Winter's Treasures
By Rey
Chapter summary: Not even the nature of his own body was familiar to Loki. Would it be surprising, then, that the nature of the land and its customs were utterly baffling? And faced with the double attack, how could a reeling, displaced, most possibly former prince of Asgard react?
3. Basics, Part 1
Nature still reigned supreme, it seemed, away from the crater, away from the ghost town. Huge mounds of rough snow formed everywhere, and heaps of ice scree likewise. The presence of the latter spooked the three younger – or at least smaller – jötnar, judging from their nervous tones and wide-eyed looks thrown at those dully gleaming piles.
Ovrekka was not safe from a similar worry. They urged their four charges to walk faster, to watch out for signs of a storm in the horizon, and their surroundings for quick shelter should it be needed.
Loki did not know what would constitute as shelter, here. He would have lost his way a long time ago in the first place, if he had not travelled with the… natives. There seemed to be nothing suggesting that they were travelling on a path of any sort, for one, although Ovrekka had informed him that they were going to a neighbouring village, half a day's brisk walk for adults in fair weather. There was no sign of life along the way, no road landmark, no road lines, let alone any hole or overhang that could be used as shelter; only rough snow and ice pellets and spires of rock. The jagged, desolate landscape stretched unbroken until it met the silvery horizon, gleaming white and grey and blue and blue-green.
Too open.
Too raw.
Menacing.
He suppressed a frisson of unease that would have made his body, still tucked close to Ovrekka's side, tremble.
Then again, what should one expect from a land of monsters?
The little band of wandering travellers became tighter in formation as the sky darkened. Loki did not know how long he had been walking. He was yet to learn to tell time or direction by looking at this alien sky.
But, well, he would abandon this wretched place the first chance he got, all the same. The only tie he had here, unwitting as it had been, was dead and abandoned miles away behind in a ghost town. What use would it be, then, learning about anything here?
For a monster, though, Ovrekka was not as bad as what Asgardian stories painted about the jötnar. The constant side-armed embrace, for example. He had long regained steadiness on his feet, and he was used to traversing long stretches of land by foot, but his new – or long-buried? – instincts felt calmer with the close proximity Ovrekka offered so freely and casually, completing the set of things that would empower him through this dreary, hopeless journey – something missing that he had never known as missing before. In fact, up ahead, the three other jötnar had been linking hands and walking closely one to another for some time already, too….
Who knew, monsters could be cuddly to each other.
They walked through the semi darkness, stopping just long enough to relieve themselves. And was that not an embarrassingly novel and squimmish and shocking experience to him in this form! Who knew the jötnar had two sexes in one body – mostly hidden by a thick surface that at first to third glances made him look sexless – and an additional smaller orifice tucked in between both just for urinating? This would explain why his Asgardian skin was so… odd, genitalia-wise, compared to other males.
They halted again not long afterwards to partake of the cleanest snow they could find, which was inside and half-way up one of the largest snowdrifts, when Avlar – the smallest of the three smaller jötnar – complained about being thirsty. If Loki were in his æsir form, the unmelted, unheated snow filling his gut that Ovrekka had just cupped out for him on their hands would have killed him through hypothermia, worsened by the no-doubt frigid outside temperature. But as it was, the outside temperature was just pleasantly cool, and the snow likewise in his belly, and both sensations put into one made it as if he had only done something as mundane as drinking a cup of water in autumn at… in Asgard.
Đorkyn grumbled something to Ovrekka as they resumed walking, and that tallest jötun in their company replied in like manner, in the same language that Allspeak oddly did not encompass. No more argument was forthcoming in reply to the curt response, however; instead, the smaller jötun quickly stomped back to the side of their friends.
Loki had been debating with himself about if he should ask Ovrekka on the topic of the untranslatable language, although he was less interested in knowing what they had just argued about with the second tallest in the company. Ovrekka had known about a part of his origin; but had they known – or at least suspected – that he had not just happened to be wearing Asgardian attire when he had fallen into this Norns-forsaken realm? What would they do should he confirm that as undeniable fact? What would he gain from holding his tongue?
Ovrekka had claimed they were all children, even Loki. Were children here apt to killing each other as adults were? Were these… well, these, going to abandon him in this desolate wasteland if not, in place of murder, if or when they found out that he belonged to their worst enemy – the latter's prince, in fact, or maybe former prince by now?
He decided he did not wish to die a forsaken detritus, in the end.
So he chose a milder branch of the problem and asked, "How old am I, in your estimation?"
Ovrekka did not answer for a while, seeming to be deep in thought. And then they mused out their observation, "You look so small and young; but you often behave several times beyond your age. Some of the Kindreds are naturally short,, but you do not bear any of their typical traits. Gannha said some unfortunate people were forced to grow up far beyond their years by unfavourable circumstances…." Their voice broke again on the mention of "Gannha," who most likely had been their grandparent, and also the Elder Vrelkki that they had mentioned only once.
The Elder Vrelkki that had died for him, an Asgardian stranger.
He fell silent as well, fighting for composure.
A brighter, more golden light was beginning to suffuse the horizon above and the landscape below, when they at last halted for a rest. Ovrekka left Loki's side for the first time since their first meeting in that little stone dwelling, scouting out a patch of ground suitable for their camp and icing it over presumably for a more comfortable surface for sleeping.
He strangely felt bereft, abandoned.
He did not even know that he was hugging himself, in an unconscious effort to stave off the surprising and surprisingly strong feeling, not until a much larger body was in his field of sight and a pair of familiar arms surrounded by a growingly familiar scent wound round him in a tight embrace. He squirmed and pushed and jabbed at his hugger, and Ovrekka chuckled at the belated defiance.
"Do not be ashamed of your needs, little one," they chid him gently, as they led him with one arm once more slung round his shoulders to the smooth, shiny patch of ice a small distance away that was already occupied by the three smaller jötnar.
"Needs," he scoffed heatedly, mortified by the very idea.
But what did it say about himself, that he did not mind the ushering arm slung round his shoulders?
Đorkyn remarked as much, in an acidic tone that spoke even more, from their place lounging against the rock formation their campsite was pressed against. Loki bristled, affronted, but the hand squeezing his left shoulder gently halted the onrush of his tongue.
"Behave, Đorkyé. We do not need fights in this journey. It is already hard enough," Ovrekka called out, though sounding more nervy than firm.
"Why we speak this tongue? Stupid language," Đorkyn needled some more, regardless. "Let little learn our language. We never go from here anyway, and no kind stranger come. Allspeak no use."
"It is still a good skill to be had," Ovrekka retorted. "And it is wrong. People still go out of Ymir's reach, at times."
"And they never come back," Avlar bit out bitterly, as if mocking the Allspeak by the mastery and use of it, from their place curled up on the farthest corner of the newly formed ice sheet. "Other realms are full of monsters. And they call us monsters."
"Your sire and eldest kin-sibling were an exception, Ava, and they did not follow the protocol for such excursion," Ovrekka parried tiredly. "Gannha had spoken about it with you and Ranyé and your dam so many times already. Repeating it and assigning blame to other people just deepen the wound, you know that."
The little band's self-assigned leader ended up having to chase after the affronted and hurt Avlar, who fled into the wilderness in high dudgeon, leaving Loki to settle alone on the nearest edge of the ice sheet. Hunger gnawed at his insides, with how much energy he had expended today, but for now he could ignore it. The thought of these monsters calling the inhabitants of the other realms "monsters" would have put him out of his meal, all the same.
