fic | thor (2011) | paper planes & playground games (1/2)

[mekosuchinae]

I, for one, blame rawles, the most shameless (and supportive) of enablers, to whom this is dedicated.

ssora has very graciously translated this fic into Russian. You can read her translation here at her main blog or mirrored here at her livejournal. Please do check it out!

Title: Paper Planes & Playground Games
Fandom: Thor (2011)
Characters: Sif/Loki, Thor, Frigg.
Warnings: None.
Summary: When Sif was but a girl, she met two princes, one like the sun, the other like the moon.

Pre-film. 14,400~ words. Notes succeed the work.



Paper Planes & Playground Games

1

The king's sons were both short, though Loki, thinnest, nearly reached Sif's nose. She'd thought they would be taller. Standing to either side of the queen, they looked down at her from the steps. Thor, the bright one, smiled. The other pursed his lips and said, "Are we supposed to play with her?"

"Who wants to play with you?" Sif snapped.

Her father laughed and drew her back. He bent to her, his hair brushed her brow, and he whispered, "Behave yourself." His fingers bit into her arm. Through the dark curtain of her father's hair, she saw Loki smile at her.

Her father shook her. "Do you hear me?"

"All right!" She scowled and looked away. "Fine."

What the queen thought of Lieff Hoffson and his graceless, skinny daughter, she did not show. Sif's father turned to her and the queen smiled graciously at them both, as if Sif had not insulted the second prince. Far from insulted, Loki looked amused.

"Please," said her father, "forgive my daughter. She's very demonstrative."

Sif frowned. 'Demonstrative' was one of her father's nice words; it meant "unladylike and rude." The queen did not hear this.

"She's fearless," said the queen, "and confident in herself." She smiled at Sif then, and Sif thought perhaps she loved the Queen Frigg a little for the way her eyes crinkled as if to say, And I think that's very good indeed.

The queen turned to her sons, first Thor then Loki, and said, "Won't it be nice to have someone new to play with?"

"Yes!" Thor cried. He grinned at Sif and then looked around his mother at Loki. "I like her already. She thinks Loki's rude, too," he teased.

Loki's eyes lidded. "I don't care what she thinks," he said.

Then, and Sif nearly laughed for the surprise, the queen pinched Loki's ear. He jumped and yelped as she dragged him about to face Sif. Sif's father turned his face away, either out of respect for the prince or mortification.

"You are a prince," the queen said quietly, "and you will treat our guest and your new friend with kindness and respect."

"Yes, Mother," said Loki quickly. "I'm sorry." His eyes flicked up to Sif and then away again. Sif bit back a laugh. "I shouldn't have been cruel."

Sif's father touched her arm. "And what do you say?"

"What?"

She glanced back to Loki, who'd grown pale - paler, anyway - and refused to look at her. Indignation welled in her; why did she have to accept an apology the queen had ordered? He stared down at his boots. The tips of his ears stuck out from his head.

The thought startled her: he was only a boy. They were both only boys, for all their airs and titles. Sif made a face.

"I accept your apology," she muttered. "Thank you for making it."

"There." The queen beamed. "That didn't hurt at all. Now, go play nicely, all of you. I have some business to discuss with Sif's father."

As her father rose to join the queen, Thor descended to meet Sif. He was short, but already thick through the shoulders, and when he smiled his whole face lit up.

"You're tall for a girl," he said frankly.

"You're short for a prince," she retorted.

Thor shrugged. "I'll get bigger. Loki will, too. He's already tallest."

She looked up to Loki, who lingered a few steps behind Thor, like a thrall or a shadow. He was looking at her, frowning a bit. Loki started when their eyes met and snapped his head around to look instead to the sky.

"He's rude, too," said Sif.

"He's just shy," Thor said easily. "He doesn't know you, that's all. Do you know how to use a slingshot? You have big arms."

She tossed her hair. "A slingshot and a bow. And I can wrestle, too."

"Ha!" Thor crowed. "I knew it! Best two out of three."

"If you can get up again," she shot back.

Thor laughed and dropped into a stance, knees split, arms wide. Sif grinned and mirrored him.

"You're going to ruin your clothes," Loki called at them.

"I don't like them anyway!" Thor shouted.

"Mother won't be happy."

What a baby, Sif thought. She bet he couldn't even lift a wooden sword without hurting himself. He probably cried when he had to use a knife to cut his meat. Now he stood on the last step, arms crossed, his mouth pulled down at the corners. His hair shone like a raven's wing in the muted yellow light.

"Three-two-one-go," said Thor, and he lunged for her.

Sif, caught off-guard, thumped his back furiously and shouted, "That's cheating! You're cheating!" and struggled with Thor in the grass without thinking to pull her punches.

Father scolded her later for bruising the prince's eye, and Mother cried, "What have you done to your dress!" but Sif found she didn't much care. She fell into the bath and shouted at the heat, and she thought of Thor yelling, "All right! All right! You win! Let go!" and Loki standing at the edge and saying, "You got beat by a girl!"

When, to her father's repeatedly expressed surprise, the queen asked the day after if Sif Lieffdottir wished to come to the palace again, Sif shrugged and said, "I guess." Maybe she'd get to bruise Loki's eye, too.

2
"Have you considered whether there's more to life than trying to kill each other?"

Loki said this politely, as if it were as neutral a thing as the weather. Sif looked up at him from the ground. At this angle she could see up his nose. His lashes had fallen down over his eyes.

"Why?" she asked. "What do you want to do?"

"I thought--"

Then Sif got her arm up under Thor's shoulder and broke his hold. He shouted at this and fought to pin her again, but Sif was quick. She took advantage of the opening and brought her knee up into his ribs, and as Thor coughed she threw him off and rolled over on top of him.

"Give," she said triumphantly.

He was red-faced and his brow knit in a glower, but he grinned so his teeth showed.

"You think you can defeat the mighty Thor?"

"I don't think," she said. "I just did."

Sif shook dark locks back from her face; too long, her hair got in the way whenever it unwound from its pins. She looked to Loki, who started. A moment, then, as he went still, then he looked away from her. Her breath came quickly, and a wisp of hair had settled in her throat. Who was he to look away from her?

Thor ran his elbow into her chest and knocked her off. Sif swore and turned her fall into a tumble. Beside her, Thor rose up onto his hands.

"What did you want to do?" he asked Loki.

Loki blinked and turned to Thor, and not to Sif. Sif flexed her fingers and wrists. She thought of socking him hard in the delicate place between his throat and his shoulder, where his collarbone showed even through his shirt. He was so scrawny.

"Well," he said, "I thought if you weren't too busy punching each other, we could go explore."

"Explore what?"

He glanced at her, a little sort of flickering under his eyelids, but it was Thor who clapped her on the back and said, "Loki finds the best places. Once we found a dragon's nest!"

Sif shoved him. "You did not."

"It's true! Loki spotted a scale the beast had shed. Brother, tell her." Thor lit up. "No, let's show her."

That was the way of it. When Thor decided a thing was to be done, that was what he did. Loki rolled his eyes and briefly he looked to Sif, as if to share this with her, then he seemed to realize who it was he'd looked at and his mouth pinched.

"Does my face offend you?" she snapped.

Both Thor and Loki looked at her then, Thor's round face creased in bewilderment and Loki looking like nothing so much as a rabbit in a trap.

"Does it make you sick?" she pressed. "Do me the honor of being honest."

"Sif," Thor said hesitantly, "did I hit your head?"

"Look at me!" she shouted at Loki, who had turned again from her.

He stopped and lifted his face. His cheeks were red and his lips were flat, as if to look at Sif was to look upon a thing which ripped at his gut. She was on her feet before she'd thought of anything more than how badly she wanted to break his nose.

Loki sidestepped her lunge. She reoriented and lashed out with her foot, but he slid away once more, light on his toes. His hair fell black against his brow. She came at him again and again he danced about her.

"Stop running and fight me, you coward!"

"I am fighting," he protested.

"My brother is very tricky," Thor told her as she tried to catch Loki by the throat. "You'll have to do better if you want to catch him."

"Shut up!"

If she could beat Thor, Thor who knew how to fight like a warrior, a true warrior, with pride and honesty, then she could box Loki's ears and kick his knee back. He turned on his toes and ducked beneath her arm. She felt a light pressure at her side and only realized he'd struck her when a moment later heat blossomed between two of her ribs. He smiled wickedly, lingering. Sif caught his shirt, dragged him to her, and smashed her head against his.

Loki stumbled back and fell. So, too, did Sif. Thor howled, laughing, and didn't stop even when Loki shouted at him to have some respect for the gravely wounded. Sif clutched at her head and wished she'd never come to the palace.

"No one's ever headbutted Loki before," Thor said.

Sif rolled onto her side and jabbed Loki's forehead between his fingers. He flinched away from her. His palms pressed to his eyes.

"Why won't you look at me?" she demanded.

"Because you look like a horse," he snapped. "I think you are a horse. How thick is your skull?"

"How thick is your nose?"

She brandished her fist. It wavered slightly. Her eyes stuck.

"If you're going to kill me," Loki said, muffled, "please do it later. Thank you."

"Should I take you two to the healing room?" Thor asked, still laughing. "Would you like me to carry you?"

"I hate him," Loki told her. "He's like this all the time. He's so disgustingly cheerful about everything."

Had Sif known all she had to do was break her head on Loki's face to find him bearable, she would have headbutted him weeks ago.

"Make him shut up," Sif said, "and I'll never call you a coward ever again."

"I knew you two would get along," Thor said happily.

3
Private tutors lived in the palace and saw to the princes. They'd classes in the morning and training in the early afternoon, then, if no other appointments dotted the schedule, hours to themselves. Sif came on the third day each week, then the third and fourth days, then whenever permitted.

"Can't stay away," Thor gloated.

"Someone has to keep you from getting cocky," she said before kicking his legs out from under him.

Loki had applauded politely and awarded Sif nine points on a grading scale which he refused to divulge. Thor insisted he was in the lead.

"Isn't that right?" he'd asked Loki.

Loki had smiled, and his eyelashes had shown dark on his cheeks - Sif's skin prickled all along her back and arms as if he looked at her - then he opened his eyes and he was looking not at Sif but Thor. It was an ambiguous and, she was learning, perfectly Loki answer. Thor took it as an unqualified yes. She was learning that was perfectly Thor.

Sif came early one afternoon. The training yard was in the left wing of the palace and access to the yard proper was restricted. She went instead to the balcony which looked over the yard. Below, Thor stood with his head turned up to a tall, thick soldier who demonstrated a twisting step with a wooden sword away from the prince. The blade flashed; it cut through the air evenly, with force enough to break bone though the edges were flat, dulled to lessen injury. The soldier's heel ground into the dirt and he spun, whipping the blade out again.

A longing so vast Sif thought she might die burst inside her belly. She wanted to choke on her tongue to stop it. Her fingers tightened on the railing. If she leaned far enough out, perhaps--but of course she could no more change the world with her will than she could make herself a boy. She bit the inside of her cheek. Stop being a stupid child, she thought viciously.

"You're early."

She turned. Loki stood in the right corner, where the balcony opened onto the stairs. He'd one glove on and the other tucked in his elbow. His leather training coat flapped as he crossed to her. He tugged the other glove off. A bitter taste filled her mouth. Even Loki was trained to fight, to really fight. She turned her back to him.

Loki folded his arms over the rail. The fingers of his gloves stood up over his elbow. Sweat beaded his throat, and his hair curled at his nape. His ears were flushed.

"I felt bad for you," she said at last. "Stuck here all alone."

The leather coat groaned. He looked to her. Sif stared at Thor as he mimicked his instructor. The tip of his sword dropped.

"Again," said the instructor.

Thor raked a hand through his hair. His head dropped. Then his shoulders straightened and he stepped back to his starting place. Sif wished she could lift the sword from his hands, the coat from his shoulders.

"He's very good," Loki said.

Her jaw ached. Thor began to walk through the steps. Abruptly, she turned about.

"I wouldn't know," she said. "My father won't let me hold a sword."

Wood thwacked against leather. Even with her back to the yard, she could see Thor staggering under the blow, catching the sword on his knee.

"Again!"

A finger on her arm.

She looked down to it then to Loki, whose expression she found incomprehensible. His gaze was steady, then he blinked. He looked to his hand and took it back. Loki cleared his throat and raised his chin.

"I think you'd make a fantastic swordsman."

Sif stared at him. No one had ever said this to her before.

He went on: "You're much better than I am. Thor thinks so, too. That you should be a warrior, I mean. Obviously you're better than me."

He lowered his eyes and picked at the railing, then stilled his hand.

"If you'd like," he said, "you could sit in on our practices."

It was too much to think of. She wouldn't think of it. Her belly siezed and so did her chest and she wanted to hit him across the mouth for teasing her so. She had thought-- For a time, she had thought they were nearly friends. She had even thought Loki not so bad, even as he called her name wrong and teased her for her hair and her long nose.

"Don't joke about this," she said.

"I'm not joking."

Then Loki smiled at her in a way she'd never seen him smile before. The thought that he wasn't teasing even a bit struck her then. Her chest tightened.

She said, "My father--"

"Don't tell him," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing. Perhaps for Loki, it was. Sif had never lied to her father before.

"But--"

Her tongue tangled up. She wasn't clever with words like Loki; she didn't know what to say or how to say it.

"We're friends," Loki said. He hesitated then. His face tightened; she didn't understand it. "Aren't we?"

He was an insufferable brat, and if he called her Sybil the horse one more time she swore she would beat him blue with her bare hands. He filched sweetmeats off her plate and pins from her hair. He wasn't at all like Thor, who was loud and honest and threw his arm about her as if they'd always been friends.

Sif said, "Yes. We are," and it was true.

4
The thing about being friends with Loki was he took it as license to behave even more abominably. He thought he'd permission to hide in trees and drop wriggly things on her, or to nick candies from her fingers and pop them in his pink mouth.

Sif dropped down beside Thor in the dirt and said, "When I see your brother, I'm going to kill him."

Thor stretched out his golden-brown arms. He'd tanned terrifically over the long summer, and his shoulders had widened. She thought he looked like a goose when he pulled his arms out like that.

"Why? What's he done?"

"He stole my strawberry tarts yesterday."

"He steals everyone's tarts," Thor said mildly.

"It doesn't matter to you," Sif accused. "You're used to him. You let him get away with it."

Thor looked at her as if she were stupid. He accomplished this mostly by squinting and frowning and looking as if he'd got the sun in his eyes.

"No," he said. "I just don't leave my things out."

Thoughtfully, she said, "I thought you ate so quickly because you were a horse."

"You're the horse. Remember?"

Sif punched his arm where she knew it would hurt most, and Thor, who was increasingly difficult to shove over, reached out and pushed her onto her back. Her head thumped down on the hard, packed dirt of the training yard. The sky was a pale sort of blue, and it was clear. She wondered when it would rain again. She felt hot and dusty and thin, but not quite so thin as Loki, who'd shot up again over the summer. How he stayed so skinny when he ate all her sweets, she didn't know.

"I really like strawberry tarts," she said.

Thor leaned back on his elbows. He smelled of exertion and grime, but then so did Sif. She liked that smell. Loki, she thought, smelled like books and a different sort of sweat, the perspiration of simply breathing.

"That's why he takes them."

"He's perverse."

Thor laughed. "You should tell him that. I think he'd like it."

"You're both perverse," she told him. "I don't know why I talk to you."

"Because you like us," said Thor. He stretched his legs out. His nose wrinkled; he grunted.

"Goose," she said affectionately.

"Horse," he said. "You should tell him to stop taking your things."

"You should tell him to look out," she said, but that afternoon when Loki reached over and took a bit of sweetened cheese from her plate she said, "What do you think you're doing?"

He paused. Loki blinked so very prettily at her. The cheese was at his lips.

"Were you eating it?" he asked her, as if he cared one way or the other.

This close, she could count the little yellow spots in his green eyes. She felt, or imagined she felt, his breath on the length of skin which showed between her throat and her shoulder. He'd cut his hair again and slicked it back against his scalp; still it stuck up in ragged spikes.

"No," she said, thinking of Thor saying, "That's why he takes them." She said, "I don't like sweetened cheeses."

Loki smiled. His cheeks creased, and the corners of his eyes deepened.

"Then you won't mind if I eat the rest," he said, and he took the plate from her.

Sif caught it as it passed her elbow. The jolt sent a number of wedges tumbling to the floor, where they were lost to one of the princes' opportunistic dogs. For a moment, Loki looked surprised, then he looked only slightly confused.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she demanded.

"You said you didn't like them." He tugged on the plate again. Sif held fast. Another wedge fell. "I thought I'd spare you having to eat them."

"I lied!"

Another wedge gone.

"You can't keep them all to yourself," he reasoned. "That isn't fair."

Across the table from them, Thor looked up from his bowl and said, "Sif, let him have some of your cheese."

She gaped at him. The little traitorous-- Sif grabbed one of the wedges and bounced it off Thor's head.

"What!" He made as if to flick a spoonful of stew at her.

Without so much as a sigh, Loki let go of the tray, and the remainder of the cheese went flying through the air. Sif spilled back in her chair and caught the tray against her chest. She looked at Loki, who had the grace to lower his eyes.

"What was that for!"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm not hungry. I thought you had a better grip."

"Well, I didn't," she snapped.

Loki pinched his lips. Another apology. He rose then and held his hands out for the tray. She'd a bit of cheese smeared across her clavicle. His eyes flickered to it then back to her face, and Sif felt suddenly, hotly bare.

"I'll get a cloth," he said.

In Loki's wake, Thor said, "You should've just let him have the cheese."

Her heart beat weirdly. She wished she'd followed Loki out. She didn't know why. She wished she'd hit him over the head with the tray.

"Shut up," Sif told Thor.

5
In the last handful of summer days, they went to a pool in the woods a half hour's walk from the Ninth Road. It was Loki's idea. He'd come over to Thor and Sif as they fought in the dirt over where to go to wash off. Sif had looked over Thor's hulking shoulder and seen Loki standing there, eyebrows raised, the first few buttons of his sweat-stained shirt opened so the dip in his collarbone showed. She'd been surprised to see him there and so missed a chance to stick her fist in Thor's gut and flip him off.

"You aren't even trying," Thor said as he pressed his arm over her chest. A shadow fell over them. Thor looked up and grinned. "Brother!"

"If you're done trying to strangle each other," Loki said, "I have an idea."

The pool was a small one, but deep, and it was fed by a creek which ran down from the Mountain of First Rain.

"No one else knows it's there," Loki explained.

"How long have you known about it?" Sif asked.

She ducked beneath a branch which came swinging back at her courtesy Thor. She ran up at him and kicked his calf. Thor swore.

"Oh," Loki said to her back. Sif had her arms around Thor's waist and her toes pushing into the dirt as she tried to bowl him over. "I don't know. A while."

"Try harder," said Thor. "Make it a challenge."

"I'll show you a challenge," she snapped, and she drove her hand into his armpit. Thor shouted and jerked away.

They were scuffling still, Sif and Thor, when Loki passed them. He glanced at them and then away, and she wondered at that. Then Thor had his hands around her waist and he was stepping to flip her over his shoulder, and she'd more pressing things to worry about than Loki's strange looks.

"We're here," Loki announced as Sif came crashing down to the ground. She'd her hands hooked in the back of Thor's shirt; he came crashing down, too.

"If," Loki added, "anyone's still interested."

Thor groaned. "Moment."

"Ha! Weak," said Sif. She tightened her gut and pulled herself up.

Loki stood there between the slender, half-grown trees, their branches heavy with early reddening leaves. Sif brushed dirt from her arse and straightened, and Loki, his face shadowed, turned away. She followed him. He parted a bush for her, its twiggy branches complaining, and Sif stepped out of the trees.

"So," Loki said to her, "what do you think?"

The pool glistened, so clear and pure and very blue. It filled, very nearly to the brim, a deep basin of ragged stone, and the creek which cut through the trees from the north poured into it over a worn lip. The small waterfall shimmered.

Loki leaned over her shoulder. She felt his gaze on her, saw the narrow line of his cheek. Thor swept through the brush, but Loki remained, looking at Sif. She thought, suddenly-- But that was silly, and it was stupid, and this was Loki.

"How do you like it?" he asked again.

She breathed in. The clearing smelled of fresh water and green things and fainter still of Loki, who stood beside her and smelled of salt, that old leather coat, and something sweet besides.

"I like it a lot," she said.

"This is fantastic," Thor cried. "Loki, you should have taken us here ages ago. Come on." He clapped Sif's shoulder. "Last one in's a jötunn, Járnsaxa."

"You!"

Furious, she swung at him. Thor skipped back, laughing. He yanked his shirt over his shoulders and managed to kick off both his trousers and his boots in one go, then with a shout he leapt off the rocks and into the pool. Sif had one of her boots off and her trousers down her thighs. She reached for her shirt, but the weight of her breasts stopped her. She'd grown again over the summer.

Loki stripped beside her. His shoulders flashed, bared, and the musculature there was thicker than she'd expected. He was still so thin and awfully pale, and if she grabbed him around the waist she could throw him over her shoulder, but when he bent to undo his belt the knobs of his spine hardly showed. Her chest felt tight.

Stop it, she thought harshly. Thor was like her brother, and she didn't care what Loki thought.

Sif tore her shirt over her shoulders. She picked the pins, long ones with ornamental heads like flowers, from her hair and set them down more carefully, and as Loki turned she threw herself over the edge. The water swallowed her. Another splash sounded dully through the water, and she opened her eyes to see Loki, silver like a fish. Sif kicked up.

Her hair clung wetly to her face, and the air on her skin was like a blast of winter wind. She clawed the hair from her eyes and swore at Loki as he resurfaced.

"It's freezing!"

Loki laughed at her. Water dripped off his nose, and his eyes shone brightly green. Sif splashed him so he fell back, gasping. He vanished beneath the surface again, a little ripple closing over his head.

Then fingers brushed the underside of her foot and a hand closed on her other ankle. Sif dropped. She lashed out at Loki - the light underwater played over his skin in shimmering waves - and he grinned at her. He let go. Sif made as if to swim to the surface again, then, as he looked to her foot, she lunged for him instead.

They broke the surface together. Loki spluttered and said, "What--" and Sif ducked him underwater. His legs kicked. Grimly, she held onto his knobby knees.

"Sif," he said, half-laughing as he came up again. Then his eyes widened, and she dropped his head again. His mouth worked furiously. Little bubbles popped.

She brought him up again. Loki gasped and wiped at his face. His chest expanded violently under her hand.

"Say you're sorry," Sif said, "and I'll let you go."

"Never," he vowed.

He started to swear, then the water closed up over his lips, and Loki's curses fell silent. His lips flashed. Flailing, he threw his hand out. His palm smacked her ribs; his fingertips swept the side of her breast. Sif dropped him entirely.

He came up again, wet and squinting. Sif kicked at him.

"Watch where you're putting your hands!"

"Peace!" He threw his hands up. "Peace! It was an accident!"

Sif splashed him again. Loki covered his face. She swam over to Thor, who was laughing beneath the waterfall and didn't look as if he intended to stop laughing any time soon. He looked like a sodden dog. Sif told him so.

"Loki looks like a frog," Thor said cheerfully.

"I thought horses liked the water," Loki shouted at Sif.

"I don't know why you put up with him," Sif said loudly so Loki would hear. She didn't permit him a look. He'd think she was playing. "I can't stand him."

Thor shrugged. "He's my brother." He smiled at her as the water poured down his brow, his square nose. "He's your friend, too."

"No," she said. She crossed her arms over her chest. Her skin hurt where his long, long fingers had grazed it, her breast sore with the memory of his touch. "He isn't."

Loki left her alone after that.

The warm reds of the afternoon shaded to a violet which deepened as the hour passed, and as bluefall threatened, Loki spoke up: "We should go."

Sif hauled herself naked and dripping and wrinkled onto the rocks. Thor followed, and lastly Loki, and as they began to dress Sif touched the winter's breath flowers someone had left on her clothes. None of the flowering bushes which grew by the pool were the right sort, and anyway, winter's breath was out of season. She looked to Loki, who'd bent to button his shirt. His black hair flipped out from his temples and his skin glistened, damp.

Sif frowned and swept the flowers away. If he wanted to apologize he could do so properly without any of his little games. Sif dressed with more anger than care. A stitch in the shoulder of her tunic tore, and she blamed that on Loki, too.

She gathered her hairpins up, counting them between her fingers. Then she counted them again.

"Loki!" She rounded on him.

He looked wary, but he held his ground as she loomed over him.

"What?"

She shook her fist of pins at him. "Give it back!"

"Give what back?"

"My hairpin!"

His face cleared. "I don't have your hairpin."

"Then where is it?" she roared.

"Give her back her hairpin, Loki," Thor called. He tested his boots.

"But I don't have her hairpin," Loki protested. He gestured. His wrist flashed, white and wet and thin. His fingers fanned. "A bird must have taken it."

Sif turned from him and wound her hair up. She thought of Loki, smiling at her in the water as he touched her foot, and stabbed the pins into place. She stepped hard on the flowers as she went for the trees.

At home that evening, Mother unwound Sif's hair for her. Bits of grass and dirt fell to her shoulders. Mother only said, "Did you lose one of your pins?" and reached for the brush.

"A bird took it," Sif said.

"Birds do like their shiny things," Mother said diplomatically. She worked at the knots in Sif's hair, her hair which fell half down her back and pulled on her head when it hung loose. Sif laid her cheek against her mother's knee. Her mother's skirt scratched her skin, but her fingers in Sif's hair were light.

"Wash up before your father gets home," Mother said.

"I will," said Sif.

6
"You mustn't be so forward," said her father. "What do the princes think of you?"

Mother whispered to Sif to pass her father the bowl of grapes, which offering he ignored. He'd gone off. Sif dropped it by his elbow. Mother slipped a bit of cut cheese onto Sif's plate.

Sif knew full well what the princes thought of her. To Thor a sister, to Loki a friend or, perhaps, a plaything, she was only Sif. She didn't see how it mattered to her father.

"Think of what distinction," said Father to Mother, "if one of the princes were to favor Sif. Thor would be best, but the second prince--"

Sif shoved back from the table. Her chair screamed over the stones. Mother said, "Oh, Sif, please--"

"I'm not going to marry Thor," she said loudly, so her father at last looked at her. She felt colossal standing there, looking down at her father with his dark hair cut short and his beard so neatly trimmed. He was a small man and in that moment she hated him.

"I did not speak of marriage," Father said, "only of an arrangement which might--"

"I won't marry him!" she said. Her heart beat fiercely. She thought of Loki, Loki of the dark hair and the green eyes, Loki who stole ribbons from her hair and wore them about his wrist. "I won't marry Loki, either. I don't want to be a princess or a lady or a queen, I--" Her throat closed up.

Father said, "Will you please take her to her room."

Mother rose. Her hair glimmered, braided and bound, laced through with silver beads to make it shine. She took Sif's hand and asked, "Why don't we step outside?" and gently, she led her from the table.

Outside was dark and humid, the air thick with the lingering heat of summer. Asgard glowed beneath the stars, their many muted lights mirrored in Mother's hair. Mother breathed deeply.

"I won't," Sif said. "I won't do it."

Mother touched Sif's hair, which she'd worn tied high upon her head.

"Then you needn't," Mother said.

Sif turned and hid her face in her mother's shoulder. Mother sighed and wrapped her arms about Sif, holding her as if she were still just a little girl. Soon Sif would be taller than her mother. The thought made her chest ache. She did not want to outgrow her mother.

"If you don't wish to marry a prince," Mother told her, "then you shan't marry one. You must do what it is you want most to do."

She rocked with her mother for a bit, listening to her mother's soft breathing, how her heart beat in her throat.

"What if what I want most to do makes Father angry?" she asked at last.

"Then I shall take him to his room," said Mother.

7
Of what her parents thought of her returning home in torn skirts with bruises on her arms and scabs on her knees, she'd no illusions. If it weren't for the distinction such an association with the royal family brought to their own house, her father would have very kindly forbade her going to the palace.

"He doesn't think a maiden should be a warrior," she explained to Thor.

Thor swung his sword round to rest it across his shoulders. She sneered and said, "Show off," but it was a very smooth move and he knew it.

"Has he ever seen you fight? Surely if he'd seen you fight he'd know you're suited for nothing else."

She snorted at this. "I could take down an entire army of jötnar and he'd still tell me to have a care." She tipped her nose up like Father and droned, "'Think of the shame it would bring our house, to have a daughter who would shirk her duties to play soldier."

"He can't be that stupid," said Thor. "If you just showed him--"

"He'd lock me up in a tower," Sif finished. She weighed her own practice sword. "He isn't like your father. He isn't reasonable."

"Then he's a fool," Thor said simply. "You'll just have to prove him wrong. You've already proved half the other boys training wrong."

"And what of you?"

He grinned. "You've proved me wrong once or twice, too. But no more!"

He flipped his sword about and held it out in invitation. Sif kicked her sword up and brought it about in the corresponding position. Thor was larger by far, but single-minded and given to aggressive pursuit without tactics, and though he was improving, slower perhaps than he ought, he had far to go. Sif blocked a blow and spinning on her heel, rapped him across the knuckles. Thor swore and went thoughtlessly on the offensive.

Later, after she'd knocked the sword from his hands and sent him sprawling, she crouched beside him and asked, "Still breathing?"

"Don't touch me," he growled.

"So," she said. "Still breathing."

Thor opened his eyes and squinted fiercely at her.

"You can't scare me," she said. "I just beat you."

He closed his eyes again.

"What will you do when your father finds out?"

So very long ago, Loki had said, "Don't tell him." She'd thought it shocking, lying to her father.

"He won't," Sif said. She shrugged and said, "It's not like we talk."

"What does your mother think?"

She hesitated. Sif thought of her mother, tall and plain and gentle, and said, "I don't know."

"Then I hope she doesn't find out, either," said Thor.

8
Loki looked up at the sound of her feet. He'd claimed an alcove as his own and filled it with books; this was where she found him, alone on the seat. A thick tome filled his lap. Dust showed pale against his dark tunic.

"Here you are," she said. "I should have known."

She made a show of looking around at the stacks of books, the tall shelves, the ancient, ever-glowing lamps which hung from the vast, vaulted ceiling of the king's library. The hugeness of it never ceased to astound. She could not imagine how so many books could exist, nor how one place could be so thick with quiet.

Loki marked the page with his finger.

"Where's my brother?"

"He had to stay behind," she said. "To do exercises."

"Ah," said Loki. He relaxed. "He lost his temper again."

"He called Gunnrún a stupid, old man and a liar, and then," she added as Loki looked to laugh, "he wanted to know who'd knocked Gunnrún's wits out."

"Not even Thor could be so idiotic as to say that."

"He didn't say the last bit," she allowed.

Loki clucked his tongue and said sadly, "Oh, Sif. How cruel you've become."

"Oh, shut up," she said. "You're the worst."

"The worst of what?" he asked her back. "You have to qualify it to give it meaning."

She trailed her fingers along the nearest shelf. The books were clad in a rich, red leather which had lost its luster, and they smelled of the dust which stained Loki's clothes.

"Fighting manuals are kept in another section of the library, I'm afraid," Loki told her. "Everything here is dull."

She looked over her shoulder at him. He'd slicked his black hair back, but a little curl peeked over his ear. Ink stained the corner of his mouth and the tips of his first three right fingers.

"Like what?"

"Theoretical magics," he drawled. "Interdimensional mathematics, also theoretical."

Sif drew a book out, then pushed it back in as a cloud of dust threatened to consume her.

"Is any of it useful?"

"Not if you're Thor," said Loki. She glanced sharply at him, but his expression was one of pleasant civility. "But yes, to the right reader, it's all very useful."

She left off the shelves and came to perch upon the seat beside Loki. A large and very dusty book poked her shoulder, so she shoved the pile closer to the wall. Her hands lingered. Loki waited.

"How many of these books have you read?"

"Not all of them," he said.

"That isn't an answer."

"It's not the answer you wanted."

"A real answer," she said.

"More than Thor has," he suggested.

Sif smiled, which was of course a mistake; it would only encourage him.

"That's not much," she said.

He'd taken his boots off and set them down below, in the corner by the seat. His toes, which were long and knobby and showed thusly even through his stockings, brushed her thigh. She shifted. Her knees knocked.

"What are you reading now?" she asked.

Loki blinked and looked down, as if he'd forgot he'd the book in his hands. He smoothed his hand over the page and said, "Oh. Just some light reading. Minor Enchantments Pursuant to the Exploration of Additional Spaces, by Víðarr Aelfson."

Sif pulled a long face.

"You're as bad as Thor," she told him. "You're both show-offs."

"Oh, I think I'm much worse," he said lightly. "You said so yourself."

The corners of his eyes pinched. He'd a way of smiling which made it seem as thought he'd a great secret, and perhaps if she asked in just the right way he would share it. The library's silence weighed on her like stones stacked high on her shoulders. His eyes were so very green. He made her belly itch.

"What are you doing here anyway?"

His smile eased.

"Reading," he said. Then: "Hiding. Hiding from Hallormr."

"Hallormr."

She tipped her head back and thought. Loki followed the angle of her throat.

"Big," he offered. "Stupid. Bears a strong family resemblance to a troll. Thor beat him in axes last week and said he was pig-headed."

"And why," Sif asked pointedly, "are you hiding from him?"

Loki looked so very innocent she might have bought it if she didn't know him to be a consummate liar and a thief.

"I'm sure he thinks he has reasons," he said vaguely.

Sif slapped his foot. Loki, outraged, drew his knees up to his chest and looked her over as if she'd turned to a frost giant before his eyes. Sif ignored him.

"And what if he finds you?"

"Please," Loki said. "He's as bad as Thor. He hates books and so he thinks everyone else hates them. He'd never think to look here."

"Someone needs to beat your face in," Sif told him.

Loki laughed.

continue.