"Oh? What other things can it become?"

"It's a weapon. Usually I use it as a glaive, but it can do anything in the neighborhood of 'stick'. Quarterstaff, scythe, ax, ranseur, spear. Once I found it convenient to make it behave as a crowbar."

"Useful! Where'd you get it? Did you make it yourself?"

"It was a gift - from Mother, actually, who has been known to approve of me when I do something sufficiently ladylike like singlehandedly slaying wyverns preying on farming villages."

"Ah... That's rather annoying. Only approving of you if you do 'ladylike' things. She's your mother."

"Well, I can't claim overwhelming amounts of affection for her, either."

"I'm not surprised, nor do I blame you."

"I think the disapproval of my extremely clumsy childhood stuck."

"That's hardly your fault. If it was to the point where you couldn't walk... That's not lack of care, that's another problem entirely."

"I could walk, just not very consistently. For a while I pretended to carry a scepter for its decorative value when I mostly wanted it as a cane - it didn't so much provide useful support as remind me that I had to be careful. Fault per se never entered into it anyway. If you're making, oh, loaves of bread, and one forms a giant air bubble and bakes unevenly, this is not the bread's fault, but it won't do for whatever you had in mind and you feed it to the pigs. Princesses are just harder to be rid of."

"That," declares Zeviana, "is an incredibly callous way of looking at your own children. Loaves of bread are replaceable. People are not. They never are. Even if a child's not - up to whatever you had in mind for it, that doesn't matter. That's without even getting started on just how utterly wrong it is to birth a child for your own selfish ends when he or she might not even want to do it."

"Why are you telling me?"

"... Sorry. I would be telling her, but she's not present. This is something of a sore subject for me."

"At any rate, her distaste for me has its limits. I haven't been formally written out of the succession, although Thor would probably have to die or do something ludicrously stupid or both for me to wind up ascending to the throne."

"I do not recommend doing this with Odin."

"I've been known to do impulsive, stupid things on occasion."

"And this habit has not been much trained away, then?"

"Not in the slightest."

"You have been lucky with consequences, or you're just incorrigible?"

"Guess," challenges Zeviana.

"I'm going to guess it's the second thing, although since you appear to be alive, there must be a sprinkling of the first."

She grins. "Got it in one. I've had some lucky moments, some not so much, but I made it through," she shrugs.

"I'm the more cautious type, although not so much so that I declined the practice of spellcraft - or even stopped once I'd managed my grace."

"I get that, and I'm going to try to not screw up your cautious thing. But I find sometimes - the subtle, patient touch gets you nothing. Sometimes you just have to say 'Fuck it' and just stand your ground."