“Well, excellent.  I’m currently housed either at Stark Tower or in New Asgard, which is appropriately centered in Norway. Have you a preference of our next meeting place?”

Loki’s flirtations cease decisively as the comparably young witch grows more inebriated. Having had his bodily autonomy revoked in a thousand creatively sinister ways, during his time under Thanos’s control, has made him hyper-sensitive to situations of dubious consent.  He’s now all business, but strikingly affable, for his usual cool and calculating self. 

“Not at all, my dear.  I don’t suppose you’ve interest in a tutor–or peer!–in the magical arts. There are too few of you here on Midgard.”  

      “I am a red wine man and woman.”  

Loki’s delivery is dryly amused. A smile spreads slowly. 

        “My lady, I prithee, a name at least.” 

Loki rests a hand over the woman’s for a beat that lingers just long enough to seem coy, without crossing over into invasive.  And then, after making meaningful eye contact, he lifts it off again.  

He’ll not bed her, not this night.  A being who has so often had his will revoked, his body misused and his mind molested, cares very deeply to afford others their true consent. 

But perhaps a friend can be made.  

       “I will go first.  They call me Skytreader  … Mother of Monsters … 
        God of Mischief … Trickster … . Sly God … God of the Hearth’s
        Fire … Shape-Shifter … Loder, Loke, Lokkju, Lopter and Lopti.  
        Or, perhaps, unto you …?”

He gestures toward her, with a cunning grin, and an impish glint in his gaze.  He wholly expects to have been a primary school subject to any self-respecting practitioner of magic. 

      “No, indeed.  I am capable, I suppose, of ‘handling’ a stronger brew,
       but wine is my vice of choice.”  

He’s impressed by the woman’s temerity; it seems at least to be backed up by a working intelligence and, despite her feigned confidence, sensible humility.  

      “Why do you ask? Would you rather our company be prolonged?”

A charming smile surfaces. 

      “My dear lady, you expect me to be forthright about my identity when it
        is clear as glass that you withhold all that is crucial about your own?” 

These things Loki purrs with skill, for they are accusatory to a fault, and yet the way that he speaks the words, it could be mistaken by one of duller wit as a compliment.  He sips the brew of which he isn’t fond, but does so with impeccable manners, and not even a single grimace at the bitter fermented grains.  

       “Well that is certainly refreshing.”  

He sips the draught, curls his nose in a persnickety fashion and
places it beside himself at the bar.  Then, with a feline shrewdness,
jade eyes examine the auburn-haired stranger.  Loki may be more
at ease in the company of women than men, but an enigma is an
enigma, and he would rather be the mystery in a given social 
dynamic.  

      “You have magic?” he queries, as blandly as he is able, sensing
      Seidhrs of a different sort sizzling about her person, like a 
      benign mist.