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The weather outside was frightful and admittedly, the fire going in the hearth of her room at the Embassy was delightful all through the night, but since she had no place to go the next day, the bright morning sun finds Lady Kelda Stormrider walking sedately around the relatively large expanse of the gardens out back. Fresh powder blankets everything, at least a hand-width's deep, and it's the good stuff — just wet enough that sculpting it is an option.
The flaxen-blonde takes a step back from her efforts, tapping a fingertip against her bottom lip. "Hmm. It needs…something else." A gesture on her part wills a fine sheen of frost overtop certain sections of the creation and then she smiles. "Perfect." It's a miniature Pegasus, favored mount of the Valkyries, and now the sunlight glitters from its wings as it should.
Sculpting takes many forms. Delightful snowmen, angels in the pillowy expanse— swans, birds, bushes. An entire winter wonderland can be assembled.
Thor makes a sphere. A nearly perfect sphere, rolled between his hands to knock off the high edges until it's just right. He rolls the ball on his fingertips, gauging the balance, the weight, and eyes his target from behind the cover of a low hillock.
When Kelda turns away, he whips the snowball at her with a warrior's precision, aiming for just behind her right ear, and immediately dives for the safe cover of the low berm near him.
A little frown as she continues to consider her winged mount. Maybe if she shifted the fine tendrils that compose the mane and tail to actually ice rather than snow?
PAFFF.
It takes her by complete surprise, that nearly perfect sphere, and thank the gods for the fact that she had the hood of her tunic up. Otherwise, it would have been an exceptionally rude assassination attempt rather than just plain surprising. Still, she stumbles to one side and turns about, a hand placed against the place of impact.
"By Hela's frigid right bosom, what was that?!" Yes, her voice is a little shrill, but then comes the hesitant laugh. "Who's out there? Show yourself!"
Thor is a wily warrior, when he wishes to be, and his response is silent.
Well— aside from a grunt of mild effort, and instead of a snowball, a snow BOULDER flies over the berm, flung from out of sight. It's easily six feet across, and looks as if it was rolled quite recently. The high, lobbing arc brings it in a parabola aimed squarely at Kelda, shedding glistening particles of crystallized snow in its wake.
"WHA —" No, it's not quite a squawk, but Kelda immediately dodges a few steps to the side when it becomes apparent that a monstrous snowball is headed her way. It breaks upon the white-blanketed lawn and fractures apart to reveal glistening innards. Eyeing the large gathering, the warrior-mage then squints at the far berm.
With a few fluid gestures, her magic reaches out to the mounds of snow upon the trees within the garden, to the collections upon nearby bushes. It lifts in lumps and clods and overshadows the far side of the berm before dumping down upon it with gravity's assistance and the cut of willpower.
There's a supersonic *CLAP* from behind the berm, as loud as a thunder bolt crackling through an empty, cold winter sky. The snow flies outwards in a titanic spray of force, flung backwards by the tremendous energies.
Thor leaps from the fray almost before the snowfall settles, a snowball in each hand, and whips them at Kelda while moving in a swift, lateral motion. "Cheat! A cheat, to use magic in a friendly game!" he says, a grin belying his derision. "Come, meet your fate, Stomrider!"
Throwing up her hands palms out stops the wall of blown-back snow and now, her attacker revealed. Leaning to one side allows Kelda to dodge one snowball, but the other clips her along her shoulder and she laughs like a mad-woman even as she's pelting away for the nearest form of cover.
"All is fair in war, Odinson!" Scooping up a handful of snow, she packs it as fast as possible and wings it back at him. "Meet your fate!" Wait, is that a snowball hovering on its own? Oh no, that's a good number of snowballs hovering on their own — as well as the one in each hand now. Kelda laughs again before whipping them at the Prince and plucking from the air the choicest sphere next.
Thor reaches into the air for Mjolnir and the hammer comes singing to his grasp, crossing the intervening space with the speed of an arrow. He grips the thong at the base and whips his hammer in a blurring circle, forcing a great gust of wind to deflect a good number of the snowballs. A few strike him, but they are powder puffs of ice instead of hard-packed wet slushballs.
He turns at the hip and leans down, the stirring hammerhead a blur, and starts sending up a volume of snow not far akin from a snowblower on full blast.
Well, she did say that all was fair. Kneeling down behind the sculpted hedge, Kelda makes herself a far smaller target before she begins to gesture once again. Three-hundred and sixty degrees of snow begins to rise up around the Prince, forming a multitude of spheres once again.
All at once, they zip down towards him, comets in white and shadowed blue from the sunlight. The mage peeps up from behind her barrier shortly afterwards, all to be seen of her in the top of her hood and two bright glacial-blue eyes.
Thor looks around in a circle, whipping his hammer in a blurring defense— but there is no stopping such an onslaught. Were they arrows, he would be dead.
Fortunately, they are but snowballs, and the Prince is buried in a cavalcade of packed ice that piles onto him no matter how valiantly he struggles. In moments, he is completely buried, and the landscape falls silent.
Like a titan heaving from under the stones he stands, shedding the snow, and flakes cling to his beard, hair, and even eyebrows. He shakes vigorously like a dog and grins at Kelda.
"Fine. We'll call it a draw," he says, with a concessionary tone.
Standing up and coming out from behind her barrier shrubbery, Kelda is certain to keep her smile to its usual cool amusement. She nods to the Prince, her hands folded in plain sight to rest at her waist as she walks over to him, twinkling with bits of snow here and there as he is.
"You're far too magnanimous, my liege. May I compliment you on your intial attack. I wasn't expecting it in the least. The world should fear your ability to surprise as such." She's trying very hard not to smile further. It's hard when he looks as if he spent a good number of minutes rolling about and making snow-angels.
"There are times when stealth has an advantage," Thor says, grinning. He shakes vigorously, the snow flying from him— the rest melts swiftly enough, the warmth of the god's skin shedding the arctic cold. "Had I know that you had such an arsenal at hand, I might have waited for more vulnerable prey. Sif flings snow rather poorly, if my memory serves."
"Aye? Then mayhaps we should attempt a two-pronged attack upon her the next we get the chance, hmm?" Bad Kelda, most magical enabler of prankery around here. And here she was supposed to be the stalwart, steadfast Shield-Maiden to the eldest Prince.
"But don't put your attempts aside so quickly, my liege. We are merely within my element, surrounded by it." Even as she turns in place, hands offered out at her sides, a mist of twinkling flakes rises up around them like smoke blown from a candle. "I would not be able to hold such an advantage in, say, a thunderstorm. That is far more your element in turn."
"Any hunter can hunt his quarry through the mud or sand," Thor scoffs. "Virtue likes in pursuing the bilgensipe on the plains, or the dark hunters through the jungle. 'tis little sport in a fight that is not even fair to begin with," Thor remarks.
"Come, though— while snow is your element, I find it less pleasant than a roast and warm mead in front of a fire. Let us repair to the halls to see what victuals Volstagg has left for us."
"Aye, my liege, a mug of warmed mead does appeal to me after some time in the elements." At his side, Kelda travels, and they make their way into the Embassy.
Being as warmly-tempered as they are in Asgardian physiology, the snowmelt is long gone by the time both reach the main dining room. The staff has worked the fire up to a roaring blaze of cheery heat and the warrior-mage slips from her hooded tunic in light of the room's warmth.
"Ah, but the hired hands here are good people," she comments, finding that a jug of heated mead already stands upon the table beside a collection of insulated mugs. "However you managed to secure them is a thing of acclaim." She pours herself a mug as well as one for the Prince and then offers out the stine to him.