Orb: 13th of Rebirth's Decline

[brosif]

Ghosts cling to the entryway and nothing ever remains unmarked. Unmade or undone, bone pressing on flesh. Fresh blueberries in autumn, with two moons hanging overhead in the afternoon sun. The scent of it stained her gums.

[Sif’s face is not in view. She speaks quietly, her words not intended for consumption. Her necklace has been tossed to the ground, and the only thing visible is her boots. They are caked in mud and underbrush. Her feet move about restlessly, motions as random and disconnected as her speech.]

We ever attempt substitution, until the original is opaque. Wax paper in a thunderstorm, dried out the next morning.

[ooc: Sif has Snow's visions! If you want her to read your character, give some details here.]

Comments

[brosif]

[Thor's voice reaches Sif, even in this state. A beacon, as it always has been.

But his voice brings other things, too. Images she is fully immersed in, and does not understand. Granite, turned to dust. Creatures carved out of scale and sinew, that she has only ever read about.

She stills.]

Sentiment.

[thoreal]

[The word means more to him than it does to her, but he does not make the connection, yet.] What--? Sif, where are you? I will come to you.

[brosif]

[Sif does not have anything close to Snow's experience with these images. The first two days, she stumbled about the kingdom, unable to discern vision from reality. It is still a challenge, and the low tone of Thor's voice is as much a hindrance as a help.

He is a fixed point: holding her here, present. He is a fixed point, giving the images something to focus on. She does not see the woods around her, but a city she has no name for. A cage falling from the sky, and the god inside it.]

Thor!

[It is a plea and a question.]

[thoreal]

I need more than that, my friend. Where are you?

[brosif]

I am--

[In meeting room, with such small men. No. Sif shakes her head, reaching blindly for the ground.

Such small men. Such a small world, really.]

I know not. There is much green.

[A laugh, there, desperate though it is.]

You let one best you.

[thoreal]

One what, Sif? [This is starting to sound strangely familiar, although the memory it dredges up is from the much more recent past: that seer he helped, with the visions... He frowns, striding from his place in the castle.] I will find you.

[brosif]

You can't find a simple boar.

[Back, then. To the hunting trips of their childhood -- these images bring infinitely more peace. In an open field lit by firelight, they listen in rapt attention to tales that Volstagg will tell a hundred times over in the centuries to come. But they are young, now, and the stories new.

Thor is a comfort at her side -- Loki, a shadow. But a certain one.

Briefly, the night is clear.]

I hear a stream. The moss here is heavy.

[thoreal]

[Boar. He remembers a day with a boar when they were still children; a day before he had fully come into the brash arrogance of his young adulthood, a day when he hesitated and Sif had not. The memory gives him a second's pause, his feet slowing...

And, yes, more and more she sounds like the seer, and though he is not sure why, he knows she most definitely must be found. He clears the castle and unhooks Mjolnir.] You are in the forest?

[brosif]

[She grips the ground beneath her, to be sure. Through the orb, he may see her hand outstretched -- fingers caked in dirt and grass.]

I am in the forest.

[She exhales, slowly.] I am in many places.

[thoreal]

[Would that the Rainbow Bridge were unbroken! (Even if he was the one who had broken it, and for good reason.) It would be so easy to find her, if only it were. Instead, he has to fly a bit blind... But the forest is as good a place to start as any -- the forest near a stream -- so he whips Mjolnir to a furious blur and takes off, soaring through Schwanheim's sky, eventually landing in the forest with a crash.]

Sif?

[brosif]

[She can hear the familiar call of Mjolnir. What should be a comfort becomes something else, as a new image takes hold.

The Rainbow Bridge: home of the sentry, road of the Gods. Testament to their race, breaking under Thor's onslaught. To hear of the Bifrost's destruction is one thing. To witness it is devastating.

Mind focused wholly on hands that aren't hers, on a weapon she will never call, Sif is unaware that in body she has reached out for her own staff. Standing, she strikes out.

She hits a nearby tree in rhythm to Thor's own blows against the Bridge. She cries out, as her brother's post is destroyed.

Her staff is a weapon meant to cut flesh, not wood. The sound of her exertions echo throughout the forest.]

[thoreal]

[He lands some distance away, but it is easy enough to hear the blows from where he is. He strides towards them immediately, jaw tight.]

What is happening? Sif: speak to me. What do you see now?

[brosif]

[His voice, closer now, pulls her again. The scenery in front of Sif changes: from the brilliant, broken etchings of the Bridge to a forest. A strange, metallic taste in the air tells of Midgard.

His hammer strikes out, still. Furious, that someone would dare interfere with the affairs of a family. Of the gods.]

A painted star.

[Pathetic, tiny man. She moves to strike at the shield.]

[thoreal]

A painted... [It hits him as he trails off, and now his eyes widen in horror. A painted star. Steve Rogers. No.]

Sif, stop this. Look away. [He breaks into a run, though his armor and hammer were not meant for sprinting. There is too much there. There are things she cannot see.]

[brosif]

[It is everywhere she looks.

To her left, a camping trip. The embers of the fire cool. They pour out a pail of water and dip their fingers into the sopping ashes, tracing out black runes on ancient rocks.

To her right, the Bifrost shatters and Loki falls.

In front of her, the most impossible: Midgard in ruins. She stands on a strange land with warriors that know her not. She seeks to protect as surely as she seeks to defend.

She cries out, unsure of who she is truly protecting. The people or--]

Brother.

[thoreal]

No! [And now, finally, he sees her ahead and speeds up further, armor clanging like a bell; he breaks out from the trees and catches her in his mighty arms, gripping her tightly.] Sif. See me!

[brosif]

[She struggles against his grip, crying out and throwing all her weight forward. At her best, Sif is one of the closest things in Asgard that Thor has to a match.

Sif is not at her best, now. She trashes, screams, like trapped game. All things that in her right mind the shield maiden would abhor. Thor's hold remains steady throughout, while the forest shakes around them.

Eventually, Sif wears. She is not here, yet. She is in the training halls of Asgard, learning to stand at attention. She is on worlds without names, fighting wars with no end. She is in a thousand different journeys, with Thor at her side: a constant. Now, a vice.

Her body starts to give out. Slouching, she is left with a single image. One sharp enough to cut present from past.]

He--

[She has no words. In her mind, she sees it clearly. A knife, run in to Thor by Loki's own hand.]

I see you, Thor.

[thoreal]

[He holds her steady, his arms like iron; she is strong, but in this, she does not pose a challenge to Thor Odinson. The screaming is harder on him than her thrashing, but he grits his teeth and steels himself against it, wills himself not to listen to his dearest friend's agony until it has passed.

Eventually, she speaks again, and he sags in relief.] Good. That is good. [He relaxes his grip, brushing back some of her hair in a companionable way.] Welcome back, Sif.

[brosif]

[Sif smiles, sadly. Yes -- she is back. Whether the spell's time has worn thin or Thor has, as always, acted as a beacon she could not say. She suspects it may be a combination of the two.

Moreover, she wonders if the visions that came earlier -- the way that time flooded, spilled down her throat and blacked out her eyes in nostalgia -- was a sort of protection. A guard against those finale images, which rang clearer than nearly anything else. Better to be lost in memories of campfire than of comrades of Thor’s that she has never met. Better to remember when Loki used a knife to cut her hair, and not when he...

She reaches out, fingers ghosting lightly over the space too close to Thor's abdomen. A space where Loki plunged (is plunging, will plunge) a knife.]

Is it good? I see you, Thor. All that we did not wish me to know.