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One moment Loki is trying to kill the snake-monster before it gets any closer to civilization, and then next -
She jabs at its face, but with momentum intended to meet resistance, and there is none. With momentum intended to compensate for a dodge on the part of the creature, but it surges forward. She's engulfed, and then there is no snake, and there is no ground, and she's falling.
She gasps. The air is clean; she doesn't need to heal poison out of herself with each breath. She sees - floating land, of sorts, there, some kind of oddly geology-themed ship maybe. She could, potentially, turn Lævateinn into something with enough surface area to steer herself onto it rather than fall farther and suffer worse from the fall, but she just recently perfected a new...
She's a bird, a swift, and she catches the wind, and her spear is a twig clutched in her feet, and she wings her way to the land.
Rockeye's first glowfic. Loki (a Bell) falls on Nick in Cloudbank.
purposeful_glory
cloudwanderer
"Alright. You can find your paper in the box labelled 37 on the right shelf. Charcoal sticks are in the narrow box next to it. There's food in the kitchen, eat what you like. Please only take what I said you could. I've got to go work on the engines, and unless you're secretly a mechanic I don't think you can help with that."
purposeful_glory
"I'm not a mechanic. I might understand how things worked if I investigated them closely, but likely not quickly enough not to get in your way. And you do not need to fear for the contents of your boxes on my account."
cloudwanderer
"Great. See ya later."
About an hour later, he comes back in different clothes.
"Engine two is having compression issues, which is less than ideal. And I think my last batch of hydrogen was impure. Ah well, I've had worse things happen. You pretty much know what there is to know about me already - wandering trader and tinker on the up and down run. I'm curious about you, though, you're from another planet! So, what's Asgard like?"
About an hour later, he comes back in different clothes.
"Engine two is having compression issues, which is less than ideal. And I think my last batch of hydrogen was impure. Ah well, I've had worse things happen. You pretty much know what there is to know about me already - wandering trader and tinker on the up and down run. I'm curious about you, though, you're from another planet! So, what's Asgard like?"
purposeful_glory
"Well, it has land, and seas, and a fairly consistent variety of air above them. Asgardians live on it. We are ruled by Odin, who has been queen for a very long time. What else do you want to know?"
cloudwanderer
"What do people do with their time? Most people here fly ships, or work farms, or make crafts. We don't really have queens - it's hard to rule lots of islands when they can just float away if they don't like you ruling them. I visited a few towns that had kings, but they only ruled the one town. How are asgardians different from humans?"
purposeful_glory
"We're stronger - you noticed - and tougher, and longer-lived, but I believe those are all the genuinely inherent differences, and some of them may be deliberate enhancements from long ago, since lapsed from memory."
cloudwanderer
"I noticed you seem to be heavier, too. I don't suppose I can become asgardian? I would very much like to be longer-lived."
purposeful_glory
"We're denser - I was categorizing that under 'tougher'. I don't have a way to turn you into an Asgardian, I'm afraid, and I've never heard of it being done either, and by the time I could even potentially make any useful progress on it via independent development you would probably already be dead."
cloudwanderer
"Shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. How would you - develop a way to turn people asgardian? Are you a doctor?"
purposeful_glory
"I've never been taught any medicine, but I tend not to think of anything as out of my reach if I spend enough time on it."
cloudwanderer
"I suppose if you have hundreds and hundreds of years, then your perspective on that kind of thing is pretty different."
He yawns. "Bedtime, I think. I need to actually be awake tomorrow to pilot us down. Goodnight."
He yawns. "Bedtime, I think. I need to actually be awake tomorrow to pilot us down. Goodnight."
purposeful_glory
"I could sleep now, but if it's useful to have someone up monitoring things on a night shift I can do that too," she mentions.
cloudwanderer
"If you knew more about the ship that could be useful, but any significant problems will set of an alarm in my room and any minor problems you wouldn't know how to deal with, so for now you might as well sleep."
purposeful_glory
"All right." She looks for a good place to put her armor and gets all the clunky bits off, leaving something only slightly laughable as nightclothes under it.
cloudwanderer
There are some empty shelves - her armor could go there.
Sunset is rapidly approaching, and there isn't an obvious way to make artificial light. Nick goes to his room and goes to sleep.
Sunset is rapidly approaching, and there isn't an obvious way to make artificial light. Nick goes to his room and goes to sleep.
purposeful_glory
Loki shelves her armor and flops into the hammock.
She stays up a little, making illusory lights in lieu of a notebook to draw out the shape of her thoughts regarding the planet-transiting snake monster. Presumably Heimdall will have already said something, and maybe she'll be collected as soon as she wanders close enough to somewhere the Bifrost can connect - but it's possible the planet is inaccessible that way; she's never heard of it before - well. She can't get home on her own unless she finishes her teleportation spell, which will certainly take decades. And more than twenty sheets of paper, but if she writes very small and densely she can probably make some progress like that.
Eventually she lets all her illusions wink out and she sleeps.
She stays up a little, making illusory lights in lieu of a notebook to draw out the shape of her thoughts regarding the planet-transiting snake monster. Presumably Heimdall will have already said something, and maybe she'll be collected as soon as she wanders close enough to somewhere the Bifrost can connect - but it's possible the planet is inaccessible that way; she's never heard of it before - well. She can't get home on her own unless she finishes her teleportation spell, which will certainly take decades. And more than twenty sheets of paper, but if she writes very small and densely she can probably make some progress like that.
Eventually she lets all her illusions wink out and she sleeps.
cloudwanderer
The next morning, Nick prepares a simple breakfast, yells into the cargo hold about the availability of food, and starts untying the ropes holding his houseship to the island. If Loki is nearby, he will start pointing out useful objects and what they do, or talking about the operation of an airship more or less at random.
purposeful_glory
Loki gets up, has no change of clothes so eats breakfast in what she's already wearing, and listens attentively to the monologue about the functions of the ship.
cloudwanderer
Nick isn't trained as a teacher, but he obviously knows what he's talking about. Flying an airship seems to be mostly about managing one's weight, speed, and the winds around one's ship, but there is plenty of fine detail to be had. The 'engines' he was talking about yesterday burn things and somehow turn the heat into motion.
At one point he pauses and asks, "How did you end up here anyway? Were you just walking along and, boom, island?"
At one point he pauses and asks, "How did you end up here anyway? Were you just walking along and, boom, island?"
purposeful_glory
"No. I'm not at all sure of the underlying mechanism, but an unfamiliar monster I was fighting somehow managed to drop me in midair on another planet. I'm nearly as confused as you are, I assure you."
cloudwanderer
"Some sort of big predator dropped you here? That sounds... Well, if I accept you appearing out of nowhere, a monster putting you here isn't that much further out there. And you were fighting this monster because it was trying to kill you, I suppose?"
purposeful_glory
"Well, it wasn't after me in particular until I went out to meet it, but I didn't want it loose in a city. I'm not sure if it was a predator. It was aggressive, but herbivores can be that too."
cloudwanderer
"Keeping it away from a city seems reasonable, good job, very noble of you. I don't understand what you mean about predators and herbivores though." The allspeak seems to be using the same word for 'predator' and 'monster,' if loki notices that kind of thing.
"How do you know Anglish, anyway? I don't imagine it's a common language on Asgard."
"How do you know Anglish, anyway? I don't imagine it's a common language on Asgard."
purposeful_glory
"It's not. That's something called Allspeak. Which may or may not contain awkward translation glitches - once I went for quite a long time without noticing that it was switching the genders of all gendered words on me - but serves for most purposes. I'm using different terms for 'something that eats other creatures' and 'something that is dangerous to people'. A ladybug eats other creatures; a bilgesnipe is dangerous but only eats plants."