I kept my eyes tightly closed.
“Details,” he boomed, then cupped a hand to my chin, pulling my head gently this way and that as he peered across my face.
I put my hands up and clamped them over my eyes.
“What are you doing, Details?” he asked, except his voice had a foreign tone. It shook on the high notes and bottomed at the end as if he'd run out of breath.
“Just go away, go away,” I mumbled into my hands.
Who knew who I was talking to?! Thor? Loki?
He sighed. He let me go. He got up – I felt his presence shift though I wasn't about to open my eyes.
I heard him leave the room.
I heard his heavy footsteps until they picked their way over the scattered wood of my door and out onto the porch.
Under my hands, which were still pressing into my face in a last ditch attempt to keep the unstable reality around me outside, I blinked.
“Is this far enough?” he called from outside, still presumably on my porch.
I kept blinking.
“I’m not Loki,” he said in a deep voice. “And you should not have left the Ambrosia.”
I didn't remove my hands from my face. I couldn't trust my ears. The details of the words I was picking up... I could be mistaken.
“You are also...” he trailed off.
I was also what? I held onto his words as if they were an anchor somehow keeping me in place though a storm of uncertainty was threatening to sweep me off my feet.
“Not normal,” he finished with a heavy sigh that shook my bedroom window.
Not normal? Hardly an illuminating thing to say, a voice of reason said from somewhere inside the storm of my mind.
“You are not...” he trailed off once more.
I waited on his words.
He didn't speak again.
What was he trying to tell me? I was not what?
I pulled my hands from my face.
There was a room around me: my room. There were bullet holes in the far wall and plaster was strewn all over the carpet.
“Details, we cannot do this all night,” Thor said from outside my bedroom window.
Rubbing my eyes and still shaking like a leaf in a storm, I turned to the window behind my bed. It was a large window, and though the curtains were drawn, they were thin enough that I could see the giant shadow of Thor behind them, his form illuminated by the street lamp outside my house.
I watched him.
Would Loki bother going outside when I asked him to get out? Would he bother mooching around on my porch while I had a breakdown – respecting my need for space and yet not wanting to outright leave?
Wouldn't Loki cackle, pull a gun, and take me off to strap me to a wall somewhere?
The tiny voice of reason that had been small moments before began to grow. I pushed to the corner of the bed as I kept a wary eye on Thor.
“I didn't expect this,” his voice lowered as if he were talking to himself.
He didn't expect what?
The questions pressed at my mind, and the more they gathered, the more they pushed the confusion out. A question indicated ignorance of the unknown, and it was the threat of the unknown that had pushed me into this frantic, self-doubting frenzy. Somehow the questions were like rungs on a ladder, while the confusion blew me off my feet and twisted me inside out.
The only problem with ladders was enterprising sea monsters, but hopefully there weren't any hiding under my bed.
I held onto the questions, cupping them in my hands (if you could imagine it) and keeping them safe from the doubt and confusion.
I stood up.
“I’m sorry,” Thor said quietly. His voice no longer shook the window, walls, or floor. I had to strain my hearing to pick it up. “I didn’t realize....”
He didn't realize what? What was he trying not to say here? He didn't realize that going to the Ambrosia was a dumb plan? He didn't realize that his maybe-wife from another identity would be there to hunt me down and try to scratch my eyes out? He didn't realize that taking the time to have a domestic was not something he should prioritize over taking the time to save the universe (and me)?
I walked over to the window warily. I watched his shadow. I could see his shoulders heave up and down. He was breathing heavily (though gods don't breathe).
“Details, there is much to find out, and you can't help me if you are lying on your bed,” his tone returned to normal.
I stared at that shadow. It was the first time I’d looked not at Thor, but at the effect he cast on the objects around him. The shadow was solid, reassuring, real.
I needed real right now.
I pressed my teeth hard into my bottom lip. I felt... different. The hysteria was passing and the doubt was leaving with it.
“Come on, Details, don't make me come in there and knock you out with Mjollnir,” he said through a gruff laugh.
Thor. Yep, it was Thor.
“You do that,” I said, voice still unsure but growing in power with every breath, “And I'll be sure they revoke your current visa.”
“Details,” Thor boomed with a definite note of happiness that shook my window something chronic.
I crossed my arms and stared at his silhouette. It disappeared.
I heard his thundering steps as he rounded my porch, went through my broken door, and popped his golden-bearded face into my bedroom.
I crossed my arms and took a shaky breath (though I hoped the fact I was still shaking was hidden by the half-dark of the room).
“You should not have left the Ambrosia,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes and glared at him. “You shouldn't have gone to the Ambrosia in the first place—“
He put up a hand. “I was gathering information.”
“You were gathering empty beer mugs,” I shot back.
He took a sharp laugh, his mouth kinking up to the side in a familiar move. “You, of all people, must appreciate that the details of a situation are not always what they seem.”
I clutched my hands tighter around my middle. The statement brought up the familiar lick of uncertainty I'd been grappling with over the last couple of hours.
Thor watched me carefully. If I hadn’t known better, he'd said that on purpose to see how I would react. “Details,” he said after a deep breath, “I’m afraid this is more serious than I originally thought.”
Despite everything, I gave an abrupt snicker. “Really? You mean you are going to take the fact I'm being hunted down by gods seriously now? How nice of you.”
Thor's face didn't turn to stone at my snide comment, and he didn't reach behind him, rip off a chunk of wall, and throw it right at my head. No... he went silent. “Who are you, Details?”
I let out a sharp, involuntary breath. What a stupid question, I thought bitterly. Yet the thought shook through me. I swallowed. “You know the answer, don't be stupid—“
“I know more than you allow for,” his tone had a note of warning, but not a threatening one. This was his attempt to point out to me that, although he acted like a total and complete jerk/bully/nong most of the time, he was still privy to the kinds of divine secrets small-time goddesses would never learn. He'd done the same thing in God Hospital when he'd stopped time to stare at me.
While academically I appreciated he must know – and I hated to admit it – more than me, it was a fact I was usually willing to bury.
I sucked my lips in.
He pointed right at me. “I do not know who you are,” he said.
I locked my jaw together, not wanting and not capable of moving it.
“There is much to this situation that is strange.” He grabbed a hand to his chin and appeared to think.
My mind caught up to my body. “I'm Officina,” I said with a punctuated breath of air.
He looked down at me immediately, eyes blazing. “Who is that? Where do you come from? What pantheon? When did you arise? What is your mythology?”
I shook my head. No. I said to mysel
f firmly. I didn't want to begin doubting myself again. The incident with the oak in the middle of the street... it had almost torn me in two. It had made me doubt the evidentiary base of everything I believed in –everything I was.
No. No. No.
“Officina, goddess of details, what is your legend?” Thor asked, a distinct note of authority in his voice. He was talking to me, not as a petulant-bully god, but as the combined champion of various divine pantheons across the globe.
“Stop this, Thor,” I wanted to say with finality, except my voice shook so much it sounded far more like a plea. “You know who I am, so stop this. I'm a goddess of details, I work at the Integration Office, I live in a cottage.” I shrugged my shoulders tightly, trying to indicate the godly shrine around me.
“But what is your legend?” He kept staring down at me, and the more he stared, the more he looked statuesque. The less and less he looked like the golden-bearded, hammer-carrying nong who would smash a sea monster only to let one of its wily tentacles kidnap a goddess by his feet. The less he looked like the kind of god who would leave you in your sitting room while his once-best-fried blew up your front door. Or the kind of god who would ignore a plea from his father to save the universe and instead indulge in some ale-sloshing party times.
The less and less he looked like the Thor I thought I knew, the more he looked like the Thor of legend – the Champion of the Nordic Gods.
I immediately dropped my gaze. It was a defense mechanism, I realized. If I wasn't looking at him, I wouldn't be able to pick up the change in his visage – the way his stature and stare became innately powerful. Seeing that change made me doubt – and it was a terrible, gut-wrenching doubt. It made me suspect that Thor had always been that way, but I’d chosen to see him as the godly equivalent of a teenage boy, supporting my conclusion by concentrating on all the wrong details.
I backed off.
“I will not harm you, Details, but tell me who you are,” his voice had a growing force.
I glanced at him then jerked my gaze away. In that quick move, I saw the same look I’d seen in the Ambrosia when he’d shaken me from my first leaf-filled hallucination. It was a look of searching. It was a look of loss. It also had a pressed, determined, frightening edge to it.
It was as though Thor was looking for something – something important enough to make the usually-contained god show a tender, uncontrolled emotion at odds with his boisterous and macho personality. As though he thought that whatever he looked for had something to do with me.
He must believe I stood between him and his goal.
Instinctively, I shifted to the side.
It didn't change the way he stared at me.
I shrugged my shoulders again, but it was a tight move. “I don't have a legend like you,” I pointed out in a single breath. “I'm not a big-time god, Thor,” I tried to reason with him.
He stood there, glaring down at me.
“Look,” I said desperately, “I don't know what you want me to tell you! I'm the goddess of details. I've always been the goddess of details—“
“Always?” he cut in sharply. “Always?”
That question sent a shiver down my spine – a cold and quick move that felt like a blizzard slicing down my back.
I shrugged again.
It was the best answer I could give.
Unfortunately it wasn't good enough for Thor.
“When did you arise?” he snapped. That look in his eye was only growing.
I unwrapped my arms and put my hands out in a peaceful move. “Look, I have a file, or a legend, if you want to put it like that.” I swallowed. “It's... it's not detailed,” I said the word, and as I said it, it gave me a terribly odd feeling. It was true. My origin story paradoxically wasn't that fact-filled. For the goddess of details, I had a murky past.
I... just arose one day. For centuries I wandered around in a haze. It wasn't until mankind learned to appreciate the necessity of details in reasoning that I began to form the personality (and control) I had now.
Thor was hardly going to like that peculiar origin story in his current mood.
He pointed a finger right at me. “Tell me.”
“I don't,” I sniffed, “I don't have a story like you. I'm a small-time goddess. I just appeared... or something.”
“You appeared,” he repeated my exact tone with an incredulous look crumpling his brow. “Goddesses do not simply appear.”
“Look,” I batted a hand at him and backed off again, “I did. I appeared. I can't remember where I came from. For centuries, for eons, I wandered around... looking at stuff. Okay? I was an airhead. I didn't do anything. I wasn't involved in any heroic battles. I didn't go on any legend-worthy adventures. I... I don't know, I just lay on a hill and smelt daisies and watched the clouds or something.” I spread my fingers wide and stiff and hoped like hell Thor wasn't going to respond to my story by bringing down the house with a lightning bolt.
He looked furious. Then his expression softened a tad. He raised an eyebrow. “That is not an origin story, Details. Gods do not appear and wander around aimlessly for years. They are born in battles, out of stars, in the fiery pits of mans’ imagination. A god must unfurl from a moment of concentrated, powerful belief. The belief must be enough to sustain, personify, and embody them. What you have described couldn’t sustain a divinity.”
Great. Just great. I didn't only have reason to doubt my senses and my sanity, but also my past, too.
I clamped a hand on my stomach as a whirlpool of bitterness took hold. I looked up at him. “Why are you doing this?” I gave a sharp breath. “Why are you coming in here acting like this?” I flapped my arms around, frustrated but unable to find the exact words to express myself. I couldn't put into a sentence how much I hated Thor right now. He’d come to anchor me, to save me, only to push me right back to the ledge I'd been standing on, then to push me off altogether. He'd given me hope, only to take it away. He'd unloaded my burden only to hurl more onto my shoulders. “Why are you doing this?” I asked far more sharply and bitterly.
Thor closed the gap between us in an instant. A snap didn't do justice to it – he came upon me faster than lightning.
His face was right next to mine.
He didn't say anything, just stared down at me with his eyes narrowed.
I hit him. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I balled up a hand and struck him right on the chest. It was a pathetic move, and it wasn't one that was going to achieve anything. The tiny fist of a tiny goddess against the full-body armor of a mythic god.
But sometimes the smallest of moves have the largest of effects.
Thor softened his expression. “I’m not doing this, Details – you are.”
I balled up a hand and hit him on the chest again.
How could I be doing this? How could this be my fault? Thor was... ahhh!
I hit him again.
He was useless. He was a nightmare. He was insufferable.
“You are the goddess of facts, and yet you do not know the facts of your own beginning. How can this be?” he asked, voice close enough to boom right through me like a clap of thunder.
“I don't know all facts,” I said through clenched teeth. “I don't know every detail – it doesn't work like that.”
“Then how does it work?”
I had no idea, so I hit him again. With every pathetic, desperate lashing-out, my determination was cut in half. It withered up and curled in on itself until my hand limply hung there, resting against the armor I couldn't hope to dent let alone break.
There was a moment of silence.
“I'm Officina, goddess of details and facts,” I said weakly.
The truth was, with every passing second, I knew less and less about who I was.
Thor grabbed a hand around my limply balled-up fist as it rested on his armor.
“There are more details in this universe than you can imagine, and yet you must rule them all. How?”
What? The frustration s
urged in me again. The question hung in the air. I was the goddess of details – all of them – and yet I had the apparent power of the God of Knit Wear. I could see where Thor was going here, but I didn't like it.
“Everything, all – there are details to be had in each and every thing. There are facts innumerable and infinite that can be drawn from every single process. You embody them, and yet you hardly have the power to dent my armor. How?” his voice hit that shaky note again.
The note was unsettling, unsettling in that way that shook parts of me I hardly knew existed.
He was still holding onto my hand, and though I didn’t want to accept the feeling, it held me in place.
“I don't know,” I admitted. “It doesn't work like that,” I tried to protest once more. It was a last ditch effort to hold onto the me I had always thought I was.
“I'm afraid it does,” he replied.
Oh god, I thought appropriately. It was the most fitting, logical, rational, wisest thought I’d entertained all day. I didn’t know what god I was. All I could do was generalize to whatever divinity would hear me.
My shoulders deflated, and in a snap, I lost all my fight.
Thor didn't let go of my hand, demand to know who I was, and smash some of my stuff to give me an incentive to tell him.
He didn't let go of my hand at all. As he held it, he took a heavy and noticeable sigh. As his chest moved up and down, so too did the hand that held mine. I was pulled along by every detail of the move.
“Right,” he said, letting go of me and taking an almighty and rattling sniff. “We need to get to work. No more wasting my time, Details.”
Snap: he was back to being the Thor I knew and mostly hated.
He looked over at me and he looked me up and down. “You are filthy.” He reached a hand forward and grabbed a tendril of my sand-caked hair.
I shuddered at the unexpected move.
Thor chuckled. “You look like a swine that has been rolling in mud. You are not the goddess of muck, Details.” He let the tendril of hair go. “Not that we know of.” He shrugged his shoulders and enjoyed another laugh.
Snap: he could change personalities just like that. One minute he stared me down, questioning the life out of me as he searched for something dear to his soul. The next, he was cracking unfunny jokes only he could laugh at.
Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book One) Page 18
