A little girl sits in her stroller at the park crying. She doesn't have words yet to express that she is terrified. That she is hungry or uncomfortable or bored. All she can do is scream and hope that someone who cares will come help her. Just 15 feet away a bald gruff individual is kicking a soccer ball to other bald and intimidating looking men. He holds a beer in one hand and has his back turned to his daughter.
A tall and slender man with enrapturing green eyes and slick black hair walks by impeccably dressed. He kneels down in front of the small child. She has blue eyes that match her mother's, a small mercy that she did not inherent her father's beady squinty grey eyes. Odin passes a hand over and whispers something in a long forgotten language. "I claim you as my own, since this animal never would." The little girl laughs and gives out a little squeal, the kind of sound only a child can make. She blinks and when she opens her eyes they have turned a shade greener.
Loki looks towards the man and he hasn't noticed a stranger kneeling by his child. He gazes fiercely at the man and just as he kicks the soccer ball, it pops loudly like a balloon that's been stuck with a pin. The man jumps with a start and spills his cheap beer. "Ah shite!"
"Harold Language!" a woman's voice with a slight lilt of Irish hidden under a thick Londoner's cockney calls across the field. "There's a child about..."
"Oi shut yer gob, Martha! I spilled me beer all over me new Adidas! I'm a right mess now! I'm headed back to the flat." Replies Harold.
"It's your daughter's birthday, you'll come back when you're changed?" Asks Martha.
"Fat chance o'that..." says Harold under his breath as he stumbles off.
Martha leans against the picnic table staring at the big white birthday cake she made. Pink letters spell out "Happy Birthday Addy!" with pink sugar sprinkles all around the edges. The lettering is clearly done by amateur but with great care. A big number 1 candle sits unlit in the middle. A pile of paper plates and a big bucket of ice cream sits next to the cake. Martha looks up her lips pursed to hold back her temper as Harold and all of his friends walk off the field and back to the apartment. A cooler filled with ice and nothing else is a testament to the origin of the empty cans of beer tossed all over the grassy field near the deflated soccer ball.
The park is completely void of people save for Martha, little Addie, and the kind stranger who's stopped to make faces at her daughter. She holds it in for as long as she can, her tight lipped stern face hanging over the cake with her hands pressed on either side. Her knuckles turn white and her face turns red. She unintentionally barks out a little sob, and once the damn is broken she can't keep her composure any longer. She sobs over the cake she spent so many hours perfecting. She sobs over the cooler of beer she had to drag herself because her husband showed up late. She sobs for all the effort and care she gave to try to lure her husband and some of his friends so that there would be some people at her daughter's first birthday party.
She cries for her mother who passed before she could see her grand daughter. She cries for her daughter more than anything. Because she knows who her father is, and that she will grow up without respect or decency or care, all because she let the wrong guy in just once. Just once, and now she was a slave to her circumstances.
She lets it out alone in the field and then grabs a happy birthday napkin, wipes her tears and her snot from her face and she does what mothers do. She buries any sign of her pain, she puts a huge smile on her face and runs up to Addie in the stroller. "There's me little lass!" her natural Irish accent flows freely now that no one is here to chastise her. "Thank you for playin' with me little Addison kind sir, would you care for some cake! I baked it meself!"
The man turns to her and her heart drops to her stomach. He's beautiful. Unconventional, dark, with a sadness locked behind his green eyes, but bloody beautiful.
He smiles and says, "It would be my pleasure miss...?"
"Misses... Misses Donover..."
"I was meeting some friends in this park in a little while for tea, but they seem to be running a bit late. Since your party seems to have run afoul of a devious soccer ball, would you mind if we kept you company?" Loki replied.
Martha looked at the cake, the plates, the party hats, and the empty field. "It'll go to waste if no one..."
"Then it's settled!" Loki shouts.
He turns away and reaches into his pocket and pulls out a very strange looking phone, "Father." he says.
"I'm watching from the throne son, I saw it all, we're on our way." Replies Odin.
After what seems like no time at all Martha finds herself surrounded by the strangest, jolliest, most beautiful people she's ever seen. They came with meat, and ale, and a beautiful young girl that appeared 15 offered her a slice of the most perfect smelling apple pie she had ever seen. A biker who cared a tool belt with a very strange, fat looking hammer road in on a massive motorcycle that had "G.O.A.T." painted on the side came with a booming voice that laughed at every joke and drank more than any one of these strange merry people. Her daughter seemed to be the life of the party as everyone passed her around and joked with her and a strange, grandfatherly man with an eye patch made the silliest faces and laughed until he cried when she pulled his dark grey beard.
What was most peculiar was that all of them seemed to have brought gifts. The kind gentleman with the green eyes must have said something because they were clearly here for a little girl's birthday party and not a single cup of tea could be found.
The little girl's eyes were bright and a shocking shade green and happy and the mother realized that this was what she needed. She needed friends. She needed people who could be there for her. Only if Harold weren't so jealous, or at least if she could afford to leave him.
The grandfatherly man then stopped the ruckus. He stood on the table and pulled a golden ring off his arm. The green eyed gentleman nudged Martha and said, "You're going to like this bit."
The man in the eyepatch then performed a rather hokey bit of slight of hand magic, making the ring split into eight more rings. He then threw them to a stunning wild looking woman who had gifted her daughter a very innappropriate compound hunting bow with razor tipped arrows. The women introduced herself as "Scotty" earlier if Martha heard it right.
She caught all 9 rings and began to fit them around her foot in a sensual and wild way. She then managed to get the other foot through and slid the rings up her legs. The rings seems to get wider as if they stretched to fit her. She then pushed her arms through as they rose up to her hips. She begin making slow sensual circles with her hips. and widened her arms. The rings grow to be the size of hula hoops and Martha realized the gimmick of this trick.
Skadi then began to hula hoop with all nine of the rings to a rhythm that the biker with the hammer from before began drumming into the picnic table. Her hips swirled and her chest circled against the motion causing an alluring display if her tight, strong body. Then the beautiful wild creature rose her hands above her head, and clapped. The second she did, the rings all split into several more. With expert rhythm Skadi clapped again and the rings split again. She kept clapping until she was covered head to tow in a golden cylinder of rings. Loki walked up and kicked the rings aside and they clattered to the ground, proving that whoever was inside had vanished. Odin selected one of the rings and it shrunk to the sized of an arm band again. He handed it to the baby who began teething on it at once with a huge nose scrunching smile.
Martha jumped and let out a yell of surprise when the wild woman jumped from behind her and landed on the table with a thud. Martha laughed at her self and then politely applauded the wonderful magic show. She heard a strange squeal and the clattering of metal as she clapped and turned to look at her daughter. She was buried in a pile of the golden armbands. She fussed over her daughter for a second and turned back to the party with a smile and everyone had vanished.
The gifts and the cooler and the pile of rings were all neatly packed into a handcart. The plates and napkins were all piled into a mesh metal basket. Even the cans left out in the field by her husband and his friends had somehow made it into the recycling bin. Martha stared wide eyed as she began to try to make sense of the world around her. There was a business card with shining emerald green writing sitting on the picnic table. It simply read:
If you or your daughter need anything, whisper my name.
Loki of Asgard
️
