|
    |
The woman couldn't have stood out more unless she had retained her wolfish form and attired herself in heels, walking around New York City while muttering, 'Hurr durr I'm a human, look at me walking around doing human things.' Fortunately for the good citizens of the city, who had the boundaries of their resilience for the adaptation of normalcy stretched daily, Skali had assumed human form. That's about all the effort she had put into it.
The Asgardian picked her way down the street clothed in heavy furs, dirt scuffed with her hair clotted in something that appeared foul. It was matted in places, untouched by a brush for months. The contrast between her vagrant appearance and the way she carried herself was stark, an diety made flesh and unamused by the restrictions it placed upon her, haughty carriage of her head and delicate prance of bare feet across broken glass and trash that whirled like tumbleweeds down Bleeker Street.
The prim little nose twitched, her amber eyes glinted, and she selected the doorway that bore the Sorcerer's scent, leaning back against the doorbell so that it rang. And rang. And rang. As if she could not be inconvenienced to not lean against it, she checked her nails and scraped out a bit of gore from underneath one.
*
The stream of tea from pot to cup is paused as the wards report a visitor not seconds before the first chime of the doorbell. And then another chime. And another? His dark brows knit in a bewildered frown as he attempts to separate silvery spells' report from chiming — Feral. Blood. Fur. Female. — and then a resigned sigh. Of course, the Sorcerer remembers now. Well…might as well go answer the door. And stop the gods-damned doorbell from chiming before he curses the mechanism defunct.
"I'm coming," he calls out as he stomps down the Grand Staircase, wards hanging about around him like leery guard dogs. "Alright, alright!!! I'm COMING, HOLD ON!!!" Perhaps those sensitive ears can catch the shout behind the thick wood of the doors even as the lock clicks and he yanks the portal open. "Skali Kineseeker, for the love of the Vishanti, stop leaning on the doorbell!" A pause and his glower lessens as she gets the once-over…and Strange grimaces. "You still have blood in your hair."
With palm curled around the door's edge, he hasn't stepped from the doorway just yet, his presence clearly indicating that an invite beyond the threshold is necessary to enter.
*
Treachery by ward, reconnaissance by intuition: there is a reason only mystics and demons ever seem to bother a certain property on Bleecker Street, and yon self-styled gods or great powers approach the tidy, elegant property in high 19th century fashion at their own risk. Lending the master of said realm to grow irritated is just cause for retribution from any number of corners, and not the least may be the Sorcerer Supreme himself. Do imagine the consequences for interrupting one of the many naps required by that feline Myrddin of Ruta, a hazard to be pursued at one's own risk of limb, life, and proper sanity.
The hour appointed belongs to practice of another kind, and bombastic noise crashing through the peace halts the witch with swords in hand. No cup of tea here; unless it so happens to be the one set aside for her later. Spell ichor coats the blade, ectoplasm licking down the runnel and dissolving into embers before it hits the floor, but the interruption ears a hardening of the fae mask of her features. Wiping the underside of her arm against her brow, she turns sharply on her toes and proceeds out to discover what on Earth all the fuss is about. Hearing Strange's voice raised constitutes reason for her to be on less than her best behaviour, climbing stairs and stepping into the foyer after a very short time indeed. The wards won't have much to say about her other than the constructs summoned or fashioned for her practice are already falling apart, waiting to be called up again. Or that she smells faintly of blackberries and airy climes, and the sword and her daggers are very much real. One has to wonder where she got such lovely cutlasses from, unless they've met Squiggly.
*
Lorna had been practicing her Polish and her training, wouldn't her father be proud? Of course being trained by Merlin in how to speak Polish, along with hearing stories and side tales in between was a fascinating story in its own right. Still, a half dozen little coins of various sizes bobbed around Lorna's head and she tried to read at the same time. An attempt at expanding her focus.
The door bell buzzing, ended that endeavor however. The coins plinked down, and as Wanda strode by on her way toward the foyer, the younger brunette picked herself up off the cushioned chair and trailed along after.
"Is everything okay?" She hedged, brows pinched as she trailed along after her older half sister. Green eyes wide and curious as the buzzing continued and she could hear the Doctor's raised voice beyond.
She was clad in a pair of sweat pants and sweater. Her hair tied back in a messy bun. She certainly hadn't bothered with dressing 'nicely' since her vague sort of house arrest had been reinforced by her father. Stocking'ed feet or slippers tended toward her sole foot wear.
*
The expression that greeted the Sorcerer Supreme was all teeth, but this time aligned in a human dentition while the wolf goddess seemed neither perturbed by the disruption she had caused. True to her bloodline, she seemed to revel in the little thread of chaos her mischief was pulling out and so she elegantly shifted her weight only after a lingering savor of his irritation. Yet her posture did not aggress, a twitch of her grin the only evidence that the wards were plucking at her presence in an obnoxious fashion. Clever boy, indeed. It felt like something brushing her fur opposite to the way it choose to lay, and she knew better than to tempt such magics with outward defiance.
"They did not have a shower at the village. I asked but it is so difficult to get a word in edgewise over screaming."
Pauses as she regards the crowd amassing behind his shoulder, that glint in her eyes flickering ever brighter as she purred,
"All alive, all alive, I took your advice after my last meal and thought perhaps since my apartment is still in ruin and I have nothing to my name, perhaps I could use your bathroom?"
A head tilt, another glance to the people behind him as her nose twitched and she focused those lupine eyes on Lorna,
"Hello, everyone. Sorry about the other day, Sweetling. I was not myself."
*
As the Varg's attention shifts beyond him, it brings Strange too to glance back. Ah, Wanda — and Lorna. The two young women are given a circumspect lingering look; the Witch likely knows him well enough that it's an unspoken warning. Hopefully the younger half-sister will take notes from her relation as the Sorcerer turns back to address Skali.
"I can't imagine why they would scream." So dryly-spoken, but he reneges. "My Apprentice has taken up residence elsewhere, so yes, you're welcome to use her bathroom." Her words to Lorna aren't addressed with much beyond a quiet snort. Not herself, the Varg was entirely herself, he muses silently. With that, he steps back and allows the fur-clad woman entry into the foyer. Should she step inside, the silvery wards will briefly increase the intensity of their scrutiny and swirl about her. The foreign magics indeed cause them minor worry, as will the presence of blood, but without bidding by their master, all they do is ruffle the fur-coat before retreating to hover behind his shoulder with the weight of their demi-sentient focus upon her still.
*
The corsair's blade ends up smoothly caught in the loop at her waist, hung from a wrapped leather belt sufficiently broad enough to duplicate the effects of a good corset on her lower body. Albeit the serviceable, thick hide is tough enough to withstand a nuclear bomb, it also manages to provide an excellent perch for her finger to hook. "Good. Someone answered," she observes in a dry tone seared of any inflections beyond the lyrical flood Transian drenches over English, given the least opportunity. Her stance is mindful but not particularly aggressive, but then she wears a sword in the middle of the Sixties, so take into account what one will. The girl could very well be high on LSD and run off to the pagan party taking place at Governor's Island, much to the despair of Shield. What? Teens and twenty-somethings get bored.
Rubbing the back of her hand against the garnet-studded headband spanning her brow, she flicks her dusky hair away from her face in a casual movement. "Do you remember where the people who clean clothes are? The building, not the Chinese service," she idly notes to Lorna, as though women dressed in ragged ruffian furs and proclaiming they have nine ranks of Barbarian are an everyday thing. Perhaps they are.
*
Finally, as all seems to calm some what, Lorna sighs, shifting her grip on her book and letting the coins lift up from her palm to dance around her again. At least, until the woman, wolf-thing, Lorna had no idea she was an Asgardian, glanced her way. The eyes hit something instinctive in the young magnokinetic and the coins stopped their idle bobbing to freeze in the air around her head.
The young woman's throat tightened as Strange stepped aside to let the creature enter. The coins following their mistress as she stepped closer into Wanda's shadow. Yet she kept silent otherwise. Even if all the metal in the room suddenly became /very/ much attuned to the magnetic fields that spun off Lorna.
Nothing moved yet. Nothing shuddered or trembled or budged. But it was clear that Lorna had noted every aspect of metal in the room, down to the nails in the floor. And if there was an odd pressure around the young woman, it certainly wasn't due to the wards.
*
Skali slinks in, the figure underneath that heavy fur coat suddenly shouldering into appearance as the coat off and fell into a puddle of hide on the floor. Kicking it away with a happy little noise, the Asgardian stood stark naked in the entry hall of the sanctum, save for the dried viscera and caked gore along her human flesh. The wards were suffered with a little shiver of sinew that was readily apparent even as she let out a sigh and breathed,
"Oh thank goodness, that was getting dreadfully hot. You're too kind, really."
The glass that had embedded in the soles of her bare feet was falling out with a chiming sound as it hit the cold floor, forced free as the body healed around it and the creature looked over a powerful shoulder to regard the women muttering between themselves,
"Oh don't fret about the coat. The man who let me borrow it isn't expecting it back."
There was something in the way her smile dimpled, the little crinkling of her eyes at the edges, that did not insinuate good things for whoever had loaned her the attire.
*
Coat on floor, he's not but an arm's length from skin that should not have that much flaking iron-ink upon it. Lots of it. All bared. The Sorcerer blinks and looks back at Wanda to give her an incredulous look before turning back to Skali.
"Yes, I've been told that before. If you don't want to keep the coat, I'm burning it." The furnace downstairs will do the job properly and the doors form a solid seal against escaping odors. Nothing like the smell of burning fur and blood. No matter her answer, Strange keeps his eyes above her collarbone even as he curls a smirk. "If you'll follow me, I'll show you to the shower room in question." Turning on his heel, he strides across the foyer to the Grand Staircase, passing Wanda and Lorna. His projection to his Beloved is unheard to all but her:
This is the Asgardian Varg who attempted to eat Miss Lorna. I can handle her. If you could help calm Miss Lorna, that would be best. Tea? I can sense the metal in the room reacting to her. Likely the Witch can as well; she's sensitive on par to the highest echelon of supernatural beings.
*
The contemplated fur receives a look, and the witch no doubt considers whether she can offer that hideous chunk of flesh and hair to someone who needs it, like a northern barbarian King with problems involving an ice wall and too many contenders to his throne. Might as well submit it to somewhere else. The choice remains Strange's, and he speaks of his intentions, aborting her efforts to render the shaggy coat properly out of sight, mind, and place. Wanda allows for the mildest blink to pass, and a smile full of too many sharp teeth around parted lips hits the proverbial stony wall aforementioned before. One of them keeps the monstrous, ravenous hordes back, and the other tries to make the wall fall down. The Scarlet Witch in her normal aspect, such as now, is always bloodied, perpetually begemmed by the hue of life's blood poured out from the veins, stabbed from the essential organ itself.
For an Asgardian's eyes, she might as well be the petite incarnation of sorcerous warfare, nature's plumage attached to someone of no real regard in height or stature, except that the most deadly things in the living world needn't be the largest or the fastest. Witness Australia. Home to none of the world's largest or fastest or bitiest, yet fully capable of decimating its native population so many times over — at least on a humanoid scale — that it's something of a joke among the world's southerly penal colony.
"No one will ask you to clean that, Miss Dane. Come and let us find a towel large enough for that." No doubt she's going to fetch up a drop cloth the size of the sanctum's outer facade, which at over three storeys tall, is bound to be fairly large. "Visitors here can be odd and often with extra teeth and arms. They are still our supper if they act wrong. Let's make sure to put your things away." Elder sister is no more bothered than she was when the debut of the pushbutton phone ended up being a spirit infestation.
*
As the strange woman dropped the blood bedecked coat onto the floor to reveal.. nothing at all beneath, Lorna turned red. Shock colored her embarassment as she side eyed the wolf in human form— which was in fact pointed out by Strange unbeknownst to her ears. Still, the young woman kept to her sibling's side, her hands clutching the book of 'Introduction to Polish' to her chest as she watched on in silence.
The coins floating around her head followed her side step closer toward Wanda, though they did not spin merrily as they had before. Rather they seemed to move in alignment to be flung at the predatory creature in the foyer.
Wanda's comment took a moment too long for her to process, and when it did register, Lorna blinked in surprise. "Wait what clean? What?" She seemed jarred from her connection to the metal in the room, and the intensity of her defensiveness ebbed to faint static.
The brunette's nose wrinkled up at the thought of cleaning anything that covered in gore, her lips pursing together in disgust briefly.
*
Skali's nose had not stopped moving since she entered the foyer. While her form was human, there were still some issues in adjusting to humanity once more. Distracted from Strange's words momentarily, a few additional huffs were drawn in as she considered the formerly forgotten woman with sickled blades hanging at her hip. A lingering tilt of her head, and then she smiled in a matching fashion to that dangerous mask worn by the other; the sort of glee that only something large and predatory can have when it meets a potential rival in power. If she had her tail, it would have flicked playfully before she nodded in a congenial fashion and fell into step behind Strange. The stride was silent, inhuman in the way her musculature wasted no effort, a grace imbued in the way she prowled that did not belong on two legs.
"They're nice. Do you have a harem here, Doctor? I would so make a lovely guard dog. You could get me a collar and maybe a nice little bed on the floor. I don't shed."
There was a teasing edge to her voice that was childish instead of coy in nature, the playful immaturity of immortality that could not suffer modesty incarnate.
*
If Skali had a tail present, there would be twenty-seven children's bow clips and bobbles in it, the kind that rip out clods of hair when removed, and inhibit any sort of polite movement because they snag on everything. Thus would Asgard's reputation be besmirched and Fenrir left hiding his nose under Jormungandr's slimy coils: his daughter waylaid by the average drugstore Goody brand product. Woe! Shame!
*
Merlin has left.
*
Thank you, «Beloved». I owe you. The gratitude flies to her with the ghosting brush of relieved affection at her cheek.
At the first landing, beneath the stylized Eye of Agamotto in the giant circular window, he hears the Varg's question and cannot help the choked laugh that escapes him. Despite himself, he glances and shakes his head, muted amusement in his narrowed eyes as they continue to climb the steps towards the second floor and its guest bedrooms. "No, Skali, they are not my harem. They are family. The woman in red, with the sword, she is my mate — Soulbonded," he adds, attempting a term she's likely familiar with. "The other one, the one you attempted to eat, is relation to her. Not harem in the least."
They reach the landing of the second floor and take a right turn, past the blue-and-white Dynasty vase that holds myriad spirits. Pausing to check that everything is secured, including its mounting within the glass case, Strange then continues. "And I have the wards, which also do not shed." A smirk towards her, gaze kept still politely above her collarbone. "Third door down, on the left," the Sorcerer gestures with his hand towards it. "There are towels already in the bathroom. Leave them on the floor when you're done. I'll need to burn them as well, since they'll smell like wet dog." The grin curls further in his own brand of immaturity.
*
Log Edit: Ming Dynasty. Or else the reader may think it's a Duck Dynasty vase and we can't have that.
*
Log Edit: I, as Strange's writer, one billion percent agree with this.
*
Log Edit: However, Dynasty with giant shoulder pads and glittery bedazzled Joan Collins vase? Win!
*
Might as well just burn the whole Sanctum down and rebuild at this rate. Out with the spirits and the books, put the relics in a box, and set up a construction zone on the grounds where the demolished building once stood. Nothing ever really gets the stink of foreign interdimensional mutt out, clearly.
Wanda is evidently unbothered by nudity, and why ever would she worry? She is, of everyone here, the true witch and of such odd bloodlines that a woman showing up naked at one's doorstep really constitutes the least egregious of sins. Now littering? That's another matter when it comes to hospitality, and she can snarl all she wants about that.
"How is your language study going? Polish is not so bad. The sounds are a bit hard to the ear, yes? I find it easier than Russian."
Her walk carries her towards one of the hallways where she came from, making abundantly clear she has no intention whatsoever of touching the filthy fur, let alone seeing it washed. The best she'll allow is simply that something will wash it, and that is that. "Maybe we can have a Rains rainshower outside. That would be nicer." She's already counting down the hours til she can boot everyone out and sit back with her drink, surveying the world through a blurry lens. "Trishul has this very well and under control. You need not be troubled. Here, then." A door is opened, not the practice room where she efficiently murdered ectoplasmic conjurations, but a tidy corner that probably served as a reading room or a storage place for extra dining room chairs, once.
*
Lorna trailed after her sister as soon as Strange and the wolf-woman departed. The myriad of coins dancing around her started to twirl and spin again in a merry dance, bobbing up and down and around the young woman as she smiled easily toward Wanda's questions. "Mister Merlin has been helping me. He's really a good teacher, I mean he gets side tracked, with stories. But I ask a lot of questions." She mused and shrugged as she padded after her down the hall.
A glance into the room where Wanda had been training earns her sibling another shrug and she makes to walk passed it. "It's okay. I'm gonna go back to reading." She waved to her sibling, and continued down the hall.
*
Skali pauses at the top of the steps, looking quietly over her shoulder at the two women even as they depart. There's something in her gaze as she considers them anew with a faint smile, an expression of wistful jealousy for their place that did not abate when she looked back at the Sorcerer Supreme.
"She is a powerful mate, and seems the sort to inspire to greatness so you can be of value to her in life. That's a lovely thing."
Surprisingly, there was no sarcasm in her tone, even as she chewed her bottom lip briefly and then slunk past him with a grin resurfacing at his words,
"It is a pack you have. I won't overstay my welcome. Simply would enjoy hot water and a roof while I collect myself. It's so loud here. You forget that when you are no longer in the city."
A small little inclination of her head as she ghosts by him, heading towards the third door with swagger to her step that even the feral shift of energy through her limbs could not smooth.
*
"Indeed, a pack," he replies, the air of humor receding towards respectful consideration in his tone. "Get as clean as you wish. There should also be a bathrobe in there as well, though I don't know the size."
Sorcerer watches the she-Varg travel down the hallway for naught but a moment before shaking his head and chuckling quietly. He won't precisely babysit, but he sure as hell isn't leaving this floor unattended. His retreat back down the hallway takes him to the railing that keeps folk from pitching headlong to the foyer floor and he leans folded arms on it.
Clearly he's off his game with supernatural protocol. Musing on this causes his gaze to level on the stained-glass window across the distance from him and fuzz out with inattention. Really, though, that coat is getting burned. Gods only know the sheer volume of blood on its and the types. He won't have any malingering ghosts drawn here for negligence.
At a silent beckoning, the silvery wards appear before him and he dictates a little message to be delivered to its recipients. They swish away from their brooding master into the foyer and down a side hallway. Hopefully it catches both women before they space themselves too far and Strange's voice echoes as if he stood there:
"Have no fear, the Varg simply showers. Lorna, you're welcome to meet her as human. I promise on the power of my mantle and the godly Vishanti that you are safe with me present. Skali Kineseeker and I have…a truce of sorts. Wanda would not let her lay a finger or claw upon you as well. If you wish to do so, meet us in the living room."
*
Lorna sighed, and rather than hiding away in her room with the plush blankets, pillows and warmth of her borrowed bed, she made her way to the living room. Her book was deposited away, but more than a few more coins found their way into the myriad bouncing and twirling around her person. A few would drop from time to time into her hands and she would play with skating them over her finger tips before launching them back up into the air.
It was a lesson in focus, to keep walking and paying attention to everything else going on around her. Too often did her focus break and cause her trouble when it mattered.
So she found herself, only one more delay in the kitchen to snag a candy bar that Tommy had brought her, back in the living room. A chair was picked and she snuggled into it, munching away on the corner of the chocolate bar.
*
There wasn't a reason for concern, unless the Doctor had a budget in mind for his water bill. Hopefully there was a nice bench or something he could lounge on, so long did she linger in the showers offered up to her. It took almost a full forty five minutes to scrub the blood out of her pores, the coagulated filth from underneath her nails, to untangle the matted mane and finally look human in full. The flesh that bound her was pretty enough, though the thick dark hair wasn't more than casually toweled dry and the appearance free of adornment as she slipped from the steam filled chamber with the aforementioned bathrobe secured lest her lack of modesty be interpreted as some sly effort to steal amorous attentions in another female's territory.
Sauntering down the hall still barefoot, she joined the living once more, smiling as the wards nudged at her freshly laundered self and frisking to one side almost playfully as if the unseen forces of the universe could be tempted into a game of chase. Finding their willingness to engage less than satisfactory, she came abreast with their keeper, nudging him with a hip in greeting though it was certainly unnecessary as she mused,
"Don't suppose you have something to drink besides water?"
Really, the god had no shame.
*
Only the Witch truly knows how long he can manage to brood. He's very good at it and sometimes it takes a startling attempt to garner his attention once more. Forty-five minutes was more than enough time for him to begin to develop a bit of a crick in his lower back for all that Strange continued to lean and glare half-lidded at the mosiac glass window.
Not so deeply enamored with turning over every last stone within recent memory in regards to dealing with wolf-type entities that the Varg catches him off-guard, but she'll definitely catch him with chin in hand, drumming his free fingertips on the wood of the railing. The wards pinging her approach and he glances over to see her wearing a bathrobe — thank the gods. Crisis averted.
The hip check isn't returned but with an eyeroll as he straightens. A soft grunt as his back catches and he lingers there, hands resting still upon the darkwood. "At least you're not doing that bizarre leaning thing. Do you know how long it took me to get all the fur off of my Cloak?" No, she probably doesn't, and no, she probably doesn't care, hence his not expanding further on the complaint. "We have a good number of things other than water, but for now, tea will suffice." Stepping around her, the Sorcerer leads the way back down the grand staircase. "I have a bone-broth tea that might appeal to you. It's useful for recovering from anemia, thicker than a standard herbal tisane," he says over his shoulder.
In the living room, he finds Lorna and pauses a few steps in. Hopefully Skali keeps this in mind and continues no further inside as well.
"Lorna? You're safe." The reminder is quiet, steeled underneath with conviction. That being said: "This is Skali Kineseeker. I won't assume to apologize for her actions before, but she won't threaten you again." And he glances over at Skali with his own variation on a wolfish toothy smile. "Will you?"
*
Lorna glanced up from nibbling on her candy bar. She was slowly eating away at the edges. The forty-five minutes however, had her going back to her room and snagging a book. So when Strange enters, she already has the book held up by a half dozen coins pinching the cover and pages in place before her. Her own figure was sprawled backwards, legs crooked over an armrest.
At the Doctor's words, however she sits up, glancing beyond him toward the woman-wolf thing. She had never met an Asgardian before and certainly didn't apply the change of shape to Norse myth. Were wolves? Yes. Gods? No.
The other half dozen coins stopped their spinning, dropping one by one onto her lap, before she glanced back to Strange.
"Okay." A pause, "If she does, it's not like there isn't iron here."
*
The varg had spent a lifetime being around those that conducted themselves with more dignity than herself, and thus his tolerance of her antics was received with a smirk. She kept time with his step, occasionally falling behind to inspect something a bit more closely, her curiosity boundless and bordering on painfully inquisitive despite her age. So many pretty things and complicated peoples in one place!
"Oh there are things here I would loooooove to just bathe in the scent of but not everything is as resilient as you to my attentions."
Nope, she didn't care a wit. The fact she hadn't eaten him that day was a high compliment, and doubled with her appreciation of his scent, he was in honorable and restricted company. Not that he could have known that and she wasn't about to inform him that the magics here made her hackles unfurl just under the skin and her nose ceaselessly twitch.
Yawning at his offer she muttered something about 'whiskey' or 'scotch' being preferable, but she had a feeling such requests would be ignored. Tea? What genteel member of society did he think he was dealing with here? She snorted at the thought, and to clear a particularly spiced hit of otherworldly energy that she had gotten a hit of, before pausing at his lead.
Once introductions had been made, she prowled into the room behind him, staring at the candy bar in the now introduced stranger's hand with a hungry smile. She wasn't looking at the candy. "Ohmygoodness, she's adorable. Lorna, yes? Iron can't kill me but it would make things quite uncomfortable and at present, I'm not particularly interested in eating you. Just don't do the squeaking, running thing again. It makes it hard to think clearly."
*
"Skali Kineseeker, behave," the Sorcerer mutters with that wolfish grin disappearing into a thin smile containing more recrimination than amusement. "Don't make me collar you."
That tart warning having been given, he makes his way over to the tea set by the fireplace. Rolling back the sleeves of his dress shirt, he gets to making up whatever he feels is appropriate for each individual present: the bone-broth blend for the one inclined towards blood, a calming blend of chamomile and ginger for the one considering flinging various of metal into said Varg at the drop of a pin — or rather, the flick of a fountain pen, maybe — and a standard dark blend not quite a Chai, but including other various notes from the Far East that appeals to both him and his Beloved regularly.
"Now that you're more presentable, are you choosing to rejoin society? You should probably start by getting a job…being useful," he adds over his shoulder as he stirs in a spoonful of honey to one of the cups.
*
Wanda leaves, heading towards Sanctum Sanctorum - 3rd Floor [UP].
*
Wanda has left.
*
Lorna lowered her candy bar to stare at the woman. Her brows furrowing as she held her silence and processed the fact that she'd been called cute in the same breath that the woman spoke of eating her. "I wasn't talking about iron specifically for you, I can manipulate magnetic fields. Ferromagnetism requires iron, and is in most modern things, like pipes, or cars.. There's also diamagnetism and paramagnetism, but I have yet to really practice with those." She pursed her lips together, drawing her knees close.
An uncomfortable shift followed as she side eyed the woman, Strange's words earning a flicker of a glance as she released the coins back into the air around her to float about again.
"He's already on a job kick since his son mentioned working to get one." She offered softly.
*
Skali slouches onto the couch that was being occupied by the little magnokenetic without much awareness for personal space or safety, smiling sweetly at the suggestion from her protector and sticking out her tongue at his turned back.
"You're no fun."
With that proclamation decreed, she turned her focus back to the young woman that had previously been prey with an appraising eye,
"That's curious. One of those mutagen sorts, yes? Fascinating bit of development there in the human race. Not that it wasn't overdue for one. I shudder to think what Sparta could have done with a handful of your sorts."
As Strange's voice cut in, she rolled her eyes and looked at his back with a silent pantomime of 'get a job, Skali', 'be productive, Skali' completed with a hand motion. At Lorna's insight, she smiled broadly and shrugged,
"Well my last employer is dead, so that is going to make getting references difficult. Plus I'm an illegal three times over, and Loki didn't particularly leave the situation here in good standing. But I can sense you're bursting with paternal advice over there that my long-neglected childhood never had. Please, tell me how to better myself. I've always wanted to know?"
*
It wouldn't be the first time he's been Fuddy-Duddy Supreme. Probably won't be the last time either, with what he can garner of his short association with the she-Varg. Likely the two women in the room can see him shaking his head slowly even as he finishes pouring out the tea. Like the good host he is, Strange delivers a cup to the side table nearest to Lorna (the ginger blend) and the bone-broth is set down nearest to Skali. He walks to and fro, returning with his own cup in hand and leans against the back of the nearest single-occupant plush chair.
"I don't think I'll waste my time trying, since you tend to do precisely as you please." Sip. Mmm. The tea is just right and the relief for something going normally can be seen in his sigh of quiet contentment. "If your employer is dead, then you have a blank slate. Difficult to complain when you're dead. No one will know you're more than human unless you reveal it. Play to your strengths…without killing anyone," he adds flatly.
*
The stuck out tongue earns a small, muffled giggle behind Lorna's hand as she watches Skali. The lack of personal space, or belief in its existence didn't seem to bother the mutant any, and she looked more amused than anything as Skali spoke. "Mutant, it's based on some extra gene. I dunno exactly how that works. It's not my science. Though I've heard the Professor at the Xavier Institute talk about it in detail before. I've been studying geophysics instead. It's related to my powers. I can lift a car." She perked up, and smiled.
It would seem that whole trying to kill her thing, had been forgiven for the moment. It would seem that Skali got off easier than Pietro had in that regard. He had bitten her though, Skali had only tried and failed.
"Also I can manipulate the Earth's magnetic fields. It's how I can levitate or make other things levitate. I can also use electromagnetic currents, that's electricity, to strengthen my own magnetism. My father uses it." A pause, "Not the Doctor isn't my father, just to clarify."
Another pause. "He's like my brother in law? I guess? He's going steady with my half sister. Who.. well okay. that's complicated." She bit her lower lip, chewing off a piece of chapped skin.
"Thank you." She mumbled, as the Doctor set a cup of tea down beside her.
*
Skali preens as the tea is set before her, sniffing it with a final hopeful consideration of alcohol. Nope, only tea. It was still sipped at idly, she even raised a pinkie finger in mild mockery of the whole civilized situation. Her legs crossed as she turned her focus from the difficult guidance counselor and his other protege.
"Listen, some people get geophysics, some people get murdering. We all have our skill sets. And I daresay, my last employer was quite fond of me so there."
The wolf's pride seemed to be wounded a bit at his insinuation that she would need a clean slate. She had possessed a meager existence but a relatively wonderful one at that. The antics of her grandsire and the ice giants had put an end to that. The emotion flickered across her features as quickly as hackles smoothed and she twitched an ear back to Lorna with a smile,
"Soul bonded, yes. It makes you pack. Not that complicated."
*
If only they knew how complicated it got at times, might continually get, being Soulbound to her, but his sincere affection for the Witch shows in the half-hidden smile behind his cup of tea.
"Yes, Wanda is pack." Boy, that sounded odd coming from his mouth. "Might call her the…alpha female? Am I using the terminology correctly?" Though check out the quicksilver speed of his thoughts. It leads him to a moment of consideration, where his keen gaze rests on Skali for some moments, before he muses aloud, "I've read that your kind has influence over other wolves, dogs. There is a pack at the zoo here, likely others in nearby zoos outside of New York. You could consider becoming a keeper. I doubt the pay would be equivalent to the quality of care and control you would offer them, but it would be a way to hide in plain sight."
Another sip and he crosses his legs at the ankle, resting a toe on the floor in a pose of utterly-nonchalant confidence. Clearly the alpha within his own mansion. "Otherwise, if you still want to keep killing…pest exterminators are always needed." Not smiling. Not smiling at all. Okay, lies, the very corners of his lips rise, noticeable to someone paying close attention. "And there will come a time when I could use your assistance." The implications there are profound.
*
A wrinkle of her nose and Lorna shook her head, "Yeah, not what I was trying to mean was complicated. Mostly how.. never mind." She groaned, and flung herself back in her chair with a grimace. Clearly, the desire to please everyone and stay 'safe' warred with the latent energy in her system. Keeping a teenager inside for over a week?
A side long glance shot toward Skali, and she exhaled a huff of a breath. "Not many jobs out there that hire based on that whole … skill set." She muttered, crossing her arms as she picked up her book again and frowned down faintly at the foreign language.
She fell quiet as the Doctor spoke, made a face and then chose to keep her silence.
*
Skali seems to be sufficiently amused by his efforts to translate her own hierarchy back to a wolf, shaking her head as she sipped again at the broth tea, now enjoying it to some degree and thus abandoning her mocking efforts.
"It's a term human's use. Both my Midgardian counterparts as well as myself aren't quite as rigid in our understanding of who commands a group. It's in our best interests to simply focus on a cohesive effort at survival. Or that's how it should be; Odin would offer a different opinion."
In his lengthy moment of consideration, she looked sideways at the young girl with a smirk, not failing to notice the huff and tense energy radiating off of her. Skali could empathize. She may have said as much if not distracted back to Strange on his throne. A quizzical expression traced her features.
"I think you grossly overestimate my ability to be hired without an education or formal citizenship papers. As lovely as that sounds, the only way your society would like me to contribute is as a cleaning woman."
Surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of derision in her tone, having done that task before as well as innumerable others throughout a few lifetimes.
*
The Sorcerer isn't too proud to learn and he does then, reassigning titles and positions within his mind as to his own family. Not too far from the truth, her explanation in terms of whom he counts as his own pack; the Witch does hold a great deal of command within the Sanctum.
"I don't think I underestimate your ability to procure these formal citizenship papers. Unless cleaning woman does appeal to you." He does note the lack of rue in her expression and tone alike and does find it interesting. Not too proud then, after all. It grants the she-Varg another facet in his estimation. "Lorna has a point, unfortunately," he murmurs, acknowledging the young magnokinetic with her quiet scowl and pent-up youthful energy. "Your options are limited. I'm uncertain as to how to assist you."
*
Lorna shifted in her seat, sighing as she set the book aside with a soft whisper of paper and cover shutting. She instead turned her attention to shifting the coins around in a bored manner, one hand held aloft as she directed them and the other took up the tea cup to sip at.
"Well she could always go to work in Mutant Town. Not like anyone there checks papers or anything before hiring people. And I mean.. it's not like there isn't trouble there pretty frequently. I mean there was that massacre.. Maybe she could do some good there by helping out?" She ventured, arching a brow as she spoke. And immediately grimaced and shook her head.
"Never mind that's not a good idea."
*
Skali quietly regards the Sorcerer over the edge of the team cup, her eyes hazed by the steam as she drew it down into her chest and looked quietly between the two. Warm, clean, comfortable; he was a fool to not see that assistance had already been given and duly received. Quietly she set the cup down on her lap and weighed him in turn.
"You have chained me, healed me, named me, cleaned me and clothed me. Certainly you do not struggle to assist those that you find, Doctor. It is just that sometimes, they may need to remember how to do these things for themselves. Do not let it chafe at your altruistic accomplishments."
A casual glance was turned to Lorna as she smiled easily at the mention of a 'massacre', probably too easily.
"I only passed through there once. A protester harassed me. My dog mauled him. It was all very dramatic. I think I will finish this tea and listen to you two discuss human things. Perhaps it will remind me of what normalcy has been lost and better inform the reclamation of it."
With that said, she settled back into the couch and let the evening pass in exactly that fashion, ultimately excusing herself to departure with whatever clothes could be offered, and slipping out into the streets of New York with nothing further requested or acknowledged.
*