"Wandering, exploring. I can do that elsewhere if you'd rather, I have no wish to intrude."

"Home became wearying. I had been on Midgard, and thought I was ready to be back with my family again, but," she shrugs, "it would seem another week or so of being elsewhere is called for."

"I see no cause for rudeness. I am Loki; what are you called?"

"Zeviana, pleasure to make your acquaintance. Just because it's not caused doesn't mean it doesn't happen. So many think that this place belongs to them just because they've planted their feet on the ground."

"I am well aware that this is not how things work. And congratulate you on having fended off those less aware with such apparent success."

"Your hospitality is welcome. What pursuits do you have that leave your days so boring that you must enliven them in that way?" asks Loki.

Zeviana motions around them, to the trees and back towards the vine-archway. There are other scattered living creations around, but none of them quite as obvious as the archway. "It's hardly boring, but - doing this. Trees and plants only seem dull when you haven't lived through them, and breathed through their leaves."

"That is admittedly not something I've tried. I have seen art done over centuries with live plants, but it sounds as though you are doing something else?"

"It's light elven magic. All of us have it," she explains. "We do different things with it. I do this."

"I practice a little myself - though I'd prefer if you didn't inform my mother - but I haven't tried to concoct any spells that touch plants like this."

"I've never met your mother, and I don't plan to tell her. Concoct spells? This is - not spellcraft, it's... I'm not sure how to explain it, I've never had to before. It's like opening my eyes and moving my fingers, all through the trees around me. Is that what your magic's like?"

"Nnnno. Not so intuitive. It's easy to use a spell once I have one, but I have to build it first, piece by piece."

"Hm. Strange. I'm sorry, that sounds terrible. I would feel blind without it."

"I've never had the chance to become so accustomed, so I don't find it terrible, but your magic does sound interesting. Can it do much besides plants?"

"Not particularly. We have some influence over small and simple animals, but nothing big. I couldn't call any to die for me, but I can entice them somewhere they'd go on their own."

"How much of this," Loki gestures at the plants, "is a particular technical skill with the magic, and how much is sheer art?"

Taking a minute to think, Zeviana replies, "I couldn't tell you where one stopped and the other began. How do you ask, say, a dancer where skill stopped and art began? It's both."

"Well, what I mean is - is it actually harder for you to make plants do this than it would be to make wire do the same thing by hand, or is the work in the design and in the time investment?"

"It's easier to do this than with wire, though that might be because I've had so much practice with one and none with the other. The work is in the design and time investment, but there's finesse to it, as well. When I was little I couldn't have done this," she explains, grinning a little. "And now I can."

"Interesting. I have been known to dance, incidentally," Loki adds, smirking a little, "and in my case it is at least eighty percent magical ability. As a child I could barely take ten steps without falling. I had to fix it with a spell."

"Have you?" asks Zeviana, delighted by her visitor. She likes to dance. "I'm glad such a situation could be fixed - that sounds terrible. Not as bad as not having my magic, but still awful. Do you use your magic to do other things, as well?"

"The spell for grace was one-time - I could cast it on someone else, but haven't seen anyone who'd benefit by enough to warrant risking my discretion. And I can heal, and do illusions, and I think next I will learn to change myself into a bird."

"That all sounds very useful! If you learn to change yourself into a bird, tell me what it's like to fly? I can only imagine..."

"It will certainly take me decades to work out a spell for it. Optimistically. But if I still know where to find you once I have tried flying I can write you a letter. Or visit again and turn you into a bird."

"That would be even better, as long as I could turn back. I would miss many things of how I am now. I think, for that I would stay here for several decades just to see the results."

"I do not think I will be inventing any irreversible bird-shape spells. Although I might not be able to arrange it so that you can change back on your own, I will be able to do it."

"I have wanted to fly for a very long time. It simply hasn't been my highest priority - and some of the other spells have left me building blocks that will let the invention go a little faster, too."

Zeviana nods. "It's not something I'd stop wanting to do, but I have just met you, I don't want to just turn into a bird without knowing that I will go back. But as to making it easier - I'm glad to hear it. It sounds like your magic is difficult, but useful in many ways. It's good that you have it."

"I am glad to have it. I think I get better results, working on my own instead of learning from other sorcerers who wouldn't have me on account of magic being unwomanly - but it is slower, yes."

"Unwomanly?" she asks, honestly confused. "What, did you become barren by using it or something?"

"No. I think I would have been told if it were anything so obvious. It's an Asgardian cultural - thing. Women the warriors and leaders, men the sorcerers and practitioners of gentle arts, if they are to be anything at all. I am not bad in a fight since I cast my spell of grace - and I don't think I would like a boy's constraints much better than I like the set I have - but it chafes."

"That is confusing and strange. Only men can use magic? Only women can fight? That's like asking one sex to blind themselves and the other to cut off their hands. Is that why your mother shouldn't know about you having magic?"

"She would be apoplectic. I might be disowned, banished - probably not executed, but mostly because it would embarrass her further. It's not even a matter of ability. I had to learn the basics by - unorthodox means, but there is no inherent barrier. Men are," she adds, "allowed to defend themselves in extremity - my father knows a little about the dagger - but there is considered to be no legitimate reason for a woman to want to practice magic."

With absolute seriousness she replies, "Do you want me to show up at your home with my magic and just taunt them? Maybe cause some damage if they truly have a problem with it? That's insane!"

"I would rather not suffer the repercussions of bringing home a guest bound and determined to be socially unacceptable, and doubt you would accomplish much."

"Worth a shot," shrugs Zeviana. "I wouldn't now that you don't want me to. I do know what it's like to have something absurdly unfair against me like that."

"Oh?"

Zeviana shifts a little uncomfortably, getting into a slightly more guarded stance. "Some of my preferences have caused problems."

"I promise not to tell your mother."

She snickers, a little. "I wasn't worried about that. She already knows. I don't like men romantically. At all. I prefer women."

"Well, if it helps, on Asgard that wouldn't even get you a raised eyebrow unless you were the heir to some sort of dynasty that required you to carry it on with children of your own."

"That does help. A little. It's not so accepted here - I don't care what people think of me, but it is frustrating to have men be sent my way to 'show me what a real man is like' or something."

"Convince me to like men, essentially. I don't understand it, either, I don't think I'm explaining it very well."

"What do they care? Is there some kind of woman shortage and they are resorting to long-shot... let us generously call it 'creative solutions'... to resolve this?"

"There is no shortage of either sex. Apparently it's against the natural order, or something. As I said, I don't understand it."

"I can offer no help in understanding the mindset, alas. On Asgard you would be somewhere between unremarkable and especially fashionable, depending on how little your circle of friends thought of men in a general sense."

"Fashionable? That's strange. I don't think less of men, I just don't want to join them in bed."

"Then you would probably acquire friends who agreed with you and not be widely thought of as fashionable by same. I think we have established that my culture is not long on this thing called 'making sense'."

"Fair point. I suppose if I'm ever desperate for a partner, I can head to your home and pretend to be magically blind. If I can stand it for any length of time."

"You'd have less trouble being openly magical than I, anyway. Not zero, but it doesn't help that I'm a princess."

"Yes. Not stay away, because if I become a complete nonentity I will have very little chance of one day being queen, but a week in Alfheim will do nobody any harm."

"You'd like to be queen, in order to change it? Or is it something that you want for other reasons?"

"I'd like to be queen in order to do a variety of things, encouraging my culture to make sense being one of them."

"I do hate when cultures make little sense, yes. It's what causes me to run off into the wilderness and practice my art with plants. I wish you the best of luck in becoming queen in order to fix it."

"Even if my sister is favored over me - which looks most likely, as she is the perfect golden representative of all Asgard's feminine virtue - she at least has the advantage of listening to me now and again, which Mother does not."

"That must be frustrating. I don't know what advice to offer you, I'm afraid - but I'm happy to listen to what you have to say."

"My greatest concern is that Thor will be made queen - she will learn that I perform magic - and then she will not listen to me, not even now and again."

Zeviana nods. "How much do you trust her? I had thought my brother would balk at my preferences with how big he is on 'duty' and such, but - he surprised me. I think that living an entire life hiding something important about yourself is a bad idea, though your situation might be different? You might not want to do what I would do."

"My best guess is that Thor would eventually find some way to understand - or at least to act like she does; actual understanding might be too much to ask. But before that happened, well, she's - impulsive."

"And you're afraid she'd proclaim to everyone that you do magic in a rage and get you banished right after she finds out."

"Or something. At a bare minimum I imagine she would say some very hurtful things. So I put it off, even though it probably wouldn't be hard to get her to come with me someplace several days' travel from anyone she could tell to give her time to cool off."

"Hmm. You could bring her here, I could obviously do magic in front of her, and you can see how she reacts to it? It wouldn't be accurate to how she reacts to you but it could open up the idea that it's okay to use magic."

"...You know, I rather like that idea. Although it's possible she will just conclude that the people of Alfheim are different."

"Possibly, but you don't know for sure. I'm fine with trying, if she yells I'll simply throw her out."

"She would be hard to throw."

"Then you can help," she says, amused.

"Thor has been known to decisively trounce groups of warriors all of whom are more dedicated to the arts of war than I, in practice."

"Oh. In that case, I suppose I would run. Perhaps you should finish the bird spell so I could fly out of reach."

"If Thor is sufficiently enraged that I have to turn you into a bird, then the experiment loses its virtue of allowing me my continued secrecy."

"True," says Zeviana. "But I would be alive."

"And I would certainly prioritize that if I had put you in danger thusly, but we have not yet committed to so putting you. So perhaps I will finish my bird spell, tell Thor about myself, and escape without any third parties present if she is out of control."

"Ah, well. Has she been known to brutally murder people without reason? If I know I won't die, then I wouldn't mind the danger."

"No, no, no murders on her conscience. I don't think she'd really be the first to resort to violence, but she would not respond well to an attempt to throw her out because of some yelling."

Zeviana sighs. "Then I won't throw her out, I suppose. Even if she does yell. The experiment can be conducted without a problem, then."

"Maybe I will try it, if she has not already found out one way or another by the time I have a suitable bird spell. Do you want to put in a request for what kind of bird?"

"I've been leaning towards some kind of falcon. I have an affection for singing birds, but they aren't the best of the fliers."

"A falcon would be nice, but - like I said, any would be fine. Leave it up to your discretion."

Loki nods. "It might be that it will be easier to do something else, like a swift - once I have a single bird down, at any rate, it should be much less work to add variants, although probably not worthwhile to spend the time on it."

"It could be if you were spying. Something like a pigeon that no one would notice for being in a place it shouldn't be. A distinctive bird like a falcon is better for practical use, but not for avoiding attention, I think."

"Swifts are quite fast too, and smaller. Though if I want to spy, I could combine any bird spell with -" she turns invisible. "this."

"Oh! You didn't mention you could turn invisible - then I take it back, and say go with whatever you feel like."

"I think I mentioned I do illusions." She re-visiblizes.

"Well, yes, but I hadn't connected the dots and realized that meant full invisibility."

"Invisibility is actually comparatively simple. Part of the full illusion spell suffices."

"That's interesting - I'd have thought it would be harder because you have to get what's behind you correct, and you don't have anything to replace an absence."

"I'm doing an absolute illusion, not one based on perspective. No specific direction is 'behind me' when I do that," explains Loki.

"Ah, I see. From those terms - yeah, that would be easier. Your magic's useful, but I think I like mine more. Less... Rulesy."

"To each her own."

"Yup," agrees Zeviana, and then a few plants shift a little to make a suitable chair. She sits in it, looking just a bit smug.

"That I cannot do, at least not yet. And I don't think I can coax Lævateinn into being a chair, however cooperative it is with changing between its standard array of possibilities," she says, patting her currently minimally threatening baton.

"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."

"I will certainly do that upon finding that my ground is the throne of Asgard - but possibly no sooner."

"Fair enough. Seriously, good luck to you. If it falls through though - you're welcome to stay here. It's been a while since I've had a non-oaf to talk to."

"If I find myself having to summarily flee Asgard it's even odds if I'll get a choice of where to be exiled to, but it is nice to know that I will have a friend on Alfheim if I wind up here."

"I recently spent three years on Midgard, but while I passed some enjoyable hours with miscellaneous company there was no one in particular I was reluctant to leave. It's an odd place. They keep their souls on the outside."

"We do try to be hospitable here on Alfheim. Lots of us fail, but we try. For Midgard - what, are their souls just floating along behind them, or something? That seems like it would be uncomfortable."

"Walking or flying behind, more often. The souls come in the shape of animals. Children's can change whenever they like, but when they grow up they stop - on what varies, apparently with personality."

"That's very strange. Though, I suppose little children should enjoy it quite a bit - lots of animals to pet."

"The daemons - that's what they're called - do stay in close affectionate contact with their people, by and large. Though it didn't seem to diminish any child's interest in wild creatures and I heard several pleading for puppies. The daemons can't leave their people, or touch anyone but their people and the other daemons, without - a discomfort I didn't hear described and have certainly never experienced."

"Oh. Yeah, that's quite strange, and uncomfortable. A pet is one matter, having a creature that can never leave your side and can't be touched by other people is... Quite another. I'm not sure I'd like to visit."

"It's a beautiful world, if primitive and full of awfully short-lived people. Avoiding the daemons isn't hard; they do cooperate with the project. I did meet with fewer stares when I illusioned up one of my own -" She displays a blue snake, wrapped around her neck, flicking his tongue out. "Since they have no real conception of a person without one."

"Hmm. Then maybe, but I'd need an illusion of my own to not be seen as a non-person. Besides the soul-animals, is it just the scenery that's beautiful, or something else...?"

"They'll assume you have something tiny, hiding in your clothes, if you don't have one visible, but it's easier if they can see one. It's mostly the scenery, although they've done some inspiring things with architecture considering their limited engineering advancement. And there's art, everyone makes art."

"How gracious of them - I do like art. Architecture, not so much, but art's always lovely. Perhaps I'm rather biased."

"Architecture can be an art, once you progress past the stage of 'I urgently wish to not be snowed on'."

"True, but I hate being indoors. I haven't met a light elf that doesn't. Our buildings are rather sparse and far-between, and filled to the brim with plants. Though, I think there's an ongoing large-scale project to build an entire living city to fix that problem."

"What do you do about being snowed on, then?"

"We tell the trees to catch it, or we bundle up in fluffy clothing. To be fair, it doesn't snow much here. I think it happened once a few decades ago, but usually it's a few centuries between snows."

"A living city sounds amazing. I'd like to see it if it's ever grown."

"If the project's ever finished, I'll invite you to see it. They've been working on it for several centuries, since before I was even born - and they're still not done. So it might be a long wait."

"How old are you? I confess I haven't read many books on Alfheim or its people and cannot tell by looking."

"Around five centuries old. I don't keep a very accurate count of it, I just pay basic attention to when the centuries change."

"I'm coming up on eight."

"Figures the Aesir live longer, I would have pegged you at four and a half or so. But, yeah - still something of a wait."

"If I were only four and a half I wouldn't have made as much progress on my magic as I have. It takes a long time. Trying to write an entire library, letter by letter."

"That's got to be fun. Another reason for me to be very, very happy about having my specific type of magic. I love it so."

"Perhaps you will be more envious after you've had a while to enjoy being a bird."

"I will not mind sharing."

"Hurray! Would you like a chair, too? My magic's is less shareable, but I can do that much."

"I would like a chair if you wouldn't mind. What is so oppressive about being indoors, anyway?"

Zeviana waves a hand, and another tree shifts just a bit, to make a chair. "Well. Remember how I described my magic like opening my eyes and moving my fingers? Being inside is like being deafened, blinded, and floating in an endless void, immobile, all at the same time. It's... Like removing my right arm to go inside and then putting it back on and having it feel strange and other when I do. Familiar, but not. It's hard to explain, I've never had to before."

"So it's not a matter of being near plants, it's a matter of - line of sight?"

"Does it matter what the wall is made of?"

"I think so. It's not the kind of thing that I test, but... Yeah, sometimes are worse than others depending on the wall."

"And a live wall that is made of plants does not count."

"Yes. If it did, if I ever used a tree as a bed or something I'd never be able to sleep because half of my magic sense would be missing."

Loki nods. "What if you grew something quick all over and around a wall that wasn't itself alive?"

"We try something like that with our scarce buildings, and it helps, but the wall still gets in the way. So it's a no to fixing the problem entirely."

"Trellises, fences? So the plants could grow through. It would still let you support flimsier and faster plants instead of having to wait for trees to accomplish anything that needs sturdy infrastructure."

"That would work better, maybe even perfectly, though honestly most of us just hate indoors so much that we're unwilling to even try working on the issue. The living city was the only one a large number of light elves could agree on."

"What will happen when parts of it die, though? Then those parts will be wood at best, no longer load-bearing at all at worst."

"Is your - directionality, good enough that you can test it with one trellis on one side, open on the other three? That's less work and has less risk of leaving you terribly uncomfortable."

"Yeah. It's fine if it's just a side, I can still tell if I feel anything through it. Otherwise we'd all just freak out at anything that isn't a plant. It's having to be surrounded by non-living things, or being cut off in some way."

"So the tests shouldn't be particularly scary and it means we only need to build one trellis. I wonder if Lævateinn can be a saw, I haven't tried it before." She unclips it from her belt and tries; apparently as long as she gives it enough of a handle to make it look almost more like a threatening bread knife than a saw, it will consent to the transformation.

"That's useful. Er - should I show you some trees I haven't worked on for a while like these, or do you want to get the lumber necessary through some other method? I'm a little bit squeamish about chopping down trees."

"I don't have a way to conjure it up out of nothing. I imagine we could assemble a test trellis out of branches without having to sacrifice an entire tree."

"That would be best, yeah. Thank you for paying attention to my sensibilities, this is probably extremely strange considering you don't feel any of them at all."

"The entire point of this exercise is to come up with a way to accommodate those sensibilities," points out Loki.

"True, but - still. It's nice of you. Want me to lead you to a tree that wouldn't be harmed overmuch by pruning?"

"Sure. And I'll need either nails or a quantity of twine-or-something to hold the branches together in a lattice."

"I could use vines, instead of twine? Some of them grow really, really quickly. For plants, anyway."

"Vines work as long as they'll hold up to being hauled on and tied into knots. And too many leaves would get in the way."

Loftily, Zeviana replies, "I can get them to tie themselves. I can be very strategic with leaf placement, too."

"All right then, what do you even need me for?" laughs Loki.

She grins, "Sawing off the branches. Squeamish about trees, remember? If it's one of the ones that are on their way out anyway I won't mind as much, but I don't think I could do it myself."

"All right. I'll help you with the sawing. Show me a tree."

"Sure." Loki unsharps Lævateinn while she starts hauling herself up the tree, then finds a relatively stable place to sit, renders it a Threatening Bread Knife, and starts sawing.

"Mm-hm." And Loki starts doing exactly that.

"If it blocks you like this, would adding plants to it help? If it doesn't block you like this, could adding plants make it worse?" inquires Loki. "If the answers are no and no, we have a fine test without attaching anything else."

"Hmm. No, and no. Testing it like this it is, then."

"Right then." Loki stands up the trellis carefully on its edge.

"Maybe trellises could serve to build treehouses, with plenty of windows and something broad-leafed on the roof. You'd still need to grow trees to support the treehouses, but they'd just need to be trees, not entire skyscrapers that are made entirely out of live tree."

"Yeah, something like that would help, certainly. I don't know about others, but floors being solid doesn't bother me - we just get used to not feeling anything down there, usually. So a treehouse of sorts would work! This was a good idea - thanks, Loki."

"You're welcome. I'm glad I had a useful idea."

Zeviana nods. "It was! Though we're probably going to need help to do anything... Tree-choppy. So it might not be very viable, unless we grow them ourselves and just stop worrying about keeping them alive."

"I wonder if you could just import lumber. The Bifrost isn't really suited for cargo, though."

"Hm. Not really, no. I suppose importing's out of the question, unless there's a better method. A lot of what we do for our magic is ensuring the plant's longevity, anyway, so having a way where we don't constantly have to do that will help."

"Maybe you could import settlers, who wouldn't object to cutting your dead wood up or pruning trees like I just did, but I'm not sure how they'd do at assimilating to the culture. It would depend where you got them from and how many there were, presumably."

"I think we could do dead wood just fine, once it got past the cultural weirdness phase. Bringing in people specifically for pruning.... Eeeh. Several light elves would probably have tried to have me exiled or something for supporting you in pruning a living tree. Some of us are fanatics," informs Zeviana sadly.

"You could also make the trellises out of metal," points out Loki. "It wouldn't fit the aesthetic as well, but if a gappy not-alive trellis doesn't block you there's no obvious reason the not-alive substance has to be wood in particular."

"True! There would be less problems with that in some ways, more in others. We kiiiind of... Don't really mine much? Some do, we do use metals for smaller things, but entire cities built out of it might be a bit much."

"And stone wouldn't hold up particularly well over a few centuries in trellis treehouse form, probably, it's better suited to architecture with heavy foundations and big blocky shapes. Hmm."

"We're hard to please with buildings so we all just live outdoors. It's alright, it's worked for us pretty well and I have no complaints," says Zeviana, amused. "This wasn't a huge issue, anyway."

"Oh well."

"It was an interesting thing to test and I can let those building the living city know. Can't promise it'll be used, though," she offers.

"Hey, a reasonable chance at a useful civilization-wide-helpful idea is more than I usually accomplish in a day, much to my regret."

"Not with my general inability to reach anything that can use my help, no, but you may hug me anyway if you'd like."

"Okay," she says. A hug would then ensue.

Hug!