Becoming We Are

K'NAAN; Is There Anybody Out There

Loki looked around and noted the odd physical sensation of his heart racing while each sound seemed to perk his ears. The fox smirked as it dawned on him that the creature he now held in his own body had never seen before, never heard anything, or smelled anything. Unlike a child she had the ability to understand language, but not the ability to identify anything other than pure information or raw emotion that held no darkness. He turned, allowing her to look around and chuckled at the wonder she held for everything. "How long have you been alone?"

"Alone?" The voice asked as he closed his eyes.

"Yes, alone with no one to keep you company. How much time have you been alone?"

"What is time?" she asked as his eyes opened again.

The fox curled his brow wondering how she could be within him and not hear his thoughts when he could clearly hear hers, until he considered why she'd let go of the souls who no longer wished to exist. She wouldn't force any creature to become more than it wished to be or continue on a path it didn't wish to follow, for she knew no darkness. So, she wouldn't push into his mind and take over when it was obvious she had the power to do so. "Time is…uh, a construct of life. It is a…." The fox shook his head as he tried to find a simple way to explain it. "It is the space between when a life begins and ends. The space between when a soul comes and goes from you."

"Oh," she replied curiously as his feet started carrying them through the wasteland desert of a broken world. He was surprised by all the questions she had about everything around them as he got back to his den laughing.

"That is the Moon, this is the Earth. I think this is right before I was born."

"Born? What is... born?"

The fox chuckled as he decided that wasn't a conversation to have yet. "I will explain it to you, but right now I need to find something to eat because I am hungry."

"But you are Loki, how can you be hungry?"

He laughed as he opened the door to his lair. "I am Loki, I am also hungry. An odd thing since I am sure I have been here longer than I have lived and have wanted for nothing since I arrived. I don't think anything ages here or it does so slowly I cannot see it. I also need to get back so Heimdall does not worry. I am sure he is trying to pull his ears off by now."

"Ears? These are the things you hear the sounds with? What is worry?"

The fox smiled as he sat at the wooden table and pulled a loaf of bread from a shelf before tearing off a chunk and shoving it in his mouth. "Worry is a feeling you get when you can't find someone you have lost." He smirked as he tore another piece of bread off and shoved it in his maw when he felt a sense of curious satisfaction he knew wasn't coming from him. "This is bread. I think you like it. You are a curious creature, having all this knowledge about the realms and life, but not knowing of any of these things. I need to get back to my brother. Would you like to see more?"

"Is it like bread?" she asked and he snickered while he continued to eat.

"Yes, it will be like bread for you. I have to figure out how to get back because Grace will not answer me. I know I cannot use my dark magic carrying you around, not that it would do me any good trying to use it here again."

"Magic?"

"That I cannot explain, but I have so much knowledge in my head now I think I can do something that will get us both back. I hope I am right thinking no one will be able to see you or the things that keep coming to you while I keep you hidden."

"Hidden?"

"No one can see you. No one has ever seen you. You are one of the things taken for granted unless it is something that is significant when you are lost or when you arrive."

"When I arrive?"

Loki chuckled, "When someone is born. I'll explain that later. Right now, let us see if we can leave this place. I have no desire to stay where no real color has arrived yet."

"Color?"

The fox left the den and tilted his head in thought as a smile spread across his face. "I will show you color, if you can lend me a little bit of your light." He sucked in a breath as his fur and eyes lit up, and stood burning like an inferno as he collected the warmth and began to pool it in his paws, calling on all the knowledge of magic he had. But this was no dark magic he wielded as he spun and threw his paws in the air, chuckling again as the voice within him gasped with a sense of awe that permeated his whole being. "That is color. This is yellow, the closest color to what you are. This is violet, the color of the first true flower that will arrive on this planet and why my mother made my brother's eyes that shade of purple. This is red, the same as my fur and the fires that started when the Earth and Moon collided. Orange, the color of most living foxes today, green, the color of the living plants. Blue, the color of the sky. This is a rainbow, a bridge we can walk on from one realm to another, though I am sure Heimdall does not know of this realm."

"Realm…?" she asked as he looked around letting her see again.

"There are nine, I suppose ten with this one. This is Grace's realm. Well, no I guess not. She said this places was between places. I think it is why everything here moves so slowly and seems to be…not in the same place at the same time. That or she has somehow managed to make a place that isn't supposed to exist, but if you and I are here I do not know how to explain it. You…where did you come from? You don't know about...You've never left your realm or land, never, lived?"

"I do not know what land or never is."

"Grace said something along the line of Neverland." Loki chuckled as he recalled what Grace had said. "A tenth realm, where everything stays unseen and hidden. It might be how she moves around like she does through the shadows and spaces between time. Grace brought me here. She is everywhere, even in the places you cannot be."

"Grace?" she asked as he stepped onto the bridge and felt his heart jump as he looked over the edge, snickering as she jolted from the first fear she'd ever felt.

"Grace, darkness, time, knows all, sees all, hears all. She is stronger than all the Gods. I am surprised you don't know he…. you don't know her." The fox sighed as he felt a sense of curiosity growing and shook his head. "I know why she brought me here. She made one hell of a point. To save me, to save you, to save herself."

"Save herself?"

Loki hummed as he kept walking, making a point to look around so she could see the cosmos they traveled through. "Each point of light out here came from you. Every light, every life will cast a shadow. Every living creature has a mind that is a shadow because no one else can see what they are thinking or feeling. Within the shadows is where she lives and how she came to be. She is the only thing in existence that you did not create. Well not directly anyway. The life forms that grew within the light you created, created her. She has always been, because before you there was only darkness. But she had no form, no thoughts, no face of her own and not even a memory until others came to be. She lives within each living creature and pulls the darkness away from them before she brings them back to you to start all over again. She is more than what she appears to be. Odin is my father and Freya is my mother. They both taught me as I grew, but I think Grace had more to do with who I am than even Sigyn. Because she knew what was going to happen if she did not get involved. I loved Sigyn so much that it changed me, I changed for her, for the love she held for me."

"Love? What is love?"

Heimdall's ears shot up as he searched through the realms again. A thunderous roar from somewhere unseen broke through the barriers of Asgard's entrance and he was thrown back, shaking his head as a rainbow appeared. The hare stood wide eyed as Loki walked to the gates, the rainbow bridge behind him fading as his feet hit the ground.

"Heimdall, what is love?" The hare looked at him and twisted his neck with a raised brow as the fox smirked.

"How did you…I'm the only one who can open the gates to Asgard and create a rainbow bridge." Loki snickered as his brother glared and gawked at him. "What are those apertures attached to your face? How can you see with that darkness over your eyes?"

"You don't see the lights?" Loki asked looking around as the hare looked him over curiously.

"Have you gone completely mad?" Heimdall asked as he shook his head.

"Heimdall, what is love?" he asked again, smiling as the buck's brow curled down in confusion.

"Love is…a bridge? A bridge that can connect all places and all living things together. Loki? What is wrong with you?" He asked as his brother kept smiling.

"Nothing. I have never felt better. Want to play a game?"

"A game?" Heimdall asked. One side of his lip turned up in confusion as his whiskers twitched.

"Hide and seek." Loki stated as he squared his shoulders, smiling broadly as his brother looked him over with a tipped brow.

"Ugh, we are a little old for that one, are we not?"

Loki shrugged as he clicked his tongue. "Ok, how about tag?" he asked with a sneaky smirk before he leaned forward and flicked the hare's ears. Heimdall's face turned to a scowl as his brother shot off in another direction. "TAG! You're it!"

"What is wrong with him? He is acting so strangely. I think he has fallen from the edge of the worlds!"

"Then perhaps you should catch him." Heimdall's ears lifted as he turned and found Grace leaning into the side of the wall that surrounded Asgard. The hare looked at her blinking as she tipped her head down, letting the glasses filled with sand on her muzzle slide forward as the gleam in her eyes caught the reflection of daylight. "If he is going Mad as you believe, then should you not make every moment you have with him that he remembers count?" she asked as he looked back to where he could hear the fox taunting as he kept running. "Build another bridge Heimdall, it is the only thing that can bring you all together." The buck looked off in thought as a thin smile curled his mouth and the vixen giggled as he bound his legs tightly and jumped, racing to catch his brother.

Grace watched as Heimdall chased Loki all over Asgard, laughing when the hare jumped in front of the fox under a low bridge. Loki fell backwards with surprised shock that raced through the being he was carrying and hiding, rolling into a laugh as the excitement from something new rushed through her. The fox looked up grinning widely as Heimdall extended a paw and helped him off the ground. "Loki, that is the first time I have heard you laugh in a millennia! Where have you been?"

The fox shrugged as the two started walking together. "Finding myself, finding reason."

"Reason?" Heimdall asked as he tipped his head.

The fox sighed as he looked back over the water they stood in front of. "Reason, Heimdall. There isn't one. For anything. It just is. We have no control over what happens with life, but, good or bad, life happens. And I would not change the time I had with any of my children. I would not change a single moment if it led me to love them, or Sigyn, even if I did lose them." He cupped a paw over his brother's shoulder and left the hare there with the same perplexed look on his face as he dove into the water, becoming a fish again before he swam away.

Heimdall followed Loki, worrying more and more as he watched him shifting to countless forms and laughing. "No, I have been every living creature at one time or another. The giants flooded me with magic and nearly killed me with the strength they added to my body. I became part wolf and lion when my parents tried to save me, part hare when my brother's tail got tangled in mine. The lady of the cliffs placed part of herself inside me, and I became able to give birth and sire children. I have given birth to thousands of children…The first were all eggs." Heimdall's face curled to worry as the fox laughed and shook his head, seeming to talk to someone who wasn't there. "No, they were not birds, and didn't lay eggs either. Their mother was a great reptile in the dawn of time. They had wings like hers but many looked like me, some were small, some were large, almost all of them had fur and furless skin. They were very unusual. Infuriated my father, caused a lot of fighting because in order to feed them we had to give them our energy. They couldn't eat the fruit or wine here because they were half mortal, half God. But we also found out that they could give us something back with their tails, something very similar to the feeling I have now. Euphoric I suppose. No, I can't explain it because I never did that with them. It was the other Gods that started it. My father called it Lust, but from what I understood that wasn't a very good word for it."

"They simply gave part of themselves back to those who had given to them. The lust was that some of the Gods became addicted to that feeling and couldn't get enough. They started fighting over one of them in particular, so my father cut some of their tails off and forbade it in Asgard. It only seemed to create two separate creatures instead of the one that had been. Their tails became something else. Some other kind of animal." Heimdall watched as Loki's ears flicked back and forth, a deep look of contemplation and thought etched into his features before he spoke again.

"No, they did not all look like this, these are my other children." Loki shifted and tilted his head at the water. "Her name was Hel. She was probably the most unique. A giant who was half alive and half dead is what they said. My father blamed her for the diseases of the world, misfortune, corruption and greed. He threw her under one of the roots of the Yggdrasil tree. This is Fenrir, the largest wolf ever in existence. They chained him up because he was so strong that none of the Gods could beat him. That is the world serpent Jormungandr. My father put him in the waters of the Earth. They say he is the reason for typhoons and great storms that sink ships and destroy lands. This is Sleipner. My father adored him, maybe because I didn't raise him and that he was of no threat to the Gods."

Heimdall looked on sadly as Loki shifted from form to form, explaining each one as if he had never seen them before and pointing to the reflection of himself in the water he stood in. Hel turned shaking his head as Loki spoke again.

"No, I think they were all so different because of what the Giants did, my parents trying to save me, my brother's tail, but mostly because of the lady of the Cliffs. She was…not a mammal. She had a great deal of dark magic that she used to put part of herself in me so we could have children and was the reason I can be one or the other, a mother or a father. These are my last, both foxes like me and their mother. Nari and Narfi, the oldest was changed to a wolf named Vali and killed his brother. My father renamed him Vali after he changed him, before he threw him to the Earth to be alone. They say he howls at the Moon in mourning for me, for his mother, his brother and the family he lost."

Loki's ears flicked back as he dropped his head. "No, the Lady of the Cliffs was not a good animal. I was never in love with her. She cast a spell on me that made me think I was. My father wanted to destroy the world because of everything she did, start it over because the animals that were growing were getting so dark he was afraid they would destroy the light." The fox tipped his head nodding as he shifted again. "The dark animals? My father ended up calling them Titans because they got so big. No one really knows how they got that big. When they came to the Earth, they brought water and other elements with them, but they were so small then you couldn't even see them. I found out later the reason she wanted us to have children was so she could get them to go between the realms. She wanted to have the power of…."

Heimdall shook his head in sorrow as he watched his brother. "He retells his life as if he speaks to another. It is worse than madness, it is not Sigyn he speaks to if he must explain even their children. He has lost his mind…."

"Then you should try to keep him happy." He turned frowning at Grace as he shook his head.

"You want me to encourage this?" he asked with a curled lip as she shrugged.

"I did not say encourage, just know he is still your brother, no matter where his mind is. You have tried to bring him from misery so many times, can you not do the same when he is happy?"

"Happy?" Heimdall asked as he looked back at his brother in a worried tilt. "It is not real, Grace. Whatever he is seeing, feeling. It will do no good if he wakes to find it is nothing more than his own mind where he finds his peace. Not when he realizes he is alone again."

"Peace of mind is all it takes to find happiness, Heimdall. You, Loki, no other creature living, is ever truly alone. Not even in your darkest moments." The hare looked at her and tipped a brow as he narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "The past will lead you to the present. It makes you who you are, you must determine who you will become in the moment, and choose the light you wish to live in."

His brow curled under as she slipped into the shadows and was gone as he shook his head and looked back to the red fox again. "That vixen talks in more riddles than he does." The hare sighed heavily as he heard Loki chuckling again and shook his head as he dove into the water and swam to his brother, determined to keep him from sinking any further into his own broken dreams. They swam back to land and found themselves sitting under the tree of life, counting eggs as Loki lifted a paw. "What are you doing?"

Loki snickered as he raised one paw in the air. "Did you know that lightning bugs were once thought to be grass fire spirits? I know what they really are."

"What they really are?"

Loki looked back at him smirking. "Did you know that every living soul comes back one last time to see the world if they have decided they do not wish to live another life?"

Heimdall looked around and rolled his eyes. "Your point is?"

Loki sat up straight and Heimdall tipped forward as his paw began to glow. "That means that if I can create the right light, they will come to me. Keep them closed and wait." The fox closed his eyes as Heimdall tipped a brow.

"I am not closing my eyes. Loki, I do not think they will come to you if…." Heimdall tipped a brow and blinked as Loki's paw started flickering like a waving flame. The hare shook his head as several little bugs started zooming around his brother's paw. "How did you learn how to do that?"

"How many are there?" Loki asked grinning as Heimdall shook his head.

"I….have no idea." The buck stood up looking around with his mouth hanging open as Loki chuckled.

"Are you ready?" Loki asked.

Heimdall looked at him and shot his ears up. "Am I ready for what?" Loki opened his eyes and spotted the little blinking bugs everywhere. The hare jumped when the fox jerked as if trying to escape his own paw that was covered with them. He fell back laughing and rolled to his side as Heimdall sighed and sat next to him again. "Neat trick. Where did you learn how to do that?"

The fox looked at him and shrugged. "Kitsukune."

Heimdall nodded as he leaned against the tree. "So, what do you want to do now, Loki?"

The fox snickered as he laid back with his brother. The hare kept him company over several centuries, listening to him talking and explaining things that were common knowledge until the day their father came to call on them. Loki ceased his ramblings as the Lion looked him over and turned an angry brow.

"I can see them." Odin growled as he dipped lower. Heimdall lifted a brow as the red fox bore his teeth and stepped away, holding the odd pieces over his eyes. "Where is that creature!?" he snarled as the fox stepped away again shaking his head. "LOKI!"

"She is not yours to hold, nor is the power she has!" He spat as Odin growled again. Heimdall looked between them wide eyed as he shook his head.

"BUT YOU HOLD IT NOW, KNOWING IT IS THE REASON WE ALL STARVE! YOU WANT TO TAKE ITS POWER AND OVERTHROW ME! GIVE ME THAT CREATURE!"

The fox growled and braced his paws on the ground as Odin roared and tried to leap at him. The cat disappeared in a swirl of darkness as Grace stood in front of them with her teeth bore. "Leave this place! Hide her! Take her back where she belongs!" Loki turned and rushed away as Heimdall stood there in shock, watching the old vixen wrestling with his father. "CHOOSE YOUR MOMENT, HEIMDALL!" Grace screamed as Odin roared again.

The hare shook his head as he turned, and ran after his brother. He found the fox standing at the gates of Asgard with his paws held out and fell in shock as Loki turned into a molten flaming lava as he threw his arms up tossing up a rainbow bridge that burst form his paws. "What have you done, Loki?! You brought that thing here! This is who you have been talking to all this time? Knowing it is what kills us!?"

The fox turned and shook his head as he stepped onto the bridge he'd created, letting his fur come back into place as the heat faded. "You know nothing Brother, nothing of what she is."

"What do I need to know! Being near it has nearly blinded you to being in the sun! You complain of the pain every time you take those things off your face! And Grace, Grace has known?! You let that thing...fade into you and hid it, it has shielded the pain and truth from you! Have you forgotten they are all dead?! Not even I can see the sense in what you do!"

"They are dead! But they are not gone! She did not fade anything from me! I have kept the darkness from her! I only saw truth! If you refuse to listen, I will hide her away from you and the others, in a place I know you cannot find her!" he spat as he stepped back again and turned, rushing over the bridge. Heimdall growled as he bound his legs and jumped, only to gasp as his feet went through the light of the rainbow. He barely dangled above Asgard as he clutched the grass and pulled himself up again. He looked back panting as Odin raced towards him with a furious growl…

Notes; In China they once believed fireflies were embers caused from burning grass.

Grace; "The past will lead you to the present." Heimdall sees the past, Sigyn lived in the present.

Loki and Creature: David Cook; Fade into Me

Heimdall and Grace: Jackson Browne; Some Bridges