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Post by Thor on Nov 8, 2017 18:06:21 GMT -5
Thor was better.
Not best - he'd been better, as in better than this, before - but better than he had been. The fact that toddler Jane Foster did not live in New York probably helped, so that Thor could not accidentally on purpose run into her family in a moment of moral and emotional weakness, and was forced to stay in New York finding something to distract himself. Working helped. Working with the Avengers helped. On a few occasions, even Loki helped. Loki was, at least, the reason why when Megan Elness had asked him for assistance in acquiring an evergreen tree for the home furnishings ("oh, excellent. it's about time this place looked like a proper hall"), he had been proudly able to rise to the occasion. Thor actually suspected that teaching his brother to drive was an elaborate prank on Loki's part, since it was, frankly, a huge pain in the ass to attempt in the city, but hey, so far there was no indication that he'd gotten him the jeep as a prank, too; it seemed to work just fine, or better than just fine, if Loki's irritation at trying to puzzle out how Thor could drop Mjölnir on the floor without any seeming weight issues indicated anything.
"I'm great at driving," Thor had said at the outset of the trip, "not so great at directions. Well, on the ground. If I were flying, that would be easy. So you just tell me where to turn and everything will be:" And he made the appropriate hand gesture. 👌
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Post by Megan on Nov 8, 2017 19:09:27 GMT -5
“Well,” Megan said cautiously as she ran it through her head, “I think the best bet is probably to go across to First and then head up to the Queensboro.”
There was a tree lot not ten minutes away on foot, but Thor was so eager that she kind of had to let him.
“This’ll be fun,” she admitted. “I haven’t been to a tree lot since I was about fourteen. We always had an artificial tree in my mom’s house, but my dad usually got a real one. I went with him that year.”
Megan was better, too- it had become easier to enjoy work not having to trail behind Adrian all the time, and even though she suspected she was going to crash hard on New Year’s, it was hard to not feel cozy and content amid the city’s holiday decorations. She had cut her hair shorter, which turned out to suit her, and generally found just about everything- life, her appearance, her job- a little more pleasant than it had been in a long time.
“Are you going to be warm enough?” she asked, glancing him over.
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Post by Thor on Nov 8, 2017 19:14:27 GMT -5
"What?" asked Thor, laughing. Thor appeared to experience temperature alterations, but in a strange, incomprehensible way even by the standards of the other Asgardians. He certainly had begun to dress more warmly, but the hoodie had on over a thermal was about it.
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Post by Megan on Nov 8, 2017 19:26:09 GMT -5
Megan, for the record, was wearing a fingerless gloves, a thermal jacket under a long burgundy wool coat, which had both a gathered waist and puffed shoulders, a thick, shawl-like green scarf, and a loose beret she had set more over the back of her head than the front so as to not disturb her bangs while keeping the tips of her ears warm. Somewhere under all this was a short sweater dress, but the coat hid it entirely, so that only her tights and boots showed below it. She felt cold just looking at him.
“...never mind.”
There were swag lights shaped like ribbons and wreaths, and occasionally menorahs, hung between the lampposts on either side of the streets, and when Thor started the car, the radio was playing “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”. Megan immediately reached over to adjust the dial.
“Sorry, I just think that song’s obnoxious- we don’t have to listen to Christmas music at all if you don’t want,” she added apologetically. “I already feel a little weird asking a Norse god to help me get a tree.”
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Post by Thor on Nov 8, 2017 19:27:45 GMT -5
"Oh, but we love trees. Yggdrasil and all of that."
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Post by Megan on Nov 8, 2017 19:36:41 GMT -5
She laughed.
“Honestly, most of what we do for Christmas comes from you guys to start with,” she admitted, “so it’s probably not as weird for you as it would be if you were one of the Greek gods.”
She paused.
“...so are those guys around too, or-“
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Post by Thor on Nov 8, 2017 19:40:29 GMT -5
"Er. Not on Asgard, they're not."
He had heard a lot of weird things about this world, including tell of a fellow "superhero"who claimed not to be a god, but from a mysterious people whose fate was deeply intertwined with that of the Greek pantheon Megan spoke of, so he did not want to judge.
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Post by Megan on Nov 8, 2017 19:47:34 GMT -5
“Fair enough. They were supposed to live on Earth, anyway, just on a particular mountain, so for all I know they’ve got their own stargate up there or something.”
She fiddled with the radio dial a little longer, landed on “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”, and decided that was light-hearted and secular enough to not be awkward.
“I mean, really though, it’s like... mostly Yule. In theory it’s supposed to be the birthday of the Christian God’s son-slash-avatar, but most historians think he was born in March anyway. When Christianity was starting to spread, they just kind of glued that idea onto Yule and called it a day,”
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Post by Thor on Nov 8, 2017 19:52:23 GMT -5
"Loki said something about it at one point or another. Really, he just prattles on about Midgardian law or religion and I think I know what we're talking about, and then BAM - actually now he's talking about Super Mario Brothers, and if you ask him when he changed topic he just gets angry. 'You haven't heard a word I said, have you?'" said Thor, in an imitation close enough that those that knew Loki would be able to recognize it but no better than that. "'You've never listened to me!' Well, it's easier to pretend that you understand and nod than to deal with that, so I haven't fully understood him but I do have some notion of what you're talking about."
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Post by Megan on Nov 8, 2017 19:57:46 GMT -5
Somehow he was able to make his own accent stronger to indicate he was imitating Loki, and she laughed, before realizing that this probably wasn’t something she was invited to laugh about and awkwardly looking at her hands.
“Well, like- that’s what it’s about, in theory, God’s son being born to a human virgin in order to take on all the sins of humanity and get rid of them by being put to death as a grown man. Nobody likes to think about that much this time of year, though, so it’s mostly about spending money on other people and having big feasts together and singing songs. If it’s not too weird for you you’ll probably love it.”
She tried beaming at him.
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Post by Thor on Nov 8, 2017 19:59:17 GMT -5
"Too weird for me? Growing up my best friend was Loki."
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Post by Megan on Nov 8, 2017 20:01:29 GMT -5
She laughed a little more brightly this time.
“Oh, it gets worse, it gets so much worse,” she teased. “There’s this whole magic Christmas guy myth they tell kids here that I think is based on your dad, though at this rate maybe he is real-“
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Post by Thor on Nov 8, 2017 20:02:18 GMT -5
"My dad?"
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Post by Megan on Nov 8, 2017 20:10:41 GMT -5
“Okay- okay, bear with me here. So like, the whole centerpiece of Christmas in the US is this guy called Santa Claus, who’s this big guy in a red suit with a white beard who travels around the world in a flying sleigh drawn by reindeer and supposedly in one night leaves presents for all the good children of the world. I mean, it’s really their parents, but that’s the story. He’s this huge mishmash of all these different figures from earlier traditions, but apparently the reindeer thing comes from your dad leading a hunt or something? I can’t remember the whole thing. Teja would know better.”
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Post by Thor on Nov 8, 2017 20:13:30 GMT -5
"You know who that really sounds like -" Thor was already laughing.
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