I ought to have killed my father, he thought, clutching the bottle so tightly its glass walls cracked within the cradle of his hands. as I am,” he said aloud, softly, then frowned at himself, and drank deeply, the liquor flaming in his stomach like the fires of Muspelheimr. Loki’s shoulders tightened, and his fingers took a death-grip round the neck of the bottle. The liquor sang in his veins, stronger now that he was…
Prone upon a thick branch high above the heads of mortals, on the cusp between the old week and the new, Loki sipped from a bottle of stolen too-sweet mead and watched the great stars wheel their slow, stately dance in the Midgardian sky above him. That first sevenday, however, passed uneventfully enough. He felt as if something-not his magic, but some other distinct, and equally crucial, part of himself-had begun to slowly slip away. In darkness, alone, he felt small, powerless, blind. In darkness Loki's plots all seemed far away, harder to hold onto than water in his hands. Nights he lay cradled in the ash’s crooked roots and wished Niðhӧggr would get on with things and gobble up Yggdrasil and the Nine Realms entire, doing away with the whole sorry mess. He amused himself by composing lies to tell them, as if the mundane little beasts were Ratatoskr and would bear his falsehoods to the Allfather’s ears, bringing confusion thereafter to all his hated not-father's plans. He liked to climb up into its branches and perch with eyes closed, listening to the whisper of the wind in the leaves, or the chatter of the numerous bold, fat, gray squirrels. On his first night in the city, after he overcame the numbness and disbelief that assailed him for some hours after his fall, Loki discovered an ancient ash in the great, nearly untenanted central land of meadows, lakes and trees, and made it his temporary home.
Loki wondered, truly, what they took him for. It amused Loki when the rare human, beholding him, actually registered the sight-when a jaw dropped, or eyes went wide, before the unfortunate tore his gaze away and hurried off in haste. Meanwhile, the better to think, he walked the streets of New York City with head held high, disdainful of the mindless scurry of the ants around him.įew regarded him closely-but then, they avoided their fellow mortals in much the same way, filled with the sicknesses of distrust and indifference, otherwise absorbed with the small, flat boxes or metal and glass each seemed to carry along with them wherever they wandered. What had that Midgardian play-maker written? “ If I had my teeth, I WOULD bite.” Oh, but Loki intended to have his teeth again, and then would he make such retribution the great oceans round Asgard would surge red with it. The golden thread of his life might have tarnished slightly, but he would have it brighten again, his fortunes restored, his tormentors punished.
That first sevenday, when the air remained still sweet and soft, and kept its balance between summer and autumn, Loki assured himself frequently that things would not be so terrible. His magic had been taken from him, true, but did he need magic to consort with mere mortals? He found it easy enough to steal human raiment and dress himself in it-raiment of good quality, so that he would be recognized for the prince he was, blue skin or not, crimson eyes or not.Ī prince, a god, an immortal-by human standards, at least.
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