fic | thor (2011) | yggdrasill dreaming: 6b.

[mekosuchinae]

( Previous.)

iv: each good-bye.

More than sword or shield or food enough to live off for a week if she stretched it out right, the other arrangements she needed to make weighed upon her. She had so little to leave to the care of another but the ties that she would loose upon leaving. It was no simple trip, to leave Asgard as she would. She did not know when she would return.

Sif hefted her bag again across her shoulders. She considered the weight and dropped it to her bed. Not too heavy. Loki would have simply vanished with not a word to anyone. He had done so before and come back light on his toes as a cat on its feet, without anything to say for himself.

"Where have you been?" she'd asked once, when she was young.

"Oh," he'd said, smiling, "here and there. Out and about. You have dirt on your nose," and he'd flicked the end of it.

She'd held him responsible for his absences then. She supposed she'd never stopped.

Who was it she meant to seek? The boy who had called her horse and pinched her nose? The man who wouldn't be caught staring at her? The king who had sent the Destroyer and watched as it would have killed her? Love was a painful thing inside her, all knotted up and pulled apart and put together again. She'd seen it like so in his eyes, too; she'd heard it in how he'd said, "I adore you," as if he tore it out of his chest like a burr from flesh.

Sif busied herself with her bag, checking the pockets, drawing the strings tight, weighing it again though she knew it balanced. If she went, she could not come back. Not soon. And was he worth it? Was Loki enough to leave Asgard, to leave all she'd worked for and all she'd sacrificed and all she'd made for herself? She had left her home, come to the palace, worked harder than any of the boys her age only to be acknowledged as a warrior, cracked her palms and rubbed her fingers almost to the bone, bled and sweat and bled more. All to be here.

She set her hands on top of the bag. Food enough for a week, if she halved it. More if she stretched it out, she thought absently.

Was it worth it to give up all this? Was it worth it to give it up for Loki?

That was the question, the real one, the one at the heart of everything else she had wondered and demanded and asked of herself before she'd asked it of him. What the answer was, she didn't know. Every sacrifice, rooted in uncertainty. Every line drawn in the sand, a question mark.

She couldn't leave him.

"No," she said aloud. She balled her hands. "I won't leave him."

No person was meant for another, she had said to him. She meant it. She believed it. She knew it to be true. She knew, too, that this was a choice, that it was hers to make, and that when she chose to give up Asgard for Loki the decision was hers. It was not that she couldn't leave him. It was that she wouldn't, and that was the difference. That was all the difference.

Sif hooked her sheathed blade to the top of the bag and tied a shield to the back. She yanked the strings tight as they'd go; they bit the bottoms of her fingers. Saying good-bye would be sharper still. It wasn't for good-if she could leave, she could return-but she thought the distinction would be difficult to explain.

The morning waited for her. She had slept little after waking, choosing instead to work in the dark hours of early morning. Now the sun had come up and the hour was pale, day a new thing. Again the urge to simply run came over her. Sif shouldered her bag. Using her left hand, she opened her door and stepped out into the hall.

The warriors three, first. Not always to be found in each other's company, for they all of them had their own lives and particular interests; nevertheless often to be found together. So she found them in the second garden, which was a favorite of Hogun's for the orange trees, which bore fruit through all seasons but winter.

"And I say I have had enough of oranges," said Volstagg. "Oranges, oranges. Enough! Even the smell is too much. Could we not retire to the practice yard?"

"I like oranges," Hogun said mildly.

Fandral, caught in the act of throwing his eyes halfway to the sky, spotted her between the trees. "Sif! Please tell me you've come to save me from these two graceless louts."

She stooped beneath the laden branches of one especially heavy tree to join them.

"I think not," she said. "This battle is yours."

"Inconsiderate," said Fandral. He leaned back against the tree he'd claimed as his own. A pile of orange peelings littered the grass left of his thigh. "I'm very disappointed in you." He passed a square up to Hogun.

Hogun looked at Sif. His eyes were dark, steady. She had left her bag beneath a tree three rows over, but she and Hogun had ever been of a kind.

"You are going," he said.

"Going?" Volstagg looked up from contemplation of his axe. "Who is going and to where?"

"I am," said Sif. She raised her chin. "I go in search of Loki."

"Loki!" cried Volstagg. He set his axe down.

Fandral said, "You cannot be serious. It's to laugh. Volstagg, it's to laugh!"

But Volstagg did not laugh. Seated cross-legged at the base of a tree, his beard shining like fire in the soft morning light, he looked Sif over and she thought he saw more than Hogun had. That was the thing about Volstagg. He knew hearts.

"He lives?" Volstagg asked.

"He lives," said Sif.

"You know this," said Hogun.

She nodded. "I do."

"But where," asked Fandral, "and how?" He threw a length of orange peel aside and gave the rest to Hogun. "Is he here in Asgard?"

"No," Sif said, "he is elsewhere."

"How will you find him?"

"How can you find him?" asked Fandral over Volstagg.

She curled her fingers. The key burnt into her palm was still. How to explain it to them?

"He showed me a way," she said at last.

"Then we shall accompany you," Fandral declared. "He was our friend, too."

"No," said Sif. She looked them over: Fandral, Volstagg, grim Hogun who was as soft as the other two in his own sharp-edged way. "You must stay here. All three of you. Asgard has need of you. Thor has need of you."

"We cannot let you journey alone," Volstagg protested. "That would be-" He cast about for a word strong enough.

Hogun said, "Disgraceful."

"Abominable," said Fandral.

"Unthinkable!" said Volstagg.

Sif smiled. She would miss them, she thought. Oh, she'd miss them. Her friends, her kind friends. She had looked up to them so as a child and never known she would love them as she did now. If she had given up one family, she had found another.

"Then you will have to get used to being disgraceful," she said, "and abominable, and unthinkable. This is something I must do myself."

Fandral picked at the fresh peel of a new orange. Bits flaked out from under his thumb. His cheek worked, a muscle ticking. Volstagg looked as if he'd something grand building in his throat, a passionate speech to convince her of the necessity of noble companions, true companions, a company to stand at her side, to fight for her as she would them.

Hogun said, "Then you must go."

Volstagg cried out. "Hogun! You must not!"

But he had. "She is not a child," said Hogun, and he looked first to Volstagg, who looked ashamed and then away, and then to Fandral, who scowled still.

"Have faith in me," Sif said to them.

"Will you return to us?" asked Volstagg when Fandral would not.

"Of course," she said, for she would. She would. "Though I not know when."

Fandral sighed noisily, then the weight fell off his shoulders and he looked, if not merry, then near enough again. "Well, if you must," he said.

"I must," she said. She smiled at them and ached to do so. "I will miss you."

"If you ever have need of us," said Volstagg, then he stopped, for the Bifröst was broken. What ways left to those who were not Loki?

"Thank you," she said, and she meant it dearly; she meant it absolutely.

"Oh," said Volstagg wretchedly. Hogun set his hand upon Volstagg's shoulder.

"Perhaps you should go," said Fandral kindly, "before Volstagg begins to weep."

"As if you would not!" said Volstagg, though he did not deny it.

Fandral only looked to his orange again. He turned it round in his hands then began to tear at the peel.

Hogun looked to Sif. Gently, he inclined his head. "Until we meet again."

"'Til then," said Sif.

And she left them: Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun, the warriors three, friends and dear to her.

The queen she came upon at her work. The sun rose at her back. The room was bare still, as yet unshaped. She bore a length of chalk in her fingers, but Frigg did not use it. She was looking out the window when Sif knocked at the opened door.

Frigg turned. For a moment, she was still, so very still, and Sif knew this was where Loki had learned it. Then her lips compressed; her eyelashes dropped. The queen's shoulders bowed, just so.

"You deserve to know," said Sif. "I leave to look for Loki. Today."

The queen looked up, and she was only Frigg: Loki's mother, Sif's patron. The queen, second only to the Allfather, but a person besides. She searched Sif's face.

"So soon," she said. "How?"

"He knows a way," said Sif, "or part of a way."

Frigg exhaled, and in her breathing out, she looked briefly wry. "Of course he does." The memory of a smile faded from her face. She leaned toward Sif, across the table. The chalk pressed into the edge. "Do you go alone?"

"I must," said Sif. "He will allow no one else."

"So I see," said the queen. She settled in her chair. The chalk hung forgotten from her fingers.

"Tell Thor," Sif said to her. "The truth. About Loki."

"Have you not told him?" the queen asked, and Sif shook her head.

"It isn't mine to tell," she said, though the weight of it in her chest dragged at her. Such a secret, and for so many years- But it was not hers.

"I wanted to thank you," Sif said then, as the queen's eyes fell and her shoulders turned in against her chest. Frigg raised her eyes again. Sif went on:

"For all you've done for me, when I was a girl and then later, when I came to the palace. You were always kind to me." She corrected it: "You have always been kind to me."

"Oh, Sif," said Frigg, and her voice broke. "If anyone has been kind, it has been you."

Sif laughed, not meaning to. "I have never been-"

"You have," said Frigg, with sudden firmness. She drew upright. Her hair shone, bright as the circlet which rested on her brow. If she was Frigg, she was the queen, too. She glowed with the sunlight.

"Thank you," said Sif.

She would have turned then, bowed and left Frigg there in that room, had Frigg not held her hand out and said, "Oh, come here, Sif Lieffsdottir."

Sif lingered, then she put her left hand upon the queen's outstretched wrist. The queen wrapped her fingers about Sif's wrist and drew her near. She kissed Sif lightly once on the left cheek and lightly once on the right cheek.

"Take my blessing with you," said the queen, "for yourself. Sif, noblest of all Asgard's warriors."

"My queen," said Sif. Her throat hurt.

"When you return," the queen said, "I would ask that you call me only Frigg."

She drew back from Sif and sat again. Sif's arm was warm where the queen's fingers had rested a moment, and she thought perhaps the queen's blessing had been more than simply words given to her.

"Of course," said Sif, "my queen."

Frigg smiled.

Sif left the queen, too.

Then: Thor.

Thor was hardest of all to find. Time was he would have been the easiest, at the practice yards training or with the warriors three, no more the boy who had tagged along but a companion true. She might have found him in the armory or drinking with the king's men or even playing at sticks with the children who loitered about in the streets outside the palace, but he was in none of those places. Perhaps he'd gone to the broken remains of the Bifröst, as he had done so before, but Sif could not bring herself to turn down that crumpled way. Heimdall's eyes saw all, and she had not forgotten what he had said to her on the bridge.

Instead, Sif climbed the palace, looking to the hideaway (he was not there), to his chambers, the long walkway which wound about the inner sanctum. He'd become a ghost, but no, that was the wrong thing to think. Ghosts faded, but Thor had grown heavy, weighted with loss and love. Emptiness of feeling did not drive him to introspection, but an awareness of feeling.

On a whim, and doubtful, Sif looked into the small study which, though formally unclaimed, had always belonged to Loki. Thor was there. He'd a little journal in his hands, and he was smiling down at it. Three chairs in the room, one each for Loki and Sif and Thor, and he stood by the window.

"What is it?"

He looked up. His smile dimmed. The particulars of their last conversation crept like unwanted wraiths into the air. Shame was why he pressed his lips together like that. Oh, Thor, Sif thought, and love for him made her chest close.

"Have you found his joke book?" she pressed.

Thor grinned then. His mood fell from him, a discarded cloak. He turned the journal about and said, "What noble aspect the simple horse."

Sif squinted at the page, but from the door she could only make out a bit of pencil scribbled across the paper. Sighing loudly, that he might know what a sacrifice it was for her to come into the room, Sif crossed over to the window.

"That's me," she said after a moment, with more surprise than perhaps it warranted. A rudimentary sketch, a blocky outline without detail, but it was Sif. She didn't know why it should surprise her as it did; after all, hadn't Loki told her he'd- Her face itched. Anyway, that had been a dream.

"Really," said Thor. "I thought it looked more like Buttercup-" meaning, of course, the dappled mare in the stables.

Sif hit him for that. Thor laughed and held his hands up for peace. The page wrinkled beneath his thumb. Sif hit him again, but she weakened the blow, and he grinned at her over her fist. Perhaps she should have softened the next blow as well, but if anyone in her near acquaintance deserved honesty, she supposed it would have to be Thor. She dropped her hand.

"I'm going," she said.

Humor still brightened him. "Where?" he asked, then his eye fell on her pack at the door. He lit up brighter still. "Have you found another nest? If you've need of my hammer, speak, and I shall join you gladly to slay the beasts."

She scoffed. "As if I could not slay them all myself!"

"Hogun took five," he reminded her, and that deserved another fist to his shoulder. Thor shrugged it off. Not for the first time Sif reflected on the injustices of the world, that Thor should be so huge and so dense.

Like an echo: "You're avoiding the question," Loki had said.

I am not a coward, she thought fiercely.

Sif looked away from Thor and across the room. The study had changed not at all, the same as it had been when Loki fell from the sky. She would have thought a trace of him would linger here, but it was only a room after all, and Loki did not linger.

"The last we spoke," Sif said, "I told you I dreamed of Loki, that I spoke with him and I walked with him."

The broad and merry lines of Thor's face folded. The effect was grim, severe, but she knew it was not for her.

"I remember," he said.

"So," said Sif. She squared her shoulders. Here was the blow. "He has told me how to find him. I leave today to seek him out."

Thor turned on her. His jaw tightened, warning. "If this is a jest-"

"Do not misunderstand me," she snapped. Her hair swung violently from its tie as she rounded on him. "And do not do me the dishonor of thinking me so poor a friend as to joke of Loki's living."

Narrow-eyed, he stared at her as a hawk would a snake; then his mouth quirked and he bent his head. He looked down to the journal. His thumb bit into the page. The thick line of his shoulders turned down. Sif set her hand on his arm.

"I saw him fall, Sif," he said. "Now you say to me that he lives."

"Loki always had his ways," she said. "You haven't forgot. His shadows, his scouts, how he could vanish and appear in another place. Is it so strange that in his falling he might have found a way?"

Thor snapped the journal shut. "I shall go with you."

"No," Sif said, her hand hard on his arm. "Thor. No. I go alone."

A cloud knit his brow. His mouth turned mutinously. "He is my brother. You cannot expect me to stay in Asgard and to wait for you."

"That is precisely what I expect," she said promptly. The storm thickened in his eyes. It was a cruel blow, but she could not spare him it: "He would not welcome you."

Thor flinched. The clouds broke apart; they scattered. In their wake, he was alone again and bowed, as Thor never bowed, with grief. His jaw worked beneath his beard.

"When will you return?" he asked at last. A rasp lined his voice.

She ran her hand down his arm then drew her fingers away. "I cannot say." Gently, she said, "After what he has done, you know that he would not come freely or easily."

He gestured impatiently. "How am I to stand idly by-"

"You won't," said Sif, for when had Thor ever stood idly by anything? "You have your duties here, and Asgard will need protecting, as she always does. And," she added more lightly, "you have your lady Jane to look to."

Thor huffed a breath; it caught in his nose. Perhaps he meant it as a laugh, but it was too rough and too lonely a thing to make it.

"Never did I think things would turn out like this," he said.

"None of us did," said Sif. "But you must keep faith. In me. In Loki. In Jane."

"I do," said Thor. "I shall." He always had.

And Sif left Thor, son of Odin.

She descended from the palace to the city, and in the city she went to her mother's house. The sun rose higher, hotter. Sweat beaded her nape, thickest where she'd drawn her hair tight and up. The pack weighed but didn't slow her. The hilt of her blade pressed against her head, and the ends of the strings pinged off the shield.

Warriors were far from an uncommon sight in the city, but warriors fitted for a long week's journey were not. A little group of children ran past her and turned to gawk as they did so. Morning traffic was always worst the nearer to afternoon it got, and as the afternoon drew closer upon them the streets clotted. An older man jostled her pack, turned to say, "My apologies, sir," and then looked twice at her face. His eyebrows reached astronomical heights. Sardonically, Sif held her hand out to say: Please, you first. Looking as if all the blood in his chest had migrated to his head, he hurried past her.

That, at least, she would not miss. She found the more she thought of it the more it seemed an adventure. Yggdrasill, he'd said. A joke or true, still it remained something she had never seen before, something she suspected few others had seen; and with Asgard broken off from the rest of the worlds, it was decidedly elsewhere. Her feet itched. She bounced off her heels and came down again on them.

The side street beckoned. Sif turned down it. Her mother's house sat between two homes of similar stature, along a paved steppe which looked down over a small incline and onto a street which ran below. The lamp set over the door was out; it hung without swinging from the arch. The tree which grew by the door had begun to blossom, late again.

Sif stopped at the door. The itching in her feet had gone. Her toes curled and uncurled. The paint on the door, enchanted never to peel or to chip, had faded, the red nearer now to pink. Her mother's house, but it was her father's shadow which she saw in the dulling color. Sif set her jaw and turned the doorknob.

The front room was empty. Her mother's work lined the table, baskets of sewing stuff half-unpacked and a stack of untended shirts hidden beneath folds of red cloth. The sweet scent of rising yeast filled the room. So strange, how in but a moment she could feel as if she were a child again, returning home from a short excursion to eat her mother's bread and sit in her mother's lap and watch her as she sewed up Lieff's shirts.

Sif closed the door. A bell jangled. A new ornament of her mother's, hooked to the top of the door. She kept forgetting it was there. Three slender plaits hung from the hook and spun about the bell, a red plait for Lieff, a blue plait for Astra, and a purple one for Sif in absentia. She touched a finger to the blue plait as it spun first to the right then to the left.

A shoe, scuffing across stones. She turned.

Her father was at the door to the hallway. She hadn't seen him properly in years. Spectacles sat on the end of his nose. Little angry lines pinched the corners of his mouth; they creased his cheeks. His eyes flicked; he looked her over. Sif drew herself up so her spine ached for its straightness. He was still taller than her.

His mouth curled. Whatever he'd seen in her, it wasn't enough. Her father turned away. His heel scraped over the floor. He passed down the hall and out of sight. She heard him calling for Astra.

Sif's shoulders trembled. She would not let them fall. She would not bend her spine, not here in this house which was her father's as much as her mother's. Jerking, she slung her bag down from her shoulder.

"Sif!"

She looked up, too late. Astra, small, enveloped her. Her mother smelled of unleavened bread and faintly of sugar. Sif wound her arm about her mother's shoulders and held her there. Astra sighed, then she turned and bussed Sif's cheek and said, "You have to let me go."

Sif loosened her arm. Her mother, smiling, sank back on her heels. Her hair, normally so tidy, puffed out in waves about her face. Flour whitened her fingers. Absently, she brushed at Sif's sleeves.

"Two visits so close together," she said. "You're going to spoil me."

Sif brushed a length of her mother's hair back behind her ear. "I should have come sooner," said Sif, "and more often."

"Yes," said Astra, "you should have."

She flicked her thumb over Sif's nose then she wiped the flour away with her sleeve. Sif wrinkled her nose.

Astra said, "What's done is done. Come with me to the kitchen and I'll get you something to eat."

She turned. Sif hefted her bag and followed her mother. The kitchen opened out onto a modest space out back, where her father kept his garden. Astra had left the doors open to air the blistering kitchen out. The stove worked hotly.

"Set your things by the door," Astra called over her shoulder. She'd a plate set out at the table already, and butter and a knife and a bit of bread from the day before. Now she brought a length of cut meat to the table as well.

Sif lowered her bag. The shield clanked softly on the stones. Her mother winced, a twitch at her mouth, her eyes. She set the plate of meat down and turned from the table.

"Would you like juice or milk? Both," said Astra. She bent to the cooling cupboard. "If you're going somewhere you'll need all the strength you can get."

Of course Astra knew. Her mother had always known. When she'd been a girl, who was it who had mended her torn skirts in the wee hours of the morn before Lieff rose? Who had seen the restless wilds in Sif before Sif knew them and told her to go out and play till dark?

"Mother," said Sif, helpless.

"Oh, don't," said Astra. She turned, a bottle in one hand and a jug in the other. Her hair fussed before her eyes and she shook it from her face. "You're going away. I can see that. You've gone away before. You'll be back."

Sif swallowed. Astra set the bottle and the jug down upon the table and went to fetch a glass. She stood, holding it in her hand, and she said, "Damn. I need two," and Sif took the glass from her.

"I should have visited you," said Sif. "I should have done more than I did."

"You and your father never got along," Astra said.

Sif shook her head, though it was true.

"I shouldn't have left you as I did," she said. She looked down to the glass. The lip had chipped on one side. "At the very least I should have asked the queen if you might come with me."

"And leave my house!" Astra cried. She snorted. Her teeth showed, there at the corner. "I wouldn't give up this house for any number of servants or gilded curtains or kings."

"Have a care," Sif warned, though she smiled.

"If the Allfather doesn't like it, he can fetch me himself," Astra said stoutly. She swept a hand through her hair. The silver in it shone, more now than before, the grey outnumbering the dark.

Sif turned the glass over. The chipped spot glittered.

"When will you return?" Astra asked.

"Not for a very long time," said Sif.

"So," said Astra dryly. "No difference there."

Into the chasm between them Sif said, "I am sorry."

"I know you are," said Astra. She softened. "You don't have to be. Now, sit and eat. I don't for a minute think you'll have anything decent to eat from now till I next see you."

Sif sat at the little table in the kitchen exactly as she did when she was young and her mother had scolded her for running out of the house before eating. The stove clicked on.

"Here you are," said Astra. She spooned a mound of spiced oatmeal onto Sif's plate.

"Thank you," Sif said.

Astra touched Sif's cheek in passing and bent to kiss her temple. The fragrance of bread and water and sweetness: but that was only part of her mother.

Astra stood and left her to her meal. The meat fell apart nicely between her teeth, but it was difficult to swallow; it stuck so to her tongue. She drank deeply from her glass. The chip worried her lip. She set the cup down.

"I'm going to my room," she said, "and then I'll leave."

"Are you sure you won't take anything with you?" asked her mother. "The bread will be done in a bit."

Sif shook her head. "No. I've enough as it is."

"Well," said Astra. She brushed her hands over her apron.

Sif crossed the distance between them and threw her arms about her mother. Astra gave immediately, falling into Sif's embrace. Sif turned her nose to her mother's hair and wished she weren't so tall, that she hadn't outgrown her mother in this way. She had never outgrown her mother.

"Will you say good-bye to your father?" Astra whispered.

"No," said Sif into her mother's hair. "Let him think what he will."

Astra sighed. Her hands knotted in Sif's back, then they loosened and her arms fell away.

"You should get going," she said, "before I start crying."

"Your tea is burning," said Sif.

Astra swore and turned from her.

At the door, Sif paused. She looked back to her mother, who worked the stove easily, as easy as Sif with a glaive. Her tongue plastered to the roof of her mouth. She dragged it loose again.

"Good-bye," she called.

Astra hefted the teapot and set it upon a cooling stone. Brushing her hair from her eyes, she looked up to Sif. Her dark eyes were muted, soft.

"For now," said Astra.

And Sif left Astra.

She neither saw nor heard tell of her father as she ascended the stairs to her childhood room, which was best. A kettle in the kitchen sounded like a gong off the counter. Somewhere outside children were playing and birds were singing. Life carried on, as it must.

Sif kicked the bedroom door shut at her back. She looked the room over, and she thought, suddenly, how silly it was that neither her mother nor her father had done a thing to change it. It remained as it had when she left it. Her throat pinched. A bird chirped in the tree outside her window, as a bird had chirped there every morning she'd known.

Sif hoisted the bag to her chest. She checked the straps, the ties, the knots. Everything held. She smoothed her hand down the sheathed sword, thought of pulling it loose, then thought better of it.

"Stop stalling," she muttered.

She fitted the straps to her shoulders and turned to the door. A line marked the corner by the hinge on top where she'd thrown a ball at it as a child. Her heart drummed. An itch began in her right palm and spread to her fingertips. Time to go.

Closing her right hand on the knob, she yanked the door open again. A shadowed passage stretched down before her, and a cool wind rose to touch her face. Lights flickered along the edges: a phosphorescent mold. The chirping of the bird at her back was very distant indeed.

Sif descended.

v: loki dreaming.

He sat in the boughs, and the boughs moved beneath him. A wind stirred them. Loki stirred, too. The cosmos went on and on before him, an endless cavalcade of stars and dust and infinitesimal worlds seen as pale spots against the blackness, which was not empty but rich with life.

A hand at his shoulder. He turned, slightly. The fingers shone, silver laid over brown as armor over skin.

"What is it now?" he asked.

"She is coming," said Yggdrasill.

He could not breathe for how his heart stuck. Then Loki closed his mouth and swallowed. He marshalled control out of the silence.

"Who?" he asked.

"I begin to see why you are appreciated for your wit," said Yggdrasill. She touched a finger to his chin. "But see. You smile."

He turned from the tree. The leaves undulated about him, wafting across the stars, which crossed the sky in remote and graceful circuits.

She was coming. Sif was coming. He touched his mouth. His lips had curled. He could not stop them from it. Joy was a peculiar thing. Hope was even stranger.

Loki looked to the sky.

5. | Masterpost | Interlude.