Premonitions

Disclaimer: I do not make any money off of this publication nor do I claim any ownership of any characters, events, settings, etc. used.

Chapter Two:

Revelations


Dusk was falling upon Asgard. A small boy was sitting in the sill of a window watching as the gulls called to their respective families.

The boy was exceedingly pale, an oddity among the golden bodies of his peers. He had dark hair, blacker than a raven's wing, swept back from his face to curl around his nape. His deep green eyes glimmered with repressed tears, another oddity to cause the child to be shunned, what Asgardian had eyes not black or blue? He was dressed royally, as befitting a child of his station, in emerald and black, an unconscious decision to showcase his differences or a deliberate incentive?

This was the image that Frigga, lady of Asgard, came upon.

"Loki." The word fell unbidden from her lips in the form of a weary sigh, exceedingly soft but still overheard by the child.

The child turned his head sharply toward her before a soft half smile took his lips. "Mother! I am sorry, I did not see you." Loki got up as quickly as his gangly five year old body would allow. He rushed over to her and stopped when he could take her hand. "Well, mother, did father know anything that could help me?"

Frigga looked down at her son's expectant face. She saw his hopes and dreams and thought on Odin's reasoning. Should she truly tell her child that he was not of her body? That he came from a race that her husband already had him fearing?

A gentle tug brought Frigga back to reality and her son. She gazed down and saw expectancy replaced with worry. Conviction grew within her chest. Loki would be told the truth. Loki would know the means of his birth and of his coming to Asgard.

"Loki, please my son, come with me." Loki looked excited at the prospect of walking with his mother. "Where are we going? Is father going to tell me what happened to me?" His face began to shine with more hope and Frigga's heart fell to know that she would be the one to disillusion him.

"My boy come, let us walk." Frigga began to lead Loki through the rooms of the palace. They passed the throne room, the reception hall with its golden pillars and imposing door, pass the many rooms reserved for servants until they reached a small courtyard.

Inside the courtyard was a gnarled mass of bushes. It gave the appearance of disrepair and neglect. In front of the mess was an intricately carved stone bench. It was small but could still easily fit mother and son as they sat.

"Why are we here? It is ugly!" Loki spoke with the surety of a child. Frigga smiled gently.

"Is it truly ugly? I had not noticed." Frigga chuckled as Loki looked at her with his brows drawn down. "How can it be anything but ugly? It is dead, nothing is alive in that mass of weeds. It should be cleaned out!"

"Before you cast judgments maybe you should learn the whole story." Frigga began. "Those weeds come from Midgard. A high lady of court fell in love with a man of a lower station. The maiden knew she could never tell the man or revel in the feeling of love so every night she would go into the garden and weep. Eventually a plant began to grow watered by her bitter tears, twisted and gnarled. It continued to grow this way until the maiden's death many moons later. The night of her death that ugly, twisted mess blossomed with thousands of tear shapes flowers."

"Mother, what was the point?" Loki asked impatient and wriggling in his seat.

"The point, dear heart, was that looks are deceiving. You cannot judge someone or something based upon its appearance or even in some cases heritage."

"Where did the bush come from?" Loki was staring with a look of contemplation toward the bushes.

"Egypt. The odd thing is that it grows perfectly in our moist ground as it did in the arid sands of their desert."

"So why have you brought me here to talk?" Frigga watched as her son's eyes grew wary. "How does this setting pertain to our earlier discussion of answers?"

Frigga sighed heavily, knowing that her son had fallen back upon his intelligence to hide his fear. As a defense mechanism it was better than his brother's who would just attack unsuspecting victims.

"I am certain you remember the tales your father has told you about our war with Jotunheim and the Frost Giants. You were told that you were born during the final days of this war. This is true, however, my son, it is not the whole story. . ."

As mother and son spoke, despaired, reconciled and reaffirmed neither noticed a small bud forming in front of them. As they left, reborn in the flames of truth and acceptance like proverbial phoenixes, again the pair ignored the haunting sounds of ghostly wailing.

And when all of the city of Asgard was asleep, rain fell. It only fell in one place, in the royal palace, in an abandoned courtyard that had a single stone bench, which was pass the servants' quarters, pass the reception hall with its golden pillars and imposing door, pass the throne room and pass the ability of any mortal to reach.