"LOKI!" Odin, Loki's father, yelled angrily. "One of the guards just informed me you were seen kissing a boy in the market square this morning. Is that true?"

"Well, he kissed me," Loki said, remembering the perfect kiss he had had with Mobius M Mobius that morning. He would do it again a thousand times. It had felt so nice... And despite it having been only one simple kiss, Loki had never felt so loved before. Mobius had just wanted to kiss him. He had had no ulterior motive. That was why it had been so nice.

"So you allowed a boy kiss you? That's even worse! We can't have an argr king! Praise the Norns your brother is next in line, I know he will not disgrace this family."

"Oh yes of course. Prince Thor, the crown jewel of the kingdom," Loki said dryly.

"I'm organising to find a princess for you to wed tomorrow. You will be faithful to her and you will never be involved with a man again, do you understand?"

"But, father-"

"I am your king and you will obey me."

Loki turned away passive-aggressively and returned to his quarters.

He sat in a meditative position and tried to focus all of his seiðr into changing his form into something unrecognisable. Unfortunately, he wasn't the most skilled at controlling his gift yet, and it certainly didn't help that his father was ashamed to have a son who was a seiðmaðr, also another reason Odin saw him as argr ("unmanly"). He just seemed jealous though, to be perfectly honest. But unfortunately the lack of training lead to Loki being unable to use his seiðr for almost anything. The most he could currently do in regards to shapeshifting was change his sex, but he still looked like himself; a rather undramatic change. So he just had to manually change the rest of his body.

He cut his hair into a bob and bleached it. He didn't like it not black, but he had to do it if he wanted to escape. Then he put as much makeup as he could on, and a dress he'd stolen on his way to his quarters.

Finally, he stashed some money and daggers into his undergarments, put a cloak on, and snuck out of the castle.

He couldn't risk taking his horse, so he just travelled on foot until he reached the nearest town.

He walked into a tavern and got dinner before buying a room for the night.

Then the next day he bought a horse so he could travel further. He ended up reaching the next kingdom over, this one called Utgard, ruled by King Laufey.

He saw some of his father's guards coming into the kingdom, so he quickly hid in a nearby shop and pretended to be very interested in some of the stock, whilst also watching the guards out of the corner of his eye.

But then one of the guards decided to walk right into the shop, and Loki turned the other way and put the hood of his cloak over his head.

The guard stood right next to Loki, and he looked at them for a second.

"Oh, Princess Sylvie, apologies, I didn't realise it was you," the guard said.

Loki looked at them again, a little confused, but he went with it. "Oh, yes, it's me. Hello. What are you doing here?"

"Well, we've actually come to ask you to marry Prince Loki."

"Oh, have you? Oh, look at the time, I must go, goodbye."

Loki ran out of the shop without waiting for a reply and just got on his horse again and left the kingdom.

He decided his best bet would be to stay in an Anglo-Saxon kingdom. The guards from Loki's kingdom would most likely look for Loki through all the Danish kingdoms in Danelaw before checking the Anglo-Saxon ones, to avoid conflict. So that would give Loki enough time to finetune his seiðr enough to give himself a better, less recognisable form.

Now he just had to find a way to convince the Anglo-Saxons he meant no harm.

Fortunately, the closest Anglo-Saxon kingdom (called Stark) wasn't too far, and he arrived there the next day.

No one paid any attention to him at first, though Loki did think he saw some people look at him warily.

But then one of the guards of the kingdom saw him.

"Hey, what are you doing here, you Heathen?" the guard shouted.

"I mean you no harm," Loki replied. "I've simply run away and need a place to stay. I promise I will not hurt you if you don't hurt me."

"Oh yeah, and how am I meant to trust you?" the guard got closer to Loki, sword drawn.

Loki spread his arms wide. "I'm unarmed, I'm a girl, and I'm wearing a dress. You can't possibly think I'm a threat."

"You said you ran away? What if I just hand you back to the Danes?"

"Well... You could... But they might just kill you if you hand me to the wrong Danes."

"Okay fine, you can stay here for a short while. But if you try anything, I'm sending you straight to Hell."

Loki smiled stiffly. "Got it."

He was relieved to be able to crash in a room at the tavern in this town shortly after. It had been a long few days.