deceived, by illusion

[purposeful_glory]

Sigyn goes on hanging around the Three and Thor and Loki. Fandral, charmed in spite of her vocal disgruntlement, doesn't go so far as to kick him out of bed for her embarrassment, let alone insist on kicking him out of their practices; Hogun is too quiet to bother objecting if she harbors negative opinions; Volstagg is put off but not enough to throw her weight behind her objections. Thor considers his fighting respectable enough, and Loki doesn't mind the addition at all.

Loki wants to be queen one day and has not neglected learning to talk to people, learning the names of important sorts - but she has neglected assembling close friends (why should she do such a thing when she can tell them so little about herself?), and piggybacks on Thor's. So she is invited along when Thor decides she wants to go hunting for giant aurochs and thereby enjoy the supposedly superior flavor of fresh-killed beef one has personally killed.

And when Sigyn asks if he can come, well, nobody contradicts Thor when she says "Very well," even though this follows a longish pause.

Aurochs, come out, come out, wherever you are.

Comments

[purposeful_glory]

"Healing spells. A suite of them, I think jointly comprehensive. All-purpose visual and auditory illusions. And the first one - when I was little I tripped, a lot. I couldn't learn to fight, I'd have impaled myself on something before a week had gone by. So -" She waves a hand, perfectly graceful. "I fixed it."

[thevictorious]

"Oh, well done," he says admiringly. "And of course I am very grateful for your healing spells."

[purposeful_glory]

"I'm proud of them. They don't see very much use. It varies how often I can get away. The illusions help, of course."

[thevictorious]

"Oh, yes. They would."

[purposeful_glory]

"The illusion spell's usable in pieces, even," she remarks, "I could turn invisible or make simple lights before I could do fully animated images."

[thevictorious]

"Invisible sorcerers. How alarming."

He doesn't sound alarmed; he sounds delighted.

[purposeful_glory]

Ha. For that he gets a kiss.

[thevictorious]

Excellent. He loves those.

[purposeful_glory]

She noticed.

"I am not at all sure that I can teach the alphabet," she mentions. "I have symbols for the atomic concepts but they are fairly indescribable. And my notation doesn't at all resemble any of the lectures on conventional magic theory I've snuck into, so I doubt I could work backwards from a typical spell and break it down from there either."

[thevictorious]

"Could you teach me one of your spells and then work backwards from that?"

[purposeful_glory]

"Maybe. I don't know. They snap together in my head from pieces. I write words and then I have them forever, same as the letters. Sentences paragraphs chapters books encylopedias spells. How does one usually learn a spell without the pieces?"

[thevictorious]

"Haphazardly and with difficulty. I stopped trying before I ever managed it."

[purposeful_glory]

"I mean, I can show you what they look like written down, if you like." She kisses him again, then rolls out of bed to pad towards the bookshelves. "Which one do you want to see?"

[thevictorious]

"I can't decide between 'whichever you think simplest' and 'a healing spell'."

[purposeful_glory]

"A healing spell it is, then. They all have some similar foundations - all my spells rely on knowing how people ought to be shaped, in the full versions - and healing is principally just insisiting that whoever it is cast on be shaped that way and not another." She tips a few notebooks into her hand and brings them back to bed.

They are full of densely packed symbols. Two hundred and nine of them.

[thevictorious]

"Less maddening than the other way around," is his conclusion. "Maybe not quite unmaddening enough. What exactly was it that you touched, to get all this?"

[purposeful_glory]

"The Tesseract. I doubt very much you can expect the same result. If it always did that then it would not be so forbidden."

[thevictorious]

"I don't expect the same result. I do expect that there must be some reason why it taught you the sorcerous alphabet instead of doing whatever it normally does to people, and I wonder if it is possible to find out what that reason is."

[purposeful_glory]

"I'm not sure. I'm lucky that no one listened to me when I said I was fine and all it did was tell me things and don't care to jeopardize that success."

[thevictorious]

"Well. I'll think about it. And I'll think about how to learn the alphabet and whether it will be worth the number of centuries I'd have to put into it."

[purposeful_glory]

"You could do more with the spells than I've managed."

[thevictorious]

"True. But there's a way I get with certain kinds of puzzle, and a way I get when I spend too long doing just one thing, and I would rather not be caught between the two for a very long time."

[purposeful_glory]

"Ah. I don't have that problem."

[thevictorious]

"It doesn't seem to be a usual one, but I am not a usual person."

[purposeful_glory]

"I've noticed that."