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Delicious wine, pressed from the latest crush of grapes a year past, blushes almost violet plum in the warm sunshine. Poured liberally from a goblet into a smaller goblet, the beverage demands a certain appreciation from the goddess of fate sprawling recumbent upon a lovely chaise. Flowers and herbs and plants form a hedgewall against cares beyond, noise of the golden city buffered from her. She languidly strokes her fingers through the shattered smoothness of a pool formed there.
How many vines sacrificed themselves to fill a pool with a good red wine? Plenty, likely, unless the tinged shade is purely a matter of artifice. She swirls around the liquor, sipping sporadically now and then, fat drops captured on the rim and slipping back into the bowl. A pretty sight to see, Karnilla lazily curled up and tasting the flavour of the magic she's imbued heavily into that looking glass on future yet to awaken.
It was the sunshine itself that drew the warrior-mage from her bower, musing over poetry from the latest court entertainer, an Elf from Alheim. Fair of face, fair of voice indeed, but there was something about his words that befuddled Kelda in the end. A shadow laced the undersides of the pretty speech, at least to her ears, and the discord chased her into the daylight.
With no mind as to where she wanders, her bare feet fall into quiet step, one before another, and as Fate would have it…lead her to pass within sight of the dark pool.
"What…rarity is this?" Gathering a fistful of her robes, she makes her way to immediate area, aware of the solitude wrapping itself about the space in the muffling manner of early-morning fog. "It is most — " A cessation of speech as she catches sign of life in her side-vision and the raised hand, already glittering with a half-summoned hoarfrost bolt, is quickly fisted and then dropped, along with her glacial-blue eyes.
"Your highness," she murmurs to Karnilla, diction with military precision despite the soft pitch. "I beg your forgiveness. I forget that a warrior's aptitude does not apply in all situations."
Thor's footfall precedes him by some metered steps; boots tread heavily on the ground. The Crown Prince is not known for stealth or guile, and does not bother to conceal or hide himself as he cuts his path through the gardens.
Voices pull him from his reverie and Thor glances upwards at Kelda and Karnilla encountering one another, a brow quirking at their interaction.
He frows a bit at the fountain, and mutters an oath hoping she hasn't filled the pool with blood. Relief crosses his features— it's wine, he can smell it from a dozen yards off, and as he closes the gap, he dips an empty chalice into the pool and takes a long draught.
"A useful magic, highness," Thor booms, in his too-loud voice. "Perhaps you will join us for the next feast, that our cups run never empty!" he says, with a big laugh.
"What rarity indeed doth languish upon the silk hems of Asgard, mighty and proud, arrayed in the finest panoply?" A casual examination of her glittering nails finds the desultory queen of Nornheim looking for any imperfection upon the shining surface. Either the lacquer she painted them with or the pool holds her attention for a moment.
Cautious not to make eye contact with Kelda, she raises her impervious chin a fraction further and tilts her head, clusters of moonsilver arrayed into a pair of discs holding her curled tresses in place. The hammered and embossed shapes arrayed around a central point chase one another unceasingly. Rather true for the life of men, too.
"Indeed, highness, such could be mine contribution upon the celebrations." Her refusal to rise is either a mark of station or concentration, but many of her lesser magics as well as great are subtle, demanding consideration of movement, posture, even perfume.. Prancing about in a woodsy scent wouldn't work so well for conjuring technology to her will. Hard to be thrilling smelling of deer urine, just ask Loki. On second thought, bellow it from a balcony. "As that should please, consider the request fulfilled. Though was there no celebration intended to mark the first days of autumn?"
It's not as though time runs backwards where Odin's around, his lecturing is simply interminable and agonizing. Whatever threat shines through as a mistake doesn't even register. Turning a blind eye is a talent for the best of people, much less someone as presumably prickly as the Norn Queen. Kelda isn't on fire. Thor isn't missing his clothes, hanging upside down on a ledge while an irate, metal eating goat eyes him up as a possible meal for his younger billies.
Notably, the warrior-mage does prefer to avoid immolation. It seems to be a painful way to go, with what she's seen on the battlefield beside fellow casters wielding the element in opposition to her own. Upon the arrival of the eldest Prince, she meets his eyes with the ease of her usual posting as Shield-Maiden and inclines her head, her smile pale but true.
"Her highness of Nornheim does speak true, my liege. What celebration there was to mark the passing of the seasons seemed…paltry. If I do not speak above my station, your father-king and mother-queen appear preoccupied. Mayhaps you could act in their place, begin the revels? It would be no hardship, I presume? The meaderies would rally to your call." Poke the Prince. Poke him with a stick. Poke poke poke.
"A friend remarked much the same," Thor concedes, throwing back a gulp of the red wine. "Perhaps it is time the Gods returned to Midgard, aye?" he inquires of the ladies, folding brawny arms across his slablike chest. "A feast the likes of which they've not seen in centuries— long tables, fine roast boar, the meals of antiquity earned by hard labor and strong backs," Thor offers.
"Not that Asgard requires strong diligence to respond to any call for festivities," Thor concedes, with a swartthy, broad grin. "But the mortals seem to require much inspiration to join our revels."
"All to celebrate the passage of autumn? Wouldst thee call a hunt and offer prizes to the greatest catches, or merely appear to anoint some unsuspecting community with a bounty and largesse unknown? I have the very place." Her fingers snap and the water wine effusion becomes a sheet of especial clarity, revealing brown hills gone rough in the parched heat of summer. Rolling hills eroded heavily into rounded contours and sliced waterways reveal what is essentially arid, a place where the mountain peaks subside into the plains. "I do believe the mortal said it was called… No, not China Hat."
A goddess who forget very little stalls only for the drama and fanfare, her mouth teased in the coyest of smiles. "The precise place to hold such festivities, the cradle of winter, bright in the autumn, burnt in summer, and holds spring in every trove. I should think Dickshooter appeals to some level of Midgard humour. Besides, the fellow said it would be impossible for anything of consequence to transpire to live up to the name. The Norns sayeth otherwise. Off to Idaho with ye and thine court, no?"
It's a real place. It's so a real place.
"Dick…shooter," Kelda repeats, giving Karnilla's elbow a dubious look. "Why would one attempt to slay one named Richard? I presume this location has merit because it is memorial to such a man? Was he brave? If so, he does deserve a feasting in his honor."
She finds the shadow of a passing cloud on the plains in the pool of wine and considers it. "It does seem a fine place with much space. The mortals would come if our presence were noted, surely."
Thor chuckles lazily at the banter and drops heavily into a lounge chair, one boot propped against the ground and the other danging lazily.
"It is easy to forget how brutal and unrelenting mortal climes can be," Thor reminds the two women. "A summer that burns and saps all moisture; a winter that is frigid to the point of deadly. And these are in two cconcurrent regions!" he laughs.
"But 'tis a most redeeming quality of those mortals; the ability to survive in environments that would send many animals fleeing towards sunnier and more hospitable climes."
"An honour of some sort. I daresay that Asgard delivering its largesse there would make a statement, far superior to entering an already crowded location." Karnilla shrugs her shoulders, the seeds of a notion planted and thus allowed their time to take root. It should not be an instant process, but sometimes that proves unnecessary to wait around.
"Praytell what suggestions you might have, Lady? For it is not merely a singular path forward." Kelda has the floor as the Norn Queen raises wine to her lips.
The flaxen-blonde mage paces closer to the edge of the pool and peers more closely into its colored depths.
"I do not see any snow upon the ground yet, so it appears that winter must not have attended upon the region just yet. The grasses seem dry. Risking a bonfire may bring the mortals to us, but not in the best of moods. If this is pasture, razing it upon accident will not win us boon." A fingertip dares to disturb the surface and she tests the flavor upon it by a brush over her tongue. "The wine is tempered well, your highness," she concedes to Karnilla, giving the young woman a respectful nod for her creation. One more tap to the mirror-like wine and she suckles the drop before standing straight and formal again. "A retinue, my liege. Bring your best huntsman and bring down the largest game of the land to be found there. Impress them with your prowess and they may come." Thor is given the usual measuring side-glance from his Shield-Maiden.
"You know not well the mortal lands," Thor chuckles at Kelda. "Even the doughtiest of Midgardian beasts pose little challenge for our kin. Their elephants are barely the size of bilgesnipe; the mightiest of their predators are fodder only for wrestling," he chuckles.
"It would be a meager challenge for our hunters, though I'm sure their warriors would be suitable impressed."