Sigyn stood next to Loki's bed, watching him sleep and wondering how he managed to survive as long as he did while being such a heavy sleeper. If he was able to sleep through her pounding on the door, then he could sleep through assassins breaking into the room to cut his throat.

A luxury an Asgardian prince could afford, and not even realize he had it.

Whatever. She was going to wake Sleeping Beauty one way or another.

"Loki… Loki," wait, why was she whispering? "Loki," she said again at full volume.

He didn't even flinch. The dead were more restless than this. Was she going to have to cause an avalanche?

Though she despised touching him, she grabbed his shoulder and shook it. "Wake up!"

Finally, he stirred. He rolled onto his back, turned his head away from her and… he was snoring again.

Sigyn huffed, marching to the other side of the bed, where she grabbed one of the extra pillows.

Loki looked like a whole other person when he was asleep. For one - he wasn't talking. That was the big thing. His face looked relaxed, peaceful…downright kinda adorable. So she hit it as hard as she could with the pillow.

He woke up right away.

"The hell, Sigyn?" He sat up, all the tranquility he had while asleep evaporating.

"Come on! We got things to do, dragons to slay!"

"It's not even sunrise!"

"Yes, and we want to be on the road before them. Jotunheim has few daylight hours. I am not fighting a dragon in the dark. Get breakfast and get ready." Sigyn left the room and disappeared.

Loki sighed, collapsing back onto the bed.

"I will hit you with the pillow again!" Sigyn shouted from down the hall.

"I'm moving!" Loki snapped back, aggressively pushing the blankets away and sitting up.

Once downstairs, Angrboda handed Loki a bowl of soup. He poked at it with a wooden spoon. It looked bland and tasteless, but this was probably the best he was going to get in this frozen wasteland. He braved a tiny bite.

"You might want to warm this up more," he told Angrboda. "It's cold already."

The giantess looked at him funny. "Why would we eat hot food?"

Loki took that as a sign to drop the subject. He took his sad, cold bowl of soup with him to look out the window.

The night sky was almost as bright as the day thanks to the glow of the aurora slowly dancing overhead. He had seen lights like these before on Asgard. When he was a child, Frigga would take him outside to watch them on nights they were the brightest. They'd stay up late and watch them for hours, until he'd fall asleep, and his mother would carry him back to his room. When he was older, sometimes he would go out alone just to watch them. To get away from Odin and Thor and just have a moment to himself. It seemed so long ago, he couldn't remember the last time he enjoyed the lights.

He wasn't alone. In the distance, in the middle of a frozen lake, was Sigyn, standing motionless, gazing up at the sky.

Sigyn had taken a moment to let herself be still. To let her mind clear and let herself get lost in the glow of the lights. In Jotunheim, the norðrljós shone almost every night. They were as common as Midgard's sun and moon. But while she lived in Norway, Sigyn learned she had to wait to see the lights, and in most places, she couldn't see them anyway through the haze of the city. The dark, empty skies always reminded her how far from home she was.

But now the lights were here, and they were brighter than she remembered. Ribbons of green and purple floated across the sky, steady like the waves on a calm beach. The ice of the lake tried to copy the light above it, but it was not as clear.

Sigyn crouched down closer to the ice, mapping in her mind how the light traveled from the sky, to the ice, and back into the air. Reaching out her hand, she used her magic to pull up a mound of ice in front of her. She turned her wrist and moved her fingers, molding the ice into the shape she needed.

As the ice moved, its reflections became stronger. The light became concentrated, like a beam of sunlight through a prism. She kept molding the ice until it reflected the image of a snowshoe hare in the air above it. Its body pulsed with the glowing purples and greens that formed it. Sigyn smiled, and manipulated the ice again. Following the movements of the ice, the hare sprang to life, hopping in circles through the air. As Sigyn's confidence grew, the hare moved faster, dashing in crazy zig-zags.

Loki watched the hare with slight amusement as he approached Sigyn. She gave the hare a few more laps before letting the ice fall apart and the image disintegrate.

"Playing in the snow?" Loki asked.

"Enjoying the norðrljós. They had lights in Midgard, but they weren't the same. Bet you can't get views like this in Midgard." She walked in a lazy line, following the reflections of the lights with her feet.

"There was a secret spot known only to me and my mother where we'd sit and watch the lights. You wouldn't think it's that impressive, but it's one of my fondest memories."

"Can't beat nostalgia. Ange and I used to sit with the other children under the lights and chase each other with the light-animals."

"You learned illusion magic that young?"

"Not illusions. Just using the ice." She knelt down and stretched out her hand again to recreate the hare. Loki stepped closer, watching the ice morph and shift. "Then, once you get the shape down -" she sent the hare off running until it was too far away and disintegrated. She looked back to catch Loki with the hint of a smile on his face. "You wanna try it?"

"What do I have to do?"

"Start with something simple, like a circle. The trick is learning how to manipulate the ice to direct the light where you want."

Copying Sigyn, Loki reached his hand out, forming a small jagged mountain of ice. The frozen spikes shifted, melting and reforming, but Loki couldn't get them to reflect the light correctly. He dropped his hand.

"You'll learn it eventually, you just gotta commit." She looked towards the eastern mountain range. "The sun will be up soon. We better get going."