Owner	Pose
Jane Foster	Solstice. A time of power and a time of waning. Asgard knows these cyclical secrets well as any. Nordic countries at the rim of night's domain long put great importance on solstice celebrations. Roaring fires and boisterous defiance in their feast halls acknowledged the sun's retreat, the incoming reign of darkness. Though today it's more an affair of sunlamps, saunas, and copious caffeine, the approaching break of the seasons still holds power. St Lucia's Day dawns in Sweden. In the moments of preparation, something is off. Festival planners quarrel. Sound systems don't go quite right. The delivery of wood from Lapland doesn't go quite right. At the Winter Market in Jokkmokk, centuries old, one of the Sami craftsmen falls into a trance while the oven crackles and burns red-hot. In the Golden Realm, a perturbation subtly makes itself known. Like a niggling draught felt now or then, or a distilled trace in the water. An offness.
Frigga	In Asgard, one is particularly attuned to those in the Northern climes of Midgard. It is a particularly favored region, and has been for a little while. There are some 'below' that still carry on traditions, or rather, the whispers of the traditions still in some recognizable form to those 'above'. And while Asgard is and will always be that 'golden city', those self-same traditions are echoed within the society of the Aesir. Crops are brought in from the fields, the cooler weather begins to prevail, and the flocks are brought in and, for some, sacrificed in the same way as they had for thousands of years. Frigga, in these moments, can usually be found in her gardens, walking the paths of the wild yet organized patches of ground, stopping here and there to crouch to check on a sprout, a growth, a flower, or to remove withered growth. It is during one of these checks where she is lowered to tend a delicate growth that she draws a breath, her attention moving from that before her to somewhere a touch bit further from her direct view.
Jane Foster	On the surface, all seems well in the gardens. A plucky transplant blown in on the wind or dropped by a bird grows where it ought not to. Light speckling on another shows signs of sickliness, ready for the shears. Subtle deviations take keener senses to spot, much less trace through the strong heartbeat of the mighty realm. A speck on a blooming rose, a hair in the proverbial soup, stands out only once spotted. Then it becomes a bit difficult to deny. Frigga's path takes her to water, a forgettable puddle leaking out from where it should be into a low point. Maybe it slipped out of a fountain or wept from an irrigation channel. If she's let the garden natural, it's a boggy spot that wasn't there wholly before. But the brackish pool, though not particularly large, smells of salt and iron.
Frigga	There are none that know her garden as the All Mother does. Even her son that holds predisposition to much the same magics as she doesn't spend near the time within. Thus deviations, once they catch her eye, holds her attention until such time as can be properly attended to. The path through, paved with stone, cobbles and gravel, leads to the pooling of water, its provenance not immediately identified. With a turn to each direction to see if a trail can be followed, Frigga returns her attention to the gathered brackish water, brows creasing, keen blue eyes looking through. The scent of the holding isn't fair, or something she'd allow for her delicate blooms that lie just beyond, and there comes that consideration for the cleaning. Before she calls to have it attended, she does pay some attention again, those niggling thoughts and feelings of something far beyond coming to the fore once more. The celebration preparations for the solstice seems a touch awry.
Jane Foster	Frigga's reflection bends across the still puddle. Tiny dots held in suspension create an opaque surface, a mirror for the sky overhead and the All Mother who walks these sacred spaces claimed wholly as her own. None of the flowers closest to the puddle suffer over much for liquid near their roots, though so late into the season, the matter of growth may be something of a moot point. Perhaps a leaf sags, perhaps the colour is a touch off elsewhere, but is that due to frost or malign influence? Though for all something in the realm feels mildly awry, this innocuous little splotch of water stands out. A mark that Mars the pattern. A testament to her powers of perception, the widened circle of her awareness carries only the faintest diffuse traces of something off. Out of balance, though that has often been the case among the Nine Realms. Rarely is there a time when Muspelheim or Jotunheim stay to themselves, or the alfar aren't at odds, or some nonsense on Midgard threatens to spill over across Yggdrasil. This, though, this is different; it seeps somewhere faint and deep, but tugs things slightly askew nonetheless. Something is not where it should be. Something dark, and at once bright, as though poison edged in silver, a black moon in eclipse.
Frigga	There is always 'background noise', whether it is battle or prayers of supplication, or the murmuring movements of the Realms across the skies. Even the shifting of the great Tree reverberates within the All Mother, the whispers of the Norn, all move across her consciousness and are shut behind walls, else the voices would drive any lesser to the point of madness. There, at the puddle, is her attention now focused. The sky above isn't met and matched within its surface, her features not mirrored back to her as it should. It is enough that it gains her attention now, and her hand dips into a hidden pocket in order to pull a sachet from within. Roots and leaves crushed within fingers in order to have it fall upon the surface of the puddle are brought forth, complete with commensurate words of subtle power that allows for the sharpening of senses within. Words taught those below on Midgard, those runes long forgotten as sources of power that are now simply items of curiosity for linguists are whispered.
Jane Foster	Three-fold voices murmuring at the Well of Urd do not bestow their gracious insight to this particular puddle. Throwing a shot of curiosity Nornheim-ward produces another sure thing: the imbalance flows through their endless spinning and weaving. A stray thread. A loose strand, poking out of the weft of it all. Then another, one that should be snipped clean that is very much not. Severance of that thick black line is incomplete; sheared off and yet tangled in the much thinner, gossamer piece that caught her vague notice in the first place. Threads do not tangle, save in the strangest of conditions. Beyond strange; the extraordinary that usually leads to an irate Norn Queen marching out to snip something or a bereft mother looking forward and demanding every last plant, animal, and mineral swear allegiance to her son's welfare. The herbs float on the water. Then they start to rot, entropy hastened until the fresh leaves wither and the powder leaches to ash-grey, anything wood completely rotted away. Only bone and stone remains intact, the former bleached, the latter dulled. Frigga's reflection withers around the edges, her face aged, eyes made hollows in her face. Magic thrums and wavers around, a spinning compass needle without polarity, a plumb crystal turning in uncertain arcs that defy gravity. The water tarnishes, darkening still, and there's that damned severed black thread again. It twists and winds into another fate, bleeding through it, gaps showing where parts of the second barely-present thread -- a life, a mortal -- simply ceases to exist. Which itself makes no sense, it's like looking at a river where half the water was excised precisely and replaced with that from another river or an ocean. Or staring at one of her plants, say a lingonberry, and finding half the stalk and parts of the leaves have just become ivy or kudzu.
Frigga	There she crouches beside the still puddle, staring into its depth, shallow as it may be. Nothing is certain, nothing is sure with these threads that hang loosely, that are neither pulled into the fabric nor cut and put aside for later use. Brows crease at the sight, seen with that second sight that is both as clear as her own first, and as dulled at times. Those bits of herb and magic is used, consumed, but at a manner and rate that could be considered alarming should Frigga not be as centered and in control as she is. She watches the magic as it pours forth, reading the tendrils, the signs and portents as unclear for her as perhaps to the Sisters Wyrd themselves. It all comes back to that thread; that black thread. Reaching forward as if to tug it to her, it is elusive, there but not in the form that it should be, that it would be.. that it could be. Now, as it lies before her, the hybrid thread hangs, holding to a fate that lies unseen. "Who are you?" Who.. not what...
Jane Foster	Sediment floats within the puddle, caught in some timeless dance. The specks move but seem stationary, the withered bits of her magical components floating freely despite that. Every breath or movement should send them bobbing beneath the All Mother, but somehow slowed. Reluctant as treacle, the surface stirs and thickens. Black tendrils thinner than hair spread out from the weak strand of gossamer, and like ivy, grab hold of whatever they can. Sink into the surfaces that darken on contact, disappearing thereafter. She cannot find a continuous path, but only see spots where a darkened facet shows itself on the underside of a leaf. An ash leaf should be pale beneath its dark surface, and yet here, it's the opposite, the rich green above painted almost black below. A telling black at that. The same vile hue that bled into Midgard and elsewhere, now depicted on the great ash tree of the Realms. Svartalf magic, distilled down to its very venomous core, corrosive and elusive for her sight even now, vanishing from her magical and turning away from her sight with a charlatan's ease. Who can stand against the All Mother's magic among the dark elves? Only one. The thread that holds his is ephemeral. Her hands will pass straight through it, as though it wasn't there. And yet? When she touches the pale, cut mortal thread? There are nine of them along with the ghostly one. And they're alive.
Frigga	That entity beyond that holds its own power opposite her own is very much something that is soon enough recognizable. Frigga's breathing slows, her clear, keen, blue eyes narrow to be sure that there is nothing that flows from without in attempt to protect itself. Hers isn't an offensive magic, no; it's scrying, it's discovery, and soon enough, a banishment of any hint of ability for the dark elf to hold even the smallest portion of the Land of the Aethir. Such is the distrust, the enmity in which they are held. A war was fought, hard fought, and still now are the echos of that war. It is those nine, now, that live under her touch, and that draws a smile from the All Mother, and that ghostly, ephemeral one. Life is there, and life to be sent of her blessings, including to that which is there yet not. That soul that Frigga no doubt now recognizes; after all, is there any in her history like it? Never, and yet, she knows to whom that thread belongs. Still, armed with what she can see, that can be derived from such a scry, there is work to be done. She will visit the Northlands once again, walk amongst them once again, and find proof against the dark elves' magic to protect 'her' people.
Jane Foster	The dark elf's presence remains as evasive as a shadow on a moonless night. Distinguishing it from the background becomes an ongoing battle of cat-and-mouse, albeit the scrying for echoes and afterimages more like the cat chasing a dusty outline of a mouse capable of turning invisible and levitating. Or passing through walls. The lady of the Aesir has her work cut out for her to detect those broken traces where they exist, before they vanish. Malekith is dead. Malekith is gone. Malekith, brought down by her son's might and cursed well and truly into death. But there Malekith's thread is -- cut, undoubtedly -- and not-cut, a parasitic entanglement with another path, and going where it has no right to be. An ugly graft. Her plants around the puddle will droop and look very unwell indeed if their feet drink the dew of that puddle. The mirror shows her the blackened image, tarnished shapes of a burnt pyre, a blackened rainbow, a Cheshire smile in the ashes blowing over wrecked buildings that could be human, could be Aesir. In the wreckage and destruction, is there any difference? But she has a name. And in the hands of Frigga the All Mother, that may be very, very dangerous indeed.