whoops

[rootbound]

Who: Geir, Vern & you!
Where: Shehui (various)
When: Day 196 (backdated to just before the telepathic fail hijinks)
Open/Closed: Mostly open!

i. setting it up (closed to geir)

[this is it. they've spent days discreetly smuggling a small heap of Palai bones one by one to a public park in a less-busy area of the city. with traffic drawn away from it by the festival, and minimal risk of anyone actually getting hurt, it's time to finish up their plan and place the final bones. one to be the trigger, one as bait for the monitors...

they peer down the street.]

...I think we can go.

ii. kaboom (open)

[and if you're in that sector of the city today, you're likely to hear a thunderclap of noise and see a brilliant flash of light coming from said park. Shehui citizens and visitors around you exclaim and turn to look, and you may see monitors making their way through the streets to the source...

Vern speaks telepathically through the entire coven's signets before the dust of the explosion's even settled, voice clipped and abrupt]

Vern and Geir here. If you're walking the city today, don't go near-- [he names the neighbourhood of the park.] If you're already near it, don't actually go to the park; make sure there are eyewitnesses that you weren't there at this time. You don't know anything about this, you weren't involved. All right?

iii. in the aftermath (open)

[Geir and Vern don't actually get themselves arrested; they're on the ground floor of the coven house as usual that evening, if you want to ask them questions face to face in a reasonably private space. they look kind of pleased with themselves...? mission success?]

Comments

<3!!!

[drizzle]

[There would've been more arguing, but upon her noticing Airis ahead of her while the stubborn creature on the other line was busy, she decided to hold back her responses to concentrate on what was most important: her daughter.

For now, she'll end the connection short and put all of her stamina and concentration on that very mission. It'll take time to do as well. A great deal of time with explanation and open conversation between them while having a treat in a nearby bakery.

Once nightfall had arrived, Nike was done with everything after having taken care of her daughter, checked her homework, and read to her a story before tucking her in at night. Her mind and mood was better compare to earlier. It was more relaxed, even if she felt uneasy with her lack of the voices she was so accustomed to sensing and feeling. Telepathy could do so much. Which was what will have her noticing a new channel was available. There are moments she would take a peek at who it may be while other times not so much. In this case, she did check only to find it was someone she had interacted with before, but wasn't on her prefer list: it had to be the dragon or the other guy. She may as well find out which to get a better reading.]

Odin's beard.

[That was all whoever at the other line was getting because it was a word that was now stuck with her.]

[rootandbranch]

[Geir's reply comes slowly; suspicious, but not exactly hostile. he did say he would talk to her if she wanted to continue the conversation later, he supposes. though if, from his own perspective, she's determined to find fault with everything that comes out of his mouth, he's not exactly sure why she would want to...]

What about it?

[drizzle]

[Ah, so the open channel she felt was the dragon's.]

Who is he? You mentioned him earlier when you were yelling at me. I was wondering about his beard. Is it so majestic that you naturally yelled it out as a way to calm yourself down or...?

[Nike isn't religious in the sense that she believes in deity figures. For her, the world, itself, was alive and the true creator of nature, unlike the gods a certain religion worship but go against its own teachings to justify their wrongs.]

[rootandbranch]

You think that I was yelling at you? That's a laugh...

[Geir's tone is disgruntled, but more grumbling than angry. it's been a long day, and he's had to talk to a lot of people, and he's tired.]

Odin is king among gods, lord of battles and dark skies and strange wisdoms, the father of the slain. He has a beard. It's okay, I guess. If you want to swear it's a thing you can swear by.

[he hasn't talked to Odin since Odin threw him in the ocean, but he remembers the beard and the eyepatch. they were the kinds of features that stuck out to a young child. everyone else seemed to think they were impressive enough to swear by too.]

[drizzle]

I'm pretty sure you were. [A pause.] ...it sounded like one to me.

[The explanation will leave her silent since she's never met a king among gods. A world king, she has met, but not one among gods. It left her stumped since she was in an already tricky situation.]

With all of those titles, he sounds like a very important and powerful person....or god? If he is the king of gods, then he must be a god, right? He isn't an....overly confident human claiming it, right? Or dragon. Is he a dragon too? Can you grow a beard too?

[Sorry Geir, Nike is overly curious and sometimes through telepathy her inner thoughts will be blurted out with the rest she was saying. It was just curious for Geir to swear by an "okay" beard; king of the gods or not.]

[rootandbranch]

He's a god, not a dragon. Dragons can be gods, but they're monsters, too.

[his voice is steady and polite enough, but guarded. he'll answer Nike's questions, but he's not feeling voluble at the moment, and he doesn't particularly trust her. he doesn't even think she's trying to be confrontational right now, and she's still challenging the fact he said Odin was king of the gods; if Odin were in front of her, Geir's pretty sure that calling him a human would be a dreadful insult. maybe if Geir cared more about defending his family's honor he'd bother to be insulted himself, but... no. if Odin cares he can show up personally.]

I don't think I can grow something like that.

[drizzle]

[The short explanation was enough for Nike to realize: 1) this Odin wasn't a dragon and 2) dragons can be gods and monsters. Somehow at the mention of a dragon being both, a weird form of pressure will be felt in her chest, she felt uneasy.....while feeling another type of urge she has never felt before; it felt a little like guilt while it wasn't, not entirely. What could it be? It was a weird feeling...almost ancient in a way.]

I've never met a god before. I have no idea what they look like. I assumed he was a dragon because you were one. You could be from a world full of them like how Red is from a world filled with dog people too. Kinda like Animintas is.

[Somehow at the mention of monsters, Nike almost wanted to add "even humans can be too, but not all of them are", but decided against it. Her gut feelings are rarely ever wrong whenever it pops up.]

That's too bad. Beards are cool. If you could pull off a beard, you'd be less intimidating, I think.

[rootandbranch]

He looks like a man, more or less. With a missing eye and beard. He feels like more than a man, I suppose, if you can sense power.

[he wonders for the first time why the Aesir mostly look like humans, while giants and monsters don't, always. strange...

his tone shifts to neutral confusion at Nike's second statement. is Nike being like this because he's intimidating? she'd never even seen him when he sent out his first psychic broadcast with 9S; that can't be right. anyway, Yona... Yona had told him he was only scary when he was trying to be, and she was his friend; he trusted her.]

Are you intimidated of me? I thought you were so hard to scare.

[drizzle]

(ooc: Due to canon taking its sweet time giving the dragon plot point a conclusion, I'm going to basically summarize her feelings while keeping them vague, just in case later on it is revealed to be a red herring.]

Now he just sounds more like a pirate than a king or god. I always heard gods were suppose to be these perfect beings. Beards are acceptable, but an eye patch though?

[Now she was just judging Odin, but it was difficult not to. There could be plenty of reasons for him to have the eye patch. Maybe he gave his eye away; someone stole it; he thinks an eye patch is cool; etc.

As for sensing power, Nike will wonder...]

Maybe if he was a figurative representation of your world, I'll be able to sense more than his power. But in my experience, it's easy to tell when someone is powerful without having to sense it.

[There is only one person she can speak in having the most power in her world: that was her grandmother. She was the most powerful mage, still is, and her mother was once second before she lost her abilities.

It was a good thing he distracted her with his next response or else she may have broadcast something she shouldn't have. Telepathy was something she had experience in, only by showing emotions and images to her rain partners, but to actively speak, it could only be done on rare occurrences, only when she or her partner are in mortal danger. There will be a pause at his question, trying to find the proper way to explain.]

Intimidated? I don't think it's the best word to explain it. Even though I used it a few moments ago. [A pause.] Your voice is louder than everyone else's. Your energy is different too. It isn't normal to me. Then again, I am accustomed to hear voices, feel their thoughts, and whenever I ask for their guidance or permission to use their power...I can feel those voices and feelings becoming one with me....I forget I exist for a moment, but I never allow it to fully envelop me. Those voices are usually the loudest and can overpower the voices of those surrounding me. And yet, why does your voice sound louder than the group but weaker than the voices I am accustomed to? It doesn't feel right to have someone louder when I can no longer hear the loudest voices of this realm. It gives me the sense that I should do something about it. Something....I would never do to a human......it feels awful......and yet if I don't do it.....I feel guilty for it, almost like I'm doing something bad for not doing that awful thing....

[It was a feeling similar to the legends of her country: the tale of her ancestor using her power to destroy three nations in a single night without reason other than they felt like it. She wanted to obey the feelings in her heart while all at once she didn't. She knew it was wrong to. The issue scared her. Were these feelings her own or something else? She had avoided him successfully ever since, but now she is being reminded of it. Why wasn't her grandmother around to explain it to her?]

.....did you even understand any of that?

[rootandbranch]

[Geir's voice is still steady, a little thoughtful; he's neither put off by nor sympathetic to the problem. he is what he is, even if it's suprising that Nike can tell anything about him from his psychic presence on a low-frequency world.]

Not really. What is it that you want to do to me?