"Winter, are you in love?" Tea demanded randomly from striding beside her friend. Winter quirked an eyebrow, her white hair resettling dramatically in the gentle wind as she turned to her friend from whom she kept many a good secret from. Because really, there was only so much Tea seemed able to retain about herself, all too pleased to accept the idea that Winter was, as she put it, good, beneath all her evil candy coating.
Or something like that, really Winter stopped paying attention after she said evil. What a strange concept, something only the humans came up with, one would think, but no, it was a universal idea. How strange it was to decide to place such a burden upon four little words. Good, evil, innocent little words with nonsensical meanings.
"And a very merry good morning to you too, Tea." Winter stated sarcastically, a wicked grin slipping onto her features at the very idea that Tea purposed. But, the woman was nothing if not persistant.
"Winter! I'm serious!"
"As am I." Winter spread her arms out with a mischievious grin, playfully furrowing her brow in mock confusion, "What kind of way is that to greet an old friend you haven't seen in," She frowned a moment, skimming through her recollection of time, the pause in the conversation stretching, "...Weeks?"
"Months, but you're getting off topic." Tea stated bluntly, eyes narrowed in a growing annoyance. Winter's grin returned to her features as Tea pinched the bridge of her nose a moment before turning to Winter once more, bouncing on her heels, their pace forgotten.
"Am I now? A shame." Winter cocked her head slightly with a mock dramatic motion.
"That you're getting off topic?" Tea piped up, bright golden hair shifting down her back at her movement, the bangs layered into her eyes in restless strands.
"That you noticed." Winter quipped shortly, resting her hands upon her own waist, allowing her eyes to slip over the form of her old friend. In truth, not much had changed in her absence, she still stood half a head shorter then herself. Tea still wore a strange array of clothing, the pettiskirt of which extending outwards in a rather large, circular fashion. Layerd over with cloths of brown, grey and green, a brown belt secured the skirt in its largness, extending the green, loose cloth up to her shoulders and partionally down, bunched at the shoulders as the princesses in the fairy tales once did.
The green fabric gave way to allow the grey fabric a moment in the spotlight, covering Tea's female physic in a flattering way, climbing to her neck in a choke hold. Strips of the green fabric were tied around each of her wrists, and in fact, the very same fabric was upon her shoes, detailed with a soft brown and clutzy in shape.
Her eyes were still bright, and upon her belt hung glass stars from thin black cords, bunching at her left side gently.
"Of course I noticed! I, your devoted, extremely wise-" Winter gave Tea a short look, blatently disagreeing with the latter, but Tea continued on as if Winter had not moved. "friend of an immortal origin, have come to recognise the look you get when you are in love. And woman, you are WHIPPED!" Tea bounced to and fro at the very idea, her golden head bobbing up and down as she did so.
The idea did seem to excite her, how strange.
"Firstly, I'm usually the one doing the whipping." Winter held up a single finger, giving Tea a smart look and a quick wink before continuing, "Secondly, I don't have a face for when I'm in love." Winter held up a second finger, her skin pale with evidence of muscle just touching upon the surface, "Thirdly, you wouldn't know if I had a face for when I'm in love, because I'm never in love around you. The last time I fell in love was.. Oh.. Two hundred years ago?"
"With that assassin.." Tea pipped up with a knowing sort of nod. Winter's lips quirked upwards in a reminiscent smile.
"And finally, and this is the very important bit. I can turn it off."
Tea's brow furrowed unflatteringly in puzzlement, "You can turn what off?"
"Everything. Emotions, hopes, dreams, long held ethics, attachments." Winter crossed her arms lightly, reclining her back upon the structure behind her as she spoke, as if it were trivial matters. "It is not as hard as you think, I assure you. It's like a switch." Winter shrugged her arms expressively, "In truth, the longer or the deeper the emotion or attachment, the harder it is to remove. But only just barely harder then something one got attached to that day."
"For instance," Winter continued, "Say I needed to lose my attachment with you.. For some reason or another." Winter gestured to the woman before her with a careless hand, "It would be nearly just as easy to lose attachment to a stranger I flirted with at a bar."
"That's not reassuring at all! So you could just, poof, turn everything off? Anytime you wanted?" Tea inclined her head in interest, coupled with a flash of almost envy.
"It is not a 'poof' but yes, I could. I do not use it often, however, soley for the fact I get.. Unpredictable, afterwards."
"Unpredictable?" Tea inquired with a raised eyebrow.
"For lack of a better word." Winter responded shortly, shrugging her arms lightly.
"What do you mean?" Tea asked, because really, OF COURSE SHE DID. No one ever let anything GO on this blasted planet..
"Well, take something out of your life, something that affected you deeply, taught you kindness, taught you mercy." Winter mumbled a little lower, eyes sharply set upon the no longer bouncing woman before her, "And then it hurts you," Winter continued lowly, "So you detach it. How much of yourself, do you imagine, goes with it? More then you'd think, I'd assure you."
"So, you lose yourself, when you do that?"
"Just a piece. Just the part that cared."
"You know, at first I envied you for that. The ability to keep yourself from heartbreak, from hurt, to live like nothing happened if your world came crashing down. It's," Tea trailed off a moment, shrugging her shoulders expressively with a sad smile, "What everyone hopes for. The ability to move on."
"And now?" Winter quirked an eyebrow interestedly.
"I pity you." Tea stated bluntly, her words ringing through the cold air, mixing with the increasing winds.
"How human of you." A smirk spread upon Winter's features as she pushed herself from the wall, spreading her arms with a conieving look that seemed to always be in her eyes. "But, I assure you," Winter's grin turned dark, "I am not the one to be pitied on this matter. Besides," The woman gave an expressive nod with a grin spreading as she leaned her head back, "I did just tell you I rarely used it."
"Winter, what are you?" Tea switched the conversation with her usual tact, that being said, there was none. She stated precisely what was upon her mind the moment it entered. A trait the pair of them shared, though for Winter, it often led to more trouble to be had. Apparently, kings didn't particularly like it when you stated their wives were hot.
As if they should be the ones getting offended!
"Sort tempered." Winter concluded, tapping her chin a moment.
"Other then that, species wise." Tea's brow furrowed once more, and it would, some day, remain stuck in that confused, frustrated expression from her friend's tricks and games.
Winter scoffed, "Now, that's the complicated bit. Like I've told you, you may recall, I do not die, but my host body does. I simply hop bodies when one.. Expires. This one, as you can tell, is humanoid, for the most part. The catch, of course, because there MUST be one, are my slitted eyes. Just enough to raise a bit of alarm in those who pass me by in this planet. The rest, well, I use a few devices to alter my appearance to others, so they are irrelevant."
"What if I was curious what you really looked like?"
"This is what I really look like." Winter struck a pose, gesturing to herself as a whole with a dramatic sort of expression upon her features.
"No! I mean deep down!" Tea elaborated, shaking her hands to firmly state her point in more detail. As if some waving of some hands really helped anything.. Strange humans..
"I'm just organs and muscle 'deep down'." Winter smirked with a laugh that rang through the air.
"You know what I mean!"
"What? That the idea that I have a 'true form' applies to me? That I should have any interest in what this host body originally looked like, and should feel a kinship to it?"
"Well, yeah."
"Our tricks become us. This is what I look like. Nothing more. And certainly, nothing less." Winter gave a wink, her short white hair resettling on her head at the shifting wind. How restless it was today! She was the average height of a human female, which proved rather obnoxious when she stood in the company of those who towered over said creatures.
"If tricks become us, what does that make me?" Loki strode over with a quizzical look, a wide grin that he'd been known to have spread across his features. He was handsome, Winter supposed, if you were looking for that sort of thing. He, as he often did, had attempted to blend in with the humans around him.
Which, of course, made him stand out worse.
"A hair stealing horse." Winter rested her hands on her hips, glancing over his appearance with a critical eye. Perhaps that style would have worked.. Twenty years ago. At least. Here, it simply stood out in its shades of green and gold that he ALWAYS seemed to HAVE to wear, for some reason.
"Really? And that makes you what, exactly?"
"Why, me of course. I didn't get pregnant with a horse. I didn't steal a woman's hair, stupid move, by the way, we women rather like our hair. Wouldn't have been out of the ordinary for someone to kill you for doing that. Regardless of wigs available."
"Would you have?"
"Yup."
Tea blinked, staring at Winter a moment "You didn't even pause!"
"Didn't have to. You touch my hair, I'm going to gut you like a fish." Winter held up both hands, fingers spread as if it were obvious.
"Winter failed to introduce us, I am Prince Loki, of Asgard, and what might your lovely name be, fair lady?" Loki turned up the charm in his voice, as he always did when meeting someone of the opposite gender, and, when the mood suited him, those of the same gender.
Evidently, it always worked, and he knew it, grew to depend on it, in fact. Immediatly Tea blinked in surprise, managing with an effort to clear her mind enough to manage a few simple words, better then most, Winter supposed, "I'm Tea, uh.. Of London?"
"A pleasure to meet you, lady Tea." He appeared almost formal in stature, giving Tea a brilliant grin.
"Well, aren't you the charmer.." Tea flushed brightly, as many women did. Recieving a rather charming grin from Loki, he KNEW he had her, already. Just a few words in, and Tea was ALREADY blushing. Winter rolled her eyes, shaking her head, taking to gutting an imaginary fish with malice.
"Very ladylike, Winter." Loki chided.
"Least I didn't birth a horse, handsome." Winter laughed, spreading her arms, "Besides, I can be 'lady like' as you so put it when I want to be. I just don't want to bother with all that.." Winter waved her hands with a look of 'wooh' across her features, "Dresses as big as tents, faces so heavy with lead and makeup the people swim like bricks, or even the painstaking putting the hair up and behaving at one's best. Tedious trivialities at best!"
"I sincerely doubt that you could be lady like." Loki teased, it was a game they often played, back and forth teasing and joking with one another. Rarely did Winter ever take him seriously, and she had the feeling the feeling was mutual.
"Oh? Invite me somewhere I should be lady like for." Winter shrugged her arms, rolling her eyes with a wicked grin across her features. "I'll be so god damn lady like you'll CHOKE on your words! Ha!"
"I stand by my statement."
"Have a little faith." Winter jokingly crooned, cocking her head to the side with a playful grin. "Now, what is you want, Loki?"
"What do you mean? Can I not just come to visit-"
"Nope. You're a busy man, as you've stated many times. 'Visiting' isn't in your nature." Winter waved a hand, cutting him off. It wasn't that she knew by sense that he was lying, as she often did with others, a rather interesting feat on his part. Rather, she knew him a bit too well for that kind of line to work on her.
Additionally, she was quite an old woman, nearing an impossible age herself, she was far older then Loki himself, and as such had used that trick before.
It was a good try, though.
"Fair enough, I came to inquire about your plans for travel." Loki watched her carefully, as if expecting her to leap at some opportunity that she had yet to see.
There was more to this then he was saying.
"Aww, you're missing me already?" Winter teased, patting his shoulder with a wide grin. "I realise I've been gone a few weeks, certainly. But the fact of the matter is, handsome, you've just got to learn to live without me.." Winter mocked an expression that is was a painful truth being told to a child.
"Actually, I imagine it is the other way around, as far as 'missing you' goes. I was simply going to extend an invitation to an event on Asgard.. But perhaps I should learn to live without you.." Loki gave a shrug, a wicked grin taking its place on his features, as it often did.
"I know you're lying." Winter stated bluntly, her white hair falling into her eyes in the blunt, serious and direct nature of her words, her eyes blank with obviousness of the lie.
"How? I am clearly not." Loki chuckled, indulging her a moment.
"Your lips are moving." Winter gestured to his face, unknown to him, of course, she was quoting a miraculously catchy song.
His fault for not staying on Earth to long on that one.
"And that means I'm lying?"
"Damn straight." Winter nodded curtly before giving Loki a careful look, "Besides," She continued, "I got banned from Asgard. Don't you remember? You were there!"
"What happened?" Tea pipped up from the side, blinking at Winter, fascinated by many of the words spoken, and for her little humaness, supposed that Asgard was some place that Winter had passed through in her travels, giving it no more thought.
How human.
"They have a sort of gate way to get in. I tried to use a device from an advanced race to bypass it. Wound up nearly getting my head cut off by a VERY angry, VERY tall gate keeper. HE," Winter directed a hand, pointing at Loki. "Had claimed that the man wouldn't even see me."
"The spell needed some more work, I'll give you that. But this is a special occasion. No sneaking in involved." Loki allowed, shrugging his shoulders once in acceptance that perhaps he shouldn't have rushed the spell. Why he DID, Winter had doubts, perhaps, as she had originally thought, he had wanted to kill her. Or perhaps he desired to see if she'd survive, a moment of curiousity.
Or perhaps he simply desired to see her.
"I'll try to contain my disappointment, I did so love having getting thrown into space." Winter stated sarcastically, giving a joking sort of grin.
"You didn't get thrown, you jumped." Loki pointed out firmly, as if that tiny little detail mattered.
"Went for a bout of space swimming. Good on the arms." The woman, had of course, had a method to her madness, and hadn't simply craved nearly certain death. She knew of a portal out of that world and into another, and that the natives of Asgard seemed to distrust the space beneath their Bifrost. Winter crossed her arms, resting her back against the building's wall, musing aloud, "Must be a hell of an occasion, what's going on there?"
"A coronation."
"Count me in."