#captainclintthomas

[aegisdaetradottir]

At first she sleeps by the sea. Ocean. It’s an ocean they say.

At first she slays beasts to protect. To calm her bloodlust.

But firsts roll by, and soon years roll by, and sooner still there are no more roaming monsters. Only smaller ones. Ordinary ones. Ones she is not allowed to hunt.

They have homes now and mortal clothing and Sif still sleeps on rooftops when she can. Sky, she needs sky. Something bright in this confining world.

It’s a slow growing feeling, but the mist begins to haunt her and each day she draws a little bit closer to walking into it. Anything to save her from this mortal plane. She cannot let herself. She cannot give into melancholy.

She tests the borders. She works her way through the city, hiding among mortals even as bright ageless eyes give her away to any who looks too close. She makes note of all the strange beings who now live pressed together in this city. The riddling sphinx and the songs of sirens. Witches and things unknowable. She passes through each territory until she has nowhere else to go but north. She’s running out of options.

Nothing satiates. Nothing settles restless feet. Thor tells her to come home, to stay. As if this mortal realm has anything resembling a home to her.

When she can put it off no longer she begins her northern explorations. Too soon there will be nothing left to explore, she’ll know this city too closely, but her feet itch and she has to follow them.

This is one of the quieter places. She treks through what passes for wilderness in this world and without looking she knows the mist looms up ahead. She merely keeps going. She has done this before. Gotten up close. When she stands before the barrier its power seems to waste away. It’s almost peaceful to her and the temptation to step forward wanes when the fog is right there in front of her. She’s not sure why. Sif supposes it means she doesn’t really want to go, but isn’t sure enough to name it her own want and not merely call it an effect of the mist itself. A defense mechanism. Stay away. You don’t want to be here. Still, she stands, and faces it down, and today is no different as she approaches.

With quiet steps she can see it now, straight ahead instead of looming over hills and treetops. She’s so focused Sif doesn’t notice the man not so far off in the distance. She does hear the arrow though, and turns head towards the sound right before it plants itself into the ground in front of her. Her eyes search, but she pauses, and does not move.

[aegisdaetradottir]

❝ hush, my sweet. these tornadoes are for you. ❞

The sky darkens and wise beings stay inside. Storms come and go, but today the clouds threaten in a way that makes old eyes know better.

Sif steps outside.

The storm doesn't come in rain, but lightning that crackles down to nest in the earth. Cutting veins into anything it hits.

Thor watches with wary eyes.

There's power in this. Power that beckons old and she expects she's not the only one venturing out. Few though they may be, she will not be completely alone.

The air is hot with the weight of waiting rain, pushed back for this brilliant and dangerous interlude. Eyes peek out between blinds and Sif hides her face behind a scarf. Hand clasps around  stones in her pocket. The water’s edge calls out to her and she follows.

A warning shot strikes three paces in front of her and cracks the pavement. There’s lingering static in her hair. If War was natural perhaps it might be this. She pushes on.

The rain finally comes as she skims along the Presidio.

It comes in a deluge no more relenting than the lightning. Lightning that only picks up pace as it mingles with the rain. Her feet move faster. too Higher ground.

She never claimed to be wise.

She is a goddess of earth and grit and blood, but Sif has always known the ways of water. Her family has always been water; how they bore her is any man’s guess. The rain soaks through to her hair, it trickles into the collar of her jacket, and down the sides of her boots. A familiar sensation of drowning.

She’s close.

There’s too much rain to see, but she knows this place. The wind whistles louder and whips her hair in front of her face. She’s drenched and the heat of the storm is giving way to cold.

Just a little further.

Because she can feels it. Sense it. There are places that burn brighter in any world and in this city they are so much more than the low embers some lands boast.  With the wind howling around her, with the flashes of light still cutting across the sky, it’s so close. One foot in front of the other she wades through the storm. Towards power.  The hand in her pocket grips its talisman tighter.

The rocky shoreline slips and crumbles around the edges of her boots with each step until finally she stops. She’s dizzy with it, the thrumming soul of this place now alight with the storm. She stands tall.

Sif screams. The boiling of anger and betrayal from her core, from so many ageless years gone by, it all releases into the air, soaked up by the storm. The hand in her coat pocket finally withdraws and casts the rune stones as far as she can into the ocean.  The rain pounds in her ears and she screams again. A challenge. She can’t hear the stones as they land in the water, but she imagines it. Let them sink there. Let them be gone. Let them not mock her with a future they refuse to bring. Send them to Ran’s keep and let them die.

She’ll make her own fate. Again.