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….
But he wasn't ordinary. Never.
His body was in perfect physical shape, she could verify this fully, without even trying to peek furtively, because during their trip he had shamelessly tried to sunbathe several times at minus five degrees.
His facial expressions and especially his smile were able to convey surprisingly and fully many times more context and emotion in a conversation than the words themselves.
His pleasant voice captured attention from the first sounds, not letting go and not allowing itself to be ignored, no matter how quietly and casually he inserted remarks.
He joked often, was strikingly sensitive, and cooked wonderfully.
In less than a week and a half on the road with him, she felt as if she had spent a good month on vacation, so easily and carefree everything passed, imperceptibly and at the same time infinitely obviously washing away old fatigue, fear, and tension from her heart.
The harmony in his movements, the color of his clothes, his behavior, all this instantly attracted attention, not allowing itself to be forgotten.
Wiry, not too tall, with the appearance of a boy who had barely graduated from college, he was something special as a man, and this feeling of hers had nothing to do with his abilities and magical tricks.
One could admit to oneself, Yuriko was desperately happy that life had brought her together with Loki, but even more desperately she felt her uselessness, her pointlessness to him.
Even if he didn't show it by word or glance, it was enough to look around… under her feet… into the sky, anywhere, to understand what a huge abyss lay between them.
This feeling tore her soul, and perhaps a true bushi or yojimbo in her place should have left so as not to burden the master with their worthlessness, but the girl lacked the spirit for this.
Selfish, base desire… but she couldn't force herself to give it up. Not after what she went through by Stryker's will and other people's.
By an effort of will suppressing the stirred emotions, Yuriko looked away from the man's figure and unexpectedly met the eyes of Project X-23. Laura.
The artificially grown girl looked at her with her usual silent interest.
She looked at everything and everyone like that, only occasionally varying her facial expression toward greater interest, surprise, or wariness.
William Stryker's former secretary didn't like communicating with her, they had too much in common for this not to lead to awkwardness and a feeling of discomfort.
They were even taught to fight according to the same template, or rather… first this template was worked out on Yuriko, and then the final version was used on the child, and just from this it was hard for the woman to be near her.
Ordinary people didn't try too hard to make training methods for their mutant slaves pleasant, rather the opposite, efficiency was put at the forefront, and when the trainee also can't die from concomitant injuries…
The former prisoner of her own body didn't want to remember this, and Laura was a living reminder.
A reminder constantly forcing her to realize that someone who deserved it orders of magnitude less than she did also went through the same thing, largely through her fault.
Meanwhile, having searched for something on Yuriko's face for a few seconds with her gaze, the girl turned to Loki and, after thinking a bit, stood up to approach him closer and sit opposite, on the other side of the tiller.
The man noticed this but didn't comment, only watching her movements keenly, hiding a hint of a smile in the corners of his lips, capable, in the Japanese woman's experience, of ceasing to be a hint at any moment, from seemingly any of Laura's actions.
For almost a minute, the Norse god and the girl born to be a weapon played staring games, as they did constantly.
At such moments, it seemed to Yuriko that they could speak mentally, so strange was their communication.
Actually, she didn't doubt that such communication was available to Loki, but the picture still smacked of some mysticism every time.
And even now, as soon as the girl lowered her gaze to the metal control "stick," and then raised it again to the God of Magic, he, as always, understood what the child was thinking.
"Mental control," the brunet explained, smiling slightly.
"…" Laura shifted her gaze to the tiller again, then back to Loki, and cautiously raised her hand, freezing with her palm over the metal surface, never ceasing to look into the man's eyes.
"Go on, try…" he was openly amused, encouragingly stretching his lips in a serpentine smile.
"Isn't that dangerous?" Sarah caught herself.
"No, in Asgard even children know how to fly skiffs," the God shook his head negatively, and the girl already touched the metal…
….
Odin's chambers greeted me with silence and the honey smell of burnt wax.
Odin loved real wax candles, or rather their smell, so he sometimes lit them in his room, despite all the technomagical advancement of Asgard.
Now they were clearly lit by Frigga, devotedly sitting at the head of her husband's bed and giving me a warm smile as soon as I entered.
The Allfather's body was covered by a golden hemisphere of healing magic, resembling a classic force field, although, as I knew, it freely let any objects pass back and forth.
Odin looked serene, covered with a fluffy blanket to his chest, he slept on his back, not at all resembling the formidable and mighty King of Asgard, at whose name entire worlds trembled.
An ordinary old man with a soft, round face, a small tummy, and a well-groomed snow-white beard.
Actually, his face exactly repeated the face of the great Anthony Hopkins, who played him in the movie, but damn me if Odin now evoked even the slightest association with Hannibal Lecter, so memorable in my past world thanks to this man's talent.
Silently walking through the bedroom hall, I circled the wide bed on the side opposite to where the Queen sat, and slowly sat down on the armchair standing there.
Strange feelings boiled inside, calling which "mixed" would be a bit faded.
….
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