Corner
The Promethean
It was a long way down, through the corn and into my very own heart of darkness.
I feel the arrow before I see it, but sometimes I do learn from my mistakes.
A blur of movement, and I catch it. I can do that now, because there exists an expectation in the collective conscious that someone like me should be able to pluck arrows and bullets and so forth from thin air. It's fletched with soft green sprigs; mistletoe. I'm nothing if not predictable.
"What're you doing this far down?"
The same laryngitis voice, coal burnt and ash thick.
He looks like he should; wild flame hair, but smooth and long, braided with feathers and gold and beads. Exotic. He has tattoos, too; but not my tattoos, these are just for decoration, not wards. His right eye and face are twirled with Nordic vines; Mammen style, they call it now I think. He's even dressed Medieval, breeches and shirt and cross-crossed bindings at his arms and ankles. He's also really, really short -- he'd barely be pushing Sig's height, I'd say -- and perhaps that surprises me most of all.
But here he is Loki, and I am not; sun-blonde and golden eyed, far too broad shouldered but not quite tall enough, though far taller than he is. Here, in the deep black deeps, I am still the Dying God.
"I need to ask you something."
He shrugs, and I take it as my leave to continue.
"The tattoos on my back, what are they?"
"What do you think they are?"
"Wards, left by Odin. Your oath to bind yourself to the Aesir made flesh, to put aside who you are. That's what I've always believed, but that's a lie, isn't it? Who did this to us? And why?"
He gives me a very, very strange look. He's still holding the bow and the arrow has returned to his hand via the unfathomable non-narrative of this place, and for a moment I think he's going to try shooting me again, but then he just looks me dead on and says, in full and clear jotun the likes of which I've never before heard him speak, "Go back to your woman, boy. Some things are too old and too deep even for you."
"What! You can't be serious!"
He turns to go, starts moving away in the endless one dimensional void of this place.
"Fuck you, I've fucking lived your life. Stop treating me like such a child!"
He turns back again, looking much darker and older than I've yet to see him. "Only children do not realise that they are. This is not for you to know."
"Don't you dare, it's my damn body!"
"No. Your form was lost when it burnt on the wings of Hringhorni. For the flesh I took I repaid my debt. I owe you nothing."
I hate it. I hate everything about it, hate that he reminds me of it, uses it against me whenever he can because he is an old fashioned stubborn little giantborn bastard...
He's small, and also light; not roped through by wry muscle like I'm used to us being. Not to mention I'm a lot bigger and, while perhaps not stronger, I have a lot more mass.
"Damn you..." In godstongue, and suddenly his eyes are above mine and I realise it's because I'm holding him by the throat, and his eyes are bulging horribly and he shouldn't need to breathe -- he's dead, after all -- but it's the intent that counts not to reality of it, and all that means is that I'm choking him. I feel the tendons in his throat crack and shift sickeningly under my hand.
He should fight back. I'd fight back, if it were me. He is older and far more powerful and besides, this is his place. But he won't, because this is what he is, what he does. It is not in his nature to do anything but be cowered and relent.
Sometimes I really am a lot like my father.
I drop him and he crumples, choking. I want to do something, to let him know I'm sorry, because I've been there and felt what it's like... But I don't. I turn away, I hate myself -- I hate being myself, want nothing more than to flee back to the safety of the persona of him I have created for myself. But I also want answers.
"Sorry," I mumble, feeling hopelessly childish.
He straightens and rubs the bruises on his neck. Shrugs, "It's nothing I haven't had before and worse besides."
"I know, I remember. But that doesn't make it okay."
He huffs. I know he's thinking about those 'silly modern thoughts' he's convinced I'm plagued with.
I sit -- the terrain simply accomodating my action without actually seemingly changing -- lean forward with my hands on my knees and my head in my hands. My hair is wrong, my jaw is too square, my fingers too thick. Suddenly I'm dying for a cigarette, which appears between my fingers almost before the thought has formed. I pop it between my teeth and inhale. Nothing happens, of course; fire is his domain, here.
"Fu-uck." I huff.
He grins at me, leans forward and snaps his fingers under a foot infront of my face. Flame dances there, and I light up.
"Thanks."
"Filthy habit," he says. Smoking is something he doesn't really understand -- not like they had tobacco in his day -- but he mouths the words he's heard through my own thoughts.
"It won't kill me." Which is true. Truthfully the only reason I started smoking was a desire to have that smouldering spark close to me. Fire is fire, no matter how small.
He hesitates momentarily, before sitting next to me on what is now apparently our invisible magic 'bench'. It's a nice gesture; he forgives me. Of course he does. For the moment, anyhow. Revenge will come later, when I'm not paying attention and vulnerable. Nothing permanent; he'll make me shout out something hideous in a board meeting, or kiss a teacher, or something equally irritating. I know. It's what I'd do.
"So..."
He sighs. "The truth is I don't really know myself." It takes me a moment to realise he's talking about the wards. I sit quietly, waiting. "I gather you've figured out the story about Odin is a cover?"
I nod. "I think... I mean, it bothered me for a while; 'if not him, who else?' And after I thought about it for a while... we did this to ourselves, didn't we?" I don't know why I'm using the plural. Maybe I'm not as wrong as I think...
He nods. "Yes, that much I know. I also know I made myself forget everything else."
I explained myself to Sigmund once using the analogy of Prometheus and the fire of the gods. We're often equated, Prometheus and myself, except those people don't know jack shit. I'm not Prometheus, Odin is. Me, I'm just the fire. Except maybe Odin wasn't the one who stole me; maybe I wanted to go.
Sun. Fire. Corn. It's all connected.
"Am I you?" I ask suddenly, then, because the question earns me a look that could best be described as 'well, duh', I add, "I mean, from before. Even before all this. Are we... the same?"