Sorrow of Divine
K'NAAN; Is There Anybody Out There
Loki stole through each realm and when the wailing he heard had nearly driven him insane, he made his way back to the secret lair he held away from Asgard and curled into his own fur as he clutched his paws to his ears. "Please! Give me peace, Sigyn! Forgive me and let me hear you scream no more….!"
"It is not her you hear, Loki."
The red fox pulled his paws away from his head, flicking his ears as his brow lowered looking around through the darkness and growled. "Go away! You are no friend of mine to have taken her from me!"
"I am your friend, Loki. I will always be your friend, little one."
"THEN BRING HER BACK!"
"You know I do not have that power."
He growled again as he bit back tears. "THEN BE GONE FROM ME! I HEAR HER SCREAMING IN AGONY! THE LEAST YOU COULD DO AS MY FRIEND IS TAKE ME TO HER!"
The vixen sighed as she seated herself on the floor. The red fox rose from his lowered position to match her as she shook her head. "Loki, you could bewitch a snake charmer if you wished it." He scowled at her as she looked away. "But you are killing me, seeing everything you once stood for lost to this darkness, when I have seen you overcome it so many times."
"She was my mate! My true mate!" He snarled as she kept her eyes locked on him. "I have lost all my children and my true mate. THERE IS NOTHING BUT DARKNESS, AND I HAVE SOUGHT HER OUT IN EVERY DEPTH OF IT! WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE OF ME? WOULD MY BLOOD BE ENOUGH!WHAT DO I NEED TO DO TO GET SOME MERCY FROM YOU?!"
The vixen shook her head as she stood. "If you wish to spill your own blood, it will not be on my conscience. God of Misery - you do not wish to live but fear death. If you cannot find the voice in the shadows, then perhaps, God of Mischief, Masks, the Moon, you should seek what you wish to find somewhere other than the darkness."
His ears perked as she tilted her head. "Somewhere other than the darkness?"
She huffed as she shook and deadpanned him. "Are you going to let this consume you, believing it is Sigyn you hear, even when I have told you it is not? Your mate was not born like any other in existence."
"What do you know of her birth?" he asked as he narrowed his eyes. "Or how she came to be? Perhaps you know of her death more than any other."
"Do you believe I do not know the inflection of your words, Loki? I can tell you nothing other than death finds all those who live, and she is not lost. No soul is ever lost." The vixen lifted a brow with a condescending glare as he rolled his eyes.
"Then prove it! Tell me how to find this wailing so I can know it is not my mate suffering, and that I have not caused her to be in such agony!"
"Loki, no living being has ever gone into the light. I do not know what it will do to you, if- you can survive it."
The red fox stood defiantly as he turned a shoulder on her. "It would be better than listening to a siren who drives me mad! Not even Heimdall can hear her! Yet you know who she is? Where she is?"
"I cannot go, Loki. Darkness cannot live in the light. There are no shadows there for me to find, no corner I can be in that would shield me from… her. What will you do when you find this wailing siren you seek?"
"I will shut her damnable screaming up! And try to find out why the hell I am the only one who hears her wailing! I want to know why she tries to drive me insane in my own sorrow!"
The vixen giggled as he dropped his brow on her. "That is a simple enough question to answer, God of Mystery. Let me help you with it. A simple little riddle, that no other in existence may understand. What have you lost, what do you seek? What will you find, when you are the weak? What will find you when you no longer look, what will be missing from your life's story book?"
Loki growled in frustration as he slammed both paws to his head groaning again. "Just tell me how to find her!"
Grace bowed her head as she lifted her arms. "You have much darkness in you Loki, but not the kind I hold or what I am. The dark magic you have learned from the lady of the cliffs, the things your mother taught you, the magic the giants placed within your body when they tried to change you, the way the lady of the cliffs changed you, you must pull them all together and combine them with my darkness. I will flee when she arrives, for I cannot stand in her light. And it will be up to you to find a way to survive her or keep her hidden. I must warn you, Loki. She is unlike any other creature in existence. She knows no lies, knows nothing but what she is and what she has been. She has no masks and will not understand if you try to be anything other than what she sees and hears."
"That is not possible, Grace. No one can be so…."
The vixen looked him over and lowered her brow as she narrowed her eyes. "I do not lie. You of all should know, I know all, see all. I chose this form for a reason and have kept it since you asked for my help teaching your brother Thor that he was not invincible. You wanted him to know this to keep him safe because you knew if he did not understand it, he would get himself killed. An old male or an old female, does it matter which I am, or that I am now a fox when I still have no reason to lie? There are no secrets from me. I am what I am and will be as I choose to be for Eternity."
"You were only a shadow before then, an old raven you sometimes still become. You have reason to do this Grace, and have had since before that happened haven't you, Vixen?" He tipped his head and narrowed his eyes looking at her as she squared her shoulders.
"I have no power over free will. I cannot change a choice someone makes. I can only hope they can hear if I try to change their minds, Loki. I can influence someone and make suggestions, nothing more. What you do, what others do, I cannot change. I have no power over the way a life unfolds."
"But you have it over death?" He asked as he curled his lip and watched as her head hung.
"No, I do not. I am only the thing that causes it, so I will not leave any soul to the darkness. I can lead them to the light and nothing more."
"You lead them to the…they see you as the reaper? When you are the guardian of souls?"
Grace sighed as she looked the other way. "We have many faces, and many names."
The red fox smirked as he looked back at her and flicked his ears up. "I have managed to influence even you? Oh, my father will love that."
"He did not, and it was just as much your mate who influenced me." She smirked back before they smiled widely at each other. The vixen kept her thoughts to herself as she watched the red fox gathering several things, until he stopped in front of a large pedestal bowl in the center of the room.
"Since you took the form of a fox for a reason, a considerable amount of time ago, I suspect you will not be telling me why it is she screams, or why you are invested?"
The vixen folded her arms over her chest and shook her head. Loki shook his head chuckling as he threw several things in the basin and closed his eyes as he raised his paws. "Wait." He looked back at her with a tipped brow as she reached into her robe and watched the vixen dig through it with her tongue stuck out as she searched. The fox chuckled as the sand in the glasses on her nose shifted in the hourglass that made them. "I have something for you that may help."
She pulled out an object and handed it to him. His lips curled up looking at it. "What is this? What is it made of?" He sniffed it, curling his brow as she laughed.
"They are called sunglasses and are made of plastic. Here." She unfolded them and he tilted his head back while she placed them over his eyes.
"Strange," he said as he opened his eyes and shook his head. "They make the world darker. What magic makes the whole world appear darker? Plastic? Why would anyone need such a thing and where did you get it?"
"They are not magic. What matters is that they may help. These are the darkest ones I could find. They are called Aviators." She said as he took them off awkwardly and gave her a disbelieving glance.
"I suppose there is no irony in the fact that they are named after a flyer and your first form was a flyer?" he asked snarkily as he rolled his eyes.
The vixen shrugged and smirked as Loki stuck one earpiece in his belt, letting them dangle from his waist. "Loki," she said sternly as he raised his paws and glanced at her. "Remember my words. She is a complete innocent. She has never seen the worlds or any kind of darkness that may live within them."
Heimdall sat for thousands of years, looking beyond the rainbow bridge and listening to his brother searching through the realms for a voice no one heard. Until the day he heard no more and sought to find him again…
Loki looked around and curled his brow. His ears pinned to his head as he flinched. "What have you done to my home?"
"I have hidden us and your Den in a realm between the worlds, where there is no sound." The red fox glared at her as his ears perked.
"Then why can I still hear her?!"
Grace rolled her eyes. "Let me respeak that. No sound can leave this realm. You can still hear it if you are here."
Loki stared at her before his eyes ticked to the side. "Heimdall cannot hear anything here? What is this place?"
"We are at the edge of Eternity. A place where nothing is real and I can move between the realms. It is not really a place, more like an intersection between everything that is, has ever been, or will ever be."
She shook her head as Loki chuckled. "Grace, I believe you should always have been a fox, not that shadowed old bird."
"Yes, yes," she smirked as he snickered and waved a paw at the basin between them. "Get on with it." The red fox laughed as he raised his paws again.
Days, weeks, months passed as Heimdall searched and found nothing. In the darkness of where Grace had pulled Loki, the fox fell to his knees as his muscles ached and he panted heavily as he looked to her with exhaustion in his eyes.
"I cannot do any more. I cannot find her!"
"Quit? Since when do you quit, Loki? You have always found a way, with your words or with your misdirection, with your faces and masks, changing your form, using magic to misguide all around you. How is this any different?"
"I do not know how to reach it, how to make her stop! I have used everything I have!"
"Why do you seek it? This sound, when I have told you it is not what you wish to find!"
"To silence it! To hear it no longer!"
"WHY DO YOU SEEK THE SOUND!?" She growled as she bore her teeth in the darkness and dipped her head. His red eyes looked up at her from where he'd fallen and glazed over as she lowered her brow. "What have you lost, what do you seek?!"
"I have lost everything! I seek silence! Silence from the worlds! Silence from the voices in my head! Silence from the failure I have become. Silence from my own sorrow, silence from the memories of all I cannot forget!"
"What will you find when you are the weak?" She asked as he tried to pull his eyes back to her.
"PAIN! Pain in knowing that no matter how hard I tried I was not good enough for any of them! Not for my father, my mother, my brother, my siblings! Not for my children and not for my mate!" He screamed as he growled and curled his brow trying to keep from sobbing.
She looked at him with sorrow in her eyes as his head fell to the floor and lowered her voice. "What will you find when you no longer look, what will be the missing story in your life's story book?"
The red fox looked at her and curled his lip as his eyes spilled over in streaks of flames. "I find the thing I do not want. I find life and breath still in me. I find the loneliness that consumes me each day and walk in a darkness that not even you could compare to, Grace."
The vixen met his eyes as hers were overcome with a dampness she'd never known. "And for my first un- born child, I will show her true mate the way."
Loki looked back to her with fire streaming down his face as she tipped her head and smiled sadly. "Your first un-…Sigyn was your daughter? ... Your only child. The vixen found in fruit, grown from a seed and a single grain of your san…." his breath caught as her eyes swelled over, tracking down her cheeks. "I have failed yet another, Grace. This will be the story not in my book. That no one will know of. That Agony has found my name yet again and will be the thing that drives me past the edge of the worlds."
"You did not fail her, or me. You are already past the edge of the worlds, Loki. Why do you seek to silence the voice you hear?" She asked as she brushed his cheek. He shook his head curling his face, no longer fighting the stream of emotions leaving him. "What made her your true mate, when there had been others?"
The fox's chest jostled as she cradled his head. "Heimdall. I loved her, but when I took my mother's necklace and refused to return it…He took her from me. Stole her and hid her away. In the moment I found her gone I knew nothing in any realm…any world…anywhere, would be worth as much to me…as her. Nothing else mattered."
"But why do you seek to silence this voice you hear?" she asked softly as his head curled into her shoulder. The red fox clutched her robes in his paws as he wailed…
"BECAUSE I FEEL IT! It is as if the sound amplifies all I cannot escape, all I wish I could still hold, all I wish to forget! It is inescapable and drives me to the edge! This is all I can handle, Grace! Knowing I am the cause of the loss of your only child! I do not deserve even a friend like you. Forgive me! I have stolen so much by hiding it and now I cannot hide from anything! I have failed her! I have failed everyone. I have even failed you!" he fell to his knees in front of her as she cupped his chin, pulling his eyes to hers again.
"You will fail Loki, if you do not try. For not trying is the only failure…."
"I cannot try again! I cannot do this anymore. I have nothing left to lose."
"Then you have truly failed Loki, and you are lost, for my daughter would not believe you were capable of quitting. If you haven't the strength to keep faith for her, you are only what you believe yourself to be, to you and her. We all exist, in the shadow of our failures if that is all we choose to see." The vixen turned and vanished into the darkness as he looked around. Staggered breaths left him as he shook and he found his way to his feet.
"Grace! Please! I can't stay here! There is no one else here! I will go mad in the silence of her screaming!"
''Then find yourself. No one is ever alone, Loki. There are no masks here, there is no mischief, there is no misdirection. There will be no misunderstandings within the chaos that is order. It simply is. This is the mystery you wished to solve, only your misery can trick you here. Nine realms, ten tails, if you do not belong in your land, you will never belong to any other. Those who do not try only know the never, when the answer is for- ever."
Her hollow voice echoed through the space as he scrambled from the Den and opened his eyes, gawking at the surroundings. He stood on a barren Earth, the Moon and world it had collided into blazing as the pieces from both planets stayed scattered around the space between them. Dark grey and dismal with the dust that hung in the air, the only color he could see was the red from the inferno still blazing both worlds. The moon burned a bright red that matched his own fur as the Earth smoldered just below it and his feet. The fox walked for eons, nothing moved, nothing changed. He became lost in the silence between the worlds, a silence that left an echo of his own life chewing and gnawing at every part of him as the wailing from the unseen voice grew in his ears, grew in his heart.
"Damnable creature! Why do you torment me!" The stars stayed bright, the sun stayed lit, the worlds still burned, but so slowly that he found himself counting days that would take a thousand years as the wailing from an unheard siren continued. Ruptured spaces hung in the sky, distant worlds were only an arm's length away and visions of things he'd never seen danced around like phantoms that faded in and out of reality. None of it was anything he could touch as it seemed to fly around in a suspended un-solid state. The only sensation he could clearly grasp was the sound in his ears of the wailing that was driving him insane.
"GRACE! PLEEAASE!" He dropped to his knees after begging for Grace to return again and clutched his head, pinning his ears back as everything around him, everything within him became too much to bear. The fox screamed, a million years of agony and loneliness rushing forward until the sound of his voice blasted the moon farther away and a light began to grow as the wailing around him became deafening. He turned trying to catch his breath as a singular spot appeared in front of him, blinking as the tiny speck grew until he was squinting against the light. Rings and orbs of light kept flooding into the tiny central point. The wailing he'd heard for centuries had his ears tipped back as he ground his teeth together. He lost his own footing when the sound became so large that everything in all the worlds vibrated around him as if the sound may shatter everything in existence.
The flashing orbs and rings of light kept pouring in and had him holding his paws up before the central point seemed to explode into a light brighter than all the suns in creation. His paws flew up as he turned away, trying to shield his eyes as he stumbled to the ground. Each breath he took heaved in as he scrambled, trying to find the odd object Grace had given him. He searched along the ground blindly after dropping it and grasped them firmly, whining as he fought to open them and get them on his face correctly. Loki looked up still trying to shield his eyes as the light seemed to shift. He looked again and found an unfamiliar form, or lack thereof, that each orb and ring seemed to be pulled into as he moved to get closer. "WHO ARE YOU? WHY DO YOU SCREAM?!"
Another shift and he kept his paws up as he moved closer, trying to identify who he was talking to. The fox reached out a paw and closed his eyes, turning his head as the bright figure grabbed his wrist. He'd expected to have his fur burnt off, but instead it burned as brightly as the fire from the moon that was used to create him. His eyes closed as he swayed and found himself engulfed in his own fire, and the being that had once been there vanished as he managed to open his eyes again, on fire and burning white hot. brighter than the smoldering lava of materials around him. He searched for the figure and curled his brow as he took a seat with hie eyes closing in an unusual calm.
Every question in his mind was answered or fled, every doubt disappeared, every regret faded, and every darkness within him dissipated along with all the pain. As the warmth of the light he was in consumed him, he settled into a calm no living being should ever know. All the knowledge of existence filled each empty part of the lonely life he'd known for so long. The memories of thousands of his children, every animal that had ever lived, every star ever born and died, every planet, every tiny little creature that had scurried through the worlds were his to know without the darkness or struggles through any of their lives present. He was whole, made complete by the missing pieces of all the lives he'd touched, all the lives he'd never known, all the lives that touched his mind through her.
Through the veil he saw all the spaces between life and death, saw why the creature had wept for so long. He looked around and found that the orbs and rings of light no longer came to a point around him, but into him as he stood to his height again. Souls, the living souls of all departed rushed to him. The creature his father had deigned a beast became clear as he closed his eyes and let himself be flooded with each light that came to the being now settled in his own body. It knew no darkness, no pain, no chaos, and it had only known loneliness when it had realized a mistake had been made. The souls that no longer wished to be had been erased and cast away. Unknown to her, that even taking their memories and doing such still left echoes that were forgotten in the darkness. Each echo she'd cast away was lost in the coldness of space and sought out others, not understanding what they'd once been. What Odin called Fairy dust. Particles of things that had once been, broken and lost from what they were and where they were meant to be. They bonded together in loneliness to form the first God of knowledge, Odin. Odin had been collecting these pieces and echoes, creating other Gods and using them to feed the trees in Asgard that kept the Gods immortal.
Life had continued to grow on its own, and in trying to correct the mistake she'd made, she took in all souls that propelled existence. With more and more being born, they'd overwhelmed her to the point that the voices and individuality of all the others had been erased as she took more than she could carry. For the first time in her existence she knew what it was to be alone as she tried to save them all from being forgotten in the darkness. The attempt to save all the pieces of echoed souls was the cause of what was starving and killing the Gods. She'd pulled them all away from the trees in Asgard trying to save them.
Each soul that had returned to her was sent back to the worlds, to be reborn again and return with more knowledge to give her, or given the choice to become one with her and all the others. Those who stayed became Divine. Within the spark where the knowledge had overwhelmed her, they were lost in al the light of the life they had created. She was no God. She was a power and force nothing could stop. She was the essence of all light, of all life. The place where light began and life formed from her first cognitive thought, exploding into existence and growing over the cold darkness of time. "Who are you?"
The only thought that came to him, a simple statement in his own mind and voice as his flaming eyes opened again and her words echoed through all creation. "I AM."
Notes; Time has no mercy to give. There is a recap of how Loki's children with Sigyn died, Narfi and Nari, the two sons he had with Sigyn and how Odin turned one into Vali, the wolf he cast to earth. His other children are in the Prose Edda, but a couple are often overlooked. A raven symbolizes bad luck, death, life, magic, mystery, intelligence, flexibility, destiny and Fate.
The Lady of the cliffs is not part of Norse mythology and is a part of this tale along with the children they had and how both her, his parents, brother and the giants changed Loki's body. Grace is the old vixen who wrestled with Thor to help Loki and Heimdall show him he was not invincible. Sigyn was her first daughter/child. A child grown from a seed and a single grain of sand she/he placed within a piece of fruit in Asgard's garden, where she was found by Idun and became Loki's mate, turning him into what is now considered a true fox.
Loki and Heimdall fought over a necklace he stole from Freya (Brisingamen). It was a story told to Nick when he was younger. Heimdall stole Sigyn because Loki refused to return it. He traded it to get his wife back. Grace is the grim reaper, old age, darkness and shadows, the carrier of souls from one place to another. She is older than life itself. This creature Loki is with- IS NOT 'GOD' or a God at all. She is above Gods ~The spark of creation~ the force that started all life in scientific terms is known as the Big Bang. No one understands exactly what caused this explosion that propelled all life. In this story, it was the realization of, "I AM." Yes I'm mingling religion and science- While I don't believe in religions, I do believe they have a place in the world and serve a purpose. Time is above everything.
Lost In Silence; Killing Me Softly Villain Of The Story; Peace Of Mind Red; Pieces