you stepped into these days [OPEN]

[ladysarmour]

Characters: Sansa Stark, wolf!Loki
Open? Indeed.
Where: Sansa's rooms in the castle
When: Day today
What: Sansa
Warnings: Should not need any!


There is an odd dissonance between one day and the next: trapped in the wood for three successive days, then a wolf attack and dreams, such tiring dreams, and now Sansa sits in her room, bent over a length of linen stretched out in a hoop frame and threading through it silk thread. Calm. Embroidery has a soothing quality to it, almost like prayer.

-- teeth flashing in the sunlight, great razor claws barreling toward her face, Lady leaping between her, no, Lady, Lady! and she has the thought 'I survived the Lannisters only to die here in the belly of my lord father's beast --

Her next stitch misses the linen and pricks her finger instead, dotting the fresh white cloth with blood. Oh, mercy, mercy, she thinks, and sets the needle aside to set a new piece of linen into the frame.

Comments

[brosif]

When she enters the room, she is trying to keep her face level. She doesn’t know what Sansa remembers of the previous night, and she is hesitant to make the girl relive anything that she may not want to.

“Thank you, Lady.”

Still not sure what to call her. Sif pauses in the doorway. She is not the best hunter in Asgard, but she isn’t far off. She could be the worst the Aesir had to offer and still recognize the smell of one she...of one who had tried to kill her friend not one day ago.

“Are you well, Lady Stone?”

Her eyes scan the room for him.

[sorcerous]

He is not hiding -- he would be terribly annoyed if anyone insinuated that. He is simply removing himself from this conversation.

And staying removed.

[ladysarmour]

"I am well, my lady, thank you." But still her hands tremble. Before she realizes it she is across the room and closing the door with a snap, breathing hard. It does not even occur to her that Sif might not remember what Sansa does. The image in her mind is both hazy and clear. Like a memory sharp in the center that fades at the edges. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to draw strength from the solid wood of the door before turning to face Sif.

"And thank you for...for using that name. Not the other."

[brosif]

A small shake of her head, as her eyes follow where Loki is hiding. They are not alone, here.

"Of course. We are not yet on a first name basis."

She has no intention of revealing his identity any more than she intends to reveal Sansa’s. But the girl has a right to know that this is not an open place to talk.

The business of keeping secrets suits Sif ill.

[sorcerous]

If no one disturbs him, he's going back to sleep. He's too tired for secrets.

[ladysarmour]

Her brow knits briefly in confusion, then smooths out. Ah. A smokescreen for any who might overhear?

"You may call me Alayne, if it please you," she says, regaining her calm and crossing back to her table. "I don't...like 'Stone'. Where I am from, it is the name given to bastards of the Vale." Easier to be Alayne than Sansa; harder to be a Stone than a Stark, with all the meaning it carries with it.

[brosif]

A look of very real look of guilt Sif's face. On Asgard, to be without a parent is to be without a name. That she has been referring to Sansa as a bastard with every conversation between them clearly grieves her.

She digs her fingernails into her palm -- a girlhood habit, never quite drilled out of her.

"Lady Alayne, then. My apologies.

[ladysarmour]

"They are not necessary, but I thank you, my lady. I..." There is a new openness to her around Sif, a simplicity. Not that she is ever fully at ease any longer, nor does she instill complete trust, but it is easier now for Sansa to smile shyly and mean it.

She lifts the embroidery frame from the table and smooths her fingers over it, then holds it out. "I'd hoped to have this finished betime we next met, but you are here now." The embroidery is incomplete yet, only simple stitches laying out a pattern of a shield bisected down the center by a sword. "You are a lady, so I thought perhaps a border of flowers... But if you wish for something else, please only say. Your sigil is unknown to me, I'm afraid."

[brosif]

Sif reaches her fingers towards the embroidery, but doesn't touch it. Her hands are still covered with dirt from this morning's practice.

"I don't have one." It is perhaps the most honest she has been with one not of Asgard. Even to Thor, she speaks very little of her family.

"My father did not support my ambition to be a warrior. My mother's sigil is one of her father's, and I find no honor in the amount of descendants already willing to shed blood in his name."

No. Sif fights for Asgard above all else, and the sigil for that is not hers to claim.

[ladysarmour]

She could render it in gold, but Sif is truer than any Lannister Sansa has known, and gold is a Lannister color; so too is red, so though Sif clads herself in that color Sansa cannot bring herself to use it. There are no true knights, but despite that, despite knowing this strange, powerful woman only a week, despite her sex, Sif is the truest knight Sansa has ever known.

"Grey, then, to signify steel?" Grey is a Stark color; grey will tell of her gratitude, if Sif remembers the banners.

[brosif]

She does remember the banners. She can see them displayed – not gilded in pomp and house trappings, but modestly. A byproduct of duty. She takes a moment to answer, clearly balancing what she wants to say with the extra ears in the room.

“If you think I would wear such a color well, then I will be proud to.”

[ladysarmour]

"Oh, you would, my lady." Sansa rushes on ahead. The image of the completed pattern spills out in her mind, perfect and simple. How long has it been since she's had something to so dedicate herself to? "You've a Northern coloring by Westerosi measure, and grey always becomes it well."

[brosif]

"Have I?"

Sif doesn't imagine she would have fit in well anywhere in Sansa's home world. But the north might have held her better than others. There’s a small, tired smile as the comment brings up an old memory.

"You can thank Loki for that." She tugs on her coal-black hair, as her eyes go towards where the wolf sleeps. "I was born with hair as gold as wheat before the harvest. It was quite a waste on me."

[ladysarmour]

"Surely not," she protests. Strange to picture Sif with hair of gold. She won't admit it, but Sansa prefers Sif's hair dark as it is now. "You are beautiful now; you must have been beautiful then.

"Who is Loki?"

[brosif]

Sif barks out a laugh at the thought.

"Beautiful? Goodness, no. I was skin and bones and teeth. Elbows and knees jutting out quicker than the rest of me could keep up with them. We could barely finish altering my dresses in time to keep up with the growth spurts. I was taller than both of the princes for years."

She hadn't even noticed until she had Thor in a hold one day during training and realized that his chin came up to her nose. She'd been distracted enough that he'd managed to break the hold, and then she'd refused to speak to either of them for a week. Thor hadn't understood why. But perhaps Loki...

Loki understands as many things as he doesn't, and rarely in a way that is convenient. For a moment, she wonders if Sansa has lost some of her memories, and then the realization hits: he never gave his name. To Sansa, he is the Sorcerer. The man who woke her from a cursed sleep and gifted her with a magic flower.

"Loki is the man who helped me when you pricked your finger. We grew up together."

A pause.

"He does not always dress like that."

[sorcerous]

At the first sound of his name, Loki shifts. A twitch-whisper of movement, awakening him against his will. He listens, and the sound of his breath is a hint louder than before. Audible.

[ladysarmour]

"Oh! I never knew his name..." Her cheeks flush a pretty pink in embarrassment at her ignorance and her unintended offense. Now that she knows his name, perhaps she can find him through the orb; she owes him her thanks for breaking the curse that had held her in sleep.

She can ask him about the flower. Perhaps he'll even make her another.

"But what has he to do with the color of your hair?"

[brosif]

"A childhood trick. He cut it off as I slept. My parents were furious."

She fingers some strands of hair, at the memory. In truth, the change hadn't bothered her all that much. But ladies were expected to have long hair, and Sif was expected to be a lady. She'd cried in front of her mother, more out of obligation than remorse.

"To make amends, Loki went to the dwarfs and had them weave new hair, just as golden as what I'd lost. But when I tied it into my old hair, the roots rejected it. Since that day, my hair has grown black."