VIDEO. UN: LOKI

[selfimage]

[ the sound of the wind storm hollows dully against the cave walls. Loki's squidge, Bacon, can half be seen crawling in the confines of his tacky green jacket and over his knee from where he sits, sometimes ducking and squeaking when a particularly large gust hits. to keep it from screaming, Loki offers his fingers absently, which the little squidge pulls on with its pudgy arms before ducking low again. ]

Hello there, it seems like we'll be waiting this out for some time considering the weather-type circumstances. While we're all rotting away, etcetera etcetera, I thought we could amuse ourselves with a game. A little bit of team bonding funtimes, so to say. [ he twists a dark nailed hand in the air, gesturing. ]

Soo—oo ... it's called Two Truths and a Lie. How do you play? Glad you asked, it's simple! Give two true statements about yourself and add a lie to the mix, shake it up then toss it out there and see if your team members know you well enough to spot the lie.

Usually this is done with copious amounts of alcohol, but we're lacking at the moment. [ pause. ] But—ah—you could always enjoy the satisfaction of being right. It's not like we're doing much else.

NOTE | Feel free to threadjack if that's your thing!! :****

Comments

[heelies]

Then I am honored that you should take such pleasure in hearing my tales, and pleased that you suspect nothing amiss therein. But I fear I must disappoint you, for one is indeed a lie - although which is more false than true, I shall not give away.

[selfimage]

Lies and storytelling are curious things, you know—sometimes they come hand in hand. Tell me, if the tale of the lie were to spread from here, do you think you'd remember it later as the truth?

You are at least partially divine, aren't you?

[heelies]

Indeed my mother's divine blood runs through these veins, mortal though they may be. Moreover, what is this you are saying? I should like to think that I know that which is true and that which is not in mine own history. Therefore, how could I ever deceive myself?

[selfimage]

You're not that old yet, are you?

[ the history of Loki had been told from mouth to mouth, finally transcribed in a copy meant to impression a Christian prince. what had been Loki, and what was Loki now were two very different things.

but truths and lies were what made story, and sometimes he could feel the echoes of old memories once whispered from mother to child in the back of his mind; they were bright, as if those were the truth, and who he was now was the lie. ]

[heelies]

I am not so young as I once was, this is true, but I am not yet old, for I shall never see myself ebb to old age.

[selfimage]

Ah, perhaps ... but myth has a way of changing things.

[ he lets that hang there for the moment, curious as to the reply. ]

There's power in story.

[heelies]

[He allows that word to sink in: mythos, a story. He had become a legend, a man with a reputation far wider reaching and longer lasting than he had ever dreamed. His name and deeds would survive long after he reached the far shore of Acheron, but what forms might they take when his living body no longer anchored them?]

Indeed, for stories keep alive the deeds of gods and of men. Are such stories not immortal?

[And part and parcel of immortality is immutability, yet Loki suggests the opposite.]

[selfimage]

In some ways, they are. In others, they change.

[ Loki's existence depended on story: both story that he made for himself, and story that had already existed. it's simultaneously his lifeline, and the bane of his identity. the role that he had been given through a millennia of story now challenged his ability to change.

the universe carried weight, and it was as heavy as a quill and ink on paper. ]

It depends on who's telling them, really. [ there's a little heh in his voice. ] You may surprise yourself when the tales continue. How do you think gods live so long?

[heelies]

[Achilles lacks the twists and turns that are inherent to Loki: in his thinking the gods live long for they are immortal. Yet he thinks now of Nalanni who delights in volcanoes and of wave-ruling Ryba, whose lives had been extinguished with little more fanfare than the flickering lives of mortals. He thinks now of what the godling Ahad had told him of the gods who ruled his land.]

For what reason do you speak of such things? I care little for riddles, and I am no seer learned in discerning the thoughts hidden in the minds of gods.

[Unfortunately for him.]

[selfimage]

[ the answer to that was simple, but Loki never intended for a simple game of two truths and a lie; no, he intended for it to go where ever it would go.

either way, he seems pleased. ]

Because you're a storyteller, and because you're Achilles.

[ a pause, then he looks up at him. ]

That's why I'm telling you.

[heelies]

[It is after a pause that he again speaks.]

Rather than the teller of stories, I prefer to be the subject, the hero for whose deeds the story is told. I have heard lately that long after I enter the house of Hades, the bards shall sing that I was impervious to the spears and arrows of men, for my mother bathed me in the River Styx when I was an infant. Yet such a thing as this never occurred. I wonder then at what point the tales of my deeds evolved such that my godlike strength turned into invincibility.

[selfimage]

Was it the tales that did it, or was it the stories?

[ he tosses a hand dismissively. ]

Will we ever know? Perhaps that's the point. Immortality comes with stories that we've left behind, not within the lives that are lived.

Though I do wonder if the one we're writing now will ever be sun, or if it will remain hidden beneath the folds of the cosmos.

[heelies]

Indeed I wonder if tales of our deeds here in the service of the sons of Alastair shall long live in the far-flung lands to which we are sent. Perhaps there shall come the day when it is our likenesses that the cloven-footed Nalawi paint upon the walls of their temples to honor the final verse of Nalanni's glorious life.

[selfimage]

If that's the expectancy set upon us, we'd best make our story a good one.