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Amora had been.. occupied with the mortal Donald Blake, to put it lightly. If Scarlett had appeared at all in the last several weeks she'd find the Enchantress fawning over the mortalesque Asgardian with an ever increasing protectiveness and frevour. It would seem an almost ravenous need for him to be Thor and restore him.
Yet all paths led to failure and questions unanswered.
This now, now, Amora searched out her apprentice, having exhausted her thousand of years of knowledge to try for as of yet untested paths. She appeared where ever it was that her apprentice resided, her figure and form aglow with a golden hue otherwise unseen till now.
"I have need of you."
*
Where does Scarlett wander in these days? Follow a hunch and Columbia University proves a suitable old haunt, but the erratic routine she follows constitutes no sort of routine at all. Wandering, weaving, an unpredictable route gives no sign when she might be in class or floating on the cloudtops or deep in the clubs of Greenwich Village, losing herself in the primal masses without ever touching the human animal. Her condition is completely unfathomable for anyone trying to observe her. It's like she deliberately goes out of her way to break the pattern.
The apprentice, such as she is, stands in the midst of a conservatory on Long Island, the sort of place inherited for the winter by students whose parents go south or to Europe and will be returning. She has a cutting in a pot and stands up to her knees in various rare ferns and jungle plants probably brought back from Borneo or Java or Madagascar in the Victorian period. Why she is here isn't apparent — an arrangement to help a professor or a friend, probably. But the luminous apparition brings her chin up, a look focused upon it with eyes even more intensely auroral than the Enchantress itself.
"You've figured the doors to Asgard are open?" she replies quite dryly.
*
A smirk and Amora steps with a click of her heels into a more corporeal form. Her blonde hair lifting up in the breeze to catch and flutter teasingly around her. "Aye, tis so. The Bifrost has been restored.." A pause, "But not the Princes." Another pause.
"The Sorcerer Supreme left a riddle.. and .. and I shall admit that I am unaware of his meanings. I require your mortal knowledge as well as your powers. I need a test for the man known as Donald Blake that I believe to be the Thunderer." She pursed her lips.
"I have sent the Valkyrie to Asgard to ascertain what has passed there. To see if the All-father has wrought all this or naught."
*
"Not quite the same Bifrost either." Scarlett leans down to extract a slender knife from the soft, damp soil surrounding the bobbing collection of greenery, the textural details of a rubber tree so different from delicate acacia and soaring palms, orchids, and other flowering species burning like candles in a sylvan night. She, too, burns; the foxfire tresses tumbling down her shoulders in elaborate braids captured in designs speaking to the torturous elements of fate. It's in her plaits that she weaves the rage of her own creation, the skald left to fend against the Norns, their herald voiceless and powerless.
Patting the one snipped cutting, she slips the knife back into the tough leather sheath at her upper thigh. Not hard to imagine her thriving in a glorious garden somewhere in Asgard, running wild in Vanaheim, in the court of Alfheim in gossamer finery that conceals a body hard as metal and far more durable in ways. "It is often futile to understand a man such as he if he wishes not to be comprehended. Words within words come shaded with meanings perhaps even he fails to countenance until their moment comes to pass," she remarks dryly. "You believe I can test this Mr. Blake to cough up his status? Godsblood, how much of Loki's handmaiden do you suspect I am? Or do you think the once King of Asgard hedged his survival through interweaving his being with me? I assure you, my capacity for mischief isn't quite that high and he no doubt kicks a rock having not thought of it himself."
*
Annoyance flickered to life in her mercurial gaze and Amora reached to try to seize the redhead's arm as she gestured to Scarlett's hand. "You shook hands with him. Bare skin to skin. I am aware of what your power is in the scantest of ways. But if you shook Donald Blake's hand, would you not be able to compare? His mannerisms, his .. strength are that of the Thunderer. Even if most of his body and memories are not." Yes she had seen both Thor and Donald's bodies enough to know the comparison was lacking in a great many ways.
It was expected after all.
"Thus I would ask for your test. I ask for your mind to puzzle over the riddle, for I am naught armed with such a paitence for things like word plays."
*
She gently lifts the pot containing a heaping of soil and the sliced cross-section of the plant, green leaves still rich with nutrients and water, unaware of their precarious fate unless Scarlett tends to the balance herself. Tucked against the crook of her arm, a spray of greenery spills against her side and over her arm. "I can try as you would ask me, my lady. As for what I fathom, you understand what I do is scarcely sacrosanct except in the eyes of chaos. The All-Father, if he lives, may never forgive the transgressions I do; given he sits upon his rightful seat of Hlidskjalf once more, I am entirely upon his mercy."
Those darkly radiant eyes lose something of the definition between midnight pupil and enshrouding sea, focused fully upon Amora. "Have you thought perhaps the Prince, in his grief, wishes his privacy? For all we know he beseeched his mother the Queen or the All-father for relief from the great sorrows he bears."
*
Amora releases Scarlett's arm with a crinkle of her eyes, turning away from the mortal to stare out at the world beyond. "Tis why I have sent the Valkyrie to Asgard. She will learn and report back in a day's time what she has learned. Whether the All-father sits enthroned or not.." She threw up her arms, folding her arms as she glowered at the horizon beyond.
"You, too, can be deaf, dumb, and blind as the All-Beings will, but I always speak true.' What make you of such a riddle, apprentice?" Her gaze turned back, and she seemed to dismiss the idea of a Thunderer too pained to carry the burdens of duty.
*
"Verily. I was unsure whether she would outright ask him or some other means. No doubt the All-father will look upon her petition kindly enough. Or the Queen." If they dwell in happiness or stare into the broken ruins of Asgard is their own business. The redhead glances down at her arm, no longer marked by the brand of the manifested sorceress' fingers. Not that a touch would do much; those are long sleeves, and her legs are equally sheltered, though things can change in a heartbeat. "May things resolve themselves peaceably. There has been enough war, violence, and dissent. What are your plans, if the gates of the golden city be open to you? Will you resume your rightful place or continue to pursue the role of faerie queen in exile?"
It is then she falls into silence to reflect upon the inquiry. A breach of consideration follows, and she breathes out, "O, that 'tis a cruelty to imply. Heed your distaff."
*
The Enchantress' eyes shut and she seemed to lean into the breeze that swept up over her and she sighed against the thoughts that spun in her mind. Green eyes lifted and returned to the redhead. "If … my exile is lifted.." She laughed and shook her head. "What means such to me if the Thunderer is naught? What is Asgard without him?" She arched a brow, and turned her gaze to Scarlett fully, her arms crossed.
"I shall remain where he is. Till he is as he should be. He might have forgotten me, and all else.. but I shall not abandon him to the Norns without swords at his back…" She hesitated, as if such a thought was impossible for her to have voiced and her gaze swung back round to the apprentice as she finally spoke of the riddle.
"I have tried. I have found naught in the distaff."
*
Scarlett looks down upon the waxen leaves sheltered against her body, tracing the central stem where it branches out into smaller and thinner brachiated routes, finally terminating out into a tiny creek at the margins of the leaves. "I say, with some certainty, that one such as he would never be at a loss under the judging eyes of the Norns, be they the ladies of Nornheim, Vanaheim, Niflheim, or any of the nine realms. For certain tapestries shine brighter than the rest, and the spinners know which they set to the most complicated patterns." Her gaze is slipped out of focus, contemplation painted through every gesture. "He is neither alone nor forbidden his allotment. We all live out what is assigned to us, you and I as much as a newborn babe or Odin Borson. If Thor Odinson dwells anywhere in these realms, much less Midgard, he will not be without strength of purpose, wits, and favour. Are the best and brightest among us ever truly dimmed? Nay. They will shine regardless of their circumstances, given time and means enough."
She lifts her head, giving Amora a direct regard, though what she reads is the privacy of her own thoughts, no more. "The distaff is the answer."
*
Irritation at the lack of anything concrete spun in emerald eyes of witchlight and Amora turned away to glower at the sky once more. "He is blessed by the Norns, aye. I know." She whispered, frowning faintly as she combed a hand through her hair.
"Come to my abode in the morning, yes? I shall hopefully, have news to give ye in regards to the Valkyrie's steps. Perhaps news on thy beloved Prince as well if all goes well. Or poor.." She mused, head tilting to the side.
"And I shall have need of your hand in spinning. Many hands make for light work.. "She murmured.
*
"All of us are. Such is the nature of the Norns; they do not favour the slave any less than the god, in their way. We are all subject to shears in the end. Some of us sooner than others. We might welcome them, in our time." A macabre, dark view of matters for a girl twenty years old, but such is it her cause. Scarlett's expression holds no capacity to smile, not in this state, though the mask of her features is softened in the corners by a hard-won wisdom. The sort of wisdom one only gains by bleeding, taking the wound direct on rather than cutting. "I do pray the valkyrie receives fine welcome when she returns home. I would, too, wish to be in good company."
Spinning. The notion warrants a faint smile. "Has it been so long a time since we sat together and reshaped the world? I look forward to it, sister."