infomodder | IC contact [Mask or Menace]

They were my gods.

[That isn't quite the answer Will's probably looking for, but Kara isn't quite sure how to explain it. She lets out a sigh and busies herself with her cigarette for a moment, though it's clear she's planning to say more.

Eventually:]

I followed them, worshiped them. Never really met Loki 'cause he wasn't, you know. [one of the good ones.] But he's here, and it's different. Strange.

[She mentions gods, and Will looks up at the sky for a second, busies himself with another swig from a too-full glass while she fiddles with her cigarette. There's more to come and if he's patient and doesn't say anything, he'll get it. It's a little like fishing, only with no lures or waders and more him just keeping his mouth shut. Which he does.

He's had a few short conversations with Loki, seen the mentions of him on the network, but his opinion is pretty undecided. Probably pretty worthless to anyone, too, so why bother?]

Used to read stories about the gods when I was younger. Watered down ones you find in the libraries for kid readers, you know. [He assumes she has some idea. Will never veered too much into the mythological, picked up a few books and moved along to something else. Not his brand.] Seemed like there was a bunch of ways to worship. Follow. And they all had their own thing. [How does one worship a fertility deity other than...] Did you get to pick and choose or was it...kind of did something for all of them?

[A kid who moved all over the Bible belt, where worship was going to church on Sundays, maybe Wednesdays, and staying straight edge and clean and praying over meals and tithing. Tithing even when the money wasn't there, told that God would provide. Would return it. There would be safety if one could only believe and give up everything under His care. For a kid who had problems with knowing how many holes his socks could get before he must go after a new pair, that didn't seem so reasonable. What, would he tithe and a church leader hand him a fresh bag of socks? No, of course not. And what's the point of getting some church family when he's just going to move in a few months?

Better to wander into their open houses, their dinners, their free meals from time to time and listen to whatever they have to say while filling his belly. While making sure that his father had one less meal to worry about providing.

Will's ideas of worship are a scattered mess, his views on anything of true godhood not something easily shared or digested by most who would hear it, but that doesn't mean he can't listen to someone else talk about it. Especially someone who has experience with what could be considered legitimate gods as opposed to.

Well.

Completely out of their damn mind humans who want to be something they never can.]

Bit of both.

[It's weird to talk about this; she usually doesn't go into mythology too much with humans, because that would involve showing too much about herself, and other supernatural beings either know already or have their own gods, which means they couldn't care less about hers.

But Will is... Will. So she'll explain.]

Odin is the All-Father, so we all worshipped him. And all the Valkyries followed his orders, even though Freyja was the one who made us. Some of us. She's the goddess of war, death, fertility, love, beauty. Thor is the god of storms and strength, along with other things, but mostly we associated him with protecting us. Others are more specific, Baldr is the god of light, Bragi of poetry, Sif is the goddess of earth, Forseti the god of justice, Týr is the god of glory and law.

[That's a lot of words, for Kara, and she isn't even done, but she takes a sip of her drink before continuing, trying to think what to say next.]

We could make sacrifices to them or call upon them, depending on what we needed. Lots of sacrifices to Odin, Thor, Freyr, and Freyja would be made before battle. To Ægir to watch over those going to sea. Freyja, for those wanting to conceive. They couldn't always listen, but sometimes they did.

[With a shrug, she finishes off her drink and lapses into silence, feeling self-conscious for having said so much.]

Edited (okay i'm done sorry) 2014-09-20 05:22 (UTC)

[Will being Will is the thing that gets him in the most trouble. This isn't trouble—hanging out with a shield maiden could, in the end, result in trouble, same as living with an undead wolf, but he'll take his chances. It's nice to hear someone speak of their gods (or any deity) in a way that's not bitter, that's not a sign he should be noticing as something malicious. He's doesn't stare at her as she speaks, but his looking off isn't disinterest or a sign she's talking too much. It's Will being Will. Again.]

That's a lot of gods. [And there's more she hasn't mentioned, he assumes. So many more.] Sacrifices like...cows and sheep and cattle sort of sacrifices? [When that muddy dog finally makes his way over to Will, he shifts just enough so that can he flop down right next him, unconcerned about dirtying his clothes or hands or anything else. The question isn't slow to come out of fear, out of horror at the idea of human sacrifice. He's trying to think of how to word it, nothing else. Which doesn't really matter, he realizes, because Kara knows what he's getting at, and sugarcoating it doesn't seem like her brand. So.] Humans? A mix?

[A mix. Like a bag of salad.]

[She knows what he's getting at; it's something a lot of people ask out of morbid curiosity, and she knows what their reaction will be, though she's not sure if Will's reaction will be the same. He's been different so far.]

Mostly animals. We'd hold a blót where we'd cook the sacrificed animals, share the meal with our gods.

[This is important to her, and it comes across in how she speaks. She misses it, those events, and it's been a long time since she thought of her family and her people and the things they shared.]

Human sacrifice was rarer, but it happened. Sometimes slaves, sometimes volunteers, sometimes leaders.

[It would be impossible for him to miss that this is something she takes seriously, that in between the cursing and what might be seen as a flippant attitude, there's nothing about her gods and old world that she doesn't hold in high regard. That while they may have faded into "myth" and "legend" and "never existed" from what he knows, they're real to her. If he had been inclined to sneer or cringe at human sacrifice, that would have been enough to keep it bay.

But he's not inclined to do that so much, and it's not the fact of the matter that humans were sacrificed that hits him the most out of everything she's said. It's the kinds she mentions, that's what has his eyebrows knitting together and him looking torn between confused and surprised.]

Leaders were used as human sacrifice? [That's different, the focal point. Interesting.] That's a nice change of pace.

[Actually none of it is really all that nice, but none of it can be changed. It's history, in his world, in many of them. And yet to hear that much...it's a fun little tidbit. Of course, whether leaders chose to be sacrificed or whether they were sacrificed to make room for someone better, he doesn't know. But that might be too much to ask.]

Usually don't. Get that sort of thing across whenever human sacrifices pop up in— [He waves that glass as he looks for the word. Movies. Books. TV. Really morbid Hallmark cards.] —anything.

[It's always slaves being sold and people who don't want to do it, isn't it.]

If things were bad...

[She pauses again, lifting a shoulder in a half shrug as she tries to find the words to describe it properly. She might have spent centuries with English, but it still isn't her native tongue, and sometimes, especially talking about how things used to be, she struggles.]

We had some choice in who led us. If we didn't like them, they could be killed, replaced, so they had to be strong and well liked. But if things under them were bad, crops and wars and famine, sometimes we'd sacrifice them to Odin, to end the bad luck that came with their rule.

[Most people would call it barbaric, would call it murder, and she knows that. But it was done, and with people she trust, she won't lie about it or cover it up to make it seem nicer than it was.]

[Will's first language is English, and he still has plenty of trouble with it. After a casual reminder that choosing words was to be done carefully because each of them had meaning and agenda and finding out that the ones he took for good meant the opposite? He's grown a little more careful himself. Her struggling is noted without him making that obvious.

Barbaric. Murder. Not really anything unusual. He teaches it, talks about it openly, makes a paycheck with it. The reasoning behind it is important, and human sacrifice to get rid of a bad leader and a bad situation...one of the better ones.]

Do you miss that? [His eyebrows lift as he asks, curious but not in the sense that he wants more in-depth details about human sacrifice.] Nowadays, we sit around with our thumbs up our asses waiting on votes or someone to step down while they technically still hold office unless they really screw it up. Plagues would multiply and cover the entire continent by the time we booted whoever it was out with the systems as they are.

[He's not saying it's a better idea. He's not saying he agrees with it. But for someone who lived in times like hers, going to times like the ones he knows...he could step in the shoes and imagine some of the aggravation with how much can be gotten away with only for the bad to retire with limitless funds and protection and never want for anything, no matter how badly they might have fucked a nation (or two, or five, or more) over.]

It's different now. The gods aren't watching.

[That might not have been the reason he was expecting it to be different, but it's - true. There's no point in sacrificing people to gods that aren't really there, it won't change anything.]

Still wish your politicians were held accountable for the shit they do. But it ain't my world anymore. [She lives in it, but she doesn't belong to it, doesn't follow it's rules.] And the leaders I gotta listen to are too powerful to do jack shit about.

[The gods aren't watching—as much as he can suppress a nod of his head, a quick exhale of what would stand in place of a laugh, he can't prevent the odd hardening of his face that comes with those words, can only change it by taking another drink. If any gods were watching over his world, he wouldn't know about it. Just people society classifies as psychopaths without understanding what that means, monsters who want to be more. No gods looking out? He can believe it.]

Tracked this one guy, couple months ago, had a thing for God. [The way he looks up, points one finger idly, it's all the extra effort he puts forth into making it clear he means a specific, supposedly one and only type of God.] We talked about Vikings, the way he strung them up. Made angels out of them, gave them wings—the Blood Eagle. Chose criminals, gifted them a transformation in return for their lives. Their prayers over him as he slept. [For the fact of the matter that Will worked this case, he talks about it distantly enough, technically, like he might with a classroom that he doesn't want to assume their teacher is about to dive off the deep end because the line of work they're all trying to get into is a horrifying, outrageous nightmare. That he didn't nearly quit his job and go play with boats because it was getting to be too much just the evening before class, that he in no way hallucinated a conversation with a dead killer he related to in uncomfortable ways.] Did some looking up on the Norse then. [Gruesome, bloody topic, and yet he manages one of those grimace-smiles when he looks back at her.] And you just told me way more than I learned then.

[There's little grimace left now.]

Thank you.

[Completely genuine gratitude, that, and not at all because of the morbid details gleaned.]

Blood eagle ain't worth nothing unless they don't scream.

[There's an edge in her voice, not anger at Will, but at the idea of someone taking a practice that meant something and using it for their own ends, like some bullshit torture.

She looks away, jaw tense as she shrugs, not sure what to do with her anger when there isn't somewhere to direct, and not sure what to do with that thank you from Will, either. A shrug is all she can give.]

I don't think there was much screaming. If any. Two of them, he did in a hotel room. If there'd been real screaming, it would've— [That is nothing reassuring, he realizes halfway through it, stops himself, tries to find a way to explain it without possibly pissing on a ritual further.] —it wasn't actually that. It was reminiscent of it. He was—he was making his angels from secular sources. They weren't accurate to any one thing. It was a brain tumor in someone who'd never religious.

[The way Will talks about him has a distinct lack of loathing that some might expect, sounds like he's been doing this work a long, long time. That's the easiest way to take it, not that Will relates to this angel maker. Uncomfortably more so now.]

But we found him. He— [morbid train coming through] —turned himself into an angel, strung up in a barn. He's out of the picture now.

[Because he's extremely dead, not because Will actually caught him. But hey, at least he's not massacring pagan rituals, right?]

[It placates her a little, though she's still sulking slightly as she finishes off her drink. People don't just get to pick and choose parts of her culture to use as some sort of fucking murder ritual.]

And you lot call us monsters.

[It isn't directed at Will, but humans in general. All the creatures she knows of that kill, they do it for food. Humans just do it because they're fucked up.]

[He reaches back for the bottle, leans across the way just enough that he can pour her some more if she holds her glass out. Will's opinion on monsters isn't something he shares much, even inside work. They all get lumped into categories and he finds it more taxing to try and explain how that doesn't work, so it's better to keep his damn mouth shut. Definitely better to keep his damn mouth shut now, at least about monsters and how they relate to that specific case.]

It's a word that's been as warped as anything else. Easy to fall back on. We like ease. Convenience. In case that wasn't already obvious.

[And Will likes his liquor, tops his own glass off as the humidity starts to change and the sounds of distant thunder finally roll in. Right on time, if the way he rolls his eyes in the direction of the noise is anything to go by.]

Does it rain all the time up where you stay?

Noticed that. It's all about making things easy.

[Mostly she's noticed humans do that by dividing the world into black and white binaries that just don't fit. Kara isn't evil just because she kills, she's seen true evil, but humans don't know what to do with things that don't fit their easy world view.

She's definitely taking that refill.]

Sometimes. Don't mind it though except when I wanna be flying.

[Her wings get wet it sucks.]

[If Will has any problems with impromptu drinking get together turning into a humanity disdain fest, it's not easy to tell. Because he doesn't. He knows his species in plenty of extremes and can't be bothered to come up with some sort of argument for or against anything humanity does or does not do. He's just one person. He can bark all day for good or worse and it won't mean shit in the long run. Kara making a note about ease while referencing her own ability to fly does have a little screw in the back of his mind, imagine trying to make things easier because you can't actually fly, but it's ignored in favor of more liquor and scratching the dirty dog's head that has flopped into his lap.]

Rains here all the time. [Compared to Heropa, compared to Wolf Trap.] It's been at least three out of five weeknights ever since we got here. [Dividing his days up by weeknights and weekend, what a nerd.] Gods probably couldn't watch through all that rain, even if they wanted to.

[Meant jokingly, despite how dry it sounded. A joke, a head's up that it was possible, that if she didn't want wet wings....well.]

Don't think some clouds and a little rain bothered Thor much.

[It's a joke right back, and Will is one of the few people she'd actually joke about her gods with, because she trusts him to know that her joking doesn't mean he can. That just because she makes a joke it doesn't mean she respects her gods any less.]

[Will has a roommate who does that, who makes jokes that Will can't return, who rather started off their relationship doing as much. He's grown used to it, can't be bothered to give her a look about it or anything. The only thing that gets a look is the sky, hodgepodge of black and dark blue that makes every single star as obvious as can be. For the moment, at any rate.]

What if he didn't send them? I—he can't send all of that everywhere, can he? Earth's large, that's...that's a full time job, making it rain where and when it needs to.

[He grew up hearing about the single God of the universe that could control everything at the same time without any problem. It's a nice theory, but the idea of having gods, delegated to roles, ones that they offered sacrifices to even if they weren't always able to listen...implies less omnipresence, doesn't it? For how potentially insulting a question it could be, it's not asked to be that. It's genuine curiosity, and considering the lightning strike he catches out of the corner of his eye is pretty far off, he feels safe that much is obvious. Not trying to be dick, no reason to smite him.]

He's our god. Different places had different gods, most of 'em kept to their own corners off the world 'cause otherwise it causes a huge fucking mess.

[So she isn't annoyed or insulted by the implication that Thor isn't omnipresent enough to send lightning and storms all over the world.]

And there's weather. Normal weather. Gods ain't in control of the whole world constantly, but they'd help us out if we did things right. Like I'd help people out who did the Dísablót well.

[Normal weather. Talking about gods and outright stating, there's weather—it's refreshing, it's a nice change of pace. Some of the religious people where he comes from could stand to learn from it, though if Kara was vocal about who and what she was back where he was from, she'd end up in—

—aha.]

Do I wanna ask what happens if you manage to totally fuck up the Dísablót?

[He's parroting Kara with that word, an unknown. Not only is it in her pronunciation, but there's something off about the way he says it because it's his voice, yes. But it's not how he would say it if he knew that word, oh no. That word is Kara in every way it can be without it coming out of her mouth. How the hell else is he to say it properly?]

[This isn't something she discusses very often or very openly; it's a private part of a world she's been forced to leave behind. But Will is Will, and she knows he'll respect whatever she says.]

Depends. There's fucking it up and there's disrespect.

[They're two totally different things, and there are even more variations of fucking it up, because there's accidents or mistakes or things totally outside someone's control.]

We ain't gods, most of us were human once, and the ones who weren't had spent a lot of time with 'em. We never expected perfection, but if people forgot, or if they decided it wasn't important, it made our decisions easier.

[About who would die in battle, about who would go to Valhalla.]

[He doesn't fully nod at her making it clear that there's a difference, but the way his chin tilts, jerks just a little—he's following along. How many festivals or concerts were planned that had to be called off due to rain or worse weather? Sure, attendance might barely suffer if it was a light drizzle...with the inclusion of thunderstorms and heavy winds, sometimes things had to be canceled. Or sometimes they didn't seem ready to get that way and things had to be shut down in the middle of them. People were at risk, the equipment being used was at risk...even the best laid plans can end up completely obliterated. It makes sense that the situation would be taken into account, that a Dísablót going poorly due to something beyond control would be a far cry from a Dísablót going poorly because the people didn't give a shit or ended up committing acts during it that the gods they were supposed to be honoring certainly didn't find respectful.

Trying didn't always mean success, but mockery didn't enter the same realm as trying. Forgetting entirely? Mockery in and of itself, wasn't it?]

Seems like if you're gonna have a party for gods, you're gonna try to do it right. [Seems like it, and yet there's all sorts of people out there. He knows, God does he know.] Good that you didn't expect perfection, because— [He doesn't quite gesture to himself, but it's there in spirit. To him, nudging his head back to the house.] —never gonna find a perfect human. We don't exist.

[Is that part of their charm? Ruling deities looking at the humans who won't ever be able to achieve anything like perfection and taking them on as pets. That's a comforting thought, requires more booze to go with it.]

When was the last time you actually got drunk?

[There's another thing that seems to Will—it seems a terrible fate to never be drunk again. Of course, he's assuming that with the right stuff, with the right amount of it...Kara could, in fact, be drunk off her ass. That is, however, an assumption.]

Sometimes the gods forget that.

[That people can't be perfect, that things go wrong outside of people's control, because her gods lean a little more towards perfection, even if they aren't infallible like some.

She remembers hearing other Valkyries - born Valkyries - and people who resided in Asgard, that certain gods were a lot more difficult to please than others. Ones who wouldn't accept any failure, but most would understand.

As for getting drunk:]

'Bout a month ago? Balthazar had real Asgardian mead.

[There's - something in her voice, in the way she takes a drink, but she's trying not to acknowledge that fact that she actually misses a damn angel.]

It'd been a while before that.

[Gods existing alongside other gods, their followers outright admitting that weather can just be weather, the idea of deities forgetting—all nothing he's used to. It continues to leave him torn, provokes two very different responses despite his lack of religious involvement. Perhaps they've talked about it too much, though. It all seems to be something she doesn't share often, doesn't have anyone to share with it. He's fine with sharing, truly, but perhaps it's best to veer course.

...somewhat difficult when the mead goes right back to Asgard, damn.]

Is there a recipe that makes it real or was a little travel involved? [How the hell (Hel?) does anyone get to Asgard, he doesn't know. The way his knees close in on each other and he leans against them further isn't nervousness now that the sound of thunder is gradually getting closer and this conversation is happening, no way. Certainly not. That would be silly.] Can you make it on your own?

It was probably from Heiðrún.

[The expression on her face is one of a little caution, because she knows how this next bit is going to sound and sometimes people can be a little weird about it.

But Will seems a bit less likely to be freaked out.]

She's a goat, the mead in Valhalla comes from her udders.

[yeah]

IC contact [Mask or Menace]

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