony. Only problem is, he can see it from where he sits, and there's no one there. He stands in the otherwise empty room, more or less holding his own breath, and waits.
The quiet sound of footfalls continues onto the other side, and the ivy rustles with the task of supporting someone's weight. He can't hear the progression past this point, so he's careful to open one of the balcony windows very quietly to double-check that he hasn't begun to go mad.
He looks up. He looks around. He looks down to see a girl with eyes that blaze blue blink into existence and Loki freezes.
He doesn't know this girl but that particular color is not a common sight in one's eyes, especially the way they flare bright and then go out.
"What are you doing down there?" He calls out. There's still some distance between the two of them, but if she runs, he's giving chase.
All these months, first in New Amsterdam and then in Thedas, and she's managed to keep herself from being caught. Then again, most people she's snuck away from are laypeople; the only person who ever came close was Jason, and he was the sort of guy who kept warehouses full of blackmail.
So to be caught now, out of nowhere, is a nasty shock. So nasty that Ellie makes a mistake -- and looks straight up and into the face of the man who yelled after her.
She's young, probably late teens, maybe early twenties. Freckled and scarred and hair somewhere between auburn and brown, greenish normal eyes, once the glow fades.
"Fuck," she says emphatically, just loud enough for him to hear, and reaches up to yank her hood down over her hair. She bolts for the end of the alleyway, moving with the kind of speed that suggests she's run from things often, and usually gets away.
The end of it is another brick wall, but it's rough enough for handholds. Farther up there's more ivy, and she hits it with a running jump, pushes off, and catches herself, shimmying up towards another set of rooftops.
The streets below are far too open and well-lit for her to get away, but she stands a better chance of losing him up here.
Gods. Is he getting old? He must be getting old because some part of him is rather displeased that she opted to run.
The rest of him, however, has already begun moving, across the balcony and up to the roof of his apartment, where she's gotten quite the headstart. It's ridiculous, really. He wasn't going to harm the girl, just ask her questions.
Granted, he realizes 'what are you doing down there' probably didn't help him any, on second thought. Well. Things to consider, if he manages to catch up with her.
She's at least two buildings away by the time he moves on from the rooftop of his apartment to give chase. He's not going to waste his breath yelling after her, at this rate, but he has his own tricks up his sleeve.
Like disappearing suddenly, the next time she checks to see where he is.
Ellie's faster than he is, but it's alarming that he's willing to come up onto the rooftop, much less have any skill with navigating them. The Hightown nobles don't often do much, as far as she's gathered, so this is surprising.
Ellie bolts across several more rooftops before glancing back, trying to mark the stranger's speed -- and skids to a stop, catching her breath, squinting.
A growing sort of trepidation rises in her chest, and she takes one step back towards where she saw him last.
"If you fucking fell," she mutters to herself, clenching her teeth, and starts to pick her way back, looking down and into the alleyways before leaping across them. Last thing they need is noble with broken legs who's seen her face.
"I didn't," comes a voice several feet to her left and a bit behind; Loki pops back into view in a dispersal of green and gold light, hands up and open and empty. "I'm a little better skilled than all of that. I just wanted to ask you questions, I'm not trying to cause you harm or report you or whatever else you may have imagined."
If she bolts again, he'll just chase after her again, but he's hoping that showing he's unarmed (mostly) will go some ways towards convincing her that he means what he's saying.
Ellie whips around, a knife in her hand faster than a blink, ready to fight like a tempest, and doesn't falter when she sees him holding up his hands. Instead she spins the knife slowly to a better grip, taking a step to the side and closer to the edge of the rooftop.
She's listening, but very plainly doesn't trust him. He did chase her, after all, and Ellie's killed people for far more simple misunderstandings.
"Yeah?" she mutters, almost to herself, her eyes sharp and green and trained on his eyes, rather than his hands.
Look if they're summoning knives, Loki could join along easily. He doesn't, at this moment, because he doesn't think it would go very far into the 'causing this girl to trust me enough to answer a few questions' direction.
He does put his hands down though.
Loki's eyes are steady as he stares her down. "Are you a Frost Giant?" There are few reasons he knows of for someone's eyes to flash that particular intensity of blue after they manage to make themselves invisible. "Or taught by one?"
Of all the questions she might have expected, it's not that one.
It breaks across her face, pure confusion, and she glances down at herself for a split second, clearly wondering what the hell a frost giant looks like in his world, because that's definitely not-
"No."
Slowly, she lowers her knife, lets her hand fall beneath her cloak, where the blade disappears somewhere on her. She pushes her hood back and out of her face. Considers him, weighing the possibilities of who he could be, how he could be aligned- but frost giant isn't anything she's stumbled across in the lore of this world.
And something about his voice is damned familiar.
Ellie tips her head to one side, narrowing her eyes at him.
His expression doesn't fall, exactly. He knew it was a long shot, but he had to ask. The fact that she turns the question on him in response makes sense no matter what her answer had been. Obviously, it's important enough to chase after her to find out. So.
He shrugs.
"The latter." Were. He was a Frost Giant, and now he's human, and that's... complicated. More than a little bit.
"With certain magics they don't look like Giants at all, apparently." A smirk. "But if that's not the cause of your blue eyes, what is?"
Though she can't puzzle out the man's expression, she can tell that it's not a good reaction, but it's not a dangerous one either. She hasn't made an enemy, and by the shifting glow of lights and magic, he's probably not aligned with the Templars either.
Ellie's shoulders relax, and she half-returns that smirk, going straight from suspicious to curious -- or at least holding her suspicion closer to her chest.
"You definitely don't look like a giant," she answers, and fiddles with her fingers, looking at his face, weighing whether she should answer.
Well. If she was confused by his first expression there is no confusing this one; it's shock, clear as day, at the idea of a 'dead' god having shards that could be consumed by a mortal and change them so. It smooths out almost immediately into a sort of intense curiosity, but there was no missing it while it was there.
"Well, I'm human now, and unable to change my shape much into what I may have looked like had I remained with the Frost Giants." A shrug of one shoulder. "How did you come to obtain a shard of a dead god?" Clearly not that dead, as it has changed her.
At least he believes her. Come to think of it, this world is fucking nuts enough that nothing is too outlandish. If she were the type, she might try spinning more stories. Hell.
But she's already in deep, and she's kind of appreciating the fact that he's unlikely to turn her in to the guards, or the Templars. So she holds up her hand, pulls back the edge of her fingerless glove -- one that shows off clearly that her left hand has missing fingers -- to show him the glint of the anchor shard.
"Same way I got this," she says, watching his eyes. She's starting to place his voice, now, and she feels sure that he'll know what she means.
"It wasn't a Rift that time, but I woke up in another world, and I could do the glowy shit. Somebody woke up a sealed god, tried to capture it but accidentally killed it somehow, and its power splintered off and fucked up space-time." Ellie gives a shrug.
Loki looks from the shard to Ellie's face, conflicted. A shard of a dead god? In a different world, so surely not one of her gods, if any can lay claim to her at this point. "Clearly not entirely dead." Otherwise, it would be inert, and not allowing her to appear and disappear at will.
Or something.
This is also the first that Loki is hearing about Rifters coming from worlds that were not their own to begin with, and he wonders... well. He wonders a lot of things.
So he blinks at her, and then shakes his head a little.
"I'm not convinced it was a god. But whatever it was, or whether it's dead... I dunno. But plenty of people have tried to cut it out and they can't, so. I guess it's mine now."
Looking him over carefully, Ellie frowns, thoughtfully tilting her head to one side.
"What does gold mean, where you're from? Fire giants?"
I'm not convinced it was a god are the words of a nonbeliever, he thinks, and isn't that something? He imagines, in the god's place, he'd be annoyed at how that works out.
But he'd be dead, so he'd be annoyed anyway.
"No," Loki shakes his head once, stuffing his hands into his pockets, "fire giants are the typical red when their magic takes on a color. Gold is for the Asgardians."
He opens his hand, and an illusion of the Asgardian city rests there. "They've never been subtle." By closing his hand he dispels the illusion in a series of gold and green sparks.
Suspicious and wary as she is, Ellie's eyes widen with wonder as the illusion lights up Loki's palm, and she takes a hesitant step closer. Still out of reach, but unable to turn away.
"Woah," she breathes, and as the city disappears in a shower of sparks, Ellie looks up at his face, considering him now in a new light.
"Asgardian, like the myths?" A smile softens her face, and she gives a laugh under her breath. "Figures that it would actually exist somewhere."
"Yes, like the myths." Loki smiles; it's always nice to speak with someone who is at least a little familiar with the tales. "Asgard was a planet, connected to Midgard — Earth — through a series of cosmic portals called Yggdrasil."
His hands go back in his pockets. "I'm sorry if I startled you, earlier. The shock of it all was just..." A shrug.
"I'm from Earth," Ellie confirms with a nod -- though there seem to be countless renditions of Earth, so that doesn't exactly narrow it down, does it. His smile softens him, makes him a touch more approachable.
"S'fine- I get it. I'd probably chase down somebody who seemed like they might be from home, too."
It's something, getting to talk to someone who effortlessly understands where you came from. To not have to trip over all the inherent misunderstandings and differences of culture.
"Ah. Thought you might be." What with appearing human, and all. There are a lot of Earths, though, a lot of different timelines and variables, and while that doesn't narrow it down per se, it does help Loki feel a little more comfortable all told.
"How long were you in the place with the dead god?"
Ellie reaches up, absently, runs her fingertips over the back of her skull, where the stitches formed a seamed scar. It's not quite visible through her hair, long-healed.
"Six months, maybe. That's my best guess. Time was kinda fucked up at the end there."
Which probably seems like a weird thing to say, so she frowns, trying to lay it out for him in an understandable way.
"I've got a couple different lifetimes' worth of memories shoved into my skull from there, so it gets hard to count it up. Can thank a different god for that."
"That sounds..." Bizarre. Impossible. Fantastical. "Complicated," is what he settles on, shaking his head a little. How many gods were involved? What were their names? What was the name of their world?
He's not sure she'd know, and so, he keeps those questions to himself.
Instead, he sighs, pushing his hair back off of his forehead with one hand. "I want to know more about it. If you're interested in telling the story, that is?" He gestures around them. "Doesn't have to be here. We could get food, or something."
She says it with a half-laugh, not actually all that funny. She does attempt a smile, though, and heads to the edge of the roof, preparing to jump down.
"If you're really interested, I don't mind."
She pauses, sitting on the edge of the roof, kicking her feet -- then nods at him.
"I'm really interested," Loki asserts, nodding. Stories have always fascinated him, the more fantastical the better, but stories of god-granted powers interest him even more. "If you have the time, I'll listen."
She sits and so he sits further along the edge of the roof, not exactly within reach but close enough for them to hear one another. "Loki. Well met."
Again, it sounds familiar, but she can't place how. Instead Ellie gives a small shrug, a half-smile.
"Nice to meet you too," Ellie answers. She notices too how he's careful to keep that distance between them. Either he's considerate of her suspicious nature or he's suspicious himself, and she approves of both.
The smile creeps to being a full one.
"All right, but you're buying, fancypants."
She slips down off the edge of the roof, catching herself a few times on the way down to the ground level. Thanks to an old friend's tutelage, she even makes it look like it's not going to hurt later.
Of course he's paying, naturally. He lives in Hightown after all. "Fancypants," he repeats bemusedly, getting to his feet as she parkours her way down to the ground.
He's still unused to nicknames that are just handed to him suddenly, give him a moment.
For his downward option, he makes his way back to the roof of his apartment and then jumps down to the patio, before going inside and locking the door on his way out to the street.
When he spots Ellie again he gives a little wave. "There's a place with decent wine not far from here."
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faderift2021-08-27 09:27 pm
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Loki is inside, reading, a different window open to the noises of the streets below, when he hears what his paranoid brain tells him is definitely someone crossing the balcony. Only problem is, he can see it from where he sits, and there's no one there. He stands in the otherwise empty room, more or less holding his own breath, and waits.
The quiet sound of footfalls continues onto the other side, and the ivy rustles with the task of supporting someone's weight. He can't hear the progression past this point, so he's careful to open one of the balcony windows very quietly to double-check that he hasn't begun to go mad.
He looks up. He looks around. He looks down to see a girl with eyes that blaze blue blink into existence and Loki freezes.
He doesn't know this girl but that particular color is not a common sight in one's eyes, especially the way they flare bright and then go out.
"What are you doing down there?" He calls out. There's still some distance between the two of them, but if she runs, he's giving chase.
no subject
So to be caught now, out of nowhere, is a nasty shock. So nasty that Ellie makes a mistake -- and looks straight up and into the face of the man who yelled after her.
She's young, probably late teens, maybe early twenties. Freckled and scarred and hair somewhere between auburn and brown, greenish normal eyes, once the glow fades.
"Fuck," she says emphatically, just loud enough for him to hear, and reaches up to yank her hood down over her hair. She bolts for the end of the alleyway, moving with the kind of speed that suggests she's run from things often, and usually gets away.
The end of it is another brick wall, but it's rough enough for handholds. Farther up there's more ivy, and she hits it with a running jump, pushes off, and catches herself, shimmying up towards another set of rooftops.
The streets below are far too open and well-lit for her to get away, but she stands a better chance of losing him up here.
no subject
The rest of him, however, has already begun moving, across the balcony and up to the roof of his apartment, where she's gotten quite the headstart. It's ridiculous, really. He wasn't going to harm the girl, just ask her questions.
Granted, he realizes 'what are you doing down there' probably didn't help him any, on second thought. Well. Things to consider, if he manages to catch up with her.
She's at least two buildings away by the time he moves on from the rooftop of his apartment to give chase. He's not going to waste his breath yelling after her, at this rate, but he has his own tricks up his sleeve.
Like disappearing suddenly, the next time she checks to see where he is.
no subject
Ellie bolts across several more rooftops before glancing back, trying to mark the stranger's speed -- and skids to a stop, catching her breath, squinting.
A growing sort of trepidation rises in her chest, and she takes one step back towards where she saw him last.
"If you fucking fell," she mutters to herself, clenching her teeth, and starts to pick her way back, looking down and into the alleyways before leaping across them. Last thing they need is noble with broken legs who's seen her face.
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If she bolts again, he'll just chase after her again, but he's hoping that showing he's unarmed (mostly) will go some ways towards convincing her that he means what he's saying.
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She's listening, but very plainly doesn't trust him. He did chase her, after all, and Ellie's killed people for far more simple misunderstandings.
"Yeah?" she mutters, almost to herself, her eyes sharp and green and trained on his eyes, rather than his hands.
"What questions?"
no subject
He does put his hands down though.
Loki's eyes are steady as he stares her down. "Are you a Frost Giant?" There are few reasons he knows of for someone's eyes to flash that particular intensity of blue after they manage to make themselves invisible. "Or taught by one?"
no subject
It breaks across her face, pure confusion, and she glances down at herself for a split second, clearly wondering what the hell a frost giant looks like in his world, because that's definitely not-
"No."
Slowly, she lowers her knife, lets her hand fall beneath her cloak, where the blade disappears somewhere on her. She pushes her hood back and out of her face. Considers him, weighing the possibilities of who he could be, how he could be aligned- but frost giant isn't anything she's stumbled across in the lore of this world.
And something about his voice is damned familiar.
Ellie tips her head to one side, narrowing her eyes at him.
"Are you? Were you?"
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He shrugs.
"The latter." Were. He was a Frost Giant, and now he's human, and that's... complicated. More than a little bit.
"With certain magics they don't look like Giants at all, apparently." A smirk. "But if that's not the cause of your blue eyes, what is?"
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Ellie's shoulders relax, and she half-returns that smirk, going straight from suspicious to curious -- or at least holding her suspicion closer to her chest.
"You definitely don't look like a giant," she answers, and fiddles with her fingers, looking at his face, weighing whether she should answer.
Would he even believe her?
"A shard of a dead god."
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"Well, I'm human now, and unable to change my shape much into what I may have looked like had I remained with the Frost Giants." A shrug of one shoulder. "How did you come to obtain a shard of a dead god?" Clearly not that dead, as it has changed her.
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But she's already in deep, and she's kind of appreciating the fact that he's unlikely to turn her in to the guards, or the Templars. So she holds up her hand, pulls back the edge of her fingerless glove -- one that shows off clearly that her left hand has missing fingers -- to show him the glint of the anchor shard.
"Same way I got this," she says, watching his eyes. She's starting to place his voice, now, and she feels sure that he'll know what she means.
"It wasn't a Rift that time, but I woke up in another world, and I could do the glowy shit. Somebody woke up a sealed god, tried to capture it but accidentally killed it somehow, and its power splintered off and fucked up space-time." Ellie gives a shrug.
"The details are kinda fuzzy."
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Or something.
This is also the first that Loki is hearing about Rifters coming from worlds that were not their own to begin with, and he wonders... well. He wonders a lot of things.
So he blinks at her, and then shakes his head a little.
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"I'm not convinced it was a god. But whatever it was, or whether it's dead... I dunno. But plenty of people have tried to cut it out and they can't, so. I guess it's mine now."
Looking him over carefully, Ellie frowns, thoughtfully tilting her head to one side.
"What does gold mean, where you're from? Fire giants?"
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But he'd be dead, so he'd be annoyed anyway.
"No," Loki shakes his head once, stuffing his hands into his pockets, "fire giants are the typical red when their magic takes on a color. Gold is for the Asgardians."
He opens his hand, and an illusion of the Asgardian city rests there. "They've never been subtle." By closing his hand he dispels the illusion in a series of gold and green sparks.
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"Woah," she breathes, and as the city disappears in a shower of sparks, Ellie looks up at his face, considering him now in a new light.
"Asgardian, like the myths?" A smile softens her face, and she gives a laugh under her breath. "Figures that it would actually exist somewhere."
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His hands go back in his pockets. "I'm sorry if I startled you, earlier. The shock of it all was just..." A shrug.
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"S'fine- I get it. I'd probably chase down somebody who seemed like they might be from home, too."
It's something, getting to talk to someone who effortlessly understands where you came from. To not have to trip over all the inherent misunderstandings and differences of culture.
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"How long were you in the place with the dead god?"
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Ellie reaches up, absently, runs her fingertips over the back of her skull, where the stitches formed a seamed scar. It's not quite visible through her hair, long-healed.
"Six months, maybe. That's my best guess. Time was kinda fucked up at the end there."
Which probably seems like a weird thing to say, so she frowns, trying to lay it out for him in an understandable way.
"I've got a couple different lifetimes' worth of memories shoved into my skull from there, so it gets hard to count it up. Can thank a different god for that."
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He's not sure she'd know, and so, he keeps those questions to himself.
Instead, he sighs, pushing his hair back off of his forehead with one hand. "I want to know more about it. If you're interested in telling the story, that is?" He gestures around them. "Doesn't have to be here. We could get food, or something."
how did I hallucinate tagging this back
She says it with a half-laugh, not actually all that funny. She does attempt a smile, though, and heads to the edge of the roof, preparing to jump down.
"If you're really interested, I don't mind."
She pauses, sitting on the edge of the roof, kicking her feet -- then nods at him.
"I'm Ellie."
oh man it happens
She sits and so he sits further along the edge of the roof, not exactly within reach but close enough for them to hear one another. "Loki. Well met."
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"Nice to meet you too," Ellie answers. She notices too how he's careful to keep that distance between them. Either he's considerate of her suspicious nature or he's suspicious himself, and she approves of both.
The smile creeps to being a full one.
"All right, but you're buying, fancypants."
She slips down off the edge of the roof, catching herself a few times on the way down to the ground level. Thanks to an old friend's tutelage, she even makes it look like it's not going to hurt later.
no subject
He's still unused to nicknames that are just handed to him suddenly, give him a moment.
For his downward option, he makes his way back to the roof of his apartment and then jumps down to the patio, before going inside and locking the door on his way out to the street.
When he spots Ellie again he gives a little wave. "There's a place with decent wine not far from here."
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