kore_logs | from the land of the ice and snow ❆

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from the land of the ice and snow ❆

Who: Meja, & open
What: A Valkyrie wakes up in the Cape. A tiny storm brews and then, suddenly, vanishes.
Where: The woods, park, and town.
When: Day 103

All at once, the lack of a presence is both painfully overwhelming and difficult to comprehend. It's as though something more important than gravity, yet more difficult to see than the wind, is gone. The disconnect is sudden, and she can't seem to remember falling asleep. Yet here she is, in woods she doesn't recognize with something around her wrist that... is entirely unfamiliar. She doesn't own any electronics; they don't like traveling between Realms. What's more, this one talks. "We hope you enjoy your stay." Meja blinks, fighting for consciousness. She doesn't sleep, why is this difficult? And then, as she staggers to her feet, it comes to her.

She can't feel Yggdrasil anymore.

The source of her second lease on life is missing. How is that even possible? Meja turns to the tree she's leaning on and presses her ear against the trunk. Yes, she can feel this tree. It's healthy (though grumpy — something about a burning incident), but it's not connected to Yggdrasil. Somehow, even waking up in a strange forest, with a technological wristband, is less unnerving than suddenly being away from the entity that holds the Nine Realms together. Is this some sort of pocket realm? Perhaps it's a trick by the Dökkálfar, and she isn't in her right mind to sense Yggdrasil at all.

A rumble interrupts her thoughts, and suddenly she realizes that her confusion and tension have whipped up a tiny storm of sorts, darkening the sky around this part of the woods. Though the droplets on her face make her feel less alienated, she holds up her hand. Small glints of light, making soft noises like distant cries, shine from her gloved hand as she disperses the storm. It clears in a matter of minutes, restoring sunlight to the forest once more.

Muninn is missing as well, she notices. Surely her raven friend would be the most disgruntled at being separated from the World Tree. He would be unable to seek out his brother for their immature little bouts of insults, which she'd come to understand as their way of touching bases.

"Muninn?" she calls, loudly, but only silence greets her. She's still feeling rather groggy, unintentionally strengthening her Norwegian accent. "This isn't funny, dumming... And it's not my new home."

Still without an answer, Meja sighs. She has all of her belongings, at least. Sweeping the hood from her head, she keeps her white cloak unglamoured — for now — and proceeds through the woods. She keeps her weapons sheathed, but also keeps her senses on alert for anything else in the woods. At first, all it gets her is the scuffle of running hares. But as she walks, she slowly makes out a small number of buildings through a large expanse of what seems to be a park. A town?

She takes a deep breath, still comfortably inside of the woods, and runs a gloved hand through her short platinum-blond hair. Time to see where I am. She's more nervous about it than she'd like, but the buildings she can see are of a style that she... hasn't laid eyes on in a long, long time.

On the other hand, she'll learn nothing in the woods. So, slowly, she proceeds forward.

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Oops. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. Meja shakes her head, though she's not entirely sure what 'synthetic' means... Wait, no. Artificial? Good grief, she's really pulling into her memories for that one.

"I'm a Valkyrie. Immortal," she clarifies, just in case Shiala isn't aware. Stranger things have, apparently, happened. "It means I don't need to eat or sleep. I could, however, if I wanted to."

For a moment, Shiala just looks carefully at Meja. She remembers the feel of Indoctrination, the many tiny machine whispers on the inside of her skull, coaxing her into obedience. She remembers; she might not be able to resist it again, even if she recognises it.

"Immortal" is a lofty claim. Machines are immortal.

"You're not a machine?" There's some suspicion there, still, but she's relaxing, just a little. "What is... I'm sorry, what is a Valkyrie?"

The look that Meja gives Shiala is startled, to say the least. A machine? That follows her artificial line of thought, but... All right, time to clear this up. She doesn't want Shiala getting the wrong idea about her.

"A Valkyrie is a person who was human and died in battle, but was... brought back by Yggdrasil, the World's Tree, to protect the Realms. Women," she adds, because men who die in the same heroic circumstances go to Valhalla. Because Shiala looks so suspicious, she also adds, "I mean no one here harm."

Shiala stares at her a moment longer, eyes narrowed, but she nods, slowly. It's... almost nonsense to her. Coming back from the dead, the Realms -- which sounds to her like this talk of other dimensions. And why, she has to wonder, are these protectors of the Realms only human women? She's known -- unfortunately -- enough asari who died in battle.

"I believe you," she says. "Or at least... I think I do." Being brought back from death is a lot to swallow, after all. "What Realms are these? Why only human women?"

It's a lot to swallow when you go through it, too. Encouraged, Meja explains as best she can feel capable. The Nine Realms are quite complicated, and it takes time and understanding to learn how to navigate them and where they are in relation to one another.

"The Nine Realms. Midgard... otherwise known as Earth... Asgard, Muspellsheimr, Niflheimr, Vanaheimr, Jotunheimr, Alfheimr, Hel, and Svartalfaheimr. Valkyrie are women because... that's what was decided, by the Allfather, so long ago. Yggdrasil takes his place, now, in our creation."

Watching Shiala, something clicks into place. "This isn't familiar at all to you, is it?"

How far from home is she?

"I've heard of Earth, of course." It would be difficult to have not heard of it. "And I think I've heard of a star system called Asgard... in the Exodus Cluster, if I remember right."

She thinks, anyway; she's maybe more familiar with humanity's explorations than your average asari, but she still can't possibly know every planet in the galaxy.

"But that's not what you're talking about, is it?" Shiala is half curious, half suspicious. Rather, make that mostly curious. "What is this Yggdrasil?"

It could be a cultural leader. It could be something else.

Stars. No, the stars have little to do with Yggdrasil, though some nestle in her uppermost branches. But for the most part, stars rest in the nether. And that's why they're visible, and different, in all of the Realms at night. With the exception of Hel, of course, where it's so dark that you can't even see the hand in front of your face. There's a reason no one likes going to the Realm of the Dead — other than it being the Realm of the Dead, of course.

"Yggdrasil is the World's Tree," Meja notes. "The Nine Realms rest in her branches. She's... hard to explain." Even to a denizen of the Nine Realms. It helped to understand her when you were privileged to hear her voice, but even then, the World's Tree is an intangible and confusing — but protective — entity. "She isn't a tree like you'd think of one of these."

The Valkyrie nods to a nearby evergreen.

"But the... form, is more or less the same. She guides us, gives us magic. And she protects all — monsters, immortals, mortals."

A tree, but not a tree. A plant, that "guides," that "protects." It makes her think of the Thorian. The Thorian Shiala had known had been apparently one of a kind, perhaps the last of its species, unless others grew on other far planets.

If she had hackles to raise, they would; as it is, her eyes narrow a little.

"You say it guides you." If this Yggdrasil is at all like the Thorian, well, Shiala is a very unique position to determine that. "Guiding," to her, suggests the sort of spore-driven control the Thorian had over its thralls. "What would happen if your wishes were... contrary to Yggdrasil's?"

Meja blinks. "Nothing, I should think."

Yggdrasil wasn't like the Norn, who had full-on hissy fits (gods, she hoped they couldn't hear her here) when you went against their wishes for how Fate would play out. Yggdrasil is the one who truly controls Fate itself, she imagines; it's a suspicion she's had ever since she was mortal. The Norn only went along with it, guessed its intentions, to further themselves. Not that they weren't powerful in their own right, but the Norn had too much ego and not enough power for what they did. Perhaps they were simply unknowing servants of the Tree. The Norn seem to think that they're on equal footing, and Meja knows that's not true. But she can hear Yggdrasil's voice, like they can, and it's not a common gift. So most are unaware of the Tree's full role in the world.

"I've... made a habit of defying Fate," she comments, with a small smile. "If there were negative consequences in the simple act of defiance, I would know. Yggdrasil counsels; she does not demand."

Well, that's encouraging.

"You would not, for instance, experience pain if you tried to even think against your Yggdrasil?" Shiala is... well, as polite as can be, considering what she's asking. It's an award question to ask, and she's watching Meja carefully for sign of discomfort, an intense desire to change the subject, anything that might suggest she has to watch Meja, that Meja might be controlled by such an organism.

"I was... acquainted, let us say... with an entity known as the Thorian, a plant of a sort, though I couldn't call it a tree. It would infect sentients with mind-controlling spores, direct their behaviour, use them to accomplish what it itself could not." Shiala is still watching Meja, hoping not to see something that suggests her suspicion is right. "It guided, and shaped. It... cared for its thralls, certainly, as a master craftsman might care for her tools, but no more than that. When done with them, it would absorb its thralls into itself, make their memories part of its own mind. It protected, but only for its own interests."

A monster, in Shiala's opinion, which is admittedly very biased.

"But its thralls... would not speak of it directly, as you do."

She listens to the explanation of the Thorian with only a slight frown on her face, due to the slightly disturbing nature of the information. Other beings from the Nine Realms might bristle at the implication that Yggdrasil could be something similar. But Meja has always been easy-going, and she simply shakes her head. She and Shiala are evidently from very different worlds, and it's a simple misunderstanding.

"Yggdrasil does not hurt anyone. It would be like... gravity hurting someone. As I said before, she's... difficult to explain. Not really a living being in the sense most people mean," Meja notes. "More of a living force of nature. Most creatures never interact with her directly at all. I'm... somewhat unique in that regard, as I can hear her voice — but most can't. For most of those who inhabit the Nine Realms, Yggdrasil is something that you learn about as a fact of life, like the stars, and then move on."

Sometimes the Ljósálfar talk of the World's Tree as a deity, but Meja, as a Valkyrie who reports to a goddess, has never wanted to offend a group of people who can make her life that miserable.

"Only a few others actually refer to Yggdrasil with... female pronouns," she adds. "But it's an old habit I picked up."

Her voice simply sounds female, to Meja. There was no guarantee that others interpreted the voice the same way. The Allfather had never referred to Yggdrasil that way, certainly.

"Your Thorian sounds like a terrible problem, however. Is it still around, where you're from?"

"No." Shiala's voice is oddly flat. "It is dead. I was not the one to do it, but I made certain it was."

And yet, the aftereffects of being infected with those spores remain. She's been, after all, and that's just superficial.

"There may be others. It may have been the last of its kind. Such creatures hibernate for thousands of years, are only active for a few brief centuries. I hope there are no more."

But she gives a sigh. "I do believe your Yggdrasil is something quite different, if you say so." Mostly, anyway. It's like imagining a sentience attached to a law of physics, to the mass effect.

Edited 2013-08-24 02:51 (UTC)

Meja smiles, though it's a distant one compared to some. She's only been here an hour or two — consciously — and she's already on the depressing topics. Perhaps she should be watching what she mentions more closely. "Don't worry, there's no comparison. At least in a malicious fashion."

She glances up at the sky, hoping to see a flash of black feathers. Nothing yet. If Muninn were here, surely he would have sought her out by now...

"You mentioned, before, that there's a farming effort going on?"

"There is." She's just as eager to switch to a safer subject. "I'm not sure that many of us know much about farming, but we've managed enough to keep from starving. There's a human who doles out the rations."

She shrugs, vaguely.

"I'm not sure why he gained that responsibility, but he is fair about it, at least. I think, on the whole, our hunting and fishing has gone better, but most species can't live entirely on meat."

She bites her lower lip, worrying it as she turns that over in her head. "Well, it's been a long time, but I used to have a friend who was... very plant-oriented, and there might be something I could contribute," she reasons. As long as magic works properly in whatever Realm she's found herself trapped in.

"How many people are here?"

"I'm not certain of the exact number. Forty or so, I think. Less, perhaps. People come and go very frequently, and I find it difficult to keep track."

Too many, in her opinion. Not a lot, but at the same far too many.

"If you can offer aid to the farming effort, it would probably be well-received. As a community, we need what help we can get."

Meja drags her gaze from the town back to Shiala, furrowing a brow. "People come and go? You mean, taken and brought back?"

Suddenly she's reminded of the way trolls kidnap children and wait for them to mostly starve to death before actually eating them, storing them in the deepest parts of their caves to prevent escape. It's a thought that has many, many bad memories tied to it, and Meja shivers ever so slightly. There's no sense in thinking about it. Trolls don't have this type of finesse.

"That's a lot of people to support on a limited food supply. I'll try to do what I can."

Magic, she's sure, will be very helpful; she just needs to practice.

"Yes. Sometimes they disappear permanently. Sometimes they return. I've gathered that this is the case, at least."

Shiala hugs herself; she doesn't like that, doesn't like an enemy she can't fight. Not one that's too strong for a frontal attack, not one that slips in stealthily and must be defended against, but not there at all.

"It's good of you to help. I know next to nothing about farming, but... I try to help where I can."

Because the hydroponics bays of Feros are somewhat different from the farming here.

"I see."

The Valkyrie absorbs that information for a long moment, as they walk. People are brought and taken on a frequent basis, and no one's seen those responsible. Not a single glimpse. That's... Well, that's fairly unnerving. It's clearly a tight, logical, and powerful operation. She can't even appeal to Yggdrasil to aid, which has been her last resort in a few old cases. Instead it's clear that they're on their own here, at least for now.

"Experience tells me that they'll either slip or give us a clue at some point," she reasons. "No operation is perfect forever."

"I hope you're right," Shiala says, and she sighs a little. "If they've made any sort of slip in the past, then I haven't been here to witness it."

It's a depressing conversation, really. There's no good news to share, and plenty of bad news, and if Shiala is avoiding the recent matter of the sea monster attack, well, perhaps she can be forgiven for that.

There will be plenty of time later for Meja to learn that Kraken aren't unique to her world. She nods. Meja has, well, an excess of time to wait out her capture. But rather than escape, her thoughts are still buzzing around helping her fellows find enough to eat. It's a much bigger concern, in her mind, not the least because of her own protective instincts towards others.

They're now at the edge of town, and all of those thoughts are temporarily stalled as she looks at the architecture. Yes, it's rather run-down, but it reminds her of... times long past, in her own world. Her expression is rather on the wistful side.

"I take it this place is a lot different, in appearance, than where you're from," she comments, with a small smile.

"Very."

Shiala pauses for a moment, wondering how to be tactful, how to not come across as being dismissive of what is, to her, woefully primitive. "I was living on Feros, which is mostly Prothean ruins but with a modern settlement built into it. It's a bit... frontier, I suppose, but it wasn't... primitive. Here... we don't even have electricity, anymore." She shakes her head. "It's been... something to get used to, certainly."

"Midgard used to look like this." She doesn't mention Ragnarök; they don't need any more depressing topics, she's sure. "A very long time ago. Now it's much more advanced, though it doesn't have any magic."

Midgard has been, in recent years, trying to forget its past.

"This place doesn't look like it has much magic, either. So it appears I'll be getting used to something as well," Meja chuckles, smiling more broadly in an attempt to lighten the mood. "You wouldn't happen to know which one of these houses is... 6, would you? This thing"—she glances at the comm on her wrist—"said something about staying there."

"Where I'm from, magic is the sort of thing told in ancient fairy tales." Shiala looks at her slightly askance -- only slightly. "Except I've already met someone for whom magic is, perhaps, not supernatural, but just part of the nature of their world -- as biotics are merely a fact of life in the galaxy I know."

It's something to think on, if nothing else.

"But house six? That's easy to find. I'm in seven, myself. We're neighbours. I'll show you the way."

"Are we?" Meja favors Shiala with a grateful smile. "I think I lucked out, in that case."

All complaints aside, the situation, she thinks, could be much worse. At least there are kind and interesting people trapped with her here, and there's help to occupy her time with. If there was nothing for her to do and no one to talk to, that would be cause for great concern for the Valkyrie.

"Magic is a simple fact in the Nine Realms. But on Midgard most do regard it as... fantasy." She shrugs. "Most humans can't use it, anyway. Magic is difficult and requires a great deal of study. It's an easy way to blow yourself up, or worse, on accident."

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