blondehairedknowitall: I surprised you. Awesome.

meghangodwin1: Glad I was able to catch you off-guard.

Disclaimer: I do no own Marvel.

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Chapter Four: Story Time

"You're my sister?" asked a shocked Loki.

"Half-sister," Laufey answered. "Your mother was Farbauti, my wife. Poinsettia's mother was a mortal."

"Are you ever going to give up and just call me by my nickname like everyone else does?" Tia asked her father with an annoyed tone.

"Are you ever going to give up and stop asking me that same question every time I say your name?" Laufey asked his daughter with an amused smile.

"You know I'm not the kind to give up first," Tia answered with a grin.

"Neither am I," Laufey said. "Your mother chose a beautiful name. You should embrace it."

"But 'Poinsettia' is so long," his daughter complained. "It's a mouthful. It's not even a normal name. It's a flower."

"What about names like. . ." Laufey started to say.

"Don't even go there with me," Tia cut him off, though she had a smile on her face.

"Stop that!"

Everyone turned to look at Loki, who just stood there looking back and forth from his father and half-sister.

"Stop what?" Tia asked.

"Stop acting like father and daughter."

"But we are."

"Let it go, Poinsettia," Laufey said, ignoring her as she rolled her eyes. "He obviously cannot see me acting the part of a father-figure and it unnerves him to see me like this."

"So you're half-Frost Giant?" Fury asked, wanting to break up the family awkwardness. He still had his hand on his gun.

"Same as everyone else here," Tia answered. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and Norse Gods gave her questioning looks. She sighed. "Everyone who lives here at South Snow Point is half-Frost Giant. Their other half is mortal."

"Is that why you live here in Antarctica?" Maria asked.

"It's as close as we can get to Jotunheim," Tia responded, "without actually going there. Our Frost Giant blood makes it uncomfortable for us to live in warmer climates. We feel much better living in the ice."

"How did this place come about?" Fury inquired.

"It's quite a long story." Tia gestured for everyone to take a seat on the chairs in the room. She herself sat down while Laufey remained standing behind her.

"I have always known about my heritage," Tia began. "My mother saw no reason to hide it from me. No one else I'd ever met could turn blue, control ice, or use magic. I never made any friends because of the fact that I was so different from them. I didn't really feel like I could ever fit in with anyone anywhere. I also aged slower than everyone else. I look around twenty, but I'm actually a couple hundred years old. My mother never took me to a doctor because she was afraid that they would find out I wasn't completely human. Good thing I never got sick. We moved around a lot, too, constantly changing our names so that we wouldn't get caught. It was easier to do back then. The humans didn't have the technology that they do today.

"My mother was always fiercely protective of me, from the day I was born to the day she died." Laufey's eyes became a bit sad when Tia mentioned her mother's death. "Outwardly, I was only about thirteen when she passed away, not even remotely considered old enough to live on my own. While some families offered to take me in, I knew that I couldn't risk them discovering my secret, the secret my mother had dedicated her life to protecting.

"Having come to a decision, I set out on my own, determined to make my own life. I lived off the land, doing the odd job here and there in some of the towns I would pass through, making sure to leave when I thought it no longer safe. Though I had, at some point, considered going to Jotunheim, I had no idea how to get there and felt that I would no more fit in with the Frost Giants than I did with the humans. I was perfectly content to live the way I was. I survived like that until the beginning of the nineteen hundreds.

"That's when I met Verrill, and discovered that I was not the only one. He had also outlived his mother and was living on his own. We thought that if we could exist, then there must be others like us. We set out to search for more half-Frost Giants and we found plenty, more than we had ever believed we would. Some were orphaned, some had been abandoned, and others had simply run away for whatever reasons. Whatever the situation, they were all on their own. And they were all searching for others like them. They were searching for a home.

"We decided that, since there was so many of us, we should make our own home, a place for half-Frost Giants to live in peace. We acquired a few boats and sailed here, to Antarctica, where we built our own community. We made the cave, the buildings, and the canals, all with magic. Of course, we had never really been properly schooled in magic, aside from what we had taught ourselves and each other, so it wasn't much in the beginning. That was when our Frost Giant parents came down to help us out. They taught us everything they knew and helped us make South Snow Point what it is today.

"And we've been here ever since. We set up a government, built some schools, shops, and houses; it's basically just like a normal town. Quite a few people are married with families of their own. Occasionally a few people will leave, searching for more like us. Sometimes we'll get a tip from a Jotun on where to find someone. We'll aid some of the scientists who come down here, albeit anonymously. We also work with the wildlife and try to slow down the melting of the ice. Of course, there's only so much our magic can do, with global warming as bad as it is. Some people who lived here have actually gone back out into the world and become scientists working to stop global warming. We like it here, but if the ice goes then so do we.

"And that's the story of South Snow Point."

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A bit shorter than I would have liked. I thought it would be too much to tell the story and then keep going before ending the chapter. I'll try to make the next one longer.

So what did you think? Is it a bit weird how Laufey isn't a total monster when he's around Tia? What are your thoughts on the story? Let me know by leaving a review.