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( we never learned to use a compass )

[ One would assume that fighting for a common cause (Justice! Liberty! The Pursuit of Happiness! Something along those lines.) would cement the camaraderie between the members of the team with ease, but the opposite seems to be true. They've been working together, training body and mind for months now, and still Teddy feels that every session is a prelude to another irritating cockfighting show between the two so-called leaders of the team.

He's waiting outside the mansion's grounds, chewing on a stick of old Juicy Fruit that had been chilling at the bottom of his knapsack (it tastes like ass). His calves are freezing, courtesy of a Hulking-transformation before he'd remembered to don his gym shorts — there went yet another pair of perfectly serviceable jeans. If this kept up, he's going to have to work more than three afternoons a week at the records store to pay for his wardrobe alone. ]

—Bill!

[ Teddy had left the mansion when Eli had started defaulting to belligerence. Billy, bless his scrawny little soul, had stayed behind, but apparently to little effect; Teddy takes in the telltale frustration pursing his lips, and can't help the fond smile that surfaces in response. The nice thing about Iron Lad and Eli constantly attempting to tear out one another's throats (really not as cool to witness IRL as it is on Channel 7 with the real Avengers and whichever masked criminal taking center stage) — is that Teddy's found a friend. The sort of tousle-headed nerdy beanpole who natters at a mile a minute and can probably name each and every one of the various Avengers and their induction dates without drawing breath — the kind of friend that Teddy never thought he'd find, being sixteen and awkward and self-deprecating still growing into the breadth of his shoulders.

It's fun. Despite the complications and the exhaustion that has come to dog Teddy's every step, he looks forward to their training sessions. More than that, he looks forward to the time afterward: when he can wave Billy down and walk him home without needing to feel too self-conscious about it. He shoves his hands into his hoodie pockets, keeping himself from smoothing down his mussed hair.

(That's another unfortunate problem that has propped up over the past few weeks. Certain dreams of Teddy's have featured spindly white fingers and clever dark eyes with upsetting frequency, to the point that Teddy sometimes finds himself looking away when he realizes that his gaze has lingered too long.)

It's not really that big of a deal. Billy's lack of self-esteem and (...kind of adorable) obliviousness means that Teddy could probably let his gaze linger for a hell of a lot longer without giving anything away. ]

The peacekeeping mission was a failure, I'm guessing?

( the day breaks apart in our hands )

[ In the depths of Loki's quarters, a silver chest is stacked neatly atop a golden trunk. Atop it, another of bronze, and another of copper alloy. His rooms are arrayed with gold and silver and gleaming metal as such, magical artifice as far as the eye cares to wander.

But in one — wrought by the dwarves of Nidavellir, with undulating waves etched into its surface, with rubies glittering aplenty no matter the angle of the viewer's approach: this chest is filled with artifacts that even Loki has thought twice before testing.

(There are realms that he dares not traverse, after all: the fortresses of Jotunheim, the lavish rotting feasts of Hel. His father's heart. And his brother's — well, some perversions are too terrible to name.)

Tonight, Loki enters his quarters with the sweep of a green cloak. His hands are trembling and there is a strange light in his eye — he has partaken of more wine than is advisable, and chalice upon chalice of spirits beyond that. Odd, that he should fall to such vice, for Loki prides himself in his control above all. Let the firstborn loosen his body and his heart for a thousand lesser men and maids to defile; Loki looks upon all with the same carefully-crafted disdain. Tonight, Thor had lost a flyting contest and given up his favorite hauberk as recompense. He had stood upon the high table in naught but his thin undertunic and still directed the laughter and affection of the court as a Midgardian maestro over their puling mortal orchestras.

And how Loki had burned, beneath the long sleeves of his robes. How he had hated every covetous eye turned upon Thor.

But tonight, Loki is a man who has switched places with his own shadow. There is greed in his eyes and in the tremor that disturbs his hollow bones; he steps across his room and sets his hands to the innocuous silver chest with fingers that scrabble for purchase. When his magic fails to undo the latch, he falls upon it with a dagger instead. Soon the vial of his choice sits upon his upturned palm, the silver-blue potion within casting wan light over his brow. He'd purchased it from a fishtailed mercreature in the oceans of Vanaheim, with secrets instead of gold.

(One drop is sufficient, my prince.)

Sobriety is quick to return, once the scheming takes over Loki's mind. He conjures a chalice of wine, shakes his head, dismisses it, and conjures a tankard of mead instead. Without hesitation, he spills the entire vial into it.

Fifteen minutes later, Loki slinks down the halls burdened with a silver tray: tankards for two, a platter full of candied meats, and a ready smile. By the time he reaches Thor's quarter and quietly lets himself in, the tremble in his hands has stilled. ]

—brother?

Silver hum runs dark and strong

[ He knows peace in the evenings best, in the chambers that belonged once to his father, the warm golden chambers which are Loki's now, the chambers reserved for the king of Asgard. There where it is he and Loki alone, where the weight of shame does not bear down so heavily upon his shoulders as it does when he is in the eyes of the court, Loki's obedient thrall before them. Where he need answer to no one but his king. And still there is no one else, here or at the foot of the throne or in the feast hall, on Asgard or Midgard or any realm, there is no one else but Loki, no one who he might offer his loyalty to: his mortal friends imprisoned, their lives bought by Thor's obedience, Sif and the Warriors Three long since fled, Frigga missing and Odin lost to the fog of interminable sleep.

Thor has long since stopped wearing chains. Loneliness is a bond far more powerful than any chain could be; it is the leash which holds him to his brother's hand. ]

You are pale. [ he tells Loki, worried, once the door has been shut and bolted behind them, the guards gone to their posts. ] You look unwell. [ Embers blaze in the hearth, the chambers glowing softly golden, yet the light makes that much starker the fine arch of Loki's cheekbones and the gaunt hollows beneath, the faint bruising of shadow around his eyes, the thinness of his mouth. He has not eaten, Thor knows, in many days: has merely toyed with a goblet of wine at the feasts, or picked at pieces of fruit, and Thor does not know what troubles him--is it the business of being king? Is it that he has taken to it, as Thor had once in spite of himself hoped he would: that it is some care of the kingdom, of the welfare of the Aesir and the rest beneath his dominion, that puts such shadows into his face?

He had not thought once that he should think willingly, and loyally and obediently, of his brother as king; that he should ever think of him so. Yet now the duties of a thrall come with a strange ease, a natural order to them, so that slowly the tension melts from his own shoulders as Thor quietly strips the outer garments of Loki's raiment from him until he is clad only in tunic and breeches, taking care with helm and cloak and armor, the motions as fluid and familiar as Mjolnir in his hand upon a battlefield. ]

Will you not eat now, Loki-king?

[ His voice is soft and rough with concern. Thor is loose, pliant, the plaits in his hair slipping down over his cheeks as he bows his head, the golden beads tinkling softly at the ends of them. A wide gold band presses its smooth and warm weight around his throat, and the stud of gems in his nipples glimmer in the light; at most times he is given only a pair of soft, fine breeches to wear, and soft boots laced to the calves, and a wide belt of beaten gold disks to rest low around his hips. Gold at his wrists, too, smooth cuffs like shackles, and around his ankles beneath the boots. Bedecked like an idol, or a prize given in tribute, his own beauty on display for his brother's pleasure. ]

Entry tags:

seasons au

( we were once cinema gods in the night )

[ Loki runs — through fields and meadow, through sweetgrass and sunlit wheat. He runs, and he does not cast his glance behind him, for he can hear Thor alighting upon his fleeing shadow, the promise of an embrace as inevitable as the rise of the sun, and the fall of the moon.

When the open fields give way to the fringe of surrounding woods, Loki scurries up into the boughs of a tree, dislodging a family of songbirds in the process. He had not known to climb with such limber skill when he first tumbled into Thor's arms, weeks and weeks ago, but the summer sun has scorched his winter-skin to a golden tan, his arms have become lean and graceful, and he moves with the elegant confidence of a creature accustomed to plenty.

Only when he has reached the topmost branches of the towering oak does Loki peer down from its heights. His lungs are full and aching with laughter, but still the music of it flows forth, as sweet and soft as the renewed murmurings of the wood;s birds and of summer-beasts.

He tosses a chain of gem-studded gold into the air — it had been the victor's recompense for a tournament meant to be held a fortnight hence, but Loki had seen it, grown enamored, and had thought to make a game of its theft. ]

How slow you are, Thor-king — !

[ crows the king of winter, perched upon his throne of wooded green. With another flick of his wrist, he sends the chain into the air again, catching it with one outstretched finger and spinning it lazily about. ]

You could have mined an ore of gold and beaten it into another chain in the time it has taken you to catch up to me.

( i'm a junkyard full of false starts )

[ Dust motes catch the light pouring in through the high windows of his chambers, glittering like specks of gold.

In the alcove beyond the shelves of old tomes, Loki is swathed in shadow, his cloak drawn about his shoulders.

(A murder of crows flap and tussle in the narrow space beyond his ribcage; his heart has beaten itself to silence.)

Down below, in the courtyard, metal sings against metal. Thor must be amongst his fellows, gleaming still even after Odin-king's proclamation declaring him unworthy of Mjolnir's grace. The realms will continue unto eternity; Ratatosk will skitter up the World Tree's unending heights, Niddhoggr will gnaw upon its great searching roots, and the three Norns will fill their earthenware pots with water enough to flood the Nine.

Time continues, unbroken by the knowledge that has cracked Loki open and left his bones naked for the day-star's fury to melt and reforge. He does not belong in these shadows of the Allfather's crafting, no more than he belongs in this skin of white and green; better that he thrust his arms back and will his shoulderblades to slice through his flesh until he has wings of blood and bone; perhaps then he can take to the skies as Asgard's Sky-walker and again rewrite the prophecies that have already come to pass.

(Oh, but relief grasps at him: so he is not the lesser of the sons of Odin because of the fabric of his existence — no, how could even the Father of All love a bastard and a runt more than his own flesh?

He is wretched as a beast chained, but there is naught to be done. Gungnir lies in Frigga-Queen's hands now, and Thor searches the lands for that which will again make him worthy of more than warmongering and feasting; Loki is left to the machinations of his own clever fingers grown spindly and ashen, of a mind half-crazed with despair.

He had brought his own people into Asgard's vault to destroy Thor's coronation.)

Perhaps he does not need wings to fly — perhaps the wind itself will take him upon its back if he were to step from the high windows and never again look back.

Perhaps.

(Little wonder that Loki had hungered so for the flesh of his own kin. Oh, if Thor could lift the veil of his glamor now, if Thor could see at last what manner of ghastly beast he had allowed to lay claim to him, again and again and again!)

So the blood of a snake mars the House of Odin. A Jotnar foundling, beloved by only the reach of Death's claws.

(Loki's magic flickers; a crystal goblet upon his sitting-table bursts into fragments.) ]

Waiting for a ride in the dark

[ He has not planned the journey. Cities, towns, miles and miles of long road with nothing in between, nothing to see but dusty fields and the bright arch of the blue sky curving from horizon to horizon: they come upon what they will, wherever the road leads, and Thor knows he does not want it to end even if eventually, somewhere, it must. They are driving west, he and Loki, and he has told no one where they are going nor where he expects to arrive, for Loki is powerless and has in all of Midgard only one who would call himself friend and kin and protector, as much as the younger brother might despise him for it.

Yet Loki stays with him. Loki must, for there is nothing now but one another; there is nowhere left to run to, no hiding place where Thor cannot find him. Or any other that sought him.

As the sun is beginning to sink from its zenith, they wind down from a long, twisting mountain road to a set of cliffs along the coast, dropping sheer to the frothing ocean below. As the sky streaks orange and twilight slips from the east, Thor finds a turnoff leading down, it seems, towards the sea.

They've slept in the truck before, in the cab or on spread blankets in the flatbed, when the night was warm enough.

So he drives until they reach the small beach deep-set between rocks and cliffs, the waves hurling and frothing towards the shore, and parks the truck there at the edge of the sand, reaching over to touch Loki's shoulder, gently: unsure if he is asleep or simply lost in reverie. ]

What do you think, brother? It will be warm enough to camp tonight.

[ In fact it was a hot day, the sun merciless in a cloudless sky, and the evening is dry but warm, especially in the close cab. ]

Bring them all back to life

[ He had not known cold, he had never truly known cold before the winter kingdom. Before he first saw the palace frozen of ice, and the snow glittering like a thousand thousand diamonds under a pale wintry sun. Before he saw his first blizzard, the wind howling in an endless wrathful voice and the falling of snow so thick and swift that it obscured all sight beyond his own hand in front of his eyes. Before he saw the snow continue to fall and fall and fall until it was piled halfway up the windows, slowly burying the palace in a silent, white blanket.

This is the cold of winter, a piercing, aching chill thrust like a spear deep within him, relieved only by the touch of his lord's hands upon his skin, the slow thrust and rocking of his cock within him. Early on, Thor came to the feasts and sat at Loki's right hand, as he had once seated Loki beside him in the greenwood palace of summer, and did honor to the food they put before him; he attended the contests and tournaments between the beasts and the sharp-eyed dryads, and took his own part in them, spilling blood before the burning black eyes of the winter king, all to see the pleasure and hunger and desire in Loki's gaze upon him. He was a part of the life in that palace, slow-moving and sluggish at times, harsh and demanding at others, but that was before the cold began to sink into him, began to steal the life and warmth from him so that he spent more and more time in Loki's bed, sleeping or fucking or awaiting the presence of his lord beside him: awaiting a soft kiss to the nape of his neck, a caress to wake him, a well-oiled cock sliding slowly, so very slowly within him, to linger for days or even weeks until he knew nothing but the endless rocking and pleasure.

He is truly the thrall of the winter's bed, now.

Thor is asleep, but only by half; there is an aching in his loins, a fierce burning and spark within him, a new life which grips him, which makes him restless. His fingers are grasped in the sheets and somewhere in the back of his mind lingers a thought: does Loki know? Does the winter king know what his cool seed has sown in him? How bewildering, how strange and shameful and joyous; and he aches for Loki's touch, gasping in the grip of dreams, waiting for him to come. ]

Entry tags:

spoils of war au

( a dry rot to take the weight off )

[ A thousand years ago, Laufey-king and his consort the storm-bringer Farbauti created new life between them. The child was to be the herald of a new glorious age for the Jotnar, the firstborn heir to the throne, with laurels curved about his horns from the moment of his conception. It was a time of great merriment even amidst a winter so cold that even the Jotnar feared the icy winds — for long had Laufey and Farbauti loved one another, and long had they wished for a jewel to set upon the lesser throne of Utgard.

Many months hence, Laufey gave birth to the child on the coldest night of the year, when the third green-ringed moon hid behind the sallow second, and when the first moon was lost in a shroud of gray clouds. For many an hour did Farbauti wolf-slayer range the cold plains, killing two score white falcons to feed his mate and his firstborn child the blood-rich hearts.

But the merriment died that night in the birthing chamber, for Laufey-king delivered a squalling monster into the night — a runt, smooth of feature and black of hair, the curl of his stunted body no larger than a pebble upon the banks of Ölfusá. Tradition sought a ritual killing, as those too weak to withstand Jotunheim's cruel storms would never grow to adulthood, much less prosper amidst the demands of the Jotnar warrior-code. That he was born a prince mattered little; the House of Laufey was of royal, proud blood, and no half-formed monstrosity would mar its name.

But little Loki breathed flame into his dam's face before he could be thrust to drown in Ölfusá's currents, and so Laufey-king named him seidrmadr of the court, and saved his firstborn from an early end. When Helblindi and Byleistr followed soon after, Loki was removed from succession, and left to play with flame and spark, with magical herb and salve; he was not treated poorly, but neither was he given the respect that warlike Helblindi and clever Byleistr both received without needing to demand it.

On the eve of Byleistr's birth, when Loki was still a child barely weaned from his dam's arms, the great golden horn of Asgard sounded through Utgard's echoing halls. It was to be the first of many of the Allfather's visits, where Laufey-king and Odin-king sat in the council chambers for hours upon hours and busied themselves with whatever it was that kings were meant to do. Loki, who had learned to outsmart his servants from a very young age, flitted through Utgard's halls, eager to look upon Odin-king's retinue of pink-faced goblins from Asgard's shores. This particular visit had been steeped in importance beyond Loki's childish understanding, but he had heard one interesting tidbit: that Odin-king had brought his own son to Jotunheim this day.

So Loki met Thor.

It took several more visits for Loki to love Thor, for they were all too much the same in their obstinacy and unyielding pride. But perhaps it was always an inevitability that sunlight limned the storm of their friendship, and that their clasped hands would be stronger than each of them alone. So the Norns writ truth upon Yggdrasil's branches, and so it sprouted into a stunted Jotnar princeling and his apple-cheekd Aesir companion.

The diplomatic events were long meandering mazes from which Laufey-king emerged full of black fury, from which Odin-king rallied his Einherjar soldiers to him and hurried again to the Bifrost site. But in the scant moments of the interim, Loki and Thor fought under the skeletal trees bordering Utgard's walls, they stole snow-peaches from the kitchens and ate handfuls until they grew sick and bloated, they raised a white valdyr from a pup and clutched at one another when the Jotnar soldiers killed it when it grew too great and fierce for Utgard's halls.

Had they known each other into adulthood, perhaps the brotherhood they had forged might have anchored them to one another in a very different way, but such things never came to pass — for Laufey-king and Odin-king loved each other not, and the night always comes sooner than the morning beyond it. The diplomatic meetings ceased. For a century, an uneasy peace reigned; Helblindi-prince and Byleistr-prince sharpened their weapons and learned to hate the Aesir as their father did, and soon the Great War spilled blood over Jotunheim and Midgard and Asgard too. Another two centuries passed, thick and heavy with death, and Jotunheim was left a charred ruin. Byleistr was dead, and Farbauti of the Clan of Blooded Ice too, and Odin the Betrayer took the Casket and left Loki's people to suffer and perish.

An eternity ago, Loki had looked into Thor's eyes and found them unutterably lovely: like blue-glass mirrors of the sky, clear and sweet and stricken through with silver. Now, a servant leans to cover Loki's skin with draping gold: bangles to his elbows, rings and whorls of gold in his ears, a circlet draped with delicate jewels to set upon his dark head. A collar of gold, too, a melody of clinking necklaces, each one longer than the last, gold anklets and strings of emeralds about calves and thighs. He has always been less of a prince and more of a jester — seidrmadr are no more prized in Jotunheim than they are to the Aesir infidels — and so Loki has never known such finery. He is to be made a gift to Thor-prince, son of Odin, and he must look his best.

His heart has been twisted by the war. Thor-prince will not find in him the same fool of a child who had clasped him and shared tears alongside him.

When Loki entered Utgard's throne-room dressed in finery, ready to offer himself as a whore, Laufey-king had looked upon him with grief crowning his bowed head; he had reached out with one great scarred hand and pressed two crooked fingers to Loki's cheek. Go in peace, my child, he had said, and even silver-tongued Loki had known only the vastness of silence in his own heart, so great was his answering despair.

Go in peace.

So Loki dons a fur-lined cloak of white, and he leaves his Jotnar escort searching the halls whilst he slips to the Bifrost site alone. He is dry-eyed and brittle-boned, and he does not look back when the shattering power of the Asgardian magic pulls him from his homeland for the first and final time. ]

Entry tags:

seasons au

( darling, everything's on fire )

[ Loki shifts from shadow to shadow in the halls of the greenwood palace, a plain wooden goblet of Thor's favored honeyed mead in one hand, and a sprig of braided sweetgrass in the other. Though his draped crystals remain strung about his limbs, chiming gently with each step that he takes, he is otherwise dressed as a creature wrought of summer: in green-edged linen, with flowers tucked into the thick spill of his hair, with a cape of white draped across his shoulders, and silver and gold circling his throat. If not for the cloud of ice upon the air every time he exhales, he may have been born of summer, a brother of Thor, meant to lie languid in the soft warmth of sun-dappled earth for the rest of eternity.

He is saying his farewells: to the red-cheeked dryads, to the soft-footed deer, to the very walls and rafters of Thor's summer palace. He leaves gifts where he may, a blue feather for the sweetest of the dryads, a tinny silver bell for each of the fawns to wear strung about their necks.

Twice has the moon grown fat, and twice has she cut herself away to a mere sliver — Loki has come to love the summerlands as much as he loves the lands of his own crafting. They have taught him to love, and to raise his whispering voice in laughter. They have taught him to cup the warmth of the sun in his hands and still brim with more.

Most of all, they have given him Thor, and even Loki's songs cannot paint the intricacies of the summer-king as he lives: warm and broad and filled with bounteous plenty. Loki has learned of all the secret hidden knolls of Thor's country, and he has learned of all the secrets hidden upon his golden skin; so winter begins it ascent into the mountains with Thor's antlers shadowed like wings upon his back. ]

If you miss your country overmuch, you must tell me. [ says Loki, when they have climbed halfway to the lands of ice. His gaze is a quick, flitting thing, darting from Thor to the peaks in the distance and back again.

After a moment, he reaches out and takes Thor's hand in his own; his thumb strokes across the back of that sun-warmed hand. ]

(no subject)

[ He watches the blood dripping, spreading dark and wet upon the stones between his braced feet, rivulets following the deep-set grout; the stone is rough and cold upon his bare soles, the light filtering only dimly from the barred window above. He has never been in one of Asgard's stone oubliettes, except as a young boy playing where he didn't belong: looking down upon the criminals so dishonored and shamed as to be fit only to be chained below the earth and left to rot. The stone cell is cold, and absurdly large, an arching vault which only taunts him with his spaciousness; Thor has been chained between a pair of columns, his arms stretched like wings in flight, and there left for long, long hours--or has it been days? Weeks? No one has come.

His head is bowed with weariness, his shoulders slumped. For a while he fought and fought the restraints, disbelieving at first, then infuriated, then horrified that anything so paltry as a pair of chains could hold his strength; but of course it cannot be all that. Loki has put some enchantment on him, or else it is a magic in this place which is as old as Asgard itself: which keeps him docile and weak, which separates him from Mjolnir. Here his wounds do not even heal; the ragged slash across his chest has bled slowly but steadily all the while, the blood trickling down his bare torso, pooling between his feet. He has been stripped of armor and garments alike. His only accoutrements are a ragged pair of breeches, such as is given to prisoners, and the metal gag which seals his mouth.

His skin prickles with cold and pain, his arms and shoulders wracked and burning from being too long stretched, and his wrists chafed where the shackles bind them: but all that Thor can ignore. Harder to turn his mind from is the shame, the soul-eating sense of failure, of defeat. His brother routed him and cast him down: first from the towering heights of the city of New York, in Midgard, and then from Asgard's golden throne. What has he done with Odin and Frigga, with his friends the Avengers, with Jane, with all the others that Thor calls his own? He knows nothing of their fates.

Fear and shame are endless. They are serpents gnawing at his heart, wearying him with every moment he passes here, sinking him further into despair.

He does not know how long it is before the iron door at last swings open again. Thor lifts his head, shakes back his shoulders, finding some measure of defiance to draw out of himself. He must find defiance. Despair will destroy him, and that is one victory Loki will not have. ]

( you've got trouble in your blood )

[ Sometimes, when night steals the sunlight from the sky, Loki emerges from his lair of villainy (a thatched-roof cottage tucked into the Wienerwald forests, where wildflowers grow to his doorstep and the sweet cold taste of rain never leaves the air). He folds himself into the branches of a hornbeam hardwood, shifting his bones until he emerges as insect or bird or beast, and watches the stars continue their endless parade across the sky. It calms him, to set the rhythm of his thoughts against the punctured brightness of the sky, until he can again strip his flesh down to vein and artery and devote himself to another act of treachery.

A week ago, he'd burst apart his favorite hardwood whilst attempting to rein in his magic enough to shapeshift.

Loki knows this restlessness. He knows it, and he fears it, for the answer to the demand of his blood lies in the golden halls of Gladsheim. Or, perhaps, upon the seventy-fifth floor of the Avengers Tower in Manhattan, where Anthony "Iron Man" Stark has set aside living quarters for Earth's sole Asgardian defender.

The first night, Loki takes his painfully turgid cock in hand and strokes himself to release half a dozen times before acknowledging that his frustration has only burgeoned in response. The next four nights, he devotes all of his remaining concentration to maintaining a glamor convincing enough to fool the mortals. He fucks his way through twelve, thirteen, fourteen eager mortals, the self-hatred curling like smoke about his heart. This is the puling creature that Loki-prince has become, left to dig in the earth for worms to satisfy the ancient lusts born from noble Ymir's loins. And worse still, the indignity produces no result, as the company of mortals offers naught to quell the flames that have begun to scorch him from within.

Thor, his mind screams, not even allowing him the comfort of self-deception.

On the seventh day, Loki dresses himself in the greens and golds of his royal standard, cloaks himself in shadow, and forces open the paths between the worlds. In the depths of the Asgardian woods he will hide himself, and he will rend the sky apart with green flame and crimson flood, but he already knows how his journey will end.

Brother, his mind screams.

Loki steps out into the forests of his long-abandoned home country, and already he's nothing but a shadow of movement across the moonlit grass. ]

Entry tags:

seasons au

( this is my excavation )

[ Like all things, winter was young, once.

Once, when the sun's light was still pale and freckled, and the skies were burnt and brushed with ash where the star-children fought against brother and sister alike to shine all the brighter. When the mountain peaks were soft and sweet with new snow; when the green promise of life wrought by rain and seed began to sprout and turn their bright blooms to the heavens.

His limbs were long and white, like the absence of all color and shadow: he sat against the stripped black spires of dying trees and watched the sunset wash his blank canvas of a body into color. He walked upon the still surface of the lake that rested upon the shoulders of a mountain; the water turned to ice under his bare feet. He leant down and pressed fingertips to the glistening surface of what had once been a lake, and he saw his face staring back at him.

Hello, he had murmured. It was the first time the mountains and the wind and the great wintergreen trees had heard his voice. Hello, he said, lifting his face away. Snow fell to anoint his raised forehead and his parted lips, matting the netted shadows of his hair to the hollows of his face.

So the snow learned the shape of its new master. So the splinter of life named Loki upon the blessed new earth breathed out, and froze the air into crystals that rose and fixed themselves into the spill of his hair.

Like this, Loki wandered the hills and the mountains and the springs eternal, and he taught the running water to still its racing feet, he taught the trees to shed their green finery and stand naked and proud before him. He taught the skies to rage with sleet and storm, and he taught it to draw itself cold and quiet with deep-veined serenity. He taught the rabbits and the wolves to shed their fur coats and grow new sleek white cloaks to hide themselves within. He taught the birds to sing winter-songs, and the beasts to build warm shelters against the cruelty of the wind and its icy scythe.

The newfragile world learned from him, and it loved him — for his clever tongue and lashing wit, for the eldritch green of his eyes and the gentle strength in his fingertips.

But Loki soon grew listless and malcontent upon his high throne of glass, for he could see beyond the white hills of his country, and into the colorful splendor of the world beyond.

—

One day, he steps out the world of his crafting, and he looks about himself with a critical eye. A bluebird and its solemn mate perched together in a low-branched tree, trilling a melody that Loki had once sung to all of birdkind. In an instant, Loki has plucked the singing bluebird from its branch, and caged it within his white fingers. With the wonder of youth, he presses his cheek to the feathered breast, and feels the thudding beat of heart and blood quiet when he snaps its neck.

Its mate begins the song again on its own.

Loki begins to hide his nakedness, clothing himself in the bright plumage of winter-birds who gladly lay life and loyalty at his feet. The crystals in his hair catch the light; he wears them in a dozen strings about his hips, and studded about the curve of his eyelids. He pulls apart the root and blossom of a hundred different burgeoning stems, drying and crushing them into fine colored powers. And so he darkens his mouth, and the fan of lashes below his eyes. He wears the cured hides of winter-beasts about himself, stitched through with golden thread and slivers of rosy quartz.

So Loki grows vain in his pursuit of beauty, and still it is not enough. Winter is the stark rise of a cold morning, and the fall of a blanketing night. He looks to the north and watches the sun paint the green earth alive with beauty and truth, and he aches to know what the creatures of such a world would have to say to him.

On the hundredth sunfall after Loki's yearning for the green country began, he peers into his mirror of glass, and deems himself ready to leave the land of his creation. He dresses his feet in doeskin boots, wears his newly-cured pelts, adorns himself with color and feather and stone, and he sets out to sate the hunger that his curiosity has become. ]

(no subject)

[ Loki's weight is a slight thing, borne easily in Thor's arms all the long way back to the camp, crossing broad verdant plain and then entering in under the cover of a green-gold forest, the sky overhead darkening to violet pinpricked by the first pale stars. They had to leave their prize, the great savage beast with its broad tusks that had pierced Loki so brutally, opening up a great bloody gash in his thigh through which bone was laid bare, and another across his ribs, but when he had realized his brother's hurt Thor had struck it savagely with Mjolnir rather than his javelin, and thus crushed the tusks; and the meat and the hide would not have been worth the effort to carry back, not with his brother so badly needing doctoring.

He bound his wounds in strips of his cloak, and he knows Loki will not die so easily from this but it is a relief nonetheless to see the camp, to hurry forward to where at last he can lay Loki down in the shared nest of their furs. Thor bends down on knees beside him, touches his pale and clammy cheek. ]

Hold fast, brother.

[ He is no healer, but that it what salves and linens are for, and leaves to staunch bleeding; he has brought enough of all, and he washes out the wounds first with the water they had boiled that morning, pouring it directly from the pot over the gashes. He fully expects a thorough tongue-lashing for the clumsiness of his arts, or lack thereof, but there is nothing else to be done for it; the wounds cannot go untended and Thor is the only one here to see to them. ]