Post by Meg Giry on Oct 22, 2014 8:41:16 GMT -5
Meg was more contented than she'd been in a long, long time.
When Fandral had returned alone and mentioned rather vaguely that Loki had some business to attend to, there had been about an hour or so of even vaguer concern from the other Asgardians in general about what that could mean before the mood dissipated. After that, they seemed to just be enjoying the fact that Loki wasn't there at all but Thor was .
As important as Meg felt with her hand on Loki's metaphorical leash, she'd very quickly decided not to let it slip to anyone other than Lady Sif. Given that the general consensus on Loki among his cohorts seemed to be "tricky and without honor", the last thing Meg wanted was for them to know she'd only managed to wrangle him in what she was beginning to realize would probably seem a pretty dishonorable way itself.
Sif, of course, didn't care, but Meg figured Sif didn't care much about anything happening to Loki.
(Meg decided not to ask why just yet.)
And in any case, Meg felt perhaps even more important than she would have telling everyone that Loki was at her beck and call by instead using the money M. Veidt had left her to buy them all tickets to the opera playing in the little theater next to Mlle. Elness's house the evening of their arrival.
It was an unusually joyful affair for an opera, and one Meg had never heard of, about a pirate king and his apprentice and a major-general's daughter. Everyone had a happy ending, from the pirates to the policemen, and nobody wound up poisoned or awaiting execution or anything like that.
After the opera, everyone returned to Mlle Elness's house in high spirits (Volstagg in particular, singing what he could remember of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General", which wasn't much and necessitated making up new words as he went). Meg's back was sore and she was generally rather sleepy, but she was too happy to go to bed right away.
And then there were the stories they told after she came back downstairs after putting on her nightgown. They had all lived for a very long time and had apparently spent most of that time traveling to other worlds and meeting strange creatures and usually fighting them, though Hogun was not quite so old as the others and had once been a knight in Japa. This did nothing to make him any less interesting than the others in Meg's eyes, though, and caused an involuntary little thrill in her chest.
Maybe she could go with them after the baby was born.
She didn't dare bring it up. She couldn't bear the idea of looking like some kind of over-eager tagalong child in front of Sif. When Sif was Meg's age, she'd probably already been slinging a sword around and slaying monsters and managing to look very stern and beautiful at the same time. The incident with Tybalt in the graveyard didn't seem like a good counter to that at all.
Tybalt and Sif would probably be great friends, Meg found herself thinking as she watched Sif toss her hair back and correct Fandral for the fifth time about his personal contributions to a skirmish against something called an orc. They had similarly wolfish grins, though Sif smiled far more easily and sometimes even laughed.
The main thing that Meg kept realizing about Sif, though, was that she was disarmingly pretty for someone so tall and narrow. She didn't have any of the softness that had characterized the beauty of her old friend Christine, and which for that matter, Meg herself knew she had. Sif was thinner, more like Iris, but more graceful than Iris had been, without Iris's knobbly elbows and knees.
In any case, Meg caught herself sitting with her chin in her hands at least three times while she listened to Sif talk, and every time she quickly straightened up and put her hands in her lap instead.
When everyone finally settled down for the night, Meg went to the kitchen for a glass of water. There was an invitation to a masquerade at a museum uptown pinned to the refrigerator with a magnet. Meg pulled it off and read it a few times. The masquerade was only three days away, and Mlle Elness was still in Greece...
"Waste not, want not," Meg murmured as she turned off the light and went upstairs with the invitation still in her hand.
In her belly, the baby kicked hard. Meg winced.
"Nobody asked you, you little monster. You've already kept me from too much fun. And she can't go anyway."
This was met with another hard kick, enough that Meg felt her skin bulge where it had hit the inside of her belly.
"Oh, stop it! It's only one night. I'll just have to ask Loki for a dress. I'm sure he'll make one. I can make him do anything..."
The baby, apparently, had no response to that. Meg took off her dressing gown and let down her hair, and eventually drifted into a deep sleep.
The next day was just as pleasant and filled with good company.
The day after, however, she was awoken by someone shaking her by the shoulder.
Meg frowned and opened her eyes. She could just barely make out in her bleariness a pale oval of a face with a lot of long dark hair hanging around it. She blushed.
"Milady Sif? What are you..."
Then her vision cleared, and the face resolved into Loki's.
"Giry?" Loki said, blinking in confusion.
"You-"
Meg felt her face go even hotter in indignation. She leapt out of bed to pull on her robe.
"You ought to at least knock before entering a lady's room!"
Loki sighed so wearily that Meg felt obligated to give him a scolding look, but when she did she noticed that he looked a lot less maniacally desperate than usual. Her frown deepened.
When Fandral had returned alone and mentioned rather vaguely that Loki had some business to attend to, there had been about an hour or so of even vaguer concern from the other Asgardians in general about what that could mean before the mood dissipated. After that, they seemed to just be enjoying the fact that Loki wasn't there at all but Thor was .
As important as Meg felt with her hand on Loki's metaphorical leash, she'd very quickly decided not to let it slip to anyone other than Lady Sif. Given that the general consensus on Loki among his cohorts seemed to be "tricky and without honor", the last thing Meg wanted was for them to know she'd only managed to wrangle him in what she was beginning to realize would probably seem a pretty dishonorable way itself.
Sif, of course, didn't care, but Meg figured Sif didn't care much about anything happening to Loki.
(Meg decided not to ask why just yet.)
And in any case, Meg felt perhaps even more important than she would have telling everyone that Loki was at her beck and call by instead using the money M. Veidt had left her to buy them all tickets to the opera playing in the little theater next to Mlle. Elness's house the evening of their arrival.
It was an unusually joyful affair for an opera, and one Meg had never heard of, about a pirate king and his apprentice and a major-general's daughter. Everyone had a happy ending, from the pirates to the policemen, and nobody wound up poisoned or awaiting execution or anything like that.
After the opera, everyone returned to Mlle Elness's house in high spirits (Volstagg in particular, singing what he could remember of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General", which wasn't much and necessitated making up new words as he went). Meg's back was sore and she was generally rather sleepy, but she was too happy to go to bed right away.
And then there were the stories they told after she came back downstairs after putting on her nightgown. They had all lived for a very long time and had apparently spent most of that time traveling to other worlds and meeting strange creatures and usually fighting them, though Hogun was not quite so old as the others and had once been a knight in Japa. This did nothing to make him any less interesting than the others in Meg's eyes, though, and caused an involuntary little thrill in her chest.
Maybe she could go with them after the baby was born.
She didn't dare bring it up. She couldn't bear the idea of looking like some kind of over-eager tagalong child in front of Sif. When Sif was Meg's age, she'd probably already been slinging a sword around and slaying monsters and managing to look very stern and beautiful at the same time. The incident with Tybalt in the graveyard didn't seem like a good counter to that at all.
Tybalt and Sif would probably be great friends, Meg found herself thinking as she watched Sif toss her hair back and correct Fandral for the fifth time about his personal contributions to a skirmish against something called an orc. They had similarly wolfish grins, though Sif smiled far more easily and sometimes even laughed.
The main thing that Meg kept realizing about Sif, though, was that she was disarmingly pretty for someone so tall and narrow. She didn't have any of the softness that had characterized the beauty of her old friend Christine, and which for that matter, Meg herself knew she had. Sif was thinner, more like Iris, but more graceful than Iris had been, without Iris's knobbly elbows and knees.
In any case, Meg caught herself sitting with her chin in her hands at least three times while she listened to Sif talk, and every time she quickly straightened up and put her hands in her lap instead.
When everyone finally settled down for the night, Meg went to the kitchen for a glass of water. There was an invitation to a masquerade at a museum uptown pinned to the refrigerator with a magnet. Meg pulled it off and read it a few times. The masquerade was only three days away, and Mlle Elness was still in Greece...
"Waste not, want not," Meg murmured as she turned off the light and went upstairs with the invitation still in her hand.
In her belly, the baby kicked hard. Meg winced.
"Nobody asked you, you little monster. You've already kept me from too much fun. And she can't go anyway."
This was met with another hard kick, enough that Meg felt her skin bulge where it had hit the inside of her belly.
"Oh, stop it! It's only one night. I'll just have to ask Loki for a dress. I'm sure he'll make one. I can make him do anything..."
The baby, apparently, had no response to that. Meg took off her dressing gown and let down her hair, and eventually drifted into a deep sleep.
The next day was just as pleasant and filled with good company.
The day after, however, she was awoken by someone shaking her by the shoulder.
Meg frowned and opened her eyes. She could just barely make out in her bleariness a pale oval of a face with a lot of long dark hair hanging around it. She blushed.
"Milady Sif? What are you..."
Then her vision cleared, and the face resolved into Loki's.
"Giry?" Loki said, blinking in confusion.
"You-"
Meg felt her face go even hotter in indignation. She leapt out of bed to pull on her robe.
"You ought to at least knock before entering a lady's room!"
Loki sighed so wearily that Meg felt obligated to give him a scolding look, but when she did she noticed that he looked a lot less maniacally desperate than usual. Her frown deepened.