"I COULD HAVE DONE IT, father! I could have done it! For you, for all of us," pleads a boy with a broken heart to a father with an illusion of a whole one.

There, amidst the roar of a broken Rainbow Bridge, there is too much to say and too little time. Centuries of social oppression have painted his youngest's face with the look of someone who knows he's hunted for, but now it is different. Now it is heavier. Once upon a time he sensed it, felt the rims of a cage around him; now he knows the truth of the cage.

And so behind those eyes he thrashes and writhes and screams. Why can the father define that stone-like, detached look contradicted by affection-starved eyes now of all times, and how is it that he can see the soul ripping itself apart between the barbed rims of a metal cage when he did not before?

Because his youngest hangs from Gungnir, peering up with nearly dripping eyes in which his mammoth struggle stirs behind. One more lie, father, one more, is the bargain for his son's soul to survive, but it is lies of the past that destroyed eyes that were once displeased by shadows, lips that were once ready to tell the truth, and a heart that was once young and free.

Indeed, it was lies that ravished the conscience of his soul. There was a time it did not see a potential predator in every other soul it met.

"No, Loki," Allfather says. You misunderstood.

Odin had seen countless deaths unravel before his eye, but this one…this one he knows will go to his grave.

His son's soul spills apart against the barbs the cage, but baby blues build a wall. Self-defense? No, surrender. Lips melt and harden into a straight line of cement. Face bleeds off all signs of life. As if the mortifying bloom of death was not enough shock, colorless fingers release Gungnir.

Thor shouts and reaches for his brother while the Allfather can do nothing but agonize. He feels the stretching thread between him and the child of his heart strain until it snaps and leaves him bleeding. The black nothingness of the Void rips the broken thread and his child away. It sucks away half of the father's heart too when it closes it's gaping mouth forever.

"No," Odin whispers. He can't remember what caressing the smooth blue skin underneath an illusion of milky perfection felt like, nor the pure smile of the younger lost in a book of adventure, nor the childish beauty of his mischief that always kept him on his toes.

What lies behind the blackness? He knows. What remains of the younger screams underneath the torrents of an ocean without water.


Dossier published in full length at home: allerdale. wordpress. com
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