video;

[bacondivination]

[ The screen seems covered in a strange, shimmering green fire before an image within it appears to show a space on a rooftop. Loki, unsurprisingly, has found a way to cheat the restriction that terminals are stationary. He's magically broadcasting what he's doing before the camera so he has plenty of room to work, and everything is faintly distorted. ]

There, that's a good start. Attention witches, sorcerers, warlocks, and others of general magical ability. There are too many of us to be playing fast and loose with our craft.

[ With a gesture, everything focuses on a pentagram of a few feet in diameter. Ancient Norse runes ring around it, and they carry suggestions of protection and power for those that might have an idea about that kind of thing. ]

This is a basic inverted warding circle. Magics inside it have a Hel of a time getting out unless the lines are disturbed, so it's generally quite useless. If you're going to be doing something experimental, use it or something like it. Chalk out the lines, write the runes anti-clockwise, and play to your heart's content.

[ A pause, and he points to one particular marking. ]

Don't get that one backwards. It will turn the nearest equine creature inside out. I've seen it happen, and it's not pretty.

[ Then he claps his hands briskly, looking pleased with himself. ]

If you don't follow this basic magical etiquette, I will set you aflame in your bed while you sleep and won't care a whit as you burn. So let's all be polite to one another, get along just fine, and not be on fire.

[ Whoops, getting a little dark there. Loki smooths out his expression and shrugs. ]

If you've any questions, just ask a professional. I'll be about once I get elsewhere.

[ The fire vanishes, showing Loki's empty home until he pops up on camera briefly to end the video. ]

Comments

[guiltapalooza]

Sometimes you have to trust things, [she protests, a trifle defensively.] Or people. Things or people. Trust isn't always bad.

[bacondivination]

[ Loki offers her a particularly eloquent shrug. She was talking to a liar, after all. ]

But you've a point there. There's always something or someone you can count on in life, isn't there? Even I have that, for some reason.

[guiltapalooza]

[Even liars need people they can trust. Maybe them especially. Willow has done her fair share of lying and knows how much feeling isolated can spur you toward it.]

Shocking how people might actually care about you. [It's obvious to her that everyone would have someone that cared for them, and that's pretty clear in her tone.] It happens.

[bacondivination]

It's a mystery of the ages.

[ It is clearly far less obvious to Loki. In fact, he sounds faintly bemused by the line of thought. ]

One of these days, I'll figure out exactly how it works. There's got to be a trick to it.

[guiltapalooza]

[It reminds her weirdly of Angel for a second before the association passes. Or maybe even Spike. Immortals everywhere find caring baffling, it seems.]

It's not a spooky mystery. People need people. Didn't you ever listen to Streisand? It's half selfish, but... it works.

[bacondivination]

[ One day, she might meet normal Asgardians and realize it's just a Loki thing. He comes from a culture that loves with alarming enthusiasm, and it makes absolutely no sense at all. ]

Never did like Streisand. More Nina Simone, 'nobody knows you when you're down and out' and all that.

[guiltapalooza]

[Normal Asgardians sounds like an oxymoron to Willow... She cares about people with alarming enthusiasm, herself, so she intuitively understands their perspective without knowing Loki's an exception.]

How about Alicia Keys? "The Thing About Love"?

[bacondivination]

As the wise master of the bardic arts known as Jay Z had once said, "There ain't no love in the heart of the city."

[ Which had to be the most preposterous sounding thing to come out of Loki's mouth so far given his ridiculous Asgardian accent. ]

[guiltapalooza]

[There's a beat of silence and then Willow starts giggling, covering her mouth with one hand and abruptly looking about five years younger. It wasn't all that long ago that she was a teenage girl.]

Sorry, I think we were having a serious yet veiled discussion about the nature of love using popular song artists, but your accent with Jay Z ruined it for me.

[bacondivination]

Rude, Willow. Rude. You were the ruiner, not me!

[ He seems to take it in stride, however, grinning at her. ]

I've done well in adopting Midgard's culture, I'll have you know.

[guiltapalooza]

You still sound like you walked out of a seriously confused period drama, [she says apologetically, but is simultaneously brightly amused.]

It's a little off-putting when you say the ain't in the same sentence as bardic arts.

[bacondivination]

He is a master of such arts, that much is irrefutable. I dare you to tell me the man is not a wordsmith without peer.

[guiltapalooza]

Yeah, that's not really my genre.

[bacondivination]

I'm so disappointed here. You've broken my heart.

[ He cants his head to the side. ] But good news! We have proven Loki, in fact, has a heart. It took shattering it into tiny pieces, but still it is progress!

[guiltapalooza]

Don't act like you're all big bad, [she scolds.] I've seen that act before and it didn't hold water then, either.

Everyone's got some Celine Dion in them. Sometimes it's just buried really deep.

[bacondivination]

Haven't you heard? I'm one-hundred percent grade A evil here. Master of wickedness and trying to steal the magics of friends and strangers alike with my little spells. This is a thing, I assure you.

[guiltapalooza]

[That's more concerning, and she shoots him a warier look.]

Don't steal my magic or you're going to get more than you bargained for, [she warns. She means both in the attempt, and what he would get if he actually succeeded.] But I'm still not convinced. Even Spike used to get all weepy over his dark princess running off with a slimy chaos demon instead of him, back when he was evil.

[bacondivination]

Ugh. You mortals just don't take jokes well, do you? Odin's empty eye socket, I can't be humorously self-deprecating for a second.

I don't want anyone's magic, nor do I think I could steal it if I wanted to, and I like my powers just fine.

[guiltapalooza]

[Once upon a time, this would make Willow apologize. She'd backtrack, feel embarrassed, and give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe with some uncertainty over the fact that he is a trickster god, but she'd do it.

After years of deception, both to her and by her, and perpetually facing down enemies-- and friends-- with growing self-confidence, Willow isn't about to give in that easily.]

I take jokes just fine when I know they're jokes, [she says disapprovingly, scrunching her face up at his attempt to divert her.] What are your powers? So far all I've got is 'mystical' and that's a hefty umbrella.

[bacondivination]

All the standard divine toolset with an added mastery of magic. Near agelessness, can't seem to stay dead no matter what people try, speak the All-Tongue, and such things of that nature.

[ He admits this all very freely, not an ounce of hesitation involved. ]

One of these days, I'll be quite the devastatingly handsome sorcerer the likes of which that has no peers. Work in progress, that part.

[guiltapalooza]

[It's not strange to Willow to admit to your powers. People have secret identities where she's from, but only to the general public. Everyone 'in the know' tends to know about each other.]

How does that work with the... agelessness? Do you apply for an age promotion?

[bacondivination]

Near agelessness. Not even gods live forever, though dying from something as simple as old age is not really on the list of things we do.

[ He shrugs. ]

Barring anything unusual happening, I could say I'll get there in a few hundred years. I'm very nearly a man grown.

[ Okay, that last sentence is an obvious, blatant lie and he doesn't give a fuck. ]

[guiltapalooza]

Well gee, no rush, [she jokes, smiling at this casual explanation of what's essentially immortality. She's hung out with Anya enough not to blink at descriptions like this anymore, much less Angel and Spike.]

You sure puberty for a few hundred years isn't some form of diabolical torture? Sounds like diabolical torture to me.

[bacondivination]

The prospect is utterly horrifying, I assure you. If I can skip it somehow and go straight to being amazingly dashing, I will take the opportunity.

[ Clear humor shines through his words. ]

But it's likely better than a mortal child going through all that in... what? A few years? Sounds rather traumatic, really.

[guiltapalooza]

It's like tearing off a band-aid, [she says thoughtfully.] You get all your excruciating public embarrassments out of the way all at once.

Then later on you get personal failures. Joy of being an adult.

[Willow purposefully sounds quite sanguine, even joking, about this-- but there's a note of regretful truth to it.]