"Thor!"

The water was rising by the instant, one moment about his hips, the next, biting cold and swirling, climbing to his chest.

Thor was casting about, brows pulled down, mouth set and furious. He threw the enchantress, who stood still on the far side of the water, a look that could have leveled cities. She was singing to bring up the flood, arms flung above her head and the flying wind tearing through her hair. Thor threw out an arm and caught Loki's shoulder.

"Hold on to me!"

Spitting water out of his mouth he locked his arms about his brother's shoulder only just as the torrent would have swept him from his feet. Stronger and taller, Thor was yet standing, but not for long. Roaring in fury he threw up an arm and caught the branch of a slender tree overhanging the flood.

So slender… It wouldn't hold for long… Already the branch was bending…

But then Father was there. How he'd come, Loki didn't know. The singing was gone, leaving no more than a shrieking ringing in his ears. The enchantress was vanished or dealt with between one heartbeat and the next. The tree was gone and somehow it was night and he no longer had Thor. His hold on his brother's thick shoulders had slipped and he'd dropped to the end of a long vine – a vine? – No – Gungnir. Father must have cast it to Thor… And the river was gone. It was the Bifrost. The Bifrost broken and shattered. But how? The Bifrost was supposed to be unbreakable…Thor. Thor had broken it. But it was Loki's fault. Somehow, all of this was his own doing, his own failing…He'd misjudged… Norns… Monster

Everything was wrong.

He looked up what seemed an incalculable distance to his father – No, not his father. He'd killed his father.

But he hadn't! He'd stopped…He was held to them only by his own grip on the smooth gold shaft of the spear. His father's spear. His father…

Such a fragile thing…

Water roared up, cold – bitingly cold and stronger than anything he'd faced before. It swept him away, dashed all the air out of him and left him gasping, choking, laughing.

It was all gone.

Falling and falling through the fierce power of the water. Falling and falling and always pulled by the rush. Torn from everything he'd known.

But it never ended. The water, always cold. Always strong. Tearing and crushing and falling and falling and falling and above the roar of the torrent, the sound of gulls. It had been there some time, but only now he realized it. Gulls. Screaming and wheeling somewhere above the water.

The gulls were wheeling closer, screaming, crying, with human voices. Then, all of a sudden like a dash in the face he'd woken.

He starred at the grey of the stone beneath him. His body vibrated with tiny pains that all but overwhelmed him by their very number. Trying to ground himself, he drew a deep breath. The fire in his lungs flared and, hissing, he stilled.

He tried to rise. The movement was difficult, but possible. He knew he couldn't stand.

Stars and galaxies swirled in the darkness beyond.

There was a great deal of blood amid the broken stone where he'd lain. To the best of what search he could manage, his skin was unbroken. It was only that everything else of him had shattered.

"It's…healing me?"

The voice sounded in his head, as near as though there were someone beside him who had spoken. Leaning his head back against the stone, he pressed his eyes shut.

The child who had spoken was far away and long ago. He was sitting in a tangled nest of bed linens, his back very straight and his eyes very bright as he held out his arm. His mother was sitting on a stool beside the bed, ministering to a break that was healing exceptionally fast in the offered limb.

The child was often sick, or injured. He knew how it usually went. But this time was different. The magic – like that his mother possessed – had come free in his blood. His mother spoke of little else these days. He liked to hear her, but he did not understand much of what it was she told him. And he did not understand what was happening this time, with his arm.

Looking down, he saw the pink line in his skin where the bone had cut through. It had been angry and red only yesterday. This morning, it had not hurt so much, and when his mother had unwrapped it (his mother was the only one who touched his wounds anymore. The medicine-woman could look if Mother was nearby, but she frightened him, and when she touched him he would cry.) a tiny, silvery-green light had been playing over it, like a curious butterfly.

"Yes," she said, and her eyes were very happy, "You have a very special magic, Loki," she promised, "It wants to protect you."

The memory drew taught and white behind his eyes, then crashed into a thousand sounds and colors. He remembered. He remembered everything. He knew how he'd come here.

Catching his breath he started coughing again. Stars popped and flashed in his eyes and his head spun. He tried to move to make it stop. Then the coughing turned to something else.

The sobs were every bit as wrenching as the coughing had been. They sent liquid fire shooting up from his lungs through to his very fingertips.

It all gave out to blackness,

TLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTLTL

The beginning of the dream is from a myth where Thor and Loki are wandering around in Jotunheim and a giant's daughters are all trying to kill them.

One of them attempts to drown them. They only live because there's a Mountain Ash (a tree believed by Medieval people to repel witches) leaning over the river and Thor catches hold of it.