He truly doesn’t ever intend for the magicians to seek him out. His intentions are always to further the doing of chaos (to cause destruction to beautiful lives, to make the child scream over their dead family, to feel the seeping darkness of evil between his bones, to sense the oncoming shadows in every breath, to see the fire flame up alongside that pretty house with the white picket fence, to watch kingdoms fall from the pressure of darkness and destruction). He won’t admit he isn’t showy (mostly because he is showy and he knows it), but the trickster doesn’t always mean for the magicians to find him.
His first interaction with such a magician was the great one himself. The magician everyone knows about (the one told from stories, the one murmured about to children in order to scare them into staying close, the one who has traveled far and long and wide and yet still finds his way back to their homelands – Carnage) was summoned by the pink Valley queen and he had been there (nothing more than a lanky colt barely a year old, with enough pride and courage to get him easily into a high position in a kingdom where the dangerous and cunning lived). In the end, the trickster ended up with broken forelegs which were sloppily sewn back together (and now his front knees are awkwardly bowlegged and criss-crossed with the scars to prove a magician’s handiwork) and his once clear blue eye poisoned by the dark blackness of the magician’s mark.
His second came from a magician who considered herself good. The magician who was, perhaps, one of the only ones on the good side at the time (from the Deserts, with wisdom beyond her years and a heart worthy enough to carry the sun – Morphine) but her dark side was pulled out when she met the trickster’s presence. He didn’t receive anything quite so physically injuring from her compared to the first magician, but his tricks did expand after a mental duel with the likes of the good magician.
And finally, the golden queen herself (the one he had attacked while he was surrounded by both friends and enemies, the queen with the magic given to her by the good magician, the queen with the strange accent and golden body – Yael). Their grudges for each other were always hidden behind the scenes but still kept nonetheless alive. Although she did nothing to him (except for keep him locked away within the realms of her kingdom) his interactions with her still remain.
The magicians find him whether he wishes them to or not. When the black mare flashes into the space beside him, he doesn’t startle. The mysterious portals between reality and fantasy (between time traveling and syrupy time; between here and there; between darkness and light; between good and evil; between sleeping and waking) are things he knows about – and has just experienced. After living surrounded by magic for so long, the trickster is accustomed to the sudden disappearance or sudden arrival of bodies. Instead, one ear merely flicks in her direction and he nonchalantly works his jaw against the mouthful of grass in his mouth.
It isn’t hard for him to smell the magic on her (or notice the way her body is effortlessly decorated and primed for perfection) and he knows instantly what – or who – she is. Nonetheless, he isn’t scared off by her presence. And when she knows his name, he rolls his shoulders in an easy motion of casualness. Before he can say anything, they are moving through time again. They stand still but the grass grows and dies and is covered by snow and grows again right under his hooves. Suns and moons rise and fall, stars twinkle in and out of his vision, the lighting of the days move through morning and noon and afternoon and evening and nighttime too quickly for him to count.
They are caught in a bubble of chaos and he soaks in the feeling of his lover purring against his skin. He relishes in the way time flows around them as if they are eternally trapped in a warping of nothing and everything and something. And when it stops (and when they are normal again; and when it is as if they never left; and when chaos fades away and leaves him whispering to come back soon) his head slowly twists in her direction.
She has captured his curiosity, at least.
“I’m sure you already know what I think of it,” he says smugly, tenor voice twittering out in that charismatic tune. And indeed his feelings radiate out (a rush of euphoria, that heart-pounding feeling of adrenaline, the lustful calling of his heart to chaos, the heavy feeling in his chest like he cannot get enough air, the dangerous tightrope between want and addiction); he has never been one to keep things contained. In fact, she could feel everything brimming behind the front of his mind – he is an oyster she is free to explore.
And he smiles, then, a smile full of chaotic excitement and charming smirks. “I’d introduce myself, but you know who I am.” His shoulders roll into that casual shrug again, bruised eyes (blue and black in the right, blue and white in the left) scanning over her face. “How can I help you?”
Lokii
the tricky god of chaos