Hello my loves! I am so sorry about the very long gap in updates, life has been a little chaotic recently, but it seems to be calming down, thank goodness! Here is the next chapter for you, I hope that you like it! There isn't too much action, but it's setting up for what's to come. ;)
New York City
An eerie quiet had begun to descend, despite the chaos that had reigned in earnest earlier in the day. Lights flickered on and off as the power stuttered, they only had a few hours left, despite all of Stark's hard work and ingenuity. Clint Barton stood and surveyed the city through a pair of binoculars. His hand trembled. A pallor had settled over his features. Natasha watched as he lowered the binoculars, rubbed his eyes, and squinted. He looked as though he was desperately trying to focus, but couldn't. He looked lost. It made her insides twist painfully.
She didn't make a sound as she moved through the thin, icy air over to him, barely even breathed. Clint was staring out at the sky, his eyes unable to really process what he was seeing. He was very still, even as she pulled out the syringe full of sedatives that Banner had given her and plunged it into his arm with a swift grace. He looked at her for one long moment of confusion, and then slumped almost gratefully into her arms as the drugs rapidly took effect.
''It's alright,'' she whispered, cradling him gently. ''Everything is going to be fine.''
Day Two: The Early Hours
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
-Edgar Allan Poe
''And I think, no matter what, whether it's sixty seconds or an actual eternity, I can live with that,'' Darcy told Loki.
He looked up at her, pain in his eyes. ''I can't. I don't want you to have to suffer through an eternity of imprisonment because of me. I can accept everything else that I've done in the past, but that I cannot accept. We are going to be fine. This will work.'' He sat up abruptly, peeled himself away from her. Darcy felt a slash of disappointment, wanted to pull him back down onto the bed, onto her body, to lose herself in him. Loneliness crawled along her skin, left her feeling pale.
''It's time to practice, as I said,'' Loki continued. ''The connection of our minds is now our most powerful asset. But though it's grown incredibly strong, it's still slightly too fragile to work as we need it to. We're going to have to channel massive amounts of energy through our combined consciousness. We can't take any chances.''
''Uh-huh,'' Darcy replied, following suit and pulling herself up into a sitting position. ''So, how do we get stronger?''
''We're going to practice a little bit of seidhr, or trance magic. This is going to be our gateway in. Remember how you wanted to know so much about those shamans?'' he smiled at her. ''Now's your chance.''
''We're going to do magic?'' asked Darcy, trying to disguise the little leap of excitement in her voice. Now that could be interesting. She grew almost instantly more lively.
Loki snorted. ''I'm not going to pull a badger out of a hat in order to predict the weather, or whatever medieval nonsense you Midgardians are still clinging to, if that's what you mean.''
Darcy giggled, felt more at ease. ''It's a rabbit that gets pulled out of a hat, usually. But yeah, every February a small town in Pennsylvania does rely on a giant rodent to tell everyone when spring is gonna be, so you were half-right. But neither one of those things is magic, even Earthlings know that. One's illusion and the other's just silly folk tradition and an excuse to get drunk and stand out in the cold, which I guess is some people's idea of a good time. Magic is more...mysterious. And most people in my world accept that it's not real, but somehow we all wish it was.'' She bounced up and down a little on the bed. ''Let's get started. I wanna learn this trancey stuff.'' Darcy's eyes were practically sparkling. ''So where are we going?''
''Well, for starters, we aren't going anywhere,'' Loki dryly explained. ''You are going to use our connection to travel into my mind, into my subconscious.''
She gave him a crooked look. ''That sounds weird.''
He narrowed his eyes at her, then said in a withering tone, ''You need to develop a basic understanding of how this sort of travel works, what it's going to be like. I would rather begin this way, because it's a controlled environment, and it will also make the bond stronger, which is a necessity at this point.''
''I highly doubt that your subconscious is a 'controlled environment,' but whatever,'' Darcy grumbled, though she was still thrumming with anticipation.
''Close your eyes,'' he told her gently, taking her hands in his. ''Try to make your mind as blank as possible.''
She did so, letting her thoughts fall away, picturing only empty space. She breathed slowly in through her nose, focusing on each inhale and exhale the way she'd been taught in yoga. After what seemed like several minutes of this she felt a strange pulling sensation, followed by a feeling of near weightlessness, or rather formlessness. It was more than a little uncomfortable. Darcy felt like a scattered collection of atoms adrift in a sea of absolute nothing. But she continued breathing, refusing to panic, keeping herself hollow and calm until she felt what could only be described as a current beginning to pull her along. And then solidity returned slowly; she felt her feet on the ground, now standing, not sitting the way she had been when they began. Darcy tentatively opened her eyes, unsure of what she might see. She blinked, her eyes watered, feeling ultra-sensitive to the light, though there wasn't really much of it, the hallway in which she found herself standing was rather dimly lit. She was alone, it seemed. But not for long. A rustling sound of footsteps, like the crunching of dead leaves, created an echoing sound as they approached.
''Off on a walkabout, little princess?'' It was Skuld, a madwoman's smile stretching her awful, beautiful face as she moved closer with her creeping, predatory elegance. Of course, it had to be her. She was everywhere. Darcy suppressed a shudder, refusing to acknowledge the Norn. ''Let me tell you something,'' continued the beastly creature, reaching out and running her long, talon-like fingernails along Darcy's face, the gesture somehow disturbingly affectionate. Darcy remained frozen; inside her mind she replayed scenes from her favourite old movie, My Fair Lady.
''Nobody will ever remember you. You have no history of your own.'' Rex Harrison was trying to get Audrey Hepburn to speak like a lady. ''You will only ever be mentioned in passing, at the end of a long, sad story that will someday be completely forgotten.'' Skuld's fingernails began to press in deeper, as though she were testing the softness of Darcy's skin. I could've danced all night, I could've danced all night...the rain in Spain stays mainly in the...
''And then you will be remembered only as a faceless whisper of grief, the sound of wind crying between stones by the sea.'' Now the Norn had a vicelike hold on Darcy's chin, clearly this bitch did not like being ignored. Their faces were less than a breath apart; Skuld's eyes burned like dry ice, cold to the point of fire. I think she's got it! By Jove, she's got it!The rain in Spain stays mainly...
Suppressing an impassioned fury, the Norn dug her fingernails in deeper, and oh they were sharp, and it hurt, but Darcy vehemently refused to give any indication that she was being bothered or frightened. Apparently sensing this, Skuld decided to take it up a notch, and briefly pressed her full, icy lips against Darcy's. The kiss was like a painful, coldly stinging slap. All loneliness and misery and the mountainous, crushing weight of time. She tasted like grave dirt.
Darcy's heart skidded, her stomach swooped and dove. But she remained firm. A quick, spooky rush of bravery overtook her and she reached out and shoved Skuld back forcefully. ''I've had better,'' she told the Norn casually, and then continued walking at a calm, slow pace, refusing to look back. She was not followed.
Her surroundings seemed to shift with each step she took, altering their form as Darcy passed through. There was no sort of coherent layout to this territory, but she seemed to be going deeper, past some sort of borderland. She wandered until the shifting ceased and she found herself in a gilded room. Torches burned along the walls and filled the space with ghostly shadows. Darcy saw one of the shadows move, and realized that once again, she was not alone. A lean figure whipped its head around at the sound of her footsteps and there he was. His eyes flashed, seeming infuriated at the intrusion. An angry light illuminated them like a fire blazing in a dark window. It was Loki, all right, or at least an aspect of his subconscious. Though he seemed quite different to her: he was thinner and colder, all sharp edges and ice. Her heart felt strangled at the sight.
''How dare you?'' he demanded in a low, harsh voice, but his breath hitched slightly when he saw her. ''Who are you? What are you doing here?''
Darcy wasn't sure how to respond. She began to say something but then the words faltered and stuck in her throat. What was the proper etiquette for situations like this?
''I've...I...I was just going for a walk,'' she offered, then winced as this explanation sounded ludicrous even to her.
He was silent, almost alarmingly so, for a moment as he simply stood and stared at her. ''You seem so familiar to me,'' he offered after several seconds of jagged silence, and his gaze softened, but only the slightest bit. She hated to admit it, but this version of Loki rather unnerved her. Young and beautiful and prideful and angry. Darcy understood that everyone had different sides to them, but it was an entirely different experience to actually see those sides, to have them take form and converse with her on their own. His green eyes were boring into her expectantly, waiting for an answer.
''I'm just going for a walk,'' she repeated, with a shrug of her shoulders.
He almost smirked, then all expression died away from his face as he strode closer to her, a mess of bitterness and bravado. ''I rather think not. I think that perhaps you ought to explain yourself more thoroughly.''
Darcy rolled her eyes, though she couldn't help but feel the briefest chill at the serpentine gaze that he gave her. ''Where are we?'' she wondered aloud, trying to distract him and also get her bearings.
''Is this how you address your king?'' he looked at her with profound annoyance, doused in curiosity.
''You're a king?'' Darcy realized that it probably wasn't wise to argue with him, thought-form or otherwise.
''I am,'' he replied, drawing himself up regally.
She made a point of glancing around at the empty room, full of shadows. ''Where are all your subjects?''
That seemed to throw him for a moment. 'King' Loki blinked wildly, as if trying to clear his head. He took a long, furious glance around the emptiness, then back at her. A half-pained, half-menacing expression clouded over his face with the intensity of a hurricane.
''You were alone here, before I came, weren't you?'' she pressed, a tingling awareness along her skin reminding her to tread carefully.
''They must have been here...'' he whipped his head around again, dizzily searching the shadows for ghosts and finding none.
''There was nobody here, not until me,'' she told him gently.
A long, awful moment passed as he considered her words. ''Get out,'' he ordered her in a deceptively quiet voice, turning away.
Loki was aware of Darcy's presence wandering delicately through his subconscious, he could feel her footsteps like a heartbeat. It was comforting, though a deep, icy fear had taken up residence inside of him. This was a necessary exercise, but an intimate one. They couldn't take any chances, couldn't find themselves falling prey to any trickery or illusion. This inexplicably powerful bond that connected them, it needed to connect their two minds absolutely, so that their combined strength would be enough to direct the energies of the Tesseract. And so they would both need to understand each other, know each other inside and out. As he had once told her, the door went both ways. And that frightened Loki. Because there were things inside of him that were troubling. And he didn't want her to feel like she'd made a mistake, now that they'd already gone too far.
Darcy unhappily left the throne room, reminding herself with each step that she was simply practicing a kind of magic, that she didn't need to be so upset about what had just happened. But really, it was more than that. She was literally traipsing through the subconscious of a god, a god that she happened to...have incredibly powerful feelings for. And it had stung to be so abruptly rejected by a part of him. But hey, what had she really expected? Darcy supposed it would be a little presumptuous and narcissistic of her to believe that each and every aspect of Loki would have the same attraction to her.
Sighing, she turned a corner and found herself in an old library. Everything was violently quiet, even for a library, and at first Darcy thought she was alone until a light rusting sound disturbed the silence and she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the outline of a person. She crept closer, and the figure moved again, stepping into her view. Of course, it was another version of Loki's unconscious. This one wore a rather nervous expression and radiated shyness. Like the other she had encountered, the outward physical appearance was virtually unchanged: the same pale skin and sharp cheekbones, but the eyes varied both in color and feeling. And he wasn't dressed in any sort of Asgardian attire, rather he wore a pair of grey trousers, a crisp white shirt, and a vest. It was a different aspect, all right, and Darcy wondered how well she'd get along with this one. He regarded her curiously.
''Hello,'' she ventured.
He cocked his head to a side and studied her for a long, ponderous moment before admitting, ''I've never had a visitor before.'' Then he said nothing and silence crept in and washed over everything and held it until he spoke again. ''I feel like I know you.''
''You do know me,'' she attempted to explain to him. He cocked his head to the side, watched her with an intensity that made Darcy's skin flush for a moment. ''I mean...the real you, the main you, does.''
Looking even more confused, if that was possible, he asked, ''What does that mean?''
''You're a part of someone's subconscious. An aspect of his personality.'' If Library Loki understood, he didn't give any real indication, he just blinked at her. Darcy quickly decided that this particular subject was slightly too existential to discuss with him in depth. Besides, she needed to explore. Taking another quick look around, she asked ''Is this where you always are?''
He nodded, stuffing his hands into his pockets. Darcy found him outrageously endearing.
''What are all these books? Do you read them? What's in them?''
''All kinds of things,'' he said proudly, though he didn't seem quite able to elaborate further. Darcy wasn't even positive that Library Loki knew which question he was answering. ''It's an extensive collection. I've been looking after it for as long as I can remember. I've never had a visitor before,'' he repeated, moving just a step closer to her. His eyes were now kind and warm and lonely. He was looking at her like she was the most fascinating thing he had ever encountered, like he was afraid that she would disappear at any moment. It made her heart twist inside of her chest, just a bit.
Then there came a feeling like a sudden gust of cold wind rushing through the library, though nothing moved or shifted at first. It was followed by a loud creaking sound, like metal buckling and straining under heavy weight. And then there was the scream. It started out low, barely little more than a whistling sound, then it amplified and grew until it was all around them, until it was intolerable. For a brief second Darcy was afraid that her head might actually explode.
''What is that?'' she cried, bringing up her hands to shield her ears against the horrid noise, but it barely did any good. The sound had somehow crept inside of her skull, into her bones, sucking at the marrow. It was the worst thing she had ever felt. ''Ugggghhh, what is it?''
''It's the Void,'' he responded in a hushed voice, putting his hands almost protectively on her shoulders, pulling her ever so gently closer to him. His touch felt a little like her Loki's, but not quite. There was something missing, something in the way. ''Don't worry, it'll be over soon.''
''What?'' she asked, removing her hands from her ears. They were so close now, she could feel his cool breath on her skin. ''The Void,'' he repeated, ''the space between the worlds.''
''That's the sound it makes?'' Darcy demanded, shaken.
''When it's quiet,'' he replied honestly.
''Do you hear it all the time?'' she asked incredulously. Her voice sounded small.
''It comes and goes,'' he admitted, an apprehension clouding over his face. ''The walls of this place are getting weaker, and so it's grown louder. I think that it's trying to find a way in. But don't worry, you're safe here for now.'' He put his hands around her waist, awkwardly, then seemed to think better of it and pulled away.
''Look, I can't stay for very long'' Darcy said, moving back, gathering her wits. Her mind fluttered, whirred like a blender. ''And to be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure that I know how to find my way back. He didn't say much about that.''
''Who didn't?''
She sighed, then gently attempted at an explanation once again. ''You—er-the person who's unconscious we're apparently inside of right now. Our minds are connected, mine and his, and we were trying to make that connection stronger. I guess it worked.'' She laughed nervously, then gave a light, weary shrug.
Library Loki just nodded again, clearly at a loss. It was sweetly sad. Darcy suddenly wanted to hug him for a long time. Instead, she said,
''Hey...why don't you give me a tour? Show me around your library, this extensive collection that you've been guarding.''
His face instantly brightened. ''Certainly. But I must warn you, the books move around quite a bit. They can never seem to stay where I put them, and sometimes they just vanish. And then sometimes a new one arrives and I haven't any idea where it came from.'' He chuckled, ran a hand through his hair and then impulsively reached out and took Darcy by the arm. She was oddly comforted by the contact as he led her through the library. At first the stacks seemed very neat and orderly, but as they continued to walk further toward the back, they grew older, messier and more disorganized, covered in cobwebs and dust. Library Loki sighed heavily. ''And this is where I start to lose track of everything, It's a bloody nuisance!'' He gestured to the shelves with scorn. ''They all have a mind of their own.''
Entropy, thought Darcy. Chaos. She almost smiled. Then she found herself drawn to the farthest corner of the room, where something unusual caught her eye. Every other book that she had seen so far looked to be quite old, with leather binding and dusty pages, but not this one. It was a fresh volume, wildly out of place, especially amid that dark, cluttered corner. She let go of Library Loki's arm and wandered over. Picking up the book, she smirked. Pride and Prejudice. Darcy. It was meant for her, obviously. It was a new edition, and the only book she had yet seen there with a title in English, not those infuriating runes. It was also surprisingly light.
Darcy opened it and almost laughed: it was hollowed out, a makeshift book-safe. Inside, there lay a piece of paper. Good job, it said. Now close your eyes and come back to me. She smiled, then let her eyelids fall closed as she began to breathe evenly and count backwards until she could feel that familiar tugging sensation, then the odd pangs of de-materialization. Once it had stopped, she timidly moved her limbs and realized that she was once again sitting, the way she had been in Loki's room, before she left. Darcy cracked an eye open and sighed with great relief to find that she had returned safely. He was sitting in front of her, still holding her hands.
''Good grief, you have a lot of selves!'' was the first thing she exclaimed, once she could feel her mouth again. Loki gave her a lopsided look. ''You only met two of them. And they're not selves, they're just aspects of my...multifaceted personality. Just pockets of feeling and thought that take on form and shape.''
''Multifaceted is right,'' Darcy snorted. ''One was an arrogant prick, the other was a confused librarian.'' She pondered thoughtfully, before adding, ''I kinda liked him, though.''
Loki rolled his eyes. ''It's not a him. It's me, just me. So whatever qualities you found...likeable, well, they came from me to begin with. I already have them.''
''And then some.''
''You have no idea.'' There was a slight, uncomfortable flicker of something like sorrow in Loki's voice. He let go of Darcy's hands. Then the flicker died away and he brightened crisply, like new paper, and asked, ''How did you know to look inside that particular book?''
''It looked different than the others,'' she explained. ''Like it didn't really belong there.''
He nodded. ''I don't want you to think that I was testing you or anything, but when you're journeying , no matter where to, you need to keep your eyes open and look for specific clues. Sort of like a breadcrumb trail, or a reminder. So, how did it feel?''
''It felt...well, real. I mean, I was in a real place, but...'' Darcy trailed off before admitting, ''I don't really know how to describe it.''
''Well, you were just getting a feel for what it's like. You'll get better at it the next go.''
She screwed up her face. ''We're gonna do that again?''
''Yes,'' he told her patiently, ''and fairly soon. We don't have that much time left, and this is a crucial aspect of our plan.''
Time. Oh yeah, there was that. Darcy panicked; cold, clammy sweat erupted on her skin. ''How long was I gone?'' she gasped. It felt like hours, but it could have been longer for all she knew.
Loki laughed, trying to ease her worry. ''It's alright, Darcy, it's only been five minutes.''
''Five minutes?'' Her voice was caked with heavy disbelief.
''Relativity,'' he told her, as if this explained absolutely everything.
Darcy couldn't help it, she laughed. It was that sort of laughter that inexplicably strikes when you're sleep deprived, an exhausted giddiness.
But now Loki seemed struck, his expression full of a kind of wonder. He moved closer to her, looking at her with a sudden great intensity. ''She never laughed,'' he said, seeming to be remembering something. ''I never saw her face and she never laughed, she only cried. A sound...a lonely sound. The sound of wind crying between stones by the sea. That's how I heard it.''
A frantic bell went off inside of her head with the words.''What did you just say?'' Darcy whispered. A recent memory tugged at her like a nervous, demanding child yanking at its mother's arm. Then she answered her own question, ''the sound of wind crying between stones by the sea. When I was in the dream-state, right before I entered your subconscious, Skuld showed up to spout more drivel about how doomed I am, and she used that exact phrase. That can't be a coincidence, can it?''
''I should think not,'' Loki said slowly after a moment. Then he climbed off of the bed and swiftly got to his feet in a rush of violent, excited understanding.
''I know it, I know...it was an illusion! The entire time. A rabbit being pulled out of a hat.'' He began his familiar tradition of pacing the floor as he explained. ''Many years ago, when I had those dreams and drew those pictures that you found in my room...I never saw the woman's face. She never said anything. Back then, I was hopping back and forth to Midgard quite often, as I said, and like I told you, I've met many interesting people over the course of these many visits, through the course of your history. Around the time that I began having those dreams I had recently gotten back from a visit to the Eastern United States, to the city of Baltimore. I'd made an acquaintance in a tavern one night—a very eccentric—well, mad really—gentleman who was something of a poet. And oh my, was he a drinker!''
Loki coughed out a laugh at the memory, Darcy listened attentively, though she wondered what the hell this had to do with anything. ''He put your friend Tony Stark to shame, this fellow did. He had a very dark, restless soul. Many demons. But that wasn't any of my business, I was merely there to observe, not to tangle with any ghosts one way or another. He wrote this eerie poem about a man who was in love with a dead woman, and she lived by the sea. Every word had this terrible ominousness to it, it was all so heavy...and I suppose that for whatever reason I couldn't get those lines and the image that they painted out of my head. I could hear that woman's ghost just crying...crying by the sea. And there were jagged rocks all around, dark waves breaking on them.''
Darcy managed a nod, she was numbed by the look in his eyes, his recollection. ''You met Edgar Allen Poe,'' she said, stumbling a little on the words. ''That's one of his most famous poems, ''Annabelle Lee.'' ''
''I never knew his name,'' Loki said after a long, quiet moment. Then he blinked and snapped out of his temporary reverie. ''My point is—remember how I told you that the Norns manipulate dreams?''
She nodded vigorously. ''Yeah, they Incept you.''
''Darling, shut up about that film or I'll drop you out of a window,'' he threatened cheerily as he continued to pace. ''What is the general scientific theory on Midgard as to why humans dream?''
''We-ell...'' Darcy tiredly racked her brains for scraps of information from the few psychology courses that she'd taken in college. ''I guess one of the most widely accepted ideas is that our dreams are filled with residual bits of what we've done all day, or what we need to do. Or...like a worry that we have, or something we try to hide or ignore. It's all still there, floating around in our subconscious and dreams are our way of processing everything.''
''Yes. Alright.'' Loki nodded, accepting this theory, then adding, ''And now can you tell me a non-scientific explanation for dreams?''
She wasn't entirely sure what he meant by non-scientific, but Darcy assumed that he probably meant otherworldly. ''Uh...I don't really...I guess that some people think that your dreams can tell the future. That they're somehow gateways that extra-sensory information can pass through. That they're something really mysterious and sacred.'' She snapped her fingers as she remembered something. ''I took this one anthropology course pass-fail and I actually skipped it most of the time but this one lecture was really interesting. The professor was talking about ancient Egypt-''
''What Dynasty?'' interrupted Loki, a wry smile on his face.
''Don't even. I have no idea. The one with the pyramids,'' Darcy said wearily, rolling her eyes. ''Smartass. Anyhow, they were big on dreams, thought that you could get answers from the gods if you dreamed in the temple, or something like that.''
''What if it's a little bit of both?'' Loki asked rhetorically. ''And what if, perhaps, you happened to be dreaming, not necessarily in some temple, but suppose that you needed an answer, and suppose that something was prepared to give you one, but it told you only exactly what it wanted you to know.''
It was actually a very terrifying concept. It chilled her for a moment, pins and needles raking up and down her arms like fingernails. They screeched. It hurt. ''Well...then...you could control everything,'' Darcy whispered.
''Since the beginning of the universe. Dreaming is our oldest function,'' Loki said with a gentle nod, sensing her tension, saddened by it. He stopped pacing, rejoined her on the bed.
''What's the second oldest?'' she asked breathlessly. In her mind, she'd just run for miles. Her body was catching up.
''Singing,'' he replied with a light shrug, as if the answer should be obvious. ''Dreams are a place, Darcy, they're like a...a port. The beginning of the journey. And journeys always contain some sort of peril, however mundane. The problem with Midgard is that you all always find yourselves having to divide everything into neat little compartments because you're all anal retentive and have serious control issues. You think that if you can put something in its proper box and context then you have nothing to fear anymore. There are no monsters in the closet—you're merely tying into some sort of collective-unconscious-genetic memory—repressed childhood nonsense and it's all like a brief, hallucinogenic ride without any sort of consequences the next day. Bollocks.''
He took Darcy's hands in his once again and continued.''The minute you dream, you put your foot halfway through the door. And whatever may be listening on the other side can get a little tiny peek inside of your soul, inside of your fears and desires and hopes and terrors and perversions. And sometimes, the thing that's listening is loving and benevolent and wants to play muse and dole out characters and plots and songs. And sometimes it's post-modern and indifferent, boomeranging your own subconscious back at you with bizarre symbolism that leaves you pondering for days. Sometimes, like me, once upon a time, it is simply bored and wants a playmate.'' Loki paused, smiled impishly. His eyes seemed to grow greener. ''As I told you, I've been inside a lot of dreams. How do you think ''The Cat In The Hat'' got written?''
He burst into laughter like an electric sunbeam, ignoring the disbelieving look on Darcy's face as he continued. ''And, my darling, beautiful Miss Lewis, even gods dream. Gods dream, elves dream, dwarves and vampires and witches and every last creature in any world...dreams. Except for three lonely women, older than time, trapped in three eternally suspended quantum states.''
He thought, deeply and with sincere hatred, about them, searched for the right words to describe the havoc that followed their footsteps. ''Urd watches the past and her heart is screaming with bitterness, with age. Her heart is like an arthritic joint, swollen and miserably creaking on. Little Verdandi, a million years young, lives always in the present, never knowing more than the moment that she govens, that she will govern forever. And our dear friend Skuld, our ''Must Be,'' a lofty statement if there ever was one. Unmoving as stone and entirely mad, she has a memory that stretches nearly to the first being that ever dreamed. It's the dreams that make the Wyrd, that feed it. Without dreams, there are no threads.''
A sudden thought pounded into her mind like a hammer. ''Wait—wait, threads...I'm remembering something,'' Darcy exclaimed, trying to gather the fleeting details of the memory as it sped along her spine, an obscure footnote in her history, long-forgotten but suddenly useful.
''During freshman year my roommate was this girl, Prudence, and she was really into like...candles and crystals and auras...the whole floor always reeked of incense, but anyhow, she did this thing called ''astral projection''. Darcy relived it briefly, plain and bright as day. Patchouli, all the time. Those crystals glaring up at her from Prudence's makeshift altar, reflecting the light but still always seeming able to glow from the inside out. ''She said that when you sleep, your soul leaves your body and goes out to do whatever, but there's a kind of rope that holds your spirit to your body, so you can always find your way back.'' She paused a moment, then blinked. ''But your mom told me that sometimes people get lost...and they can't find their way back. So...which is true?''
Loki smiled gently. ''There is a cord, or a thread, but it's not holding anything on a safe tether. It's simply transmitting information to whomever may be on the receiving end. And then the threads are finally grabbed by the ones who never sleep.''
''The Norns.'' Darcy almost spat the word, as if it were something stale.
''Of course they control everything,'' continued Loki. ''We all have the one vulnerability that they don't. When I got back from Midgard, after talking to that man, his poem was still in my head for days. And while I slept, the Norns crept in. I may have been extra tired, less guarded, more susceptible to their trickery. And they wove images of a beautiful, faceless woman woman who only cried and never smiled, a sense of longing and loneliness, and a poem about a man in love with a ghost in a kingdom by the sea and lo and behold, you have there the perfect recipe for mysterious dreams and eerie sketches.'' He smiled almost manically, his eyes alight with realization. Loki now looked younger and stronger than ever.
''Even then, they were laying down the tracks, up until the moment that I looked out of the window and saw you standing there. The ancient scribes and poets, the ones who brought our myths to your world, they dreamed. Oh, they certainly dreamed. And everything they wrote was exactly what they were supposed to write. And then the Norns waited. They were patient. Do you think it was merely by chance that after Thor was banished he happened to arrive in New Mexico right at the precise moment that your strange...caravan happened to come crashing by? Oh, Darcy, I hate to tell you this, but at the risk of sounding melodramatic—you and I were meant to be.''