Post by mintedstar/fur on Nov 1, 2019 3:49:54 GMT -5
Sorcerer of Storms
---
There is a darkness 'a drawing near,
Coming like a night-time clear.
Storms 'a breaking,
Lighting shaking.
Everything held dear.
---
"Personally, I think you should have dressed as Iron Man again," said the young girl. A bright, teasing smile danced over her face. Her brother looked at her with what was as close disdain as he usually got.
"But I like this costume," he pointed out. "Anyway … I can't be the same thing two years in a row."
The girl looked down at her own outfit and scowled, bouncing on her heals. "Can too. Anyway, what's wrong with wearing the same costume in a row. We're not even at home for this Halloween. Who is gonna know?"
Her expression would have answered any casual observer's questions about whether her current outfit (a tiger) was from last Halloween or not.
"But whatever. Be a policeman." She huffed, still sore about the indirect complaint about her outfit. She tapped her foot against the floor with impatience as she glanced at the clock. She'd picked out this room only because it had contained a digital clock set up on a side table. She wanted to make sure how much prime trick-or-treating time was being spent without her.
"Fenrir is taking a while," she said.
"You said that two minutes ago," pointed out the boy without looking over from the coffee table books. The girl frowned down at him (again) and noted his badge was pinned on upside down. She didn't make any comments on it, however, she just glanced out the window at the sun.
Most of it was obscured by the distant New York skyline. Back at home, she would have already been out there by now. She would have probably been heading back, just to be sure that there was still light in the sky for the journey, just to be careful.
Home didn't sound as safe as here. But she missed it. A lot.
The door opened and the girl's head jerked around so she could see who was entering the room.
Fenrir came bounding in, looking very excited. He grinned and held out his arms, saying, "Ta da!"
The girl blinked several times, then looked down at her own costume. Both of them were clearly cats.o
"Ha!" said the middle child, grinning from his place by the coffee table. "You're both cats!"
The girl scowled at him again. "Yeah … whatever Jörmungandr. You're badge is on upside down!"
The last member of the small team walked in the door then, looked around, and shook his head. "Penny ..." he said, sounding slightly exasperated.
Penny looked at him and her eyebrows shot up. Whatever he was wearing, it wasn't her idea of a normal costume.
"What are you?" she asked. The teen scowled a bit, which made the face paint crinkle in an odd fashion.
"I'm a … actually, never mind."
"Sleipnir said he's 'a parody off a rapper,'" Fenrir chimed in helpfully.
Penny looked down at him, then over at Jörmungandr, and then finally up at Sleipnir again. She looked unimpressed.
"Alright then. Can we go noooooow?"
Her arms crossed in front of her chest and she put great emphasis on looking outside.
Sleipnir seemed satisfied, at least, that she wasn't going to pick on him further and instead worked on getting Fenrir and Jörmungandr to pick up their pumpkin heads to collect candy. Penny already had hers. Only then were they ready to go.
+++++
Penny hadn't actually been sure how trick-or-treating would work in New York. She was surprised to see children running past the building to go into stores, brightly colored costumes included.
"Are we doing that too?" asked Fenrir, looking through the window at the small kid dressed as Superman running past.
Sleipnir gave them a cursory look. "No. The stores are probably running out of candy by now. We're going somewhere else. "
Penny glanced at him, letting her eyebrows rise. "You're not driving us." It was too late for that and still be able to reach anything.
Sleipnir waved his hand vaguely and the air warped, revealing a tear in reality. Brownstones were on the other side, just waiting to be visited.
Penny brightened a bit. "You sure?"
Sleipnir didn't look sure. Penny knew he was still practicing teleporting and portals. His dad had it down, complete with the green highlights and slight theatrics to impress the kids. Sleipnir was getting better.
Sleipnir didn't hesitate at the challenge, however. "Of course!"
But the words were weak and Penny looked away.
"Let's just get going," Sleipnir said. He took Fenrir's hand and Jörmungandr took up a position next to his older brother.
Penny, resigned to the fact that the fun was over for now, trailed after them. The portal snapped shut behind them and the noise of the current street they were standing on, as well as the smell of dead leaves, completely overtook their senses.
Penny had no idea where they were, but there were various houses and a couple of businesses. Sleipnir looked around before he led the three of them to the back of a small gaggle of children who were heading to the nearest house.
Penny, Fenrir, and Jörmungandr proceeded down the line of doors for about an hour, Sleipnir always hanging back a bit. Penny craned her neck, looking around at the decorations but mostly at the costumes of the other children, teens, and most of the adults. It was more festive than the small town she had lived in before. There, Halloween had felt much spookier. Sometimes there were literal monsters in the shadows and not all of them gave candy. Here she might have felt safer, but it was also a lot louder. It didn't matter if you were trick-or-treating with three boys who were just a bit magical, things still felt a little too tame.
"That house has an eye on it," Fenrir noted from beside Sleipnir. It drew Penny's attention and she looked around. Then up.
"Reminds me of that eye tattoo for Count Olaf in Series of Unfortunate Events," commented Penny, looking at it with curiosity. It was slightly off, but it was still what the window looked like in her opinion. She might have commented on it being nice for Halloween, but it looked like it was just how the house was set up.
"Maybe they're a fan," said Jörmungandr, not sounding very interested.
Penny was interested, and anyway she was here to trick-or-treat. "Let's go check it out!"
She hopped forward, heading for the stairs up to the door.
Fenrir took the stairs much slower, followed by Jörmungandr. Fenrir reached the door before his brother, but started shifting from foot to foot and looking back at Sleipnir.
“We don’t need her yet,” he said softly.
Penny, about to press the doorbell, looked back at Fenrir with curiosity. She wasn’t used to his random spouting of odd sentences, but she was trying to adapt to them. She knew that the youngest boy sometimes … saw things. Things which hadn’t happened yet. But she never knew what they meant, not really. She glanced at Jörmungandr instead, in case he knew what his brother was talking about a bit better than she did. But Jörmungandr looked just as mystified.
Penny shrugged at him. If they were supposed to know, then she guessed that they’d figure it out soon enough. She pressed the doorbell and adjust the pumpkin container she was holding so it might be a bit more obvious that she was a trick-or-treater. As if it was difficult to tell. She did budge a bit so all three of them had a rather precarious perch on the stoop.
Several lengthy seconds passed and nothing happened. Penny looked at the light in the side window, checking to make sure the unwritten law that the light had to be on for it to count as fair trick-or-treating ground was still good. Then she shrugged again, for a different reason, and started to turn to step back down the steps. Sleipnir looked a bit bored from where he was standing, waiting on the sidewalk for them.
Then the door opened. Penny hurriedly turned around to face the person who was opened the door. She was a bit surprised that she didn’t have to look up that far. She had grown quite a bit in her recent years and was still marveling the fact that some of the shorter adults were now starting to come only a head or so taller than her.
The woman seemed to be dressed up for Halloween. She had orange robes, or maybe a coat would have been a better description? Either way, it was far too fine a pattern to be normal day wear, surely.
She also looked a bit surprised that there was a cat, police officer, and a tiger on her doorstep (as well as a rapper on her walkway). Penny didn’t bother with the confused look and apparently Jörmungandr didn’t either. Instead, both she and her brother held out the pumpkin and repeated the mantra of “Trick-or-treat!”.
This at least seemed to lift the confusion on the woman's face, though she did look down at Fenrir like she was curious on why he had been silent. He was looking at her with curiosity that mirrored hers, but also an old expression of someone who knew a bit more than the adults. Unlike some of said adults, however, she didn’t seem that unnerved about it.
“Please wait here a second,” she said to the children on her steps. Then she retreated.
Penny’s original theory that the owner of the house was a Series of Unfortunate Events fan was sadly disproved, or so she believed. She did crane her neck a bit to try and see what the house looked like behind the door. While she was, the door suddenly closed in her face, cutting off her view of odd artifacts on the upper story.
“Whhha?” she said, unable to keep the disappointment out of her voice. And also the confusion. The woman had left and wasn’t anywhere near enough to close the door. There also wasn’t a breeze.
She glanced at Jörmungandr again. “I didn’t bump it, did I?” she asked, sounding nervous. She didn’t want the woman coming back just to yell at her for slamming her doors.
“She did it,” said Fenrir, without removing himself from his spot next to her but looking nervously back at the windows as if he was tempted by the idea of just turning back around now.
“No she didn’t,” Penny pointed out. “She was halfway up the stairs when the door closed.”
Fenrir made no comment.
They weren’t waiting for long before the door was opened again and the same woman was back, passing out a couple pieces of candy. She didn’t have a bowl of it, just a few pieces that she dropped into each of the children’s baskets.
“Thank you!” Penny and Jörmungandr were sure to say. Fenrir was still quiet. Penny had to nudge him with her foot before he grunted a thanks.
The door closed behind them as they turned and children stepped down the stairs. Sleipnir seemed very jumpy, glancing back at the house as they walked away from it.
“That was weird,” said Penny, rummaging through the pumpkin in an attempt to find what sort of candy she had just been given. But it all looked generic.
“I think she closed the door by magic,” Jörmungandr said matter of factually.
“What makes you say that?” asked Penny. Jörmungandr got that look on his face which she was almost as good at recognizing as she was the disconnected sentences Fenrir sometimes said. “Oh,” she said. “A ghost told you.”
She reached into the pumpkin, pulling out a MilkyWay bar and unwrapped it. She started chewing on the end as she said, “So. Is she a witch?” she asked. “That would be cool. A yellow-robed witch. Like Fenrir is a cat seer. And you’re a policeman medium or whatever words ya use.”
Jörmungandr’s nose wrinkled a bit and he commented, sounding ever so slightly offended, “You’ve been reading too many Wikipedia pages again.”
Penny shrugged.
“Maybe. But anyway, she can do magic. That’s kind of cool. Wonder who she is.”
If Sleipnir could hear all of this, he didn’t make any comment on it. Instead, he led them around the corner.
The kids continued trick-or-treating for a little longer, their pumpkin containers getting weighed down with more candy as they went. Penny had put the idea of a witch out of her head for now and had instead focused on the hunting of candy. After all, she was used to trick-or-treating with supernatural beings. Fenrir, Jörmungandr, and Sleipnir could be counted as them too, though Sleipnir would have nitpicked the words. But the point still stood. Penny hadn’t needed to remember things like witches before so she didn't now.
Fenrir still seemed jumpy, and she might have noticed that, but she just thought it had to do with the candy he’d been consuming. She was pretty sure on the journey alone he had already eaten over ten pieces. Jörmungandr didn’t seem worried at all, though Penny was a bit more attuned to where he was keeping his eyes after she had been reminded that he might be seeing ghosts right now. It was surprisingly very easy to forget when she couldn’t see them herself.
But the evening was wearing into the night and they’d already made a circuit of two blocks. Penny knew that any second now Sleipnir would be calling it a night.
She hurriedly said, “There’s the next house!” She’d been having fun, despite the fact that she still preferred the Halloween celebrations back in her own town. But New York had proved to be satisfactory.
“This is the last house,” Sleipnir called, as Penny had sadly predicted. Grumbling a bit, she glanced at Jörmungandr.
She exclaimed, “Race you!”
Then she bolted down the sidewalk and headed for the front porch. Jörmungandr had been distracted, but at once started to race after her. Fenrir’s eyes widened and his mouth curled into a worried ‘o’ before he started racing after them as well.
Penny took the stairs up to the door two at a time. This time it was a house, not a business (because those did trick-or-treating in New York too!), but it was un-decorated. The light was on, however. And there wasn’t any sign that she could see about not knocking.
Penny knocked on the door, then took a step back onto the lower step to wait. She didn’t have particular long. The door was opened …
And Penny took another step backward, her eyes widening in surprise. It wasn’t even that shocking to see what she was seeing. Not in New York. But the black cape, and stiff fangs still surprised her.
The person answering the door was dressed like a vampire. Beside Penny, only now making it to the steps, was Jörmungandr. He stopped at the bottom of them, looking at the outfit with curiosity. Penny wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was. Mostly ‘is this legal?’
Back in her old town, this sort of outfit would be impossible. Mostly because someone - maybe your next door neighbor - had an actual pair of fangs.
The person dressed as a vampire looked from Penny to Jörmungandr and finally at the out of breath Fenrir as he pulled up.
“Something up?” they asked. Then, apparently getting into character, tried again, “Velcome to the House of the Dead. W - vould you like treats, ha ha ha?"
Penny was the one to feel offended this time.
“Vampires don’t talk like that,” she snapped. She knew that was a bit unfair, but she didn’t know what to think about this new addition to Halloween. She preferred the actual vampires who wore historical clothing. Jörmungandr glanced back at her and then just stepped forward, holding out his pumpkin. “Trick-or-treat,” he inquired. This seemed a bit more steady footing for the gifter of candy, who reached into an orange bowl by the door and sprinkled a generous helping of candy into it. Penny’s annoyance lost the battle against getting candy and she held out her pumpkin as well. Candy was placed in it as well, though she noticed it was less than Jörmungandr had gotten.
She stepped to the side to let Fenrir come to the top of the stairs, but he didn’t. She looked back at him, confused on whether he had had the same reaction to the appearance of a “vampire” that she had.
But he wasn’t looking in their direction. Instead, he was looking over in the direction they had come. There was dark, hazy clouds hanging in the sky, resembling dust more than anything else. They tinted the sky.
“Looks like a storm,” commented the not-vampire. Penny ignored the words.
If that was a storm, it had cropped up rather quickly. She tensed, but did exactly what she thought she would in these circumstances. She looked at everyone else. They were the ones with the powers. It was almost clear that Fenrir had seen this coming. Sleipnir could even teleport them to safety!
But it was Jörmungandr who said, “That woman is back there!" The words seemed to be a lot more worried than Penny might have expected.
"Yes?" she started, but her brother was already racing off at top speed for the odd house. Right behind them was Fenrir. Never one to be left out, particularly if she didn't know what was going on, Penny followed after them.
Behind them, she could hear Sleipnir's panicked exclamation, but Penny was too busy to check behind them to see if he was following.
The sky was thick with dust and clouds and Penny looked up as she jogged along, paying no mind to the risks of a skinned knee or stubbed toe. The very air seemed thick with dust and the smell of leaf mold, but all of it spun around the height of the second story. It wasn't a natural storm. Even Penny could see that much without Jörmungandr's and Fenrir's combined sixth sense.
Why they were running toward it she didn’t completely understand. But she wasn’t letting the younger children have all the fun (or not fun) without her. They were in this together, weren’t they?
She caught up just as they were rounding the corner. But then she didn’t need to catch up at all. The storm had touched down in the middle of the pavement. Penny craned her neck to see past Jörmungandr (why were all of Loki’s children fated to be taller than her?) and shivered. In the middle of the street, autumn leaves blew away in drifts from the creature that was standing in the middle of the street.
Penny tensed.
“It’s a human,” she said. Then added, “-oid.”
Jörmungandr’s eyes narrowed at the statement. “Maybe,” he muttered.
“You don’t sound convinced,” muttered Penny. She tensed as the head of the ‘person’ slowly turned to scanned the sidewalks. She did too, checking for trick-or-treaters. But for now, there weren’t any. Maybe they had run away from the storm rather than toward it. Maybe that was a bit more logical. They were just kids after all.
“Should we call Loki?” she asked.
“Mama’s busy,” squeaked Fenrir, though he sounded worried enough that Penny was tempted anyway. But he usually didn’t say that sort of thing without a reason. Whatever Loki was busy with, Penny would just have to trust that this wasn’t something dangerous enough for the Avengers.
Sleipnir pulled up behind them and at once gripped Penny by the shoulder and reached out to grab for Fenrir as well.
“What the hell do you three think you’re doing!” he hissed, eyeing the figure in the middle of the street with very wary eyes. Jörmungandr flinched away from his brother’s outreaching hand, glancing back at him, and then looked at the street again.
That’s when the humanoid spun on its heals and looked directly at them.
Its sclera were the color of a dust storm, the pupil the tone of a blood moon. Wild grey hair framed a face with pale skin. Penny at once gasped, which if anything seemed to catch the creatures attention. It was just … it reminded her a lot of creatures she was already familiar with. But this wasn't a vampire. Vampires, as far as she had ever known, had no control or affiliations with storms. As if sensing the thoughts within Penny’s head, and wanting to disprove them as much as possible, the figure was hurriedly covered by dust and blowing leaves, which quickly engulfed the lower stories in twisting browns, greys, oranges, and yellows. It was almost beautiful. But Jörmungandr still seemed fixated with what he was watching, head inclining as if he was trying to listen to something that Penny couldn’t hear.
Then the ‘almost beautiful’ dust storm exploded.
Brown dust coated Penny in seconds, stinging her eyes, getting into her mouth and nose and any part of her body that wasn’t covered in her tiger costume was stung with the fine particles. She hurriedly closed her eyes, but nothing could have possibly been fast enough. She could feel Sleipnir’s hand loosen and then release from her shoulder as he doubtlessly attempted to cover up his face with his hand. Penny didn’t dare say anything, even as her mind swirled with information. She was trying to think of some way out, but completely failed to think of anything. What could a normal human (who had knowledge about vampires and maybe a handful of dead languages) and a couple demigods with very specific, passive abilities do? Sleipnir could fight, but he couldn’t fight dust.
It took her a second to realize something was tugged at her costume’s tail. Though very tight pressed fingers, she looked to see the small form of Fenrir pulling at her costume. Trying to lead her somewhere?
She shut her eyes again, then reached out a bit further and took one hand each of Sleipnir’s and Jörmungandr’s arms. Then she started pulling in the same direction to follow Fenrir. She didn’t know where he was taking them, but she trusted him enough that she didn’t think she was going to land on anything. Anyway, he probably wasn’t going to be walking for the storm-being. If Fenrir knew where it was.
She nearly stumbled over a stoop of some kind, but through the occasional glimpse between her fingers she thought she could tell where they were going.
Another hand found her shoulder and tugged her somewhere - up a set of steps - and then a door was closed behind them. Penny was too busy trying to spit grit out of her mouth to try and question who this person was.
“It’s you again,” she could hear Jörmungandr say. It took her another second to get her eyes clear enough to see the woman from before. She was looking over all the children in her … Penny supposed it could be called a foyer. Penny wasn’t sure if all the dust had been there before or after they had gotten there, but either way it was a bit messier than she had seen during the few seconds she’d been able to glimpse the floor when the woman had answered the doorbell.
“What happened to your house?” Penny asked.
“Now really isn’t the time,” pointed out Sleipnir.
"It isn't my house," said the woman simply.
Penny had no clue what that meant. But the woman turned to focus on the door instead. Dirt and dust sifted from around the door, blowing through the cracks in a force that must have signaled a large wind force outside. Penny tried to look out a window but all she saw was brown dust and indistinct outlines.
Her teeth tasted like grit, making the back of her mouth crumbly with sand particles. She almost spit, before she remembered where she was.
The door was holding, it seemed, and whatever was out there was staying out there for now. The woman moved around Sleipnir, who was coughing into his hands, and instead checked or Jörmungandr and Fenrir. Penny was the one who patted Sleipnir on the back, hoping to help, but all it really did was stir up more dust from the back of Sleipnir's costume.
"What are we going to do now?" asked Penny, shakily. Her voice hissed out of a dry, stung throat, but she ignored the dust's effects.
"Go. Home," hacked Sleipnir. Penny hated when he played responsible adult. She knew he wasn't feeling so well - in more ways than one - but she was pretty sure that dust person had seen them and that wasn't a good thing. Sleipnir knew how things were … sometimes a bit too well. Being a child of Loki - adopted or otherwise - came with a library's worth of reasons why people wouldn't like you.
Halloween just seemed like bad timing.
"It turns into dust," said Jörmungandr hesitantly. "And fallen leaves."
"I know," said the woman. "You were very unlucky to be stuck in it."
Jörmungandr's lips twisted with distaste. "Yeah." He clearly didn't like the bad tasting dust-storm any more than Penny did.
"Were you going to do anything to stop it?" chimed in Penny without any hesitation. She had no idea if the fact this woman was magical was supposed to be a secret or not, but she was going to assume it wasn't and ask anyway.
The woman turned and looked at her and there was a spark of amusement within her eyes and expression, though it didn't touch her mouth. Penny felt both very calm and highly impatient. It was an odd combination.
"I intended to," answered the woman.
Penny's eyes narrowed. "Intended?"
The woman glanced around at the people gathered in her foyer and then looked back down at Penny.
"I still do," she corrected.
She seemed, Penny thought, worried about them.
Well, she didn't need to be. Penny's chest puffed out as her pride kicked in.
"We can help," she said. "Sleipnir and Jörmungandr and Fenrir can help. And so can I."
She wanted to include herself. She was smart. She could be included.
The woman seemed to hear, but she glanced around at the children.
She nodded at Sleipnir instead. "You want to take them back to your guardians than I believe you should."
Sleipnir might have spoken up about that, but Jörmungandr cut him off.
"It's coming in!"
A second later, the windows blew out, dust flying into the room and around it as if the person within the storm was searching around the edges just to be sure that nothing was going to escape. Then the window slammed shut just as quickly and now the storm was inside rather than outside.
The woman stiffened, her arms moving, tracing shapes into the air. Golden lines followed the trail of her hands, and suddenly the storm was forced to part. The area around the children and the woman was clear and beyond those boundaries there was only swiftly spinning clouds of dirt and leaves. Occasionally, Penny thought she saw the same humanoid outline of before: the same pale skin and moon red pupils showing though the shifting clouds. But that wasn't for long. The storm retreated to the edge of the room.
"You're in the way," the woman said. She outlined a circle in the air, clearly talking about them and clearly intending to remove them from things. She probably hadn't bet on Jörmungandr and Fenrir, however. Jörmungandr was a second faster than her, head inclined like he was listing to what someone else was saying. He jumped forward, arms wrapping around the woman's waist. Fenrir, on the other hand, grabbed Penny's wrist and pulled her in a direction she found completely random.
Because of this ... it was just Sleipnir who fell into the gold-outlined hole in the floor. Penny goggled at the magic. She'd seen Sleipnir and Loki create portals and it didn't look that different from this. But she hadn't expected it to happen from this woman.
Sleipnir looked panicked ... and then the portal closed behind him. Penny wanted to question where he had gone, but that was when her attention had to shift again. The storm had stopped and the humanoid figure collected into a person.
Jörmungandr was holding onto the woman, but he hurriedly backed so she had room to move. She might have had the option of trying to send them away again, but that would have meant distracting from the main conflict.
The golden ring of sparks suddenly appeared in the path of the figure. Penny tensed, aware that this was a shield rather than an actual attack.
The figure ran up against the etched symbols of gold and there was the sound of sand against rock. Leaves and dust drifted to the floor, like the figure had exploded into the two items it seemed to be made of. It retreated once again to the edges of the room, nasty noises of cracking, dead tree branches and old tombs resonating through the room.
If Penny had thought the room was dirty before ...
"Why don't you attack them?" she asked, turning to look at the woman in orange.
Fenrir looked the storm over, but kept close to Penny. Penny didn't glance down at him, but she squeezed his hand. He couldn't actually see the future clearly - he just saw things sometimes. At least that was the impression she got. Or maybe he saw everything all the time but couldn't communicate it. She didn't know. All she knew is what he spoke and that sometimes he moved like he knew what was going to happen next. Like he had to pull her out of the way of the opening portal. She trusted him to do it again if he could.
"What about Sleipnir?" Fenrir asked as well, bristling. Penny didn't know what he wanted as an answer though.
Jörmungandr added, "If you don't want to kill it ... then what do you intend?"
She didn't intend to kill them? That was news to Penny.
"What can you do instead?" she asked, cutting over Fenrir's question about Sleipnir.
She was concerned about the elder teen but right now she figured the dust monster was a bit more pressing.
The shield of gold sparks spun a bit faster, mimicking the woman's hand movement, and moved along the floor to cut off the worst of the dust and leaf storm.
"Trap it," she said simply, her eyes fixed on her work.
Penny actually brightened at this. Not killing something was preferable to her, but that wasn't actually why she was brightening.
"Why can't you do that portal thing under it."
The woman glanced at Penny, then let the shield retreat closer to them. The dust collected again into a figure, swirling leaves and dirt coming together. It once again moved forward. Penny wasn't sure if it was menacing or not. She wasn't even sure what it was. But whoever they were, she was glad the woman wasn't trying to kill it.
The woman started to make the hand movement that Penny thought she recognized as the same one which had opened the portal under Sleipnir. But apparently she wasn't the only one who did, because a second later the figure had once again morphed into a storm of dust and leaves. It rushed for the shield, which Penny only now noticed was shrinking in favor of the attention on the portal. But the woman was fast - scary fast - and the impact of the storm on the newly grown shield caused the cloud of dust and foliage to explode upward and back the way it had come. Penny gasped a bit, but she untensed as soon as she could.
"I believe it will do that every time I attempt to get close to it."
"You can't box it in?" wondered Penny, eyeing the shields.
"No. It would just try and slip though the cracks of things," answered the woman.
Penny glanced around at the dust. She couldn't tell if the figure was in there somewhere.
"We can help!" she repeated again. "Fenrir can see things sometimes." She figured that might be the best she could offer for now. She wanted to be useful herself, but she thought that Fenrir might have a desire to help. "He might be able to help by doing that."
She glanced at Fenrir, hoping that he would agree. He looked more hesitant than she would like. He didn't even say anything. Jörmungandr seemed to have more interest in the dust than what Penny was saying. Penny felt herself bristle, mostly with embarrassment.
That was until Jörmungandr pointed a finger into the dust, tracking something that Penny couldn't see. She looked at him, surprised. She hadn't thought that he might be able to hear a ghost who might be able to go past the barrier and be undetected by the being outside of it. But she hadn't thought to suggest it. He glanced at Penny as his hand moved and then looked back at the dust floating outside the protective shield.
The woman seemed to understand what the pointing finger meant - it wasn't that hard to find out - and she let a couple seconds pass before she tried to open another portal in the direction that Jörmungandr was directing her in.
Penny waited with baited breath, but nothing seemed to happen. Jörmungandr hand moved and the woman's attention moved with it. Whether she was still trying, Penny didn't know. But she still held onto hope that she was.
It was only then that Fenrir tugged on the woman's sleeve and pointed somewhere that Jörmungandr wasn't pointing too. Penny hurriedly grabbed at the woman's sleeve to, joining in to point.
Their was a sense of movement from the arm ...
And then the dust cleared, leaves blowing across the floor and then coming to a rest. The remaining dust in the air settled painfully and Penny coughed. She had to admit that this had not been good for her lungs.
"Where'd you put them?" she asked.
"They're not harmed," the women said, as if that was the one thing Penny would be concerned about. "Just in a place where it can't do harm. Back home." Her voice seemed a bit mysterious and maybe even a little sad. Penny's eyes narrowed. Not with suspicion, but with annoyance. Adults and their sense of mystery. She honestly couldn't care less for it.
Jörmungandr and Fenrir bunched together and this time it was Jörmungandr who spoke up, reminding, "Sleipnir?"
The woman turned to look at him, then down at Penny. The shield of glowing sparks disappeared, fizzling out into thin air.
"Of course."
This time the line she traced in the air wasn't one on the floor, but one which was tall enough and wide enough for someone to walk through when they were standing upright.
Sleipnir looked very affronted on the other side of it. There was a view of the street he were on - Bleecker Street - which was behind him. He was about to step through the portal when the woman behind Penny and the other two children pushed them forward instead. "Out," she said, not unkindly but very firmly. There wasn't much choice on the matter, so the three dusty and leaf-litter children were led out of the house via an ... unusual exit.
"Go home," the woman added, looking at Sleipnir.
Penny glanced back and had to ask, "So are you a witch?"
The woman seemed slightly surprised.
"No. I'm not."
Penny didn't get a chance to ask any other questions as Sleipnir's hand closed around her wrist.
Then the world shifted around them and three children of mischief plus one honorary member reappeared back at their lodging.
All of them missing their trick-or-treat bags and all of them desiring a bath.
---
There is a darkness 'a drawing near,
Coming like a night-time clear.
Storms 'a breaking,
Lighting shaking.
Everything held dear.
---
"Personally, I think you should have dressed as Iron Man again," said the young girl. A bright, teasing smile danced over her face. Her brother looked at her with what was as close disdain as he usually got.
"But I like this costume," he pointed out. "Anyway … I can't be the same thing two years in a row."
The girl looked down at her own outfit and scowled, bouncing on her heals. "Can too. Anyway, what's wrong with wearing the same costume in a row. We're not even at home for this Halloween. Who is gonna know?"
Her expression would have answered any casual observer's questions about whether her current outfit (a tiger) was from last Halloween or not.
"But whatever. Be a policeman." She huffed, still sore about the indirect complaint about her outfit. She tapped her foot against the floor with impatience as she glanced at the clock. She'd picked out this room only because it had contained a digital clock set up on a side table. She wanted to make sure how much prime trick-or-treating time was being spent without her.
"Fenrir is taking a while," she said.
"You said that two minutes ago," pointed out the boy without looking over from the coffee table books. The girl frowned down at him (again) and noted his badge was pinned on upside down. She didn't make any comments on it, however, she just glanced out the window at the sun.
Most of it was obscured by the distant New York skyline. Back at home, she would have already been out there by now. She would have probably been heading back, just to be sure that there was still light in the sky for the journey, just to be careful.
Home didn't sound as safe as here. But she missed it. A lot.
The door opened and the girl's head jerked around so she could see who was entering the room.
Fenrir came bounding in, looking very excited. He grinned and held out his arms, saying, "Ta da!"
The girl blinked several times, then looked down at her own costume. Both of them were clearly cats.o
"Ha!" said the middle child, grinning from his place by the coffee table. "You're both cats!"
The girl scowled at him again. "Yeah … whatever Jörmungandr. You're badge is on upside down!"
The last member of the small team walked in the door then, looked around, and shook his head. "Penny ..." he said, sounding slightly exasperated.
Penny looked at him and her eyebrows shot up. Whatever he was wearing, it wasn't her idea of a normal costume.
"What are you?" she asked. The teen scowled a bit, which made the face paint crinkle in an odd fashion.
"I'm a … actually, never mind."
"Sleipnir said he's 'a parody off a rapper,'" Fenrir chimed in helpfully.
Penny looked down at him, then over at Jörmungandr, and then finally up at Sleipnir again. She looked unimpressed.
"Alright then. Can we go noooooow?"
Her arms crossed in front of her chest and she put great emphasis on looking outside.
Sleipnir seemed satisfied, at least, that she wasn't going to pick on him further and instead worked on getting Fenrir and Jörmungandr to pick up their pumpkin heads to collect candy. Penny already had hers. Only then were they ready to go.
+++++
Penny hadn't actually been sure how trick-or-treating would work in New York. She was surprised to see children running past the building to go into stores, brightly colored costumes included.
"Are we doing that too?" asked Fenrir, looking through the window at the small kid dressed as Superman running past.
Sleipnir gave them a cursory look. "No. The stores are probably running out of candy by now. We're going somewhere else. "
Penny glanced at him, letting her eyebrows rise. "You're not driving us." It was too late for that and still be able to reach anything.
Sleipnir waved his hand vaguely and the air warped, revealing a tear in reality. Brownstones were on the other side, just waiting to be visited.
Penny brightened a bit. "You sure?"
Sleipnir didn't look sure. Penny knew he was still practicing teleporting and portals. His dad had it down, complete with the green highlights and slight theatrics to impress the kids. Sleipnir was getting better.
Sleipnir didn't hesitate at the challenge, however. "Of course!"
But the words were weak and Penny looked away.
"Let's just get going," Sleipnir said. He took Fenrir's hand and Jörmungandr took up a position next to his older brother.
Penny, resigned to the fact that the fun was over for now, trailed after them. The portal snapped shut behind them and the noise of the current street they were standing on, as well as the smell of dead leaves, completely overtook their senses.
Penny had no idea where they were, but there were various houses and a couple of businesses. Sleipnir looked around before he led the three of them to the back of a small gaggle of children who were heading to the nearest house.
Penny, Fenrir, and Jörmungandr proceeded down the line of doors for about an hour, Sleipnir always hanging back a bit. Penny craned her neck, looking around at the decorations but mostly at the costumes of the other children, teens, and most of the adults. It was more festive than the small town she had lived in before. There, Halloween had felt much spookier. Sometimes there were literal monsters in the shadows and not all of them gave candy. Here she might have felt safer, but it was also a lot louder. It didn't matter if you were trick-or-treating with three boys who were just a bit magical, things still felt a little too tame.
"That house has an eye on it," Fenrir noted from beside Sleipnir. It drew Penny's attention and she looked around. Then up.
"Reminds me of that eye tattoo for Count Olaf in Series of Unfortunate Events," commented Penny, looking at it with curiosity. It was slightly off, but it was still what the window looked like in her opinion. She might have commented on it being nice for Halloween, but it looked like it was just how the house was set up.
"Maybe they're a fan," said Jörmungandr, not sounding very interested.
Penny was interested, and anyway she was here to trick-or-treat. "Let's go check it out!"
She hopped forward, heading for the stairs up to the door.
Fenrir took the stairs much slower, followed by Jörmungandr. Fenrir reached the door before his brother, but started shifting from foot to foot and looking back at Sleipnir.
“We don’t need her yet,” he said softly.
Penny, about to press the doorbell, looked back at Fenrir with curiosity. She wasn’t used to his random spouting of odd sentences, but she was trying to adapt to them. She knew that the youngest boy sometimes … saw things. Things which hadn’t happened yet. But she never knew what they meant, not really. She glanced at Jörmungandr instead, in case he knew what his brother was talking about a bit better than she did. But Jörmungandr looked just as mystified.
Penny shrugged at him. If they were supposed to know, then she guessed that they’d figure it out soon enough. She pressed the doorbell and adjust the pumpkin container she was holding so it might be a bit more obvious that she was a trick-or-treater. As if it was difficult to tell. She did budge a bit so all three of them had a rather precarious perch on the stoop.
Several lengthy seconds passed and nothing happened. Penny looked at the light in the side window, checking to make sure the unwritten law that the light had to be on for it to count as fair trick-or-treating ground was still good. Then she shrugged again, for a different reason, and started to turn to step back down the steps. Sleipnir looked a bit bored from where he was standing, waiting on the sidewalk for them.
Then the door opened. Penny hurriedly turned around to face the person who was opened the door. She was a bit surprised that she didn’t have to look up that far. She had grown quite a bit in her recent years and was still marveling the fact that some of the shorter adults were now starting to come only a head or so taller than her.
The woman seemed to be dressed up for Halloween. She had orange robes, or maybe a coat would have been a better description? Either way, it was far too fine a pattern to be normal day wear, surely.
She also looked a bit surprised that there was a cat, police officer, and a tiger on her doorstep (as well as a rapper on her walkway). Penny didn’t bother with the confused look and apparently Jörmungandr didn’t either. Instead, both she and her brother held out the pumpkin and repeated the mantra of “Trick-or-treat!”.
This at least seemed to lift the confusion on the woman's face, though she did look down at Fenrir like she was curious on why he had been silent. He was looking at her with curiosity that mirrored hers, but also an old expression of someone who knew a bit more than the adults. Unlike some of said adults, however, she didn’t seem that unnerved about it.
“Please wait here a second,” she said to the children on her steps. Then she retreated.
Penny’s original theory that the owner of the house was a Series of Unfortunate Events fan was sadly disproved, or so she believed. She did crane her neck a bit to try and see what the house looked like behind the door. While she was, the door suddenly closed in her face, cutting off her view of odd artifacts on the upper story.
“Whhha?” she said, unable to keep the disappointment out of her voice. And also the confusion. The woman had left and wasn’t anywhere near enough to close the door. There also wasn’t a breeze.
She glanced at Jörmungandr again. “I didn’t bump it, did I?” she asked, sounding nervous. She didn’t want the woman coming back just to yell at her for slamming her doors.
“She did it,” said Fenrir, without removing himself from his spot next to her but looking nervously back at the windows as if he was tempted by the idea of just turning back around now.
“No she didn’t,” Penny pointed out. “She was halfway up the stairs when the door closed.”
Fenrir made no comment.
They weren’t waiting for long before the door was opened again and the same woman was back, passing out a couple pieces of candy. She didn’t have a bowl of it, just a few pieces that she dropped into each of the children’s baskets.
“Thank you!” Penny and Jörmungandr were sure to say. Fenrir was still quiet. Penny had to nudge him with her foot before he grunted a thanks.
The door closed behind them as they turned and children stepped down the stairs. Sleipnir seemed very jumpy, glancing back at the house as they walked away from it.
“That was weird,” said Penny, rummaging through the pumpkin in an attempt to find what sort of candy she had just been given. But it all looked generic.
“I think she closed the door by magic,” Jörmungandr said matter of factually.
“What makes you say that?” asked Penny. Jörmungandr got that look on his face which she was almost as good at recognizing as she was the disconnected sentences Fenrir sometimes said. “Oh,” she said. “A ghost told you.”
She reached into the pumpkin, pulling out a MilkyWay bar and unwrapped it. She started chewing on the end as she said, “So. Is she a witch?” she asked. “That would be cool. A yellow-robed witch. Like Fenrir is a cat seer. And you’re a policeman medium or whatever words ya use.”
Jörmungandr’s nose wrinkled a bit and he commented, sounding ever so slightly offended, “You’ve been reading too many Wikipedia pages again.”
Penny shrugged.
“Maybe. But anyway, she can do magic. That’s kind of cool. Wonder who she is.”
If Sleipnir could hear all of this, he didn’t make any comment on it. Instead, he led them around the corner.
The kids continued trick-or-treating for a little longer, their pumpkin containers getting weighed down with more candy as they went. Penny had put the idea of a witch out of her head for now and had instead focused on the hunting of candy. After all, she was used to trick-or-treating with supernatural beings. Fenrir, Jörmungandr, and Sleipnir could be counted as them too, though Sleipnir would have nitpicked the words. But the point still stood. Penny hadn’t needed to remember things like witches before so she didn't now.
Fenrir still seemed jumpy, and she might have noticed that, but she just thought it had to do with the candy he’d been consuming. She was pretty sure on the journey alone he had already eaten over ten pieces. Jörmungandr didn’t seem worried at all, though Penny was a bit more attuned to where he was keeping his eyes after she had been reminded that he might be seeing ghosts right now. It was surprisingly very easy to forget when she couldn’t see them herself.
But the evening was wearing into the night and they’d already made a circuit of two blocks. Penny knew that any second now Sleipnir would be calling it a night.
She hurriedly said, “There’s the next house!” She’d been having fun, despite the fact that she still preferred the Halloween celebrations back in her own town. But New York had proved to be satisfactory.
“This is the last house,” Sleipnir called, as Penny had sadly predicted. Grumbling a bit, she glanced at Jörmungandr.
She exclaimed, “Race you!”
Then she bolted down the sidewalk and headed for the front porch. Jörmungandr had been distracted, but at once started to race after her. Fenrir’s eyes widened and his mouth curled into a worried ‘o’ before he started racing after them as well.
Penny took the stairs up to the door two at a time. This time it was a house, not a business (because those did trick-or-treating in New York too!), but it was un-decorated. The light was on, however. And there wasn’t any sign that she could see about not knocking.
Penny knocked on the door, then took a step back onto the lower step to wait. She didn’t have particular long. The door was opened …
And Penny took another step backward, her eyes widening in surprise. It wasn’t even that shocking to see what she was seeing. Not in New York. But the black cape, and stiff fangs still surprised her.
The person answering the door was dressed like a vampire. Beside Penny, only now making it to the steps, was Jörmungandr. He stopped at the bottom of them, looking at the outfit with curiosity. Penny wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was. Mostly ‘is this legal?’
Back in her old town, this sort of outfit would be impossible. Mostly because someone - maybe your next door neighbor - had an actual pair of fangs.
The person dressed as a vampire looked from Penny to Jörmungandr and finally at the out of breath Fenrir as he pulled up.
“Something up?” they asked. Then, apparently getting into character, tried again, “Velcome to the House of the Dead. W - vould you like treats, ha ha ha?"
Penny was the one to feel offended this time.
“Vampires don’t talk like that,” she snapped. She knew that was a bit unfair, but she didn’t know what to think about this new addition to Halloween. She preferred the actual vampires who wore historical clothing. Jörmungandr glanced back at her and then just stepped forward, holding out his pumpkin. “Trick-or-treat,” he inquired. This seemed a bit more steady footing for the gifter of candy, who reached into an orange bowl by the door and sprinkled a generous helping of candy into it. Penny’s annoyance lost the battle against getting candy and she held out her pumpkin as well. Candy was placed in it as well, though she noticed it was less than Jörmungandr had gotten.
She stepped to the side to let Fenrir come to the top of the stairs, but he didn’t. She looked back at him, confused on whether he had had the same reaction to the appearance of a “vampire” that she had.
But he wasn’t looking in their direction. Instead, he was looking over in the direction they had come. There was dark, hazy clouds hanging in the sky, resembling dust more than anything else. They tinted the sky.
“Looks like a storm,” commented the not-vampire. Penny ignored the words.
If that was a storm, it had cropped up rather quickly. She tensed, but did exactly what she thought she would in these circumstances. She looked at everyone else. They were the ones with the powers. It was almost clear that Fenrir had seen this coming. Sleipnir could even teleport them to safety!
But it was Jörmungandr who said, “That woman is back there!" The words seemed to be a lot more worried than Penny might have expected.
"Yes?" she started, but her brother was already racing off at top speed for the odd house. Right behind them was Fenrir. Never one to be left out, particularly if she didn't know what was going on, Penny followed after them.
Behind them, she could hear Sleipnir's panicked exclamation, but Penny was too busy to check behind them to see if he was following.
The sky was thick with dust and clouds and Penny looked up as she jogged along, paying no mind to the risks of a skinned knee or stubbed toe. The very air seemed thick with dust and the smell of leaf mold, but all of it spun around the height of the second story. It wasn't a natural storm. Even Penny could see that much without Jörmungandr's and Fenrir's combined sixth sense.
Why they were running toward it she didn’t completely understand. But she wasn’t letting the younger children have all the fun (or not fun) without her. They were in this together, weren’t they?
She caught up just as they were rounding the corner. But then she didn’t need to catch up at all. The storm had touched down in the middle of the pavement. Penny craned her neck to see past Jörmungandr (why were all of Loki’s children fated to be taller than her?) and shivered. In the middle of the street, autumn leaves blew away in drifts from the creature that was standing in the middle of the street.
Penny tensed.
“It’s a human,” she said. Then added, “-oid.”
Jörmungandr’s eyes narrowed at the statement. “Maybe,” he muttered.
“You don’t sound convinced,” muttered Penny. She tensed as the head of the ‘person’ slowly turned to scanned the sidewalks. She did too, checking for trick-or-treaters. But for now, there weren’t any. Maybe they had run away from the storm rather than toward it. Maybe that was a bit more logical. They were just kids after all.
“Should we call Loki?” she asked.
“Mama’s busy,” squeaked Fenrir, though he sounded worried enough that Penny was tempted anyway. But he usually didn’t say that sort of thing without a reason. Whatever Loki was busy with, Penny would just have to trust that this wasn’t something dangerous enough for the Avengers.
Sleipnir pulled up behind them and at once gripped Penny by the shoulder and reached out to grab for Fenrir as well.
“What the hell do you three think you’re doing!” he hissed, eyeing the figure in the middle of the street with very wary eyes. Jörmungandr flinched away from his brother’s outreaching hand, glancing back at him, and then looked at the street again.
That’s when the humanoid spun on its heals and looked directly at them.
Its sclera were the color of a dust storm, the pupil the tone of a blood moon. Wild grey hair framed a face with pale skin. Penny at once gasped, which if anything seemed to catch the creatures attention. It was just … it reminded her a lot of creatures she was already familiar with. But this wasn't a vampire. Vampires, as far as she had ever known, had no control or affiliations with storms. As if sensing the thoughts within Penny’s head, and wanting to disprove them as much as possible, the figure was hurriedly covered by dust and blowing leaves, which quickly engulfed the lower stories in twisting browns, greys, oranges, and yellows. It was almost beautiful. But Jörmungandr still seemed fixated with what he was watching, head inclining as if he was trying to listen to something that Penny couldn’t hear.
Then the ‘almost beautiful’ dust storm exploded.
Brown dust coated Penny in seconds, stinging her eyes, getting into her mouth and nose and any part of her body that wasn’t covered in her tiger costume was stung with the fine particles. She hurriedly closed her eyes, but nothing could have possibly been fast enough. She could feel Sleipnir’s hand loosen and then release from her shoulder as he doubtlessly attempted to cover up his face with his hand. Penny didn’t dare say anything, even as her mind swirled with information. She was trying to think of some way out, but completely failed to think of anything. What could a normal human (who had knowledge about vampires and maybe a handful of dead languages) and a couple demigods with very specific, passive abilities do? Sleipnir could fight, but he couldn’t fight dust.
It took her a second to realize something was tugged at her costume’s tail. Though very tight pressed fingers, she looked to see the small form of Fenrir pulling at her costume. Trying to lead her somewhere?
She shut her eyes again, then reached out a bit further and took one hand each of Sleipnir’s and Jörmungandr’s arms. Then she started pulling in the same direction to follow Fenrir. She didn’t know where he was taking them, but she trusted him enough that she didn’t think she was going to land on anything. Anyway, he probably wasn’t going to be walking for the storm-being. If Fenrir knew where it was.
She nearly stumbled over a stoop of some kind, but through the occasional glimpse between her fingers she thought she could tell where they were going.
Another hand found her shoulder and tugged her somewhere - up a set of steps - and then a door was closed behind them. Penny was too busy trying to spit grit out of her mouth to try and question who this person was.
“It’s you again,” she could hear Jörmungandr say. It took her another second to get her eyes clear enough to see the woman from before. She was looking over all the children in her … Penny supposed it could be called a foyer. Penny wasn’t sure if all the dust had been there before or after they had gotten there, but either way it was a bit messier than she had seen during the few seconds she’d been able to glimpse the floor when the woman had answered the doorbell.
“What happened to your house?” Penny asked.
“Now really isn’t the time,” pointed out Sleipnir.
"It isn't my house," said the woman simply.
Penny had no clue what that meant. But the woman turned to focus on the door instead. Dirt and dust sifted from around the door, blowing through the cracks in a force that must have signaled a large wind force outside. Penny tried to look out a window but all she saw was brown dust and indistinct outlines.
Her teeth tasted like grit, making the back of her mouth crumbly with sand particles. She almost spit, before she remembered where she was.
The door was holding, it seemed, and whatever was out there was staying out there for now. The woman moved around Sleipnir, who was coughing into his hands, and instead checked or Jörmungandr and Fenrir. Penny was the one who patted Sleipnir on the back, hoping to help, but all it really did was stir up more dust from the back of Sleipnir's costume.
"What are we going to do now?" asked Penny, shakily. Her voice hissed out of a dry, stung throat, but she ignored the dust's effects.
"Go. Home," hacked Sleipnir. Penny hated when he played responsible adult. She knew he wasn't feeling so well - in more ways than one - but she was pretty sure that dust person had seen them and that wasn't a good thing. Sleipnir knew how things were … sometimes a bit too well. Being a child of Loki - adopted or otherwise - came with a library's worth of reasons why people wouldn't like you.
Halloween just seemed like bad timing.
"It turns into dust," said Jörmungandr hesitantly. "And fallen leaves."
"I know," said the woman. "You were very unlucky to be stuck in it."
Jörmungandr's lips twisted with distaste. "Yeah." He clearly didn't like the bad tasting dust-storm any more than Penny did.
"Were you going to do anything to stop it?" chimed in Penny without any hesitation. She had no idea if the fact this woman was magical was supposed to be a secret or not, but she was going to assume it wasn't and ask anyway.
The woman turned and looked at her and there was a spark of amusement within her eyes and expression, though it didn't touch her mouth. Penny felt both very calm and highly impatient. It was an odd combination.
"I intended to," answered the woman.
Penny's eyes narrowed. "Intended?"
The woman glanced around at the people gathered in her foyer and then looked back down at Penny.
"I still do," she corrected.
She seemed, Penny thought, worried about them.
Well, she didn't need to be. Penny's chest puffed out as her pride kicked in.
"We can help," she said. "Sleipnir and Jörmungandr and Fenrir can help. And so can I."
She wanted to include herself. She was smart. She could be included.
The woman seemed to hear, but she glanced around at the children.
She nodded at Sleipnir instead. "You want to take them back to your guardians than I believe you should."
Sleipnir might have spoken up about that, but Jörmungandr cut him off.
"It's coming in!"
A second later, the windows blew out, dust flying into the room and around it as if the person within the storm was searching around the edges just to be sure that nothing was going to escape. Then the window slammed shut just as quickly and now the storm was inside rather than outside.
The woman stiffened, her arms moving, tracing shapes into the air. Golden lines followed the trail of her hands, and suddenly the storm was forced to part. The area around the children and the woman was clear and beyond those boundaries there was only swiftly spinning clouds of dirt and leaves. Occasionally, Penny thought she saw the same humanoid outline of before: the same pale skin and moon red pupils showing though the shifting clouds. But that wasn't for long. The storm retreated to the edge of the room.
"You're in the way," the woman said. She outlined a circle in the air, clearly talking about them and clearly intending to remove them from things. She probably hadn't bet on Jörmungandr and Fenrir, however. Jörmungandr was a second faster than her, head inclined like he was listing to what someone else was saying. He jumped forward, arms wrapping around the woman's waist. Fenrir, on the other hand, grabbed Penny's wrist and pulled her in a direction she found completely random.
Because of this ... it was just Sleipnir who fell into the gold-outlined hole in the floor. Penny goggled at the magic. She'd seen Sleipnir and Loki create portals and it didn't look that different from this. But she hadn't expected it to happen from this woman.
Sleipnir looked panicked ... and then the portal closed behind him. Penny wanted to question where he had gone, but that was when her attention had to shift again. The storm had stopped and the humanoid figure collected into a person.
Jörmungandr was holding onto the woman, but he hurriedly backed so she had room to move. She might have had the option of trying to send them away again, but that would have meant distracting from the main conflict.
The golden ring of sparks suddenly appeared in the path of the figure. Penny tensed, aware that this was a shield rather than an actual attack.
The figure ran up against the etched symbols of gold and there was the sound of sand against rock. Leaves and dust drifted to the floor, like the figure had exploded into the two items it seemed to be made of. It retreated once again to the edges of the room, nasty noises of cracking, dead tree branches and old tombs resonating through the room.
If Penny had thought the room was dirty before ...
"Why don't you attack them?" she asked, turning to look at the woman in orange.
Fenrir looked the storm over, but kept close to Penny. Penny didn't glance down at him, but she squeezed his hand. He couldn't actually see the future clearly - he just saw things sometimes. At least that was the impression she got. Or maybe he saw everything all the time but couldn't communicate it. She didn't know. All she knew is what he spoke and that sometimes he moved like he knew what was going to happen next. Like he had to pull her out of the way of the opening portal. She trusted him to do it again if he could.
"What about Sleipnir?" Fenrir asked as well, bristling. Penny didn't know what he wanted as an answer though.
Jörmungandr added, "If you don't want to kill it ... then what do you intend?"
She didn't intend to kill them? That was news to Penny.
"What can you do instead?" she asked, cutting over Fenrir's question about Sleipnir.
She was concerned about the elder teen but right now she figured the dust monster was a bit more pressing.
The shield of gold sparks spun a bit faster, mimicking the woman's hand movement, and moved along the floor to cut off the worst of the dust and leaf storm.
"Trap it," she said simply, her eyes fixed on her work.
Penny actually brightened at this. Not killing something was preferable to her, but that wasn't actually why she was brightening.
"Why can't you do that portal thing under it."
The woman glanced at Penny, then let the shield retreat closer to them. The dust collected again into a figure, swirling leaves and dirt coming together. It once again moved forward. Penny wasn't sure if it was menacing or not. She wasn't even sure what it was. But whoever they were, she was glad the woman wasn't trying to kill it.
The woman started to make the hand movement that Penny thought she recognized as the same one which had opened the portal under Sleipnir. But apparently she wasn't the only one who did, because a second later the figure had once again morphed into a storm of dust and leaves. It rushed for the shield, which Penny only now noticed was shrinking in favor of the attention on the portal. But the woman was fast - scary fast - and the impact of the storm on the newly grown shield caused the cloud of dust and foliage to explode upward and back the way it had come. Penny gasped a bit, but she untensed as soon as she could.
"I believe it will do that every time I attempt to get close to it."
"You can't box it in?" wondered Penny, eyeing the shields.
"No. It would just try and slip though the cracks of things," answered the woman.
Penny glanced around at the dust. She couldn't tell if the figure was in there somewhere.
"We can help!" she repeated again. "Fenrir can see things sometimes." She figured that might be the best she could offer for now. She wanted to be useful herself, but she thought that Fenrir might have a desire to help. "He might be able to help by doing that."
She glanced at Fenrir, hoping that he would agree. He looked more hesitant than she would like. He didn't even say anything. Jörmungandr seemed to have more interest in the dust than what Penny was saying. Penny felt herself bristle, mostly with embarrassment.
That was until Jörmungandr pointed a finger into the dust, tracking something that Penny couldn't see. She looked at him, surprised. She hadn't thought that he might be able to hear a ghost who might be able to go past the barrier and be undetected by the being outside of it. But she hadn't thought to suggest it. He glanced at Penny as his hand moved and then looked back at the dust floating outside the protective shield.
The woman seemed to understand what the pointing finger meant - it wasn't that hard to find out - and she let a couple seconds pass before she tried to open another portal in the direction that Jörmungandr was directing her in.
Penny waited with baited breath, but nothing seemed to happen. Jörmungandr hand moved and the woman's attention moved with it. Whether she was still trying, Penny didn't know. But she still held onto hope that she was.
It was only then that Fenrir tugged on the woman's sleeve and pointed somewhere that Jörmungandr wasn't pointing too. Penny hurriedly grabbed at the woman's sleeve to, joining in to point.
Their was a sense of movement from the arm ...
And then the dust cleared, leaves blowing across the floor and then coming to a rest. The remaining dust in the air settled painfully and Penny coughed. She had to admit that this had not been good for her lungs.
"Where'd you put them?" she asked.
"They're not harmed," the women said, as if that was the one thing Penny would be concerned about. "Just in a place where it can't do harm. Back home." Her voice seemed a bit mysterious and maybe even a little sad. Penny's eyes narrowed. Not with suspicion, but with annoyance. Adults and their sense of mystery. She honestly couldn't care less for it.
Jörmungandr and Fenrir bunched together and this time it was Jörmungandr who spoke up, reminding, "Sleipnir?"
The woman turned to look at him, then down at Penny. The shield of glowing sparks disappeared, fizzling out into thin air.
"Of course."
This time the line she traced in the air wasn't one on the floor, but one which was tall enough and wide enough for someone to walk through when they were standing upright.
Sleipnir looked very affronted on the other side of it. There was a view of the street he were on - Bleecker Street - which was behind him. He was about to step through the portal when the woman behind Penny and the other two children pushed them forward instead. "Out," she said, not unkindly but very firmly. There wasn't much choice on the matter, so the three dusty and leaf-litter children were led out of the house via an ... unusual exit.
"Go home," the woman added, looking at Sleipnir.
Penny glanced back and had to ask, "So are you a witch?"
The woman seemed slightly surprised.
"No. I'm not."
Penny didn't get a chance to ask any other questions as Sleipnir's hand closed around her wrist.
Then the world shifted around them and three children of mischief plus one honorary member reappeared back at their lodging.
All of them missing their trick-or-treat bags and all of them desiring a bath.
