Despite his initial reluctance, Loki took quite quickly to this language of gestures. Book wasn't far behind him in picking it up, seeming to soak in the knowledge with little effort. It wasn't long before they were having basic conversations. The newness and very nature of the language somewhat hindered his silver tongue, but Loki could suffer under the constraints of a reduced vocabulary purely for the simple pleasure of communicating more freely. He couldn't deny the joy that sparked within him the first time he used sign language to make himself understood where basic pantomime had failed. It wasn't his power back, but it was a chink in his shackles.
When he wasn't improving his new found conversation skills—or seeing to the basic needs of survival—Loki spent most of his time in the library. Typically Book accompanied him, more valuable now that he could act as a kind of translator. Sometimes Loki would find his own way to the book hoard. He had a much better understanding of Midgardian history now, though, he noticed several glaring omissions. No wonder they had been so ill prepared for an invasion from the stars. They had thought themselves alone in the cosmos, all record of contact with other races expunged or surviving only as myth.
But the deeper he dug, the more he realized he yet had to know. One human philosopher had summed it up well, saying that "the more you know, the more you know you don't know." Loki had studied all the realms, and many things beyond, but none bore the intricacies of Midgard. Everywhere you turned another culture seemed to be trying to assert itself with its own set of histories, knowledge, traditions, discoveries, and understanding of the world. And these thousands of groups clashed into one another, wiping some out, absorbing others, influencing and springing off in another direction. They built upon one another, bickered, rejected, rediscovered, exterminated, and splintered. Each new bit of knowledge was but a point in a radiating web leading to ever more points.
The Realm Eternal and most of the other realms knew no such intricacies. For one, the realms were far more homogenous and lacked the hundreds of thousands of conflicting viewpoints and practices found on Midgard. Perhaps it was their short lives that led them to be so fractious and ephemeral.
And though he may not have gained any honor for it among the Aesir, Loki was a fine student and knew when he required guidance. His current methods had pulled him in too many different directions at once. This is what led him to Book's oh-so-delicate librarian.
"What is it, Needs?" growled Kayden, never looking up from the book she was reading, cheek resting on her fist. A piece of paper slid across her view. She glanced at the single word scratched across the scrap. "You're wanting a recommendation?"
Loki gave a sharp nod.
Leaning back, Kayden crossed her arms and squinted at him from behind her glasses. Her appraising gaze flicked across him, cataloging, deducing, collecting what information she could. For an instant he was afraid that searching would uncover too much. Abruptly she snatched up a pen and dug the nib into the paper with quick, hard strokes. She shoved it toward him.
"Given the stack in your hidey hole, you've got eclectic tastes, but you haven't wandered out of the reference and non-fiction." She smiled a bit. "Let's acquaint you with the fiction stacks."
Fiction? He cocked his head to the side.
She interpreted his confusion. "It's not that hard. Fiction—stories that aren't real, people just made them up." She gestured to her left as she said "fiction" and then to her right, "and non-fiction as you might imagine are things that are not fiction—true, real life stuff."
Midgardians create whole books of lies? In Asgard no one had any time for stories that weren't true—though everyone enjoyed a little embellishment, or in Fandral's case a great deal of embellishment. Storytelling was a well respected art in Asgard—and though few would want to admit it, Loki had been one of the best. But most had no taste for his choice of tales, no matter how well told. They clamored only for exploits of daring and brave deeds, mostly the kind of stories his one-time brother would have starred in. And if a dozen enemies had been slain, the listeners expected it to come out to a hundred in the telling—all riding upon demon wolves. Thor had been the only one to sit through, or ask for, tales of Loki's choosing. Less so in the past couple hundred years. Then he'd only had time for Loki's stories when they were in praise of his own deeds. Loki tensed at the memories. And of course he'd interrupt because I was telling it wrong. And my contributions were naught but tricks.
"How much is wrong with you exactly?" asked Kayden, shaking her head. "There you go, zoning out again. Keep it together."
He tipped his hand to her. Do continue.
She blew a strand of purple-streaked hair out of her face. "You've already plowed through a number of books in an afternoon, so I know you're voracious. You'll be able to handle these I think." She tapped the paper.
Loki cocked his head to the side. The Lord of the Rings?
"Just give it a try. I'll see about getting you a more orderly reading list put together in the meantime." She gave a challenging smile. "I'm kind of throwing you in the deep end. Try not to drown."
He plucked the piece of paper from her desk and scanned the jumble of numbers and letters. Very well then. He would see what the lies of Midgard were made of.
Kayden threw him out at closing time despite his protests. A creature known as a balrog had just appeared and he needed to know what happened next. The librarian had merely smiled at him in a sly, self-satisfied kind of way and hidden behind her mocking gaze was true pleasure in his enjoyment.
"Go on, take it," she said, thumping the ragged copy into his hands. "We're going to be breaking out the duct tape for that one soon anyways. And besides, if it happens to wander off, I'll finally have a reason to get my hands on a new one."
Loki looked up at her with suspicion. He'd rather been under the impression that she wasn't fond of him.
"Come on now, Needs, I'm not that cruel. No way I'm going to take away The Lord of the Rings mid-read. I think that breaks some part of the Geneva Convention."
Note: Just a short little chapter expanding a bit upon how Loki views Midgardian history versus his experiences with the other realms. Also a bit of irony here that the friend Kayden is based upon has never been able to get through The Fellowship of the Ring in book form…and yet she adores Ivanhoe….As you might have surmised in addition to being a huge Loki fan, I'm also a mega Tolkien fan—I have two shelves of Tolkien writings and related materials and they're still growing!
BlackWitchesCat: Funny thing…I actually worked for some professors in the Library Media Specialists department (aka librarians) while I was in grad school (they weren't part of my department, but were the BEST bosses and just general people, which helped to alleviate what was otherwise a rather miserable two years). They often sent me to check out books from the Library Media section of the library and things there were always mis-shelved and I'd have to hunt around the whole section before giving something up as truly lost. Ah, irony.