Borr the Grumpy
mythopathy
"You won't tell, will you brother?" Loki crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes in a manner not unlike Odin's when facing his seeming contrite youngest son– but for the eye patch of course and usually just his one eye proved more discerning than others' pair.
Thor's blue eyes twinkled, again not unlike their father's, when he grinned knowing just then Loki was not going to deny him (well he never did). Sif was not so sure and had lowered her head for her ears were already filled with her mother's outrage.
The shame of a noble girl training in arms in secret like some valkyrie and with a prince of all people. Being dirty, disheveled, sweaty and overall presenting herself in a most compromising way to an eligible blue-blooded male when she should have been batting her lashes and bashfully giggling to his wit. In a few more years she would be choosing a husband properly and not like Skadi who thought she would get away with her wild ways and in the end had had to marry an old man and move to the seaside away from the Sky Citadel. Sif did not want to become Skadi. Sif wanted to be a sheildmaiden and a hero and sate her battlelust in the blood of the enemies of Asgard. Her eyes stubbornly refused to break away from Loki's upon whom her entire adolescence now depended.
As if Loki would have allowed his brother keep a secret without him in on it. Of all the companions the Mother had appointed for the two princes Lady Sif was the one most devoted to Thor and followed him everywhere: to the dinner table, the training pits, even to the astronomy and mathematics lessons and often they would sneak out for hours on end to – Loki now knew what and where. He would let them keep training under the statue of Borr the Grumpy because it was interesting. He was ten. Thor and Sif were thirteen. Perhaps they had shared a strange smiling look between them at Loki's endorsement but most probably they didn't.
When Loki was sixteen he cut Sif's hair. Completely by accident of course because it was not his fault that she chose the precise moment he reverse parried with his long-bladed scythe to attack with her reverse drop kick. The fact that he had designed that move to counter her attack was beside the point. The scythe caught her ponytail right at the root in the back of her head barely avoiding her neck. He froze as it flew off and she got him in the nose with the pommel of her sword.
He had swiveled too soon, he realized while something hot dripped down his face soaking his shirt. His nose was bleeding. Loki went down.
"Idiot." That was Thor who had been watching the exchange from under the shadow of the statue.
"I swiveled too soon."
"Nice move. It could use some perfecting," Thor said and picked up the casualty of the session. Thor had almost lost half a pinkie once and the three of them had searched the grass for an hour so that the healers could put it back again.
"My hair!" The unevenness of the cut caused the back strands of Sif's dark hair stand straight up with the sides falling like curtains in her face.
"Sorry."
"Idiot!"
"I said sorry."
"Now what?" Thor again.
"We can make a wig of it. Mother has wigs," Loki said.
"My head feels lighter." Sif wasn't paying attention.
"It looked like a dead raven there on the ground." Thor wasn't paying attention either. Thor was fond of Sif's hair stroking it when he got the chance and surprisingly quick-tempered Sif let him. Loki noticed his head was feeling a bit light as well.
The healing rooms weren't soundproof. Thor was with him and his already broad shoulders were looking rather stooped. Sif's mother's howls were coming to a short end (the wig idea must have worked on her then) but Sif facing her vocal mother had bravely chosen that moment to reveal her intent to join the valkyrie corp in front of the whole court. She was half-way to becoming a hero after all.
A shudder passed through the floor of the healing rooms.
"When Sif returns from exile we'll take up the practice swords again," Thor decided.
"Agreed."
There was a throbbing in Loki's skull that centred in the back of his eyes. Sigyn was smiling down at him when she ministered the cool healing rock on his swollen face. Her hair was long and silky and golden brown and tickled his hand when she leaned over him. Lovely Sigyn.
She liked listening to him reading aloud lying side by side on the grass under Borr's disapproving gaze.
.
A/N: Might turn out to be a prologue to something bigger. Unbeta-ed. Oooh also, this apparently takes place in ~975 C.E.