out of continuity, by contrivance

[purposeful_glory]

Loki soon chafes at home, after three years of freedom. She does not mean to be gone long, but she does mean to be gone. Not Midgard again. Alfheim will do, a week will do, just a little break before she wedges herself back into the confines of Asgard and its Aesir.

Heimdall operates the Bifrost for her without comment. She notes her location, draws a little map, and heads east.

Comments

[headunbowed]

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

[purposeful_glory]

"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."

[headunbowed]

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

[purposeful_glory]

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

[headunbowed]

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."

[purposeful_glory]

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

[headunbowed]

Zeviana nods, and leads Loki to a tree. It's a huge tree, with tons of branches - but not as many leaves. It's still got some, but Loki can probably tell that it's on its way out of the world.

The tree-squeamish companion points at it. "That one would be best, I think. I'll start getting the vines in order while you work? They'll still need some persuasion."

[purposeful_glory]

"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.

[headunbowed]

When the Threatening Bread Knife gets past bark and to the wood proper, Zeviana flinches a little. Then she takes a deep breath, and gets to working on the vines. Vines. Vinesvinesvines. Pay no attention to the tree that's getting partially dismembered. No attention at all.

Light elves don't think of trees as people, or even as animals, but her magic-sense gives some feedback. Sometimes it's unwanted. She can deal, as long as she's not the one doing the work. Under her care, several vines slowly become longer, thinner, and stronger - better for binding together a trellis. She doesn't flinch a second time.

[purposeful_glory]

Loki pauses briefly, when Zeviana flinches, and then keeps going when the flinch doesn't turn into a verbalized objection.

She can lower cut branches to the ground gently without having to jump out of the tree if she turns Lævateinn into a long pincer sort of object to do it.

Eventually she has enough that she thinks she'll be able to lash them together into a square of wood mesh.

[headunbowed]

Zeviana's taking a bit longer on her vines. She can tell when Loki is finished with the tree, and smiles a little bit. She's not finished entirely with the vines, but she's gotten to a reasonable point where at least something can be done with them.

"Alright - shall we arrange them into a trellis?" she asks, when Loki's safely on the ground with the branches.

[purposeful_glory]

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

[headunbowed]

Her companion gets to binding them together with vines, where it's necessary. Leaves get arranged into out of the way places, and knots are tied. Sometimes she has to go back and work with the vines some more - more length, thinner, stronger and so forth, but soon enough, it's done.

"Should we cover it in plants to test it first, or see if just this works? I can't tell with it on the ground like this."

[purposeful_glory]

"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."

[headunbowed]

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

[purposeful_glory]

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

[headunbowed]

Stepping to the proper location, Zeviana considers through magic sense.

"It's not nearly as bad as walls, but I think if I were completely surrounded by them it might freak me out a little. That said, it's certainly an improvement, by a large amount. Maybe if there were some kind of - in the buildings we have we have a lot of windows, to go with the copious amounts of plants. If we did a trellis thing with lots of windows, along with a roof that's entirely plants, I think that would work well enough," she pronounces, after some consideration.

[purposeful_glory]

"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."

[headunbowed]

"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."

[purposeful_glory]

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

[headunbowed]

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."

[purposeful_glory]

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

[headunbowed]

"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."

[purposeful_glory]

"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."

[headunbowed]

"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.