"Mama! Mama!" Sigyn could hear the small voice call for her, and the crunch of small feet on gravel as the child approached the house; her child. The door burst open revealing a rather muddy little boy, with a curly mop of blonde hair.

"Look what I caught with father!" He ran to Sigyn hold a large trout on a line.

"Well! Now I don't have to worry about what to make for dinner!" Sigyn laughed taking the still feebly wriggling fish from Tuomas, and placing it on the counter she had just cleaned.

"I have never seen that boy run so fast." Xaver laughed as he walked through the door, carrying three other fish on a line.

"I guess he was pretty excited."

"I am going to go see aunt Luzia and Marco," Tuomas announced and without waiting for his parent's approval left the house as quickly as he entered it.

"I guess it's lucky you and Luzia had the boys at the same time. Best friends readymade." Xaver laughed, wrapping his arms around Sigyn, which was a little harder lately, given her extremely round pregnant belly.

"She's strong today," He noted as the baby kicked furiously.

"How do you know it's a girl?"

"A little girl, just like you would be perfect. Just hopeful." He pressed a kiss to Sigyn's temple.


Sigyn tossed and turned that night and her baby followed suit. Figuring there was no point in trying to sleep when a baby as kicking her internal organs, she crept out of bed and down the stairs, careful not to wake Tuomas and Xaver.

The paused in front of the fireplace where the last of the coals were beginning to dim and counted the stones on the left.

"Five up, four to the left." She muttered counting and when she came to the stone she was looking for, she pried it loose from the others, revealing a small bundle.

With a deep sigh, she took it from its hiding place and took it to the table and unwrapped it; she took a minute to look at her reflection in the golden apple while in her other hand she held the pendant with the elegantly twisted snakes. She looked very different than the last time she had held both, she thought.

"You're back!" Loki said happily when he saw Sigyn approach but his smile faltered when he saw her face, "Oh Sigyn, no…."

"I can't." She held the apple and the pendant out to him.

"Why? You don't belong here!"

"I do, now. This is where I belong now, this is my home." She stepped toward him and pressed the items in his hands. "I know us…and I know how much I loved you. But all of it seems like a lifetime ago…and it was. But I am here now, I love Xaver and Luzia, I can't leave them."

"Sigyn…" Loki's voice broke.

She shook her head, and tangled her hands in his hair and kissed him, causing the stranger to stir to life inside of her, when they broke apart Loki still had his eyes closed, "It is easier for me to suppress her love for you than it would be for me to forget about them with you. Please understand Loki."

He gave a strange jerk of the head that could have been a nod…" And please, Loki, don't come back." Sigyn pressed a kiss to his lips once more and stepped away from him and started back up the path.

"Wait!"

She paused and heard his footsteps running behind her.

"Keep them," He said pushing the apple and necklace into her hands.

"I can't.."

"Just keep them, they are yours."

She tried to argue but Loki silenced her with a kiss and with his lips still on her shimmered away…

Xaver was lying awake in bed when Sigyn returned home and said nothing as he held her while the stranger inside her wept and eventually became silent.


The ground under Sigyn's feet began to shake, something she had only just began to get used too, something the world never seemed to experience until recently. Quickly, she wrapped her possessions back up and shoved them back into the hole in the fireplace, knowing what was coming next.

"Mama! Father!" Tuomas called from his room. She could already hear Xaver groan and his heavy footsteps on the wooden floors above her head. Giving a heavy sigh she trudged slowly up the stairs.

"It's nothing," Xaver comforted the trembling boy.

"That's not what the priest said!"

"What did he say?" Sigyn asked as she sat down on the bed and rubbed the boys back.

"He said that it's a punishment, that one of the gods is being bound in the Earth and each time the earth trembles it's because he is in pain."

Sigyn and Xaver exchanged a glance.

"You know; I've always wondered where these priests get their information." Xaver said lightly, but Sigyn could tell he was thinking the same thing.

"It's true he said! He said the only way the gods could control Loki was to have him bound to a rock, deep in the earth, with an enormous snake to guard him!"

"Those are just stories," Sigyn said.

"And quick ones at that, this strangeness only just happened, how priests can have concocted this story so quickly is beyond me."

"But!"

"Shhhh we will stay here until you fall asleep." Which didn't take as long as she thought, as the little boy's eyes fluttered closed, she and Xaver slipped from his room.

"It's all just a story right?" He asked as they crawled into bed.

She wanted to tell him it was, but as she settled into his arms she knew that that Loki would not have gone back to Asgard quietly, and wondered what he had done this time to earn such a punishment.


I was really torn writing this ending. I may write an alternate ending but, for now, this is how it is. I mean really...would it really be a punishment if she went home with him? Thank you to everyone who followed this story and left reviews, it means more than I can ever express.