Loptr
By Rey
Chapter notes:
On timeline: This chapter follows right from the previous one.
On warning: There is a brief mention of forced marriage and its unspoken inplications.
On language: In Ýmska and in jötnar culture, addressing an elder/stranger/superior in second-person ("you") in a conversation is considered terribly rude. However, one raised and living away from the language and customs may not think so.
On Loki: "Loé" is in warm-weathered form but now that of a child, no longer a young adult.
On age differences: To the jötnar, 1000-year-old is comparable to about 8-to-9-year-old compared to our standard, while 4000-year-old is comparably 21-year-old. To the æsir, the former is comparably 13-to-14-year-old while the latter is middle age.
List of term and nicknames used:
Bé: Bestla, Voðen's mother, Laufey's elder sibling
nar: parent-sibling, aunt/uncle
Úti: Farbauti, Laufey's spouse
ýto: elder sibling/cousin (term of address placed before a name or standing on its own)
4. In Pursuit of Truth
"I did not know – I thought you died! They were alone there and people said Týr–," Voðen – the terribly rude brat – my sibling-child, unfortunately – cries in defence of themself, of their decision that robbed me of the entirety of my child's earliest childhood, then cuts themself off with a hitch in their breath.
I can continue the sentence perfectly well, myself. But I do not know – cannot even guess – whether they cut themself off just now for my sake (Ha! My sake?!), because they inexplicably yet reserve some great emotion about it (What is it?), or because we are no longer alone.
Because Loé has just slipped into the room and stumbles to a stop not a step further, their own breath hitching.
I beckon them in and draw them into my arms, all without looking away from Voðen's eyes – Ýto Bé's eyes – now so foreign to me.
It has been centuries since I could last guess what Voðen was thinking or about to do by looking into their eyes.
Not since the last blow Asgard gave Ýmirheim.
Not since Voðen – my only remaining sibling-child – went to rule Asgard as the last eligible candidate, instead of forsaking the realm that had kidnapped their dam and forcefully married the latter to Bor.
They are clad in the form of an ás, even now; so much – too much – like Bor, although with my sibling's eyes, although they used to visit Ýmirheim in their milaða forms.
My heart burns.
But still, I keep looking into their eyes.
And I see a flicker deep in those eyes – anger? Jealousy? Hurt? Satisfaction? What might it be? – as I hoist Loé – still too small, still too light – into my arms, half into their view.
"I thought you died," they repeat, before I can say anything – if I even wish to say anything. As if repetition could make the statement true – without any omission, addition or misdirection….
But the flicker is back, now, stronger than ever, and different from the previous one.
And this one, I have seen, just before we were parted all those centuries ago.
Just after they watched with their own eyes how Úti killed the no-longer-quite-sane Ýto Bé – Úti's own childhood friend – for mercy, as the latter requested.
No, Voðen is somehow telling the truth.
And they do change into a milaða's warm-weathered form – so young, and so much like Ýto Bé, now – right in front of me – in front of us – when I ask it of them, to Loé's shocked and disbelieving gasp.
They are no longer in æsir garb, either.
And they murmur – an acknowledgement, a claim, a plea – "Nalla."
Nalla: Their nickname of me that they blurted out the first moment we met, when they were a millennium old, three millennia ago, compressing "Nar Laufey" into one, as they boldly claimed in the way of children everywhere that it was too long and "tongue-twisty."
My heart squeezes.
"Ðinyé," I say at last, in return; my own nickname for them, which I gave them blithely in response to what they gave me that time – that much better time, despite all the trials and tribulations.
And, like that time, now we start again, right from the beginning.
All because I followed where my Loptr-flower flew.