Loki gathers the skirts of her green and gold gown about her and sinks into a seat beside her daughter.
“The mortals of Midgard … . those who hail from nations and races thought to be, ehm, ‘hispanic,’ or ‘latino,’ they celebrate a magnificent custom of honoring, remembering, their beloved departed. They call it the Day of the Dead. It is a time of feasting and celebration, of putting out flower petals to guide souls home, of great shrines with the likenesses of all the lost loved ones, called an ofrenda.”
She cups Hela’s face, ever cool, ever clammy, in her own, and wills warmth and comfort into her child’s very bones.
“Think on that, love! Tis a celebration of your duties which does not center upon gloom and sadness.”
Loki looks up from her needlepoint. She’s not mastered the art of weaving yet, for lack of a loom like her mother’s, but this craft she practices in Frigga’s honor. The sewing arts powerfully resemble the use of Seidhr: interlocked threads of thought that radiate the incanting words across vast distances on the spiritual plane.
Her expression is both sly and affectionate when her lover enters, and finds her in the process of producing a needlepoint of Sigewif for the very witchling who now sleeps on her lap. Thea preferred Loki in serpent form, as is more customary, but mama was able to persuade her to wait a while, for progress on her surprise.
“Profitable outing?” she murmurs, quiet enough to keep the toddler sleeping. She sets aside the needlepoint and reaches for the baby blanket. She places it over her womb.
Her breasts have been tender, her humors more labile, her appetites strange and her stomach sour. She has not bled when it was time. And rune stones have confirmed it.
So she guides Balthazar’s hand over her lower belly, and, while smiling all the slier, simply nods.
He halts at the sight of all that is dear in his world, missing but the son he can hear singing cheerily in his bedroom down the hall. Theophania, peaceful in slumber with her curls tossed haphazardly as she sleeps on mama’s lap, and Loki, his divine and brilliant love, so sly and clever and exquisitely gorgeous in the autumn light. The angel nods his agreement, the trip was quite profitable indeed, and when he has set aside the bags he offers the blanket to his lady love and kneels reverently beside the comfortable couch to further admire her.
Quietly, he informs her, “I have provisions lovely enough that they may even tempt your misbehaving stomach into civility once more.” His worry is obvious in the furrow of his brow and Balthazar studies her lovely green eyes with concern bright in his own blue ones.
And then—
She has taken his hand and her smile is even more sly, the proud and wily smile of a natural trickster with the sweetest of surprises. He stifles a gasp out of deference to their sleeping witchling and his eyes are filled with tears. Joy floods his veins in a bright and singing sensation of warmth and he beams, leaning forward to cup her cheek and press sweet kisses to her lips, over and over and over.
“My heart,” the angel breathes, shaky and soft and filled with wonder. “You have created a life from our love—“ his voice breaks, thick now with the tears of bliss that fill his eyes. He cannot summon the poetry he so loves to offer his beloved, can only rest his forehead against hers and smile as he feels gently for the hidden spark of life within Loki’s bright and beautiful magic. Tiny and vibrant and he is lovestruck once more so he brushes their noses gently together and beams all the more brightly through his tears.
A smugly contented Trickster she is. Loki, ever the most guarded and cautious of souls, introspective, fiercely shy as her truest self, delights in sharing momentous news with her loves ones with eyes aglint and tongue prodding through grinning teeth. Indirectly, askance. As in this moment.
“Oh, my sweet fool, stop it.”
Her eyes flush with tears; curse her body and the ungainly ways it accommodates their bright new life.
“Stop it, I said, or I shall weep and kick you away,” she insists, wetly laughing and, quite contrary to her words, gathering the Angel of Families near. How apt this evidence that some benevolent higher power, unfathomable to her, has deigned to fill her ache for her own clan with the celestial being who nourishes the very concept.
Between kisses she laughs some more, soft breaths like stirring leaves, resigned to the fact that Thea may awaken to her parents in such a state of mutual rapture.
“I might’ve told you sooner, but it has only been several weeks, and I suspected as soon as several days, for we have been trying quite persistently, and I rarely have difficulty, quite the contrary in fact, I’ve carried multiples… eheh, ehh, would you … pay attention, eheheh … . ! I decided … !!!”
She smacks a palm square to the center of his chest.
“I decided that I would tell you today, by having a friend at the market place that very blanket within your purview. What do you think? Am I very clever? Do continue, now, to praise your wife.”
Loki has sensed his witchling’s distress already. He descends the stairs from his study, every surface, including the outside corner of his right hand, littered with ornately inked runes. He kneels before Thea, implored from any corner of the cosmos by those two syllables: mama.
“Here, loveling. Here. Give your friend to me. I’ve a spell for soothing her.”
Loki strokes the rabbit’s spine, savoring the feel of its softest and warmest fur, murmuring an incantation in a watery tongue. A murky earth-hued cloud of magic brightens to gold and mingles with lime, effecting a blissful sedation.
“Is bunny gonna be okay?” Her voice is soft, the little lass getting better already at the gentle tone needed to soothe equally little creatures. She implicitly trusts mama, looking up with worried hazel eyes.
“Galley an’ Siggy find her under the rosies. She scared, huh? Poor bunny, they not gonna eat ya, promise!” She leans against Loki’s sturdy shoulder, laying her head on his arm and studying the bunny with a faint little frown. “They not gonna, right mama?” She’s just double checking, sometimes the things in their bowls are red, red, red with blood. But surely they wouldn’t eat this poor little bunny, not an innocent little bunny!
The God of Mischief hums in accord with his daughter’s question.
“Very much so. She merely needs rest. I have cast a healing upon her, and now, I am soothing her to sleep, so that she will let it take hold. Would you like to help me, wildling?”
He guides one of Thea’s hands to the rabbit’s soft pelt, demonstrating how to pet it.
“Gently. Very … very gently … and you must think all the while upon how you love the sensation. How you love the whole of the animal. Its whiskers. Its ears. Its bright black eyes. Its fur. Its strong legs. Its tail. Think on how you love it, and therefore, become it. And it shall feel your love, and rest easy.”
Loki turns an expression of grave bemusement on his son.
“Humans, loveling. Humans. Their lifespans are naturally limited to roughly eighty or ninety years, and owing to this, their vocabulary becomes as stunted, coagulated, and nonsensical as moldy mashed potatoes.For this reason we pity them, andlook the other way.”
Jormungandr thinks on this for a moment, growing more and more downcast. He crosses his arms over his chest as if trying to coil up, despite being in his human form.
“I suppose…my worst nightmare would be to lose my mind or memory,” he begins in response. “Knowledge and learning are my great passions, and to lose all of that would’ve made so much of my life for naught.”
His focus turns to Loki. “Losing you for good would follow close behind. You have always motivated me not just to seek knowledge, but to break conventions and see outside of the norm.” Jormungandr’s mood slowly picks back up. His arms relax. “You taught me the difference between learning and exploring. You are my greatest inspiration, mother.”
“Oh, love. I am sorry that in a version of this life you have had to endure one of the things you fear most. But I shan’t leave you again.”
A pale long-fingered hand rests against the side of Jory’s neck.
“Thank you for confiding these fears. Would it help if I cast a protective sigil upon you, so that you are especially impervious to mind control spells?”
Green eyes are uncannily gentle.
“It is the least I can do, for knowing one of my children considers me his inspiration.”
Loki, though touched, is overcome with concern; he tugs Hela’s face out from his chest and searches her gaze, all but frantic. Yet his voice remains carefully calm, soothing, as he strokes her raven hair.
“Sweetling, whatever’s amiss? What has happened? Are you well?”
CAECILIA’S TINY HANDS grip her card with a surprising strength, one that even turns her knuckles white as she fidgets with it. she wants to give it to him. truly, she does. but her body is just frozen in overwhelmed fear. it takes her a good thirty seconds or so to fully hand the card over, where she’s drawn a rather good magipie for a girl her age, a true sign of natural talent. she’s drawn miniature depictions of huginn and muninn as well, just for fun because she likes them very much. she seems to take after her mother, that way – feeling more comfortable with animals than she is with others of her own kind. she places her hands in her lap, and remains silent.
Loki takes great care to examine the fluid lines and delicate sensitivity with which his signature disguise has been rendered. His fingers trace the contours of the magpie’s beak and feathers. He does this for a long and intimate span of moments, daughter secure in his lap, while with his other hand he smooths her hair. Huginn and Munin earn similar attentive study. All the while, sharp lean features are ever so soft and gentle; only Loki’s eyes remain keen.
He does not force her to speak. And after his initial request, he does not force her to look at him. As a father, Loki has long since vowed never to strongarm his children. Many valuable lessons were learned from Odin, but not those Odin intended to teach.
Rather, how not to make a child feel constricted, small, ashamed, as Odin did. How not to make a child feel love was contingent upon good performance, as Odin did.
“This is exquisite. That is a word which means very beautiful. Thank you. How the Norns have blessed me with a daughter such as you. Kili, I love you so. I think every hour on how blessed I am that you are my daughter. Everything that makes you you, is dear and perfect unto me.”
Loki, who picks up Narvi, and drapes him over a shoulder as dawn approaches, turns silently to his wife and displays the brooch. He tilts his head and pouts with a touched maternal expression. Then he nods her toward her gift, in Vali’s grasp, with a knowing breath of laughter, tongue poking between incisors.
“Aye … ! My darling, I remember this well. You were so very enamored with a facet of the living realm. The egg shells from the nest. They were and are a reminder that you are not only a goddess of death, but also, of all of life’s transitions. Yes?”
The sly magpie twirls his wrist and in his palm appears a blue robin’s egg. This one begins to hatch.
“You may ever participate, should it be your choice. Here. A fledgling for you. I have fullest confidence you shall nourish her to flight.”
icyxmischief 