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Loki is not technically banished. This is just - giving her mother space. To think. About what to do with her wayward child. She will be called back in a few years for a more permanent decision. Midgard's nice enough, anyway, and Sigyn's coming along.
The Bifrost lights up in all its colors and -
- this might be Midgard, but it is not a part of Midgard she ever saw and not the place she was expecting to be dropped, and there is no Sigyn with her.
She holds Lævateinn ready as a glaive. Maybe her mother feared her sorcery and thought she'd best be sent somewhere deadly under the impression she was meant to survive the trip -
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purposeful_glory
I'm worried you might end it the moment you decide I think it's real.
You should talk to my father about the boats. It was a terrible mistake but - less excusable than Alqualondë is a very strong claim. He thought they'd be stuck for a few decades while they learned how to build ocean-going boats, he did not expect them to undertake a death march. ...And, actually, I don't know if they did. I only have your word for it.
You should talk to my father about the boats. It was a terrible mistake but - less excusable than Alqualondë is a very strong claim. He thought they'd be stuck for a few decades while they learned how to build ocean-going boats, he did not expect them to undertake a death march. ...And, actually, I don't know if they did. I only have your word for it.
purposeful_glory
They did; the Valar kicked them out. At least some of them would have gotten across even without me bopping everybody on the nose and getting them to 'not starving, not frostbitten'. What in the world would the point be of a hallucination that ends as soon as you buy into it?
Toying with me, as I said. He's done worse for less reason. Do that three times and then really let me go, they've done that to some people. Less politically valuable people, usually, but perhaps the situation has changed and I'm no longer politically valuable at all.
It's not that I doubt Findekáno could cross the Ice and survive it, it's that he wouldn't risk the lives of his people. The Valar kicked them out? After they had no way to leave?? Did they say how? Does my father know that that happened, or just that they crossed?
It's not that I doubt Findekáno could cross the Ice and survive it, it's that he wouldn't risk the lives of his people. The Valar kicked them out? After they had no way to leave?? Did they say how? Does my father know that that happened, or just that they crossed?
purposeful_glory
Your father doesn't want to talk to or about them at all, or acknowledge they exist; your brothers will say 'our cousins', but he insists on 'my father's children by his second wife' and I started shortening that to 'the inconveniently phrased' because it's too long. So I don't know what he knows. I wasn't taking notes when I heard all of this - I think there was technically an option to go fling oneself on the mercy of the Valar? Because that's something the Valar are really good at and definitely should be trusted to have? But the host that arrived here didn't do that, obviously.
And I do not blame them, and Father wouldn't. But I am telling you, that is not the information he was operating under when I left him, and it is information that he needs to have.
purposeful_glory
She makes a note in the air in front of her as they fly and tucks it under her wing. I expect I'll wind up with his attention even if I don't solicit it specifically and he's in the middle of something when I land and start talking about you, so I'll mention you said that.
His instinct is to add more. Father doesn't talk about me, does he? He doesn't talk about his mother. He handles grief by not talking. The fact he is not talking about the other host does not suggest he doesn't want to hear about them. It's an aversion to justifying himself, not to questioning the justness of his choices.
He doesn't say it. If the Enemy can't rip it out of his head the Enemy can't have it.
Thank you.
He doesn't say it. If the Enemy can't rip it out of his head the Enemy can't have it.
Thank you.
I love you. I miss you. I wish I could ever be justified in speaking with you again, but if you think about it you will agree with me.
Tell Macalaurë that in fact I am not sure the Enemy could imitate his voice, and that if circumstances permit it sometimes I will listen and believe I am alive for a few hours. Tell Tyelcormo that I got to see the whole world before him but I won't get to touch it all first, looks like, unless he's very slow about this nonsense with some Enemy. Swifts can't land. Tell Carnistir that I would never have encouraged him to pick a more practical subject of study if I'd guessed how gifted he'll be for the world we are building. Tell Curufinwë that our father has always been excited for the day that you'll surpass him. Tell Ambarussa that I have noticed every moment of his courage and believe that our family desperately needs it.
And then some impersonator will take the words and speak them and win the trust it will take to destroy them.
Sure, that's fine, he thinks quite neutrally.
And then some impersonator will take the words and speak them and win the trust it will take to destroy them.
Sure, that's fine, he thinks quite neutrally.
purposeful_glory
I'm wondering what I'd pass on to Thor... probably even less than that. We've never had very much to actually say to each other that wasn't situational... and I wouldn't count on her to think through a situation and come to a reasonable conclusion about it either.
.As you describe it, any enemy taking you prisoner to understand your sister would have a laughable understanding of strategic priorities. There is no conceivable situation, save one that demands specifically and exclusively a lot of lightning strikes, in which you are most useful as an avenue to her. And yet that is exactly the sense in which I most serve my family.
purposeful_glory
Well, she is the one who's going to be queen, which I think is of some strategic importance, but I'm flattered anyway, says Loki.
I was once in line to rule the Noldor. A few thousand years can change a great deal.
purposeful_glory
Being in line for a thing is a little more urgent when the only person around who even hopes to live forever hasn't gotten around to telling anybody about that yet. It would probably take more time than Odin's got left for her to favor me over Thor.
My instincts cry out to point out that eventual death associated with mortality is the sort of problem I'd expect my father to chew through in a few decades, but it sounds like you're not sure that should be pursued.
purposeful_glory
Well, if he solves it she wouldn't have the same objections she'd have to taking a spell from my hand. Actually, I think your father would be very popular on Asgard for a variety of reasons. But my own planned solution would not sit well for her and anyway I don't want her to reign for all eternity.
I don't want my father to reign for all eternity - luckily for me, he doesn't want that either - but I cannot imagine letting his whole self be annihilated, were the only problem his stubbornness and aversion to being indebted to people. But then again, he's never even possibly tried to kill me.
purposeful_glory
Your father's a lot more likable than my mother and I can much more easily envision him doing things with his existence that weren't ruling.
Some of which are a much better use of his talents. We do our best to free them up.
purposeful_glory
I've noticed the way people scurry around doing that, a little; it's... it's an interesting display of coordination.
I wouldn't be able to do that anymore, even if I could go home. It works exactly to the degree that he trusts us completely, and I ended up rather mangling that.
purposeful_glory
Because you didn't set anything on fire or because you got captured?
The former, obviously. If he can't trust me because it turns out Moringotto can take someone's head back even years later, he'll engineer a way for us all to bear an acceptable level of risk. If I'm going to disobey his orders whenever I disagree with them -
The mental impression of someone shaking his head.
For my father, there's significant overhead involved in partnerships with people who only partially share his values. He can sometimes develop a sense that they are or are not trustworthy, or are or are not capable, but he tends to accomplish rather little through delegation to people whose interests only overlap with his up to a point. It constrains him to know that if contingent circumstances change he'll have to completely recalculate who is reliable. I think most people who play the game of politics do that recalculation intuitively, but for him it is entirely explicit and very demanding of his attention. Therefore he delegates more or less exclusively to people who he knows will act wholly on his interests.
You can imagine, then, that if someone finds their interests mostly aligned with my father's - ninety times out of a hundred, perhaps - they may realize they can best achieve their ends by adopting his, unconditionally, and becoming the sort of person he finds it worthwhile to delegate his goals to. Combat only works if a commander can trust that his people - or hers, I suppose, in your world - will obey orders. You can't win a war knowing that your battalions will only move insofar as their interests overlap with yours in ordering them forward. If you want to win a war, you don't have to believe that your commander is the best of all possible commanders at moving battalions, you just have to notice that he can't function at all if you cannot be relied on to move.
But I didn't burn the ships. It did not help anything at all. Perhaps I should have done it.
The mental impression of someone shaking his head.
For my father, there's significant overhead involved in partnerships with people who only partially share his values. He can sometimes develop a sense that they are or are not trustworthy, or are or are not capable, but he tends to accomplish rather little through delegation to people whose interests only overlap with his up to a point. It constrains him to know that if contingent circumstances change he'll have to completely recalculate who is reliable. I think most people who play the game of politics do that recalculation intuitively, but for him it is entirely explicit and very demanding of his attention. Therefore he delegates more or less exclusively to people who he knows will act wholly on his interests.
You can imagine, then, that if someone finds their interests mostly aligned with my father's - ninety times out of a hundred, perhaps - they may realize they can best achieve their ends by adopting his, unconditionally, and becoming the sort of person he finds it worthwhile to delegate his goals to. Combat only works if a commander can trust that his people - or hers, I suppose, in your world - will obey orders. You can't win a war knowing that your battalions will only move insofar as their interests overlap with yours in ordering them forward. If you want to win a war, you don't have to believe that your commander is the best of all possible commanders at moving battalions, you just have to notice that he can't function at all if you cannot be relied on to move.
But I didn't burn the ships. It did not help anything at all. Perhaps I should have done it.