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Amora was in the Asgardian manor, more over, she was perched on the edge of a chair in the kitchen, a tankard of something in hand. A platter of forgotten cheese and cold meats set out before her. She wore her mortal guise, but it was not that of the harsher, tightly reigned version anyone had seen in recent time. Rather, this was, once again, the guise of Helen Even that she'd worn when she'd first been exiled.
A book sat in her hand and she idly flipped through the pages, the cover old and worn, faded with age and it lacked any kind of letters on the front. She sighed, recrossing her legs as she leaned back in the chair.
The blonde had once more let her hair down, a voluminous wave of gold that tumbled down her shoulders and back. A vibrantly green turtle neck sweater clung to her curves, with ribbed stripes of another, darker green. A black skirt hugged her hips, the fabric clinging high around her waist and ending scandalously short on her thighs. Clearly, she had been keeping up with mortal fashions.
Another muttered word escaped her lips as she reclined, shifting her grip on the book before reaching for a nearby pencil and scribbling something down in it.
*
No one steals into the Wildenstein Mansion like a thief, save the finest thieves able to bypass notice of Loki of Asgard. Those sorts are few, cosmic beings or devilishly clever sorcerers, and they most definitely are not a redhead delivering a book and a handwritten note.
Or a folded blanket, wrapped in a ribbon. These things end up dispatched healthily by way of rooms on opposite sides of the building, their light footed messenger directed by one or two Asgardian servants used to seeing their Midgardner counterpart about. Hrimhari receives something; Loki receives something. No explanation will be forthcoming otherwise.
In a building populated by creatures of luminous abandon, long and strong of limb, glowing of skin, shining of hair, the hopeful temple of otherworldly beauty is made worse by its resident bombshell lounging around. Good thing that Scarlett does not even aspire to be other than how she appears, though she's had that deadly luster upon her briefly before.
A diversion to the kitchen seems unlikely, but one unimpressed servant points her that way. "Go eat. You look as though you'll fall over any moment now." Perhaps a dessert will pick her up. Textures fit to dance to, a dusting of honeycomb and a dreamy penance of blueberries or cream might be just the thing.
She steps in to find a bowl of whatever constitutes a meal, not about to commit heavily to eating, but the redhead rarely consumes much. "My lady," she murmurs in passing, reflex; there is no sneaking through, so might at least be lion-hearted about it.
*
Amora slowly lowers the book to the table top as Scarlett enters the room, her gaze shifting to follow the mortal with an arch of golden brows. "Scarlett," A pause, and the Enchantress shifts in her seat, leaning forward as she gestured to another chair beside her.
"Sit. Join me." Her voice was smooth and once more filled with the cleverly warm and charming hues that had once been present months prior, but had been missing these months past.
"And have a drink with me. I would have words."
*
Words. Words hold power, especially backed up by terrible strength of purpose and twisted convictions. The woman last seen on the Empire State Building in the arms of Thor returns to the normal current of life, as though nothing changed. In her long life, it probably amounts to no more than a blip. Goody.
Scarlett pauses 'ere grabbing a dish, and instead stops to pluck a slice of bread from the platter always laid out. Fast foods are welcome, surely, when the caprice of age-old creatures is involved. Nonetheless, the solitary mortal in the vicinity tips her head and presumably complies with Amora. Mind you, given whom her greater shadow is, it may be questionable if she complies with anything at all.
A nod follows, and Scarlett settles into a chair opposite the Enchantress, tucking her feet beneath her, knees touching, her ankles swept back. There lies a certain grace to the formal arrangement.
*
Amora leans forward, her manicured hands folding together to prop up her chin as she stares at Scarlett for a long time without speaking. Much like a cat with a tail twitching, Amora remains perfectly still, poised, to the point that it nearly becomes awkward. Then she sighed, leaning back and stretching her arms up over her head in a movement that, with anyone else, could be seen as sinuous.
"I'm sure you have questions as to what I am doing thusly returned, what I had planned by the light show upon the mortal's building on Alfablot. So, speak. Ask your questions. I would answer them now." She offered, her shoulders rolling backward as she jutted her chest out and folded her arms over her middle.
*
What will one see? A lack of age in human form, copper threaded braids in Asgardian formations netted across slim shoulders. Not an iota of damage anywhere to be found, the creamy sculpture given living form by an animated breath offsets the terribly French stylings of her gossamer dress and heavier cropped jacket. Only the fire of emerald suns banked in her gaze betrays a sort of awareness deeper than blithe, the formative lines of history inscribed in every blink, every passing second.
"Whether the princes deign to inform me is their business," she says simply, tearing the crust from the bread and releasing the fragrance of honey butter. Her fingers easily pluck through the soft interior, pulling free a morsel. "Your actions ought to have captured every camera in the city, though they did not. I suppose one may consider that a fortunate turn."
*
A heavy sigh followed Scarlett's words, and Amora shot the woman a flat glower over the table. Then she moved, reaching for her tankard of mead and sipping at it delicately. "Please, you do me little credit. The spells I cast that night were to ensure the lack of note. I did not cast one spell for one sole purpose. I lacked emotions, not thought. Everything I did was planned out. I /expected/ you, Thor and others to attend. Twas in my intent that you did. Granted, I had not planned for that mortal to arrive.. but.." She waved a hand as if in a shrug.
"The Princes, know not what I planned that night, nor have they cared to ask. None have. Nor do they care. However," She leaned forward then, propping her chin up with a hand, while the other gestured with a green manicured nail pointing Scarlett's way.
"I offer you a chance to question and fill your curiosity, if you so desire."
*
The morsel is popped into her mouth, though Scarlett shields the actual act of consuming the bread with her hand. Manners are considerable where she is involved. No slouching, slurping or mashing food into her face as fast as she can here; not that anyone credits her. "Why should they not speak to you regarding it? Assuredly this matter touches upon their bailiwick?" That may be surprising to her, though her tone declares little of that, giving a slight and delicate tension to the fine balance of her features. It's nearly impossible to ascertain what she thinks, at times.
"Truly, you held purpose. Why, then, my lady?" She knows how to play to an audience, a form of survival, and therefore she asks what must be said, assuredly as a playwright struck ink to page.
*
A slight shift follows, and Amora recrosses her legs. "Oh darling, simply because they cannot be bothered to know the truth of my actions. The Princes care not. Simply where they can apply to me a sort of horrid and pathetic tale to better their beliefs about their own actions." Her lips peeled back and she glanced down at the tankard in hand.
"The runes and the fashion that drew the energy of the mortals was simply the means to ignite the runes. The runes themselves were for protection of the crystals. I had not the power to spark anything, so I used the power of worship freely given. Hence, how I did not break a single law of Asgard nor any one decree."
*
A smooth curve drawn from shoulder to hip defines Scarlett's posture, her elbow braced on the table for a moment. She takes another slip of bread, a bite to be taken in the same veiled manner. "You know assuredly faith can empower someone, then. Have you been so cruelly treated that you would reap the wealth of belief, and deprive people of their wellbeing so obtain your health? Or is it affecting, perchance, that this destination would restore you a measure of grace?"
Her stillness goes on, other than that singular nibble of bread. "Putting this to reflection, are you so determined upon their opinion of the matter? I suppose when they are remote and likely dithering on a proper response?"
*
Another drawn sigh follows as she eyed Scarlett over the top of her tankard. "I did not use their worship for myself, I could not use the magicks born from that belief for myself. It would break Odin's decree on my magical bindings." Her fingers tapped against the tankard, nails scraping down the condensation that had gathered there.
"Using their belief would, in fact, kill them. I required their deaths not, however, I required the Thunderer's anger for lightning to be summoned. So I allowed him to believe such a thing might happen. He knows not the limits of such runes that were drawn upon the tower. All save Loki, would in fact have been lost. And were." She smiled, and sipped at her mead.
"The lightning summoned, now that, held the power that I desired and required."
*
"You had hoped he would brew a storm to fuel your spells, then, and thus what? It falls upon him for whatever happens, and the guilt is the result resting upon his shoulders? Would that presumably break his resolve?" Scarlett orchestrates a few questions, nothing quite so elaborate or in depth as one might expect if she were wroth. Certainly none of them come bearing an acidic point, none showing a certain force of rage or contained vehemence. No, she's disturbingly calm if one doesn't know her to be mild, contained, and deferential even if her nature is so much more kinetic and dynamic, robbed of its essential life force by circumstance.
Silence, calm, patience. They are horrible lessons for anyone to learn, much so the children of Midgard, but learn what one can, no? Her silence stretches out as she eats the bread, wordless.
*
A faint smile pulls at her lips once more, and Amora continues to nurse her mead. "Indeed, I had hoped he would fuel my spells. For I had naught the magic to do what I desired, and if I had drawn that power from the mortals, well.. I'm sure Loki could make a case that I was breaking one of the All-father's decrees—something I decidedly did not wish to prod. As it stands, I did not." She rolled her shoulders back as she spoke, warming to telling the tale as any good Asgardian would when they spoke at length with an audience.
"I cared not about what Thor thought or felt as a result of feeding the magic for my spell, remember, I held not the feelings that would drive such a spite. As I do now." She murmured, tapping her glass again.
"I merely needed him as… hmmm what mortals call a 'battery' I believe. A power source. And that he was. It required him to be angry for a storm of that magnitude. So I made sure to push him that far."
*
The itemized list of two thousand years of disagreements and disservice done to Amora can be boiled down into so many words. Scarlett rests her chin upon the palm of her hand, her elbow yet placed in purpose. "Now, then, you remain in the mansion. You surely have purpose, and you have your feelings restored. How do you reflect upon the efforts of that spell, or presumably the same in the future? Is it something that you no longer need to achieve?"
And why tell the least of them all? Is it power over the powerless?
*
A curve of a smile follows and Amora leaned forward, her chin propped up with a hand. "Oh my darling, what makes you think that my spells failed? That my plan did not succeed? I've no need to continue with such a thing now, it worked out as I desired, as I planned." She winked, taking a sip of her mead and looking very much like a self-satisfied cat.
"I no longer have a need to continue to tease mortals with such things, my fashion business lined with runes is over. I have no need to harness their worship." A shrug, "Your mortals need worry no further on /that/ account."
*
"It is you, not I, whom used the word failed." Scarlett's soft voice prevails upon the art of listening to be clearly heard. She is not the type to interject often, the more elaborate responses she so often turns at a moment of importance banished utterly in the present company and, perhaps, among more and more. Whatever penchant for explanation existed, it's not coming forth in the current atmosphere. Suicide by word is not her typical pattern, not any more.
Yet into murkier waters she steps, without complaint, giving Amora a slight arch of her brows. "You establish your independence. Your ability to draw even the crown prince of Asgard. You are once more in his company. All, my lady, seems to be much as it was a few months past. I suppose the spell reset the balance for you?"
It proves a gaping wound, too. "You have a purpose yet upon Midgard, else I think you may have flown."
*
Amora leaned back in her seat, recrossing her legs as she settle the tankard of mead upon the table once more. "No, I did not desire to be near the Princes. Not even the Crown Prince—that I planned not. I had little concept that the Queen would move as she did to chain me in service to Lady Sif. 'Till marriage or her ascendancy as Queen, I am thusly bound." She held up her hands, a snarl pulling at her lips.
"The spell had nothing to do with the Princes, or aught else connected to them. No. Twas not for me, nor them." She murmured softly.