Hello! I am also posting this story on AO3 under the same username, and have decided to cross post it here. It is nearly finished on AO3, so feel free to head over there and check it out.
Reviews would be gratefully received!
Loki was found on the day of a great storm, as had not been seen in living memory. The snow bit through the air, great drifts of it piling up to trap people in the homes they would never dare to leave. They tucked themselves away, warming the huts as best as they could, fighting a desperate battle against the freezing wind that forced its way through the smallest crack to threaten the weak fires made with thin, damp twigs – the last left after the vicious winter.
Suddenly, the storm was gone. There was no gradual lessening of the gale, no slow retreat of clouds back to the horizon as the snowfall tapered slowly to a stop. It was just, gone. One second the people feared for their lives as gusts blew harder than ever and snow piled up, already threatening to cave the roof in with the weight of it, but showing no sign of letting up. The next, it was calm, the snow settled on the ground and no more fell, the clouds disappeared like dust into the wind and the sun shone through the icy windows.
Leif was one of the first to poke his head out. It was desperation that drove him, and the pain of loss. His young wife had given birth in the hut, to a child born already cold as the night air around them. Her own skin grew clammy shortly after, still bleeding sluggishly in the aftermath of her labour, with no way to stop it and the doctor inaccessible. Leif went out in search of firewood to keep her warm through her fever. There was a stand of fir trees about 2 hours from the village – perhaps three today, since he had to navigate the deep drifts of snow and watch carefully for hidden crevasses.
He pushed determinedly through the snow, snowshoes strapped to his feet still dragging in the deep powder as he used a long pole to test each drift before he dared step out over it. By the time he reached the stand of trees, his thighs were burning with the effort and his breaths came short and sharp, clouds of mist puffing from his mouth and dissipating into the frosted air. He was leant against a tree catching his breath whilst he unfastened the axe and knife he had carried with him when he spotted it.
A bundle of blankets hung from a tree branch, half coated with snowfall but safe from the deep drifts around the roots. Leif's heart near broke when he saw it. A second babe fallen victim to the cold, hanging still and silent in the cold. He moved to take it down, intending to bury the body somehow, not able to stand the thought of leaving it under the snow for someone to find when it finally melted come summer.
Where were its parents? He wondered. Likely lost somewhere, likely two more bodies to be found in a few months' time. As his hands reached out to take the bundle down, it moved. He froze, still as the dark trees around him. Hands shaking he took the bundle in his arms, stunned beyond words by the squirming he felt under his palms. It was alive, and oh how his heart ached that this child should live through frozen hell whilst his own never even had the chance to draw breath.
Pulling the blankets aside he nearly dropped the bundle then and there, nearly ran home to scream of monsters and be known as mad throughout the village. The creature, whilst undoubtedly an infant, was blue. The dark grey-blue of the storm clouds that had set upon their village, lines and strange marking trailing across its skin like art. And the eyes that peered sleepily up at him were a bright, uncompromising red. The eyes of a demon. Leif reached a trembling finger out to stroke the cold skin of the baby's cheek, and then nearly dropped it a second time as colour bloomed out from his touch, spreading quickly across the child's face until he was staring at what appeared to be a human child. Red eyes had changed to a sparkling blue-green. The hair remained the same, but the downy black curls that had blended into the dark blue skin now stood out starkly against pale skin.
Leif tucked the child numbly into his jacket and quickly set about gathering wood. Once he had a sizeable bundle he hefted it onto his back and began the long trek home.
His bundle was heavy enough that his snowshoes sank into the snow with every step he took. He was carrying far more wood than he usually would, enough to keep the fire burning near constantly to ensure the warmth of his wife, and of the child. Yes, it was some sort of shapeshifting demon creature, but it was an infant and he could not suffer another child to die when he could save it.
His coat shifted a little as though the child knew his thoughts were upon it. It had not cried, apparently happy to just sit next to the warmth of his body heat and sleep. Exhaustion weighed heavily on Leif's shoulders, but he forced himself to continue. Finally the lights of the village came into sight and he nearly shouted his relief to the mountains, but stopped himself lest he wake the child.
His wife seemed better when he finally arrived back, sitting up in a chair and stirring a pot hanging over the fire.
"Leif," she greeted, "I am so glad you are returned safely." Leif dropped the firewood and stooped to kiss her cheek, then stepped back, mouth opening uncertainly.
"What is wrong Leif?" She asked, her face pale from sickness lined with concern.
"In the fir stand Asta, I… I found something."
"What? Oh, love, tell me there was not the body of some poor soul?"
"Not exactly," Leif hesitated, "I… Asta, I found a child."
Asta's eyes filled with tears as the pain of her own loss augmented the ache at the thought of a child out in the cold.
"Oh Leif…" she gasped, a tear escaping to roll down her cheek.
"No, but Asta… the child lives. I… I have it here."
"You… you have a…?"
Leif nodded. "I do." He pulled open his jacket and gently extracted the baby. The motion woke the child and it mewled unhappily, head turning as it searched for food.
Asta opened her arms for the child and Leif gave it gladly over. The baby burrowed itself into her chest and she laughed painfully, pulling open her shirt to nurse it with the milk meant for her own son, tears streaming down her cheeks even as she smiled gently at the suckling babe.
"He needs us, Leif." She spoke softly, but with certainty and Leif knew the baby was theirs now.
"What shall he be called?" He asked, hands brushing the tears from her cheeks before settling one on her shoulder, the other stroking over the crown of his new son.
"Loki. He shall be Loki."
Leif and Asta lived with their new addition in a world of bliss for almost a year. She never knew Loki was not truly human, and the other villagers believed Loki to be their own child – they never spoke of their loss, nor of Leif's discovery. Loki was known as Loki Leifson, and they never sought for it to be otherwise, only smiled knowingly when people tried to claim that Loki had his father's nose, or his mother's high cheekbones.
Loki would gnaw on anything he could get in his mouth, crawling and rolling around the floor of the hut and eventually taking the occasional shaking step. He was an intelligent and pleasant child, Leif and Asta's pride and joy. He looked at them both with such love and trust in his eyes that Leif could not bear to think how empty his life might have been if he had just left that demon child in the snow.
Asta had never really recovered from her birth, always weaker than she had been before. Years later, Leif reflected that perhaps she had only been keeping herself alive to give Loki the mother he needed, as the winter after Loki was weaned from the breast, her fevers returned with a vengeance, and one morning Leif woke to find the hand he clutched in sleep gone cold.
He pulled her on a sled to the trees where he had first found Loki, where he had buried their stillborn baby and carved out a grave for her in the frozen ground beneath the trees. The whole village lived in mourning, and Loki found himself passed around the neighbours for a time whilst Leif struggled to piece his world back together.
They left the village after the first time Loki turned blue again. Leif had taken Loki out with him to hunt for food, and looked up at one point to find his son playing in the snow, his skin storm blue. Loki appeared entirely unfazed by the change, but Leif swept him quickly up in his arms, panic flaring in his gut. Leif loved Loki regardless, but should another villager see him in this form he would surely be injured or worse when they persecuted him as a devil. Losing the other light of his life would kill him as surely as a knife to the throat.
The very next day Leif piled their belongings onto a sled and they began the long walk. They travelled for nearly a year until they reached a place where there was no snow. The warmth was jarring for Leif, who had never before travelled beyond the cold peninsula he had been born in. Loki adapted with the natural ease of a child, bedding down happily in the tiny one-room home Leif found for them, and romping in the street with other children his age, the new language tripping easily from his tongue.
Leif never found a new love, but his bond with Loki was close, and Loki was all he needed. They were happy in their sunny town where it rained in winter, but never snowed. Happy and safe. When Loki was 13, Leif noticed something. As his friends hit puberty they were growing rapidly, voices deepening and beards sprouting haphazardly from their chins. Loki, however, remained small and slender, his voice high and boyish, his cheeks smooth. Leif was not overly alarmed at first – it was not uncommon for some boys to grow later than others into men. Another few years later though, Loki was still as unchanged as the wooded hills that surrounded their town. Leif knew then that though Loki might wear the guise of a human, he would never truly be the same. Loki, too, had begun to notice he was different, and Leif knew he would soon have to tell him the painful truth of his origins.
Loki was a studious child – he learnt to read from a neighbour and grew with a love of all literature and knowledge. In the evenings, he would often spend long hours in the library of a local lord, which he was allowed to use in exchange for his help managing the stables. He had a brief flirtation with one of the older boys at the stable, innocent and carefully hidden as they both revelled in the delicious taste of forbidden love. That ended when the other boy was married to a girl who worked in the kitchen. Next, Loki loved one of the scullery maids. She had golden hair that fell to her waist, and he would tease her, pulling on it gently whilst he helped her carry water from the well.
He was walking home late after using the library one evening, when he noticed a pillar of smoke rising above the village.
He felt the first prickling of fear as he hastened his way back towards the collection of houses. There was an eerie silence blanketing the village. Loki broke into a run, skidding around the corner to his street. A lot of the houses were blackened from smoke, with smouldering holes in their straw roofs. Worst by far though was the charred ruins of the house at the other end of the street. Loki's house. A wordless cry tore from his chest as he saw it, and the people stood around outside it turned to look at him.
Loki walked numbly towards them for a few steps, but then came the most horrifying moment of his young life. Without noticing how, he was on his knees, unable to move any further because there, on the ground was a body. A corpse, as black and damaged as the wooden frame of his house. Leif.
It took a week before his neighbours managed to calm Loki enough for him to speak coherently, though he rarely did. It was nearly two weeks before he allowed more than the barest morsels of food to pass his lips, and three weeks after he lost the only constant in his life that he finally picked up what remained of his belongings and left.