The daylight gradually became much more intrusive, inexplicably. Loki could not help but notice it, despite his constant internal meditation on beauty and desire, greed and deceit. The simple, dependable brightening and dimming clambered for his attention as it never had before. He set aside his other thoughts and focused instead on the daylight alone. It was External, he had faith, whether it had a true independence from thought or whether a loving missive from a Deceiver. He loved it for that very reason, despite the fact his thought had grown so far beyond the mere day.
And yet. Some intangible factor made today different from all other days, and he dearly desired to know what it was. (His thought created determination, which was satisfying). So he waited, waited for the light to tell him what was new.
The light had brightened nearly to fullness when a sudden other stimulus broke his concentration. He did not know what it was. It was abrupt. It was startling. It was different. It was not light, but it was an externality he could perceive.
It was sound, he instinctively understood. Perhaps it was a new deception. He waited for it to happen again, and it did, coming in rhythmic starts and stops: one, two, three, four, five... It was constant in quality but not in intensity. The initial instance was loud, the second much quieter, but growing louder again with each subsequent tap. Then it changed. The sound was no longer succinct. Now it flowed, with variations in rhythm, intensity... volume, pitch, timbre. There was pattern to it, but the pattern was too complicated to define and follow in the moment.
Sound was so complex! It was uncomfortable, almost painful, but he endured it, relished it for its newness.
Then it paused, and he was desolate in its loss. When it returned with a hesitant softness, he yearned towards it with all his being...
He discovered space. He discovered directionality.
With an intense shock, he discovered movement. The sound moved in space. He unconsciously tried to follow the sound, and he moved. He could feel it, recognizing it instantly despite its newness. This revelation was beyond light and time, desire, deception, and sound. If there was external space (and he perceived that there was, unless it was an extravagant deception), then he was a point within space.
He was more than thought. He was a body. He had form.
Space. A whole mode of existence that had been hidden from him. He had been infinite thought, and now he was curtailed. The magnitude of this thought was terrifying. (He had discovered fear, he noted). It felt like a huge loss, not just a new perspective. It was difficult to process.
Vaguely, he registered that the sound had changed as well. It was closer, louder, faster. He hearkened to it reflexively and immediately regretted the subtle movement that generated in another terrifying shock. The sound intensified further, assaulting him.
Then he felt movement again, and with another sinister shock discovered the difference between volitional and non-volitional movement. Something moved him. Loki had an instinctive feeling of possessiveness (another new concept) regarding his body, since it seemed to be just as much him as his thought was. Although movement remained a novel discovery, non-volitional movement felt like a terrible violation. This was totally different from perception. Perception was by nature passive. Movement was by nature active. It was his hasty but logical conclusion that nothing should be moving his body except for him.
He did not know how to stop the other though, whatever force was the source of the movement (and the sound?). In despair, Loki felt his body clenching, resisting the non-volitional movement since he could not prevent it. With another feeling of horror, he felt another point of contact, another movement to resist...
Light flooded in, as he remembered it from once before. A beautiful stream of dizzying patterns and color. It was so beautiful. Despite everything, he softened, drinking in the light he loved. There was a lot of white, but also soft shades of brown framed by a nimbus of gold, accented with points of vivid blue. For some reason, the pattern itself was comforting, almost as if it were something he had seen before, something he should recognize and love dearly.
Loki didn't recognize it, but he accepted the comfort nonetheless. When the being let go of him, he was able to unclench and relax fully. With determination though, he remained focused on the light. He didn't want to lose it. To his amazement and delight, it stayed.
His body had eyes and could see, he realized.
The being that had caused the non-volitional movement had done it to open his eyes.
Loki discovered gratitude, and it was beautiful.
Frigga and Thor arrived at the door to Loki's chamber at the same moment as Eir. All three wore huge, hopeful smiles. "Let's see how he is today," Eir said happily as she opened the door, which squeaked loudly on the hinge. The three of them walked forwards to gather around the still figure on the bed.
"Good morning, my darling," Frigga said.
To their collective amazement, Loki's eyes shifted beneath their lids, roving towards his mother.
"Loki!" Thor shouted excitedly, taking his hand. Loki's arm almost instantly stiffened at the touch, and his usually calm breathing quickened.
Eir passed a healing stone over his face briefly, then reached over from the head of his bed to open his eyes, though Loki seemed determined to keep them closed to her touch. His determination proved no match for the healer's eagerness, however, and his lids inched open. He locked gaze with Frigga as soon as his eyes were fully open. "My baby," Frigga breathed as tears leaked out. He slowly relaxed again, still watching her, though he said nothing. His gaze flicked to Thor and to Eir in turn as they spoke to him, welcoming him back to the world. After awhile, their faces could no longer hold his attention, and his eyes wandered all over the room. He stared for almost a minute at Odin when he hastened to his son's bedside later in the morning.
He said nothing at all, followed none of Eir's simple commands, and again seemed distressed when anyone tried to move him or even sit him up in the bed. But he stayed awake all day, visually exploring his room and hunting for the source of any voice whenever someone spoke to him. Thor and the Warriors Three even turned it into something of a game, each taking a position in the corner of the room and taking turns calling to him. Sif stood referee at the bedside, and Loki at times seemed more interested in the afternoon sun glinting in her black hair than in his brother's antics. They had to reposition his bed so he couldn't look directly out the window as the sun began to set, because he kept staring straight at it, blinking furiously, even after his eyes started to turn red and watery.
The day was a resounding victory so far as the royal family and Loki's various healers were concerned.
To the healers, Loki made astounding gains each day. To Thor, each update he got from Eir filled him both with delight at the improvement and maudlin impatience at the incremental pace of his long-awaited recovery.
A few days after Loki first opened his eyes, "He's moving more. He even glared when I repositioned him this morning."
A week later, "He's been holding his arms up like that at times all morning, moving his fingers around. Don't worry, they aren't stuck. Lady Eir thinks it's a self-stimulating behavior. I've tried putting them back down, but he just puts them back up. He even glared at me the last time I did it and batted me away. He knew I was the one bothering him! That's the first time he's clearly recognized any of us as, well, people."
A week and a half, "Today, he yelled at me! I think his own voice must have startled him though, he looked so surprised."
"No, we still can't get him to eat normally, mostly because he won't open his mouth. He likes tasting things though, always licks his lips if you touch some food to them. I think the rosehip jelly has been his favorite so far, but it's hard to tell of course. He definitely has a sweet tooth.
A fortnight, "He's been humming all yesterday and today. It's interesting, actually. He's very methodical. First he was just humming in a monotone with different rhythms, but then he started exploring his vocal range, going all the way down and then all the way up. He can sing really high. I never knew that about him. Then he started making melodies. I don't recognize any of them, though the King when he was here earlier said one of them was a mathematical progression rather than a real song. Today, he's been trying out different humming and singing techniques. He managed to harmonize with himself! I didn't know that was possible..."
Three weeks, "He said something today!" The other young healer in the room immediately started giggling. "He said Asni, when we were repositioning him. He kept saying it until we stopped."
...
"His vocabulary has expanded! Yesterday, he called us Fjandinn, and today he called me kukkalabi. I had no idea he had such a foul mouth! He always seemed so proper before."
"He wasn't given to coarse language before," Thor told them with a pang of worry.
"And he likely won't be when he is fully recovered," Eir assured him as she entered the room, casting stern glances over her apprentices. "It is not uncommon for language recovery to begin with swearing, as the emotional connotations make them more widely accessible from different regions on both sides of the brain. I actually expected this, since he has been so musical as well. Music production tends to originate in the areas corresponding to language but on the opposite side. Although the math he is using in his compositions implies he is using both sides... but that is neither here nor there. He just needs more time, Thor. Keep speaking to him as you have, as much as you can. It will help."
The next day, Thor duly arrived with a book, which he had selected at random from the shelves in Loki's old room. He had decided that if Loki needed to hear spoken language to recover his own ability to speak, then Thor would sit with him and read as many books as needed to get his brother back. Loki was sitting up, cross-legged in the bed, staring at his fingertips. He barely glanced at Thor when he came in, though he did cease his incessant humming briefly when Thor greeted him. Thor pulled a chair over and settled himself, cracking open the massive tome and groaning inwardly when he realized he had picked up one of Loki's scientific texts.
Loki promptly leaned forwards and plucked the book from his lap, running his fingers over the text excitedly. He focused intently on the words near the top of the page for half a minute. He started humming softly again as his eyes flicked back and forth along the page, slowly tracing their way to the bottom.
Thor's mouth fell open in shock. "Are you reading that?"
Loki paused and visibly shivered. He looked up at Thor with an expression of undiluted joy. "Yes, reading" he said, smiling. Thor heard the sole healing attendant gasp from behind him and slip out of the room, running to fetch Eir no doubt.
"You're talking?"
Loki cocked his head to the side. "Yes...talking..." He blinked. "All... those... noises... have you... talking to me... this entire time?"
"YES." Thor almost shouted.
"Mmm." Loki looked back down at his book and turned the page, the picture of unconcern.
"Loki..." Thor said, but then realized he didn't know how to begin to say all the things he wanted to.
Loki paused and looked up at him again, brow furrowed. "Loki," he repeated, as if tasting the word. "You talk that a lot... That's me, isn't it?"
Thor's eyes widened. "Yes," he said softly. "You are Loki, and I am Thor, your brother. And I... I am so happy you are back with us, Loki. I love you."
"Thor," Loki repeated. He closed his eyes. "Love," he echoed softly, then started to mutter. "Are, be, am, is, was, were, you, I. I! Me, we, us, reading, read, write, writing, wrote, written, book, that, this, yes, no, talking, talk, talked, say, saying, said, all, some, none, noises, noise, quiet, have, has, had, do, does, did, to, from, entire, whole, time. Time! A, an, the, lot, little, not, it, and, but, brother, father, mother, sister, so, such, happy, joyful, sad, sorrow, back, behind, return, with, without, love, like, care, careless, discard, loss, mourn... Loki. Thor... Frigga... Odin... family... home... Asgard..." He sounded angry as he finished.
"Loki," Thor said, reaching out a cautious hand. He didn't know why Loki was angry. He was just rattling off words, mostly the ones they had just said, or those closely related, Thor realized.
"Norns and Fjandinn, Thor! These, these words are not... my creation. I ...remember them. I have memory from the time... before there was time. This is... this is... Gah! I do not understand what this is." He shuddered and hunched to hold his face in his hands, muttering again. "I, yes. Existence, yes. Thought, yes. Change...yes. Externality...yes? Because time, yes, light yes. Unless..." Suddenly his muttering changed to muffled chanting, almost singing,
"Deceiver, Trickster, yes or no?
Comfort and discomfort, yes.
Desire, determination, hope and doubt, greed:
Me, yes. Authenticity. Creation.
Number and pattern, symmetry and asymmetry, arithmetic and geometry:
Mine, yes. Legitimacy. Deduction.
But ...light and sound, space and time, form and infinitude, language, home and family, love and loss...
Memory, or deceit? Truth or untruth? Truth or untruth? Truth or untruth?"
He paused before speaking again in his normal voice, "Is there a Trickster? Am I the Trickster? That would explain where the memories come from."
"Some people do call you that," Thor confirmed cautiously. He did not understand what Loki was saying.
"What?" Loki looked up at him, appearing mildly surprised that he was still there. That was a pretty frequent occurrence, actually. Loki often seemed to forget other people in the room.
"'Trickster' is one of your names, Loki. I don't call you that though," he said hastily.
"Hmmm...I think that is irrelevant... The problem is complex." He lay back on the bed, frowning at the ceiling, the forgotten book sliding from his legs to land neatly back on Thor's lap.
"What is the problem, Loki?" Eir asked as she strode into the room. Loki didn't acknowledge her at first, but he jumped when she touched his shoulder. "What is the problem you are contemplating, my prince?"
He grinned. "I am ...attempting... to ...determine whether there truly exists... anything external to thought, or whether everything I think I ...observe is merely an ...illusion of my own mind." He locked eyes with hers. "I can create wonders in my thoughts," he said with a fierce earnesty.
"By the Norns," Eir said in wonder. "How did his language recover so fully so suddenly? Vocabulary, complex grammar, and prosody. Minor word-finding problem mayhap, but otherwise it's all there..."
"It just happened, as soon as he tried reading for the first time."
Eir laughed. "Reading. Of course. Perhaps not your first language, but your preferred one nonetheless. Or perhaps you needed the visual stimulus to access the receptive language area. Your mind is truly marvelous, my prince."
"It is," Loki agreed. "But there is a question of degree..." He craned his neck to look at Thor. "Are you real?" he asked.
Thor's stomach plummeted. He set the book aside and stood up, taking Loki's hand in his, much to Loki's obvious displeasure. "I'm real, Loki. I'm really here. You're home."
Loki did not immediately respond to Thor's heartfelt reassurance and instead extricated his hand and looked back at Eir. "Are you real?"
"Yes... Loki what is this, why are you asking these questions?"
He looked at her shrewdly. "Why do you ask?"
"Because I am the healer who has been taking care of you. You have been ill, and we are all trying to help you get better."
Loki looked very interested at that. "Ill? Illness. Yes, that would be... logical... perhaps. Very well." He smiled indulgently. "Let us... assume you are an... individual and that you ...have a motive to care. Let us assume I am also an individual and have an illness." He paused and raised a finger. "We are not the same individual," he said very clearly, and paused again, as if waiting for a response.
"Okay," Eir said bemusedly.
"Good. As an individual with a motive to care for those who are ill, you will naturally not be... offended by anything that is said in... delirium... be they ungodly lies or horrible truths."
"Naturally."
"Now I shall try to explain myself, as one individual who is ill to another individual who is not me and does not share my thought and is not ill."
"Oh, good." They waited.
"Loki?" Thor asked. Loki shushed him and steepled his fingers.
"He's thinking," Eir said unnecessarily.
Finally, Loki spoke again, very slowly and carefully. "The things I know are relatively limited. I know that I am. I know...that I have motives. I know I am thought. There are a number of things that I... suspect but do not know how to confirm. I suspect that I exist as a body in space and time as well as in thought. I suspect that you and most other things I see and hear and feel are real, or at least external. But I am not sure. If I close my eyes, I can still see you if I wish it. At first I thought externality was a certainty, because even if light was deceit, the deceiver must be true. But... today I ...discovered language within me. The more I think on it, the more of it there is, words and phrases attached to memory. I did not know I had memory until today. The Deceiver, if he exists, has never violated my thought before, only my... perception." He shook himself. "Hope is real, it is mine. I hope that you are also real, and language a reflection of an externality that I... forgot." He grimaced. "Fear is real, and it is also mine. I fear that you are false, and there is nothing except my thought, and my thought is the Deceiver."
"You fear you are insane," Eir concluded.
Loki shrugged. "Perhaps."
"I don't understand, Loki, why would you doubt what is before your very eyes?" Thor asked.
Loki smiled thinly. "I didn't even suspect I had eyes until you opened them."
Thor's heart climbed into his throat at that statement. His brother was still so, so broken.
"You may be confused, Loki, but I do not think you are insane," Eir declared. "At least, not in the traditional sense. You have been more profoundly ill than you know, but I think you will recover. I will give you the same advice I have been giving Thor and your parents: healing takes time. If you have questions, we can try to answer them, but you must be patient. Understanding will come in time. You must be patient." She smiled kindly. "Now, forget your riddle for a moment. I informed your parents that you are now speaking, and they will be here very soon, I am sure. How are you feeling, other than confused, hopeful, and nervous?"
Loki thought for a very long moment before finally answering. "An interesting question. I am not sure how to answer. My body is... comfortable. My thoughts are not."
"Good enough. Do you know where you are?" At Loki's pained expression, she quickly amended, "Or I suppose it might be more correct to ask, can you say what this place is called?"
"Asgard."
"Yes, what part?" Loki shrugged. "You are in the healing chambers. What is your name?"
"Loki."
"Who is your father?"
"Odin, Allfather, son of Bor, son of Buri..." Loki sang before trailing off contemplatively. It was the melody of a children's rhyme about the kings of Asgard.
"Do you know what year it is?" Loki shrugged again. "It is the 4587th year of Odin's reign. You were born in the 1078th. Now, this might be a harder question, but what is the last thing you remember before waking up here for the first time?"
Loki shrugged again helplessly. "I ...have no idea. I have memory of existing in infinite... isolation, in the time before there was time. Then there was light and time, and whatever I chose to make of them. Then there was sound, and as you say 'waking.' But I also have memories of being a ...child and ...a warrior and... a prince. I don't know when anything happened." He smiled bitterly. "Particularly since, as far as I know, half or all of it could very well be imagined and illusions. I also have memories of some exquisite illusions."
Eir smiled. "I'm sure you do. Do not worry on it. Your family is here and can certainly help you sort out your memories. I will leave you now. I am sure Thor would like to spend time alone with you, and your parents when they arrive."
Loki raised his eyebrows and looked quizzically at Thor. "Is that so?"
"Of course!" Thor enthused.
"Very well. Why?"
"Because, because you're my brother, and I thought I lost you," Thor said, taking his hand again.
"We all did," came Odin's voice from the doorway. Both he and Frigga were there, staring at their younger son with tears in their eyes.
Loki withdrew his hand quickly. "So?"
Author's note: moving things along... I think it's reasonable that Loki would make some exponential gains, at least for a little while as more and more of his mind comes back online. Once he had all the primary senses working (vision, sound, and touch), the secondary and tertiary association areas had to follow somewhat more rapidly. Things like hand-waving and humming are real self-stimulating behaviors, usually seen in Autism/developmental disorders rather than "acquired" neurologic disease, but they certainly seem like logical progression from Loki's catatonic state. Some other neuroscience tidbits you might have noticed: swearing actually does localize in different parts of the brain from regular language, as does singing. Since Loki managed to "reinvent" music before speech, he naturally finds it easier to articulate himself while singing for now (I used ellipses for verbal hesitancy, but you'll notice there weren't any while he sang). This can happen in real neurological injury too. It probably isn't very accurate to have reading come back more easily than spoken word, but hey, it can be accurate for Loki, because it's Loki!
On the other hand, he's definitely not all better. There's a lot of new information to process and interpret and reconcile with the internal logic he has been building up. More to come, hopefully a bit more fun now.
Also, of course, "Space...The Final Frontier" is the opening line for Star Trek, the best speculative fiction series ever to grace the television screen.
Keep the reviews coming! I will try to update at least once more this month...
