st_ormbreaker | Tomorrow's Dream

Tomorrow's Dream

Tony Stark is, like he is almost every night, holed up in his room/lab working on who-knows-what. Thor made it a habit of going down there to drop off something to eat and remind him to stay hydrated, but whenever he was in Tony's lab, he felt too large for the room somehow, like a piece of luggage filled with too many clothes that was straining at the zipper.

It wasn't that the room was physically small, or that Tony had too much stuff there, either. For some reason, Thor just felt awkward being there. Tony never once told him he was an intruder, but he did feel that way. Tony's lab felt exclusively Tony's. He'd visit during Tony's long lab hours, but never for very long, so most evenings, Thor was left to his own devices. Some nights he would doodle in his sketchpad. Other times he'd go to Loki's room in search of his brother.

Tonight, though, it meant going next door to talk to Corbie about dreams and ask to place a ward on him.

When Thor raps at her door, he's wearing a pair of dark gray pajama pants, a simple white t-shirt, and a pair of rabbit slippers he acquired back in Europe. He never expected to ever find any that'd fit his enormous feet, but when he wandered through a department store and saw they had some in his size, he immediately purchased them.

Thor liked cute things. And he had no compunctions about showing it.

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Thor can understand her apprehension. He had some of it when he first got his powers nearly 1500 years ago. He wanted to be perfect at it from the get-go, because he was sure that was what his father wanted.

"At what, teaching me, or using your magic?"

Corbie thought about that for a moment before shrugging one shoulder. "Both, I guess. I mean, technically mental constructs ain't magic, but I still kinda put them in the same wheelhouse. Also, I've never taught anybody before."

Well. That wasn't strictly true. Mildmay probably knew more about magical theory than most annemer in large part because of Felix, but also because of her continuing to talk to him about magic. Jackson too had picked up a few points of thaumaturgy just from listening to her babble. But she hadn't done it on purpose.

"You won't know if you're good at teaching if you don't try," Thor points out. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." As Jane would put it.

"If things don't work out, we can put a stop to it."

Hadn't she had exactly this conversation before, just on the other side of it?

I'm afraid I'll fail.

Well. I'm afraid I'll fail, too. So we're even.

Felix had taken a chance on teaching her, for all that he'd been way more scared shitless than she was right now. Corbie pushed her hands back through her curls, a gesture she'd picked up from her teacher without really noticing that she had, and lifted her chin. She was a novice, but he knew that. If he was still willing to work with her anyway, she could give it a shot. "Yeah. Okay. I'll try."

"Thank you," Thor says. "Anything helps."

Anything was still better than the nothing he had right now.

Thor offers Corbie a smile. "I don't expect we'll start tonight, but can you let me know what we can expect?"

"How are you at meditating?" Corbie didn't even have to think about that part. It was one of the first--and most difficult--things Felix had taught her, and sometimes she still struggled with keeping still and focused.

"I've done it before." Mostly when he needed to mind-link with Heimdall, like he had on Sakaar. "I'm not especially good or bad at it."

Corbie nodded. "A lot of this starts as meditation and visualization exercises. The end goal is a mental map where various types of dreams fit to different cardinal points." Even as she was saying this, Corbie was bouncing to her feet and flitting over to her desk to get her notes. This was easier to explain with a visual.

Flipping open to a page of a compass rose as she reclaimed her seat, she went on. The deeper she got into considering what she knew, the less self-conscious she was about it. "North is dreams of the future, south for dreams of the past. West is dreams that answer questions, east is revelations. Nightmares, or false dreams, is southwest. True dreams are northeast. Northwest for ideals, southwest for instincts and base desires."

She let the notebook lie open in her lap so she could talk with her hands. "But like I said, you can also use a construct like this for mental fortification. Felix uses Mélusine, the city he came from, because it's surrounded by walls and each direction maps onto a gate. I started using Bernatha, the city I'm from, because it's on a bunch of islands and is protected by water. You can make up something whole cloth, but it's more work on top of something that's already work."

Thor looks down at the compass rose. They did not have these on Asgard, but he knew enough from his camping expeditions with Darcy and Jane what one was and how to use a compass if he needed one.

Asgard had neither gates around it nor islands around it; it was merely a flat disk out in the recesses of space. Thor knows his world better than anything else and if Corbie and her teacher both used places they were from, it only seemed appropriate that he do the same.

But...

"Should it be a place that is well-protected?"

"It can be whatever works for you," Corbie said, which she knew could either be the least or most helpful answer, depending. "It's a symbol, so it should be something your mind can work with. But that's a ways off yet anyway, and even when we get there it takes time to build up something like this. You can figure it out later."

"I know Asgard better than any other place in the Nine Realms. I think that's as good a place as any."

True, it is, as Corbie says, awhile away yet, but it's good to start thinking about it.

"Nine Realms..." Corbie mused, tipping her head to one side. There was a lot of potential there, to her mind. "You could maybe think of each of the directions as one of the other eight." Certainly it made sense mathematically, though she didn't know enough to know if it could actually work as a metaphor.

Thor smiles at the suggestion. "I didn't consider that, but I like it." The other eight realms with Midgard at the center of it.

Corbie smiled, too. But she made herself set the idea aside. Couldn't put the cars before the engine. She made a gesture like pushing something away. "Like I said, though, that's later. Walking before we can run and all that."

"Meditation and a focus," Thor says, because the picture in his mind's eye of the Nine Realms sounds like it's as much as one as Mjölnir was before he realized he didn't need it to use his powers.

"What else do I need to know?"

"Those are the two big things," Corbie said with a little shrug. "And increasingly demanding visualization exercises." She smiled. "It's a lot of sitting still and quiet, which ain't as easy as it sounds--" especially for someone who was constantly flitting like herself; even now she was not entirely still--"and for me at least there were plenty of times where I just got bored and cramped while my ass went numb."

"I can relate," Thor says. He's managed to stay still when he needed to, but being quiet wasn't exactly easy for him when he was such a loud personality. Meditation was considerably easier for his quieter, calmer brother than it was for him.

"Should I start doing something? Like homework?"

Thor is taking this seriously.

"Not yet," Corbie said with a shake of her head. "I need a little time to think about how to approach this. But eventually, yeah, practicing on your own's gonna be important."

Thor nods at that.

"Do you think you can put a ward on me? I'm just looking for a night or two of peaceful rest." Sleeping Thor could manage; he fell asleep easily and was out like a rock. He just could do without the dreams.

This she knew she could do, and Corbie sat up straighter. "I can do that. That's about how long the ward lasts, by the way, before I'd have to do it again. Guarding a mind ain't like guarding a building so much as like trying to keep the tide from coming in. Eventually everything just shifts whatever you do."

"What do you mean by shifts? It's not going to get harder for you, is it?"

If it is, well, it might be better to space things out.

Corbie shook her head. "Nah, just... minds are complicated and they're always changing. Feelings, new knowledge, new memories, old memories fading, so on. And what dreams do with all that's even stranger. It ain't even quantifiable. You can make something that last longer and goes deeper, but those..." She shook her head again, harder. "I don't wanna do those." That shaded into compulsion territory, and she'd never be able to look Felix in the eye if she did such a thing.

Corbie's discomfort was palpable. "Then you shouldn't," Thor says. "Just do what you're comfortable with. We'll just stick to the basics. Keep it simple."

He shoots her a reassuring smile. "I'd be grateful for whatever you can do."

"All right, then." Using magic on other people was one of those areas where Corbie showed her mixed magical training. Felix had been trained to never do so under any circumstances, even healing, though obviously this was a rule he'd broken time and again. It was still one she tried to live by. But that wasn't how things were done in Corambis, nor was it how the wizards she'd met here did things. She could do this without feeling like she was letting her first and favorite teacher down.

Corbie stood and touched her fingertips lightly to Thor's brow, murmuring a few soft words of Cymellunar as she drew her fingers across his skin. Magic tended not to feel like much of anything, but perhaps her hand was warmer than it would normally be, perhaps there was a momentary tingling. Or maybe that was just from how lightly she was touching him.

A moment later when she was sure the ward had taken hold, she took her hand away. And on impulse, she kissed his forehead before she sat back down.

Thor isn't sure whether or not it's the magic or something else when he feels warm tingling stretch across his face. It's very different from how Loki's magic feels -- more deliberate, more delicate.

Thor presses a palm up to where Corbie kissed his forehead, wondering if that were part of the ward as well. He rubs it against his forehead, then sets it back down against the plush cushioning of the seat of the couch.

"It wasn't as long or painful as I thought it would be."

Corbie gave him an almost shy little smile and tried not to duck her head. "If it was gonna hurt, I would've warned you," She didn't like causing pain when she didn't have to. "Hopefully that helps."

"I can handle pain," Thor says, smiling a little smile back. "Doesn't mean I have to like it."

Thor lifts himself to his feet and rolls his neck.

"Well, probably time to test this out."

Corbie only looked a little puzzled at that. "I figure you could handle it. Just..." she ducked her head a bit now, "if things don't gotta hurt, then they shouldn't." Life was hard enough as it was. And even though the room was not very big, she stood as well to see him out.

"Agreed."

Thor steps towards Corbie and gives her a hug. "Thank you again. I'll send you a message and let you know how it worked in the morning."

Corbie hugged Thor back, smiling up at him. "I'll look for it."

Because while she could have failed... the possibility that she'd done right was a deeply exciting one.

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Tomorrow's Dream

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