Liesmith Chapter 1
Title: Liesmith (part 2 of the golem-verse)
Written for this prompt: http://norsekink.livejournal.com/11219.html?thread=25518035#t25518035
Warnings: Discrimination against "non-living" sentient beings?
Summary: The golem wakes up for the first time.
***
Chapter 1
The first thing it knows is a sudden warmth (warmth? What is that?), and… light? It is surrounded with strange sensory details that it doesn’t understand.
It looks.
There is a large thing before it.
The thing is different kinds of dark, heavier around the edges, and when the thing notices it looking, its… mouth? Yes, mouth. Its mouth quirks up, and the two dark circles above the mouth start to crinkle. The thing rumbles out a deep sound.
“Hello.”
It blinks.
“You can hear, yes?” The thing reaches a large appendage up, there is a snap beside its head and it looks at the offending noise. The large thing makes another rumble (laughter?), the hand moves from the side of its head onto it, running from front to back. The touch stops on the back of its neck. It is heavy, and warm, and… comfortable. “You understand me?”
The quirk of the mouth is still there. It tries to mimic the movement.
Maker, it thinks.
And then there is another, smaller set of hands.
The large thing’s hand shifts off its neck (it wants the warmth back) and the small hands make their way to its face, its shoulders, a trail of body heat follows their path. They are attached to a thing its size that is lighter in all ways than the large thing from before.
“I am Thor,” the thing its size says. “That is mother and father. That is a dwarf.” It follows the finger pointing with its eyes. Thor. Mother. Father. Dwarf. “You are mine now.”
“Darling,” the tall one that matched the thing its size, Mother, says, pulls the small one closer, away from it. The tall one is different than the others, thinner; the lines of the body move in different patterns. There must be different types of things; it will look for a distinction.
Mother turns to it. “Golem, Thor is your Prince, you were made for him.” There is a firmness in the word Prince, it decides to put that word at higher priority. “You will follow the orders of only the royal family.”
The first large one (Dwarf) steps between Mother and it. “Give the poor thing a moment.”
It can hear grumbles coming from behind Dwarf, and the chatter of the one its size. The other tall one, the one that is thicker than the first tall one, the one its sized called this one Father, says nothing and only meets its eyes as the others talks. Father’s eyes crinkle. It wonders what that means.
Dwarf turns to it again and leans in close, whispers old words in its ear and everything blurs for a bit- Ek alu. Im hallr. Ni's sólu sótt ok ni saxe stæin skorinn. Ni læggi mannR nækðan, is niþ rinnR, Ni viltiR mænnR læggi ax.Hinn varp náséo mannR, máðe þæim kæipa í bormóþa húni. HuæaR of kam hæráss á hi á land gotna. FiskR óR firna uim suimande, fogl á galande. Alu misyrki - before becoming solid once more.
“Yes?” Dwarf asks, it nods. “Alright, again now. Not so fast then.”
After a motion from Father, the one its size moves in closer, but it does yet move past Dwarf. It focuses on the tall ones talking until there is a hand touching it again.
“Will the spells hold?”
Dwarf gives Mother a look that is full of things it doesn’t understand yet, but Dwarf’s mouth is pulled tight and the thick lines above Dwarf’s eyes are drawn close.
“Hey,” the one its size pokes its shoulder. “Hey, let’s play.” It looks to Dwarf one more time, who waves it away with a less tight expression, and follows when the one its size moves, unsure what play means.
It is led to a corner of the room where there are wood carvings of things with legs and heads that are not like the things in the room with it. They play (play? Still unclear. PrinceThor plays and it watches and does what it is told to do) in the corner until PrinceThor decides that they should ‘escape.’
PrinceThor takes them out into the halls when Mother is not watching. There are other things that pass them by. Some are tall, some are round. One has lines on its face the way that Father did. Distinction?
“Those are servants,” PrinceThor tells it. “They bring me things. Except for Eir. Eir is my nanny.” It is led through more halls and they ‘play.’ PrinceThor tells it to turn around while he hides and then look for him. It does. PrinceThor has moved very far in the short time it had not been watching and makes a pinchy face when it walks up to him. “You are good at this game,” PrinceThor says after he hides and it finds him again. It is drawn to PrinceThor’s location, it does not understand. “Let’s play a new one.”
One that Thor called servant will come for them later; servant has the same patterns as Mother.
“Thor,” servant says. “Your mother is wondering after you, she wishes for you to return to your rooms. It will soon be time for bed.”
She, it thinks. Moves the word around the patterns it is creating. She. Mother.
“Nooo,” PrinceThor whines, and begins to kick around when servant grabs at him and hauls him up (it is startled; other servants had not taken this liberty when PrinceThor got underfoot). It watches. Follows. Touches and looks at everything, learning them for the first time.
“Where did you come from?” Servant asks when they get back to the room. “One of the courtier’s children come to visit?” It does not know the answers to these questions, so it says nothing and continues to watch. Servant takes the silence in stride and is forcing a new piece of fabric over PrinceThor’s head, looking over at it as though PrinceThor is not struggling at all. “What is your name?”
It blinks, “Name?”
Servant looks oddly at its answer.
The door opens. “That will be all, Eir.”
“Father!” PrinceThor bounds over and attaches to Father’s leg.
“Sire,” Servant (Eir?) bows. Servant responded to Eir. It puts the information where it will be able to draw from it later.
“You are dismissed, thank you.”
“Of course, my lord.” EirServant dips again and leaves.
Father stands still until Thor finally lets go, rushes around the room one last time, and then flings himself up on the bed. Father wrestles him under the sheets and takes a seat on the chair pulled close. Thor kicks his feet around under the fabric. When it looks up from Thor, it sees Father, watching him.
“Come along,” Father reaches a hand out toward it. “Let me tell you a story.”
It moves closer and sits quietly on the foot of the bed, listening to the sound of Father’s voice. The prince is excited and it is under the impression that stories from Father do not happen often.
The story is of shifting forms and fire and flight. Of a man who is also a bird, who laughs and sings and tells his own stories. A man Father used to know.
“That’s what its name is.” Thor announces at the end.
“Whose?”
Thor whispers in Father’s ear and they both look over at it.
“Name?” it asks again.
“What you shall be called.” Father looks at it with crinkled eyes again. “Loki. Does that satisfy you?”
It does not understand the question, but it thinks, Loki, and then nods. Father smiles.
“May you wear it as well as those who came before you.”
That night it reflects while it is sitting in the dark that the quirked mouth and the crinkles and the rumble that the large thing made were all good. Pleasant. And then the prince made similar quirks and crinkles and rumbles, and they were also good. And Father.
It sits on the edge of the bed and rests its own hand on the prince’s side, the warmth of it seeping into its body.
-
“And that is a bird.” The prince points. Each carving in the hall has a different name and he had decided that if he had to know them, then Loki did too. Loki absorbs.
Eir had brought sweet smelling things that Prince Thor had shoved in his mouth, and then taken the prince for lessons. Loki had followed because it had not been told to stay behind.
“That one?” It asks. Prince Thor stares at it, brows furrowed in concentration.
“A horse? Horse.” He said at last, more confidently the second time. Eir nods. “And those are wolves,” he points to another. “They are father’s.”
“We shall practice writing the words next,” Eir tells Thor. “Do you remember what we practiced before?” Thor makes a face.
-
Everyday Prince Thor is taken by Eir to have lunch with Mother. Loki follows, but does not go in the room. It is satisfied to wait in the hall for Prince Thor to come back out.
It follows until one day, after Thor has greeted her by shouting MOTHER in a way that echoes down the hall before the door shuts, it hears Mother ask Eir why it is there. After that Loki is told to stay behind in Thor’s room so Mother does not have to see it. Eir comes back one day and looks at it, head cocked to the side. “I do not understand you,” she tells it.
It looks down at the still small feet attached to its body.
“Would you like to learn something new?”
It nods. Eir takes it down to the gardens.
-
Few servants question Loki’s appearance in the royal family’s wing of the palace, but when one does ask it questions, Loki has decided it is easier to say things then to stay quiet. It gets strange looks either way, but if it says something and is wrong then it will get a pat on the head (which it enjoys if they are not too rough) or corrected and that means it can learn new things.
-
The first time it sees the prince bleed (Thor had tripped over his own feet and tumbled into a table), it is fascinated. The wound isn’t much, a cut, though the prince cries as though something might be broken. After it establishes that Thor is not hurt badly, it remembers Eir’s lessons and stops the flow of red. Loki wonders if everything does this or if it is singular to Thor and decides to ask Father, who seem to know all things.
It closes its eyes and looks through the walls of the palace to find Father (it had started with Mother, but she had not heard him call her name). He is in a room with a large map on a large table with other tall ones who talk and gesture loudly. In a blink it steps through a wall and walks in the room quietly. Thor is with Eir, who is teaching him things that Loki already remembers. There are scrolls and books everywhere, it takes one and opens it. They are full of words, like the ones Eir sometimes brought, and it immediately identifies each one it knows and stores away those it does not for later. It will learn these new things.
The others in the room, just as tall as Father, are still talking with him over a large table.
It waits, still looking at the book, until the other tall ones leave before speaking.
“Father?”
When it realizes there was nothing said back in response, it turns to Father, who walks close to him in long slow steps. Whose face looks very soft and who runs a hand through the hair on its head.
“Hello,” the tone is almost a question. It was not expected here.
“Hello,” it mimics. “May I ask you a question, Father?”
The man nods. It shows him its hand where there is still some red, “What is it?” Father takes its hands to a basin of water and helps it wash the red off.
“It is what flows inside us,” He says while he dips its hands into the basin, “what keeps us alive.”
“Does everything have it?”
There is a pause and then Father runs a hand through its hair again.
“Most things.”
It wants to know if it will bleed.
-
Thor gets sick.
A warm, heavy kind of sick where he coughs and shivers and rubs at his eyes when he is not making grabby hands at things.
It sneaks back into the room; it was been removed earlier and had not been pleased by this.
The room is dark, though there is a candle lit, and Eir sleeps sitting in a chair. When it climbs up on the bed, Thor is still warm, and it sits and thinks about Dwarf and Father, running large hands through his hair. So it scoots closer and leans against the head board of the bed, and cards its fingers though Thor’s hair. The prince cuddles closer and sighs.
The next day it asks Eir to teach it about helping those that get too hot when they are sick.
It realizes as it walks with Eir out into the gardens for a new lesson on herbs, that the table it used to reach up at for tools is not as high as it had thought. When it mentions this to Eir she laughs.
“Of course it seems like it’s getting lower. You’re a growing boy, aren’t you?” She is not asking a real question (it had learned the difference), but it has to stop and think.
That night it wants to see if the same has happened in other places in the palace, and takes a walk since it is not supposed to be with Thor (it will sneak in again later). Tables and chairs around the wing all seem lower, but the shelves in the library are still as high as ever and he has to reach and reach and reach, and it’s still not enough so he reaches without his arms. The book floats down.
-
It has returned the book and gotten a new one many times, and it isn’t until a gasp behind him that he thinks anything of the action.
“There are layers upon layers of spell work built in. It was meant to be an initial cast, there are bound to be unexpected oddities. That is why we make initial casts for work this complicated.” Other dwarf says when he came with Dwarf at Mother’s order. They had started arguing before Eir brings Loki in, so it does not hear everything. Father sits on his chair at the big table. No one in the room is happy (though Father seems more resigned).
“It is defective,” Mother says. “Why did you even give us the initial cast.”
“Because you took it before the traditional testing was done.”
“Make the real one. Fix this.”
Other dwarf looks like he is holding his breath. He and Mother have dark, angry looks on their faces. Father rises and touches Mother’s arm, he takes her past a set of doors to a side room where it can hear them talking quietly. Dwarf has not spoken yet, but he is standing close by, so it turns to him.
“What is your name?” Loki asks, because he does not know. Dwarf grins at it, a big toothy thing that might have been intimidating if it hadn’t also been its first memory.
“Eitri, and this is my brother Brokkr.”
Other dwarf turns from the door Mother had exited through, glad for the distraction.
Eitri leans close.
“Did you do the things she claims you did?” He speaks kindly. There is hesitance in his voice too, like he is curious, but doesn’t want the answer at the same time.
“I do not know what she said.” It glances at the door, where he can hear Mother’s movement. “Eir was teaching Prince Thor the words, and I wanted them-“ Brokkr starts at the word “-so I started getting books.” Loki had not done anything wrong. He had seen others take books from the shelves. “There were so many, and I returned them when I was done. I did not think they would miss one.”
The doors open again, Mother and Father return. Her face is still hard.
“It is dangerous,” she says. “I do not want it hurting my son. Fix it.”
The dwarf nods to them and kneels on one knee in front of Loki, a hand resting heavily on the back of his neck.
“I do not want this,” Eitri whispers to him; Loki clings with one hand to the old robe the dwarf is wearing. “Do not worry. You will be safe. Sigli's dáu-hlé.” He presses his lips to Loki’s forehead, “You are a good boy,” Then stands and turns to address the king and queen. “Large scale changes are more complicated than I am prepared for this moment. I will have to return at a later time.”
Mother has him locked in a small room after the dwarves leave, but he gets out and finds Thor. Eir will give him warnings to get out of sight when it is needed and she does not tell Mother that he is not where she wants him to be.
They are in the garden, Mother having found them and talking at Eir firmly using words like “following orders” and “responsible” when it happens.
The man rushes them and all Loki can think of is AWAY and then they are.
“What-?” Prince Thor looks wide-eyed around him, standing still until the suddenness has faded, and then he shrugs and goes to his chest of play things. Loki stands at the foot of the bed, keeping an eye on the door.
Mother swoops in and collects Thor in her arms, holding on tightly. She does not look at Loki past her initial glance, and there is something hollow in him afterwards.
Father looks at Loki and leaves again without saying a word.
-
He does not bleed. He tried.
The clean mark and the knife on the table leave him with an empty feeling.
Thor falls asleep on him and he quietly rests his hand on the prince’s chest to feel the heart beat.
-
The dwarves do not come back to change him.
Next Chapter
Written for this prompt: http://norsekink.livejournal.com/11219.html?thread=25518035#t25518035
Warnings: Discrimination against "non-living" sentient beings?
Summary: The golem wakes up for the first time.
***
Chapter 1
The first thing it knows is a sudden warmth (warmth? What is that?), and… light? It is surrounded with strange sensory details that it doesn’t understand.
It looks.
There is a large thing before it.
The thing is different kinds of dark, heavier around the edges, and when the thing notices it looking, its… mouth? Yes, mouth. Its mouth quirks up, and the two dark circles above the mouth start to crinkle. The thing rumbles out a deep sound.
“Hello.”
It blinks.
“You can hear, yes?” The thing reaches a large appendage up, there is a snap beside its head and it looks at the offending noise. The large thing makes another rumble (laughter?), the hand moves from the side of its head onto it, running from front to back. The touch stops on the back of its neck. It is heavy, and warm, and… comfortable. “You understand me?”
The quirk of the mouth is still there. It tries to mimic the movement.
Maker, it thinks.
And then there is another, smaller set of hands.
The large thing’s hand shifts off its neck (it wants the warmth back) and the small hands make their way to its face, its shoulders, a trail of body heat follows their path. They are attached to a thing its size that is lighter in all ways than the large thing from before.
“I am Thor,” the thing its size says. “That is mother and father. That is a dwarf.” It follows the finger pointing with its eyes. Thor. Mother. Father. Dwarf. “You are mine now.”
“Darling,” the tall one that matched the thing its size, Mother, says, pulls the small one closer, away from it. The tall one is different than the others, thinner; the lines of the body move in different patterns. There must be different types of things; it will look for a distinction.
Mother turns to it. “Golem, Thor is your Prince, you were made for him.” There is a firmness in the word Prince, it decides to put that word at higher priority. “You will follow the orders of only the royal family.”
The first large one (Dwarf) steps between Mother and it. “Give the poor thing a moment.”
It can hear grumbles coming from behind Dwarf, and the chatter of the one its size. The other tall one, the one that is thicker than the first tall one, the one its sized called this one Father, says nothing and only meets its eyes as the others talks. Father’s eyes crinkle. It wonders what that means.
Dwarf turns to it again and leans in close, whispers old words in its ear and everything blurs for a bit- Ek alu. Im hallr. Ni's sólu sótt ok ni saxe stæin skorinn. Ni læggi mannR nækðan, is niþ rinnR, Ni viltiR mænnR læggi ax.Hinn varp náséo mannR, máðe þæim kæipa í bormóþa húni. HuæaR of kam hæráss á hi á land gotna. FiskR óR firna uim suimande, fogl á galande. Alu misyrki - before becoming solid once more.
“Yes?” Dwarf asks, it nods. “Alright, again now. Not so fast then.”
After a motion from Father, the one its size moves in closer, but it does yet move past Dwarf. It focuses on the tall ones talking until there is a hand touching it again.
“Will the spells hold?”
Dwarf gives Mother a look that is full of things it doesn’t understand yet, but Dwarf’s mouth is pulled tight and the thick lines above Dwarf’s eyes are drawn close.
“Hey,” the one its size pokes its shoulder. “Hey, let’s play.” It looks to Dwarf one more time, who waves it away with a less tight expression, and follows when the one its size moves, unsure what play means.
It is led to a corner of the room where there are wood carvings of things with legs and heads that are not like the things in the room with it. They play (play? Still unclear. PrinceThor plays and it watches and does what it is told to do) in the corner until PrinceThor decides that they should ‘escape.’
PrinceThor takes them out into the halls when Mother is not watching. There are other things that pass them by. Some are tall, some are round. One has lines on its face the way that Father did. Distinction?
“Those are servants,” PrinceThor tells it. “They bring me things. Except for Eir. Eir is my nanny.” It is led through more halls and they ‘play.’ PrinceThor tells it to turn around while he hides and then look for him. It does. PrinceThor has moved very far in the short time it had not been watching and makes a pinchy face when it walks up to him. “You are good at this game,” PrinceThor says after he hides and it finds him again. It is drawn to PrinceThor’s location, it does not understand. “Let’s play a new one.”
One that Thor called servant will come for them later; servant has the same patterns as Mother.
“Thor,” servant says. “Your mother is wondering after you, she wishes for you to return to your rooms. It will soon be time for bed.”
She, it thinks. Moves the word around the patterns it is creating. She. Mother.
“Nooo,” PrinceThor whines, and begins to kick around when servant grabs at him and hauls him up (it is startled; other servants had not taken this liberty when PrinceThor got underfoot). It watches. Follows. Touches and looks at everything, learning them for the first time.
“Where did you come from?” Servant asks when they get back to the room. “One of the courtier’s children come to visit?” It does not know the answers to these questions, so it says nothing and continues to watch. Servant takes the silence in stride and is forcing a new piece of fabric over PrinceThor’s head, looking over at it as though PrinceThor is not struggling at all. “What is your name?”
It blinks, “Name?”
Servant looks oddly at its answer.
The door opens. “That will be all, Eir.”
“Father!” PrinceThor bounds over and attaches to Father’s leg.
“Sire,” Servant (Eir?) bows. Servant responded to Eir. It puts the information where it will be able to draw from it later.
“You are dismissed, thank you.”
“Of course, my lord.” EirServant dips again and leaves.
Father stands still until Thor finally lets go, rushes around the room one last time, and then flings himself up on the bed. Father wrestles him under the sheets and takes a seat on the chair pulled close. Thor kicks his feet around under the fabric. When it looks up from Thor, it sees Father, watching him.
“Come along,” Father reaches a hand out toward it. “Let me tell you a story.”
It moves closer and sits quietly on the foot of the bed, listening to the sound of Father’s voice. The prince is excited and it is under the impression that stories from Father do not happen often.
The story is of shifting forms and fire and flight. Of a man who is also a bird, who laughs and sings and tells his own stories. A man Father used to know.
“That’s what its name is.” Thor announces at the end.
“Whose?”
Thor whispers in Father’s ear and they both look over at it.
“Name?” it asks again.
“What you shall be called.” Father looks at it with crinkled eyes again. “Loki. Does that satisfy you?”
It does not understand the question, but it thinks, Loki, and then nods. Father smiles.
“May you wear it as well as those who came before you.”
That night it reflects while it is sitting in the dark that the quirked mouth and the crinkles and the rumble that the large thing made were all good. Pleasant. And then the prince made similar quirks and crinkles and rumbles, and they were also good. And Father.
It sits on the edge of the bed and rests its own hand on the prince’s side, the warmth of it seeping into its body.
-
“And that is a bird.” The prince points. Each carving in the hall has a different name and he had decided that if he had to know them, then Loki did too. Loki absorbs.
Eir had brought sweet smelling things that Prince Thor had shoved in his mouth, and then taken the prince for lessons. Loki had followed because it had not been told to stay behind.
“That one?” It asks. Prince Thor stares at it, brows furrowed in concentration.
“A horse? Horse.” He said at last, more confidently the second time. Eir nods. “And those are wolves,” he points to another. “They are father’s.”
“We shall practice writing the words next,” Eir tells Thor. “Do you remember what we practiced before?” Thor makes a face.
-
Everyday Prince Thor is taken by Eir to have lunch with Mother. Loki follows, but does not go in the room. It is satisfied to wait in the hall for Prince Thor to come back out.
It follows until one day, after Thor has greeted her by shouting MOTHER in a way that echoes down the hall before the door shuts, it hears Mother ask Eir why it is there. After that Loki is told to stay behind in Thor’s room so Mother does not have to see it. Eir comes back one day and looks at it, head cocked to the side. “I do not understand you,” she tells it.
It looks down at the still small feet attached to its body.
“Would you like to learn something new?”
It nods. Eir takes it down to the gardens.
-
Few servants question Loki’s appearance in the royal family’s wing of the palace, but when one does ask it questions, Loki has decided it is easier to say things then to stay quiet. It gets strange looks either way, but if it says something and is wrong then it will get a pat on the head (which it enjoys if they are not too rough) or corrected and that means it can learn new things.
-
The first time it sees the prince bleed (Thor had tripped over his own feet and tumbled into a table), it is fascinated. The wound isn’t much, a cut, though the prince cries as though something might be broken. After it establishes that Thor is not hurt badly, it remembers Eir’s lessons and stops the flow of red. Loki wonders if everything does this or if it is singular to Thor and decides to ask Father, who seem to know all things.
It closes its eyes and looks through the walls of the palace to find Father (it had started with Mother, but she had not heard him call her name). He is in a room with a large map on a large table with other tall ones who talk and gesture loudly. In a blink it steps through a wall and walks in the room quietly. Thor is with Eir, who is teaching him things that Loki already remembers. There are scrolls and books everywhere, it takes one and opens it. They are full of words, like the ones Eir sometimes brought, and it immediately identifies each one it knows and stores away those it does not for later. It will learn these new things.
The others in the room, just as tall as Father, are still talking with him over a large table.
It waits, still looking at the book, until the other tall ones leave before speaking.
“Father?”
When it realizes there was nothing said back in response, it turns to Father, who walks close to him in long slow steps. Whose face looks very soft and who runs a hand through the hair on its head.
“Hello,” the tone is almost a question. It was not expected here.
“Hello,” it mimics. “May I ask you a question, Father?”
The man nods. It shows him its hand where there is still some red, “What is it?” Father takes its hands to a basin of water and helps it wash the red off.
“It is what flows inside us,” He says while he dips its hands into the basin, “what keeps us alive.”
“Does everything have it?”
There is a pause and then Father runs a hand through its hair again.
“Most things.”
It wants to know if it will bleed.
-
Thor gets sick.
A warm, heavy kind of sick where he coughs and shivers and rubs at his eyes when he is not making grabby hands at things.
It sneaks back into the room; it was been removed earlier and had not been pleased by this.
The room is dark, though there is a candle lit, and Eir sleeps sitting in a chair. When it climbs up on the bed, Thor is still warm, and it sits and thinks about Dwarf and Father, running large hands through his hair. So it scoots closer and leans against the head board of the bed, and cards its fingers though Thor’s hair. The prince cuddles closer and sighs.
The next day it asks Eir to teach it about helping those that get too hot when they are sick.
It realizes as it walks with Eir out into the gardens for a new lesson on herbs, that the table it used to reach up at for tools is not as high as it had thought. When it mentions this to Eir she laughs.
“Of course it seems like it’s getting lower. You’re a growing boy, aren’t you?” She is not asking a real question (it had learned the difference), but it has to stop and think.
That night it wants to see if the same has happened in other places in the palace, and takes a walk since it is not supposed to be with Thor (it will sneak in again later). Tables and chairs around the wing all seem lower, but the shelves in the library are still as high as ever and he has to reach and reach and reach, and it’s still not enough so he reaches without his arms. The book floats down.
-
It has returned the book and gotten a new one many times, and it isn’t until a gasp behind him that he thinks anything of the action.
“There are layers upon layers of spell work built in. It was meant to be an initial cast, there are bound to be unexpected oddities. That is why we make initial casts for work this complicated.” Other dwarf says when he came with Dwarf at Mother’s order. They had started arguing before Eir brings Loki in, so it does not hear everything. Father sits on his chair at the big table. No one in the room is happy (though Father seems more resigned).
“It is defective,” Mother says. “Why did you even give us the initial cast.”
“Because you took it before the traditional testing was done.”
“Make the real one. Fix this.”
Other dwarf looks like he is holding his breath. He and Mother have dark, angry looks on their faces. Father rises and touches Mother’s arm, he takes her past a set of doors to a side room where it can hear them talking quietly. Dwarf has not spoken yet, but he is standing close by, so it turns to him.
“What is your name?” Loki asks, because he does not know. Dwarf grins at it, a big toothy thing that might have been intimidating if it hadn’t also been its first memory.
“Eitri, and this is my brother Brokkr.”
Other dwarf turns from the door Mother had exited through, glad for the distraction.
Eitri leans close.
“Did you do the things she claims you did?” He speaks kindly. There is hesitance in his voice too, like he is curious, but doesn’t want the answer at the same time.
“I do not know what she said.” It glances at the door, where he can hear Mother’s movement. “Eir was teaching Prince Thor the words, and I wanted them-“ Brokkr starts at the word “-so I started getting books.” Loki had not done anything wrong. He had seen others take books from the shelves. “There were so many, and I returned them when I was done. I did not think they would miss one.”
The doors open again, Mother and Father return. Her face is still hard.
“It is dangerous,” she says. “I do not want it hurting my son. Fix it.”
The dwarf nods to them and kneels on one knee in front of Loki, a hand resting heavily on the back of his neck.
“I do not want this,” Eitri whispers to him; Loki clings with one hand to the old robe the dwarf is wearing. “Do not worry. You will be safe. Sigli's dáu-hlé.” He presses his lips to Loki’s forehead, “You are a good boy,” Then stands and turns to address the king and queen. “Large scale changes are more complicated than I am prepared for this moment. I will have to return at a later time.”
Mother has him locked in a small room after the dwarves leave, but he gets out and finds Thor. Eir will give him warnings to get out of sight when it is needed and she does not tell Mother that he is not where she wants him to be.
They are in the garden, Mother having found them and talking at Eir firmly using words like “following orders” and “responsible” when it happens.
The man rushes them and all Loki can think of is AWAY and then they are.
“What-?” Prince Thor looks wide-eyed around him, standing still until the suddenness has faded, and then he shrugs and goes to his chest of play things. Loki stands at the foot of the bed, keeping an eye on the door.
Mother swoops in and collects Thor in her arms, holding on tightly. She does not look at Loki past her initial glance, and there is something hollow in him afterwards.
Father looks at Loki and leaves again without saying a word.
-
He does not bleed. He tried.
The clean mark and the knife on the table leave him with an empty feeling.
Thor falls asleep on him and he quietly rests his hand on the prince’s chest to feel the heart beat.
-
The dwarves do not come back to change him.
Next Chapter