I was born sickbut I love it
Death is something the jokester considers to be a fickle thing. It changes, it morphs, it degrades or restores. He has seen new life blossom from nothing (torturing young creatures in the woods to develop his tricks), he has seen failure but also strength (losing in the battle against the rest of the land, but growing stronger in his lust for chaos), he has seen those come back from the dead (his own self battling against the zombie version, a powerful magician calling him to follow her league). Death is not a permanent fixture in life. It can change, it can disappear, and it can birth new life. Death is a mere portal between two dimensions.
Thankfully, the trickster doesn’t have to worry about death himself. Since his first murder under the supervision of the monster, his body has stopped aging. The gray around his bruised eyes and near his smirking lips has not developed further. He feels perfectly content after slumbering for years (his bones do not ache from lack of use, his stomach does not moan for energy, his mind is not drowsy with sleep) and it excites him. Death did not scare him before, and death certain does not scare him now.
She answers her name and he hides it. Names are a powerful thing, when used in the correct context. They can be used to build someone up or tear someone down. They can be used to encourage or degrade. If a name is mentioned to the correct soul, it can ruin the rest of their life or perhaps make it all the more better. At this point in his life, the trickster doesn’t care if she knows his name (there was once a golden-eyed warrior who played games to know his name, like it was the greatest mystery in her life); in fact, he wants her to know his name. He wants her to have a name to put with the face that will be in her nightmares (although he doesn’t think she is the type to get them).
Her voice is barely dipped in the threshold of curiosity. He can hear the sharpness of her relatively flat tone and it interests him (in the same way delectable grass might interest his wearily starving stomach, if he were ever hungry for herbivorous things anymore). She perks his curiosity in her next question (he has a brief flashback to the days of standing in a pit dramatically filling with water, of twisting his tricks around a Jungle warrior’s mind to think he is next to her, of spending that same night sweaty and rough under the glow of a Valley moon) and he tips his good ear closer toward her.
The trickster briefly wonders what she might have that is so unique. He has seen many things in his life (an entire kingdom burning around him, half alien half horse creatures devouring other horses, a lightning strike nearly missing him and imploding a mare, a zombie version of his own gangly body, watching his mistress’s face as she is transported to new and exciting places) and he wonders if she thinks whatever she has up her sleeve will dazzle him. If anything, he might laugh. He nods briefly, bruised eyes dancing with amusement. “Please, indulge me.”
LOKII
