Loki was meeting his mother and Mirilya for tea on the Allmother's balcony, a nice break in his full schedule for the day. They were talking about the wedding. Loki wanted to get married as fast as possible, for all he cared they got married tomorrow, but his mother objected to that. "You are the king, my dear. A small wedding is not really an option, I'm afraid."

Loki huffed. "One of the perks of being king is getting to do what I want, mother!" He winked at Mirilya when she chuckled, hiding her smile behind her cup of tea.

"You still have to take your people into consideration, Loki. They have a right to a royal wedding too," Lady Frigga argued. "Before long, Mirilya was just a common girl. And she's pregnant too. If you want the people to accept her as their queen, you will have to follow some of the rules and traditions. Walhalla knows you haven't done so far!"

"I think your mother is right, Loki," Mirilya said, setting her empty cup down on a side table. "I mean, I don't particularly want the attention of a big wedding, but I understand why it would be necessary."

"But a big royal wedding takes a lot of planning. We don't have a lot of time, my love." Loki put his hand upon Mirilya's ever growing belly.

"If I can throw together a ball in little over than two weeks, I can also manage a royal wedding in a month or so," Lady Frigga said with a smile. "I agree we can't wait that much longer, already people are talking about Mirilya possibly being pregnant."

"Or they just think I'm fat," Mirilya suggested drily.

Loki watched the sharp lines of Mirilya's face. "I don't think you can fool anyone into thinking you're overweight."

No, soon enough her pregnancy couldn't be hidden in loose fitting gowns anymore. Loki didn't care much about the opinion of the public when it came to premarital sex, but he wanted to be married before the baby was born.

"Alright, mother, let's put the wheels in motion. We're having a royal marriage at the first possible date."

"If I can find a dress that fits," Mirilya muttered, but her worries were soon drowned in Lady Frigga's suggestions for different wedding dress styles.

Loki listened to the women for a while, slowly losing focus of what they were talking about. He even closed his eyes at some point, enjoying the sun on his face, his long limbs stretched out in front of him.

His mother's voice got him out of his light slumber. "Will you allow your brother to return?"

Loki slowly opened one eye, seeing his mother looking at him expectantly. "Father banished him because he was not worthy. Last time I checked, he couldn't pick up that hammer yet," he answered casually.

Lady Frigga frowned at her son, clearly not pleased with his reaction.

"What do you want me to do, mother? Go against father's last decree? I'm not comfortable with that." Actually, Loki wouldn't mind very much to undo the Allfather's decisions, but he was pretty comfortable here without his brother around. Having to give up the throne to someone with a better claim to it would be bad, but giving up the throne to that oaf of a brother was even worse.

"Will you at least give it some thought?" His mother looked at him pleadingly and her eyes started to glisten. "I am sure your father would welcome him back by now too."

"I'm not so sure of that," Loki said slowly, although he knew he hurt his mother with a comment like that.

"Come on, Loki. Why not let Thor come back to Asgard and prove his worthiness here?" Mirilya withstood his glare with ease, she knew he would not get mad at her.

"Are you women teaming up on me now?" Loki sat up and got to his feet. "I should go back, I have a kingdom to rule." He leaned down to kiss Mirilya, one hand stroking her belly when he did. Before he left the balcony he looked back at his mother. "I promise I'll think about it, ok?"

Lady Frigga nodded gratefully. "Thank you, that's all I ask."

After he left his mother's rooms, Loki didn't go to the council meeting that was scheduled for this afternoon. Instead, he went to the library. The throne room was the only room in the palace that was bigger than the library. The huge space was filled with books and manuscripts, two stories high. Loki liked coming here, it was the one space he was the most comfortable, besides his rooms. Even more, before Mirilya he was even more at ease here than in his own room. The library was a quiet place, there were not many people that came here. Loki had spent days here, reading and researching, not meeting a soul.

He went up to the second floor, to the section where the oldest books were kept. They were written in Old Asgardian, a dead language, but Loki had learned how to read it long ago. He was one of few who could actually, the others being erudite old men, even by Asgardian standards. Most of the books were boring, not really worth reading. The knowledge in there had been copied and updated over the years, as it should. That meant this section of the library was the most secluded part of the palace, nobody ever came here. Nobody was interested in the knowledge that was in those books, nobody, except for Loki.

Although he did not suspect Heimdall was looking for him at the moment, he shrouded himself with magic anyway. Loki always did that when visiting the library for this purpose.

The Asgardian king walked directly to a bookcase in the corner, picking up a large volume with sheets of parchment in two hands. He placed the book on a table and opened it. The first couple of sheets were intact, but they were just there to hide a cavity in the book. Inside was a smaller book with handwritten pages, somewhat like a diary. When Loki first found this notebook, it had not been touched in centuries.

He took out the notebook and searched for the right page. With a wave of his hands he held a handheld mirror in his right hand, the green light of his magic dimming quickly. The surface of the mirror was tainted from time, but it didn't serve its original, mundane purpose anyway.

Carefully pronouncing the Old Asgardian words, Loki read the spell out loud. It was a long, intricate enchantment, written over nearly two pages of the diary.

When the last word was spoken, the surface of the mirror shimmered and the tainted glass changed into an image of a narrow cavity in a rock wall. Inside the cavity you could see a clearing in a forest. Loki knew this to be Alfheim, better yet, it was the portal to Alfheim. The portal was situated on the east side of a large rocky structure that jutted up from the soil, a few miles from the palace. This was a single purpose portal, it only allowed you to travel to Alfheim and back again. But it wasn't the portal Loki was looking for.

With a sliding motion across the surface of the mirror he changed the view, skipping across the various portals that were on Asgard. The portal in the forest, that he used to travel to Jotunheim, showed flickering images inside the portal. It was a sign of the instability of that particular gateway. There were more portals, most of them like the Alfheim portal: a gateway between Asgard and one other realm. Loki skipped the hidden portal underneath the rainbow bridge and found the portal he was looking for: the Bifrost.

He needed another spell to direct the Bifrost to the place he wanted to see and that enchantment was also written down in the diary. It was of course much easier to just go to the Observatory, but Loki didn't want Heimdall's eyes prying in his back.

He just wanted his own eyes to pry in Thor's back. The surface of the mirror shimmered again and the tiny town in New Mexico came into view. This was not the first time Loki checked in like this, but he had not done it often. He had to be quick too, if he kept the Bifrost focussed on one spot for too long, Heimdall would notice.

He found Thor in a workplace of some sorts, it looked like his brother was doing some heavy lifting. The human girl that was usually somewhere around Jane was there too, sitting with her butt on a desk while Thor was putting some metal construction together. The mortal was talking to Thor, her hands moving through the air as she did. A door opened and Jane came in, carrying a tray with sandwiches piled up on it. Loki watched how Thor greeted her with a kiss, before he took the tray from her and settled down with it at the desk. Both of the women took one sandwich from the tray and Thor made the rest disappear in no time.

It was odd to see Thor in such a domestic scene, his brother had never been one to play house. But Loki couldn't deny that Thor looked happy, he seemed to feel very much at home with the humans. On Asgard his brother was always doing something, preferably stuff that involved sparring, actual fighting or drinking. This was the most mellow he had ever seen the God of Thunder.

Loki used the spell again and shifted his view in the mirror to a temporary facility in the middle of the desert. It was the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility he had visited shortly after the Allfather went into Odinsleep. The humans had build the facility around Mjölnir and Loki chuckled when he saw the mighty hammer was still half buried into the soil. The ground around it was recently dug up, causing the hammer to sit at least six feet lower than it's original position. Loki suspected the humans had tried to dug the hammer out, wanting to transport it to another location.

"Good luck finding someone who's worthy," Loki chuckled softly to himself. He doubted there was a human on Midgard who could lift the hammer. If there was, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Besides, the humans didn't even know the hammer could only be lifted by someone who was deemed worthy. They were just grappling in the dark when it came to this. And the one person that had wielded the hammer for centuries, was preoccupied at the moment, more focussed at playing house with a mortal woman than finding a way to get his hammer back.