Winter's Treasures
By Rey
Chapter summary: Family is a sharp, beautiful irony.
5. Basics, Part 3
When what Loki would have called "day" in Asgard deepend, he warded their campsite using his seiðr, just as Ovrekka created walls with high openings to complete their ice roof, to better conceal them from unkind eyes. He was actually impressed with the truly house-like shape that Ovrekka had built in such a short time. A thing of beauty and civilisation, built by a monster….
The trio of smaller jötnar were in turn impressed with his seiðr, and showed off their own seiðr afterwards. It made him wonder if all frost giants were capable of using seiðr, and thus his misplacement on Asgard had been visible right from the start, if only he had known what and where to look.
His feats of magic seemed to somewhat endear him to the smaller frost giants, all the same, although Ovrekka passed him by with just a pat on one shoulder and an assured, "Gannha already suspected that you have a good grasp on seiðr, Lokyé. – Or do you wish me to call you Lokka instead? – But do not tax yourself. The journey before us is still far."
"Do you… still wish to know?" Avlar offered suddenly, tentatively, as they stuffed themself into their bedroll fully at last, sans most of their clothes.
"If you would tell me," Loki agreed noncommittally from the opposite corner of their temporary… house, but did not acknowledge any of Ovrekka's praise, admonishment or offer to – presumably – give him a diminutive in the unknown language of monsters they seemed to speak in. He was now seated leaning against the smooth ice wall Ovrekka had just erected, perched on his still bundled bedroll.
The littlest monster – aside from Loki himself – stirred uneasily in their bedroll, then finally sat up and cleared their throat, sounding like the crashing of ice crystals. "Ranyé…. They…," they began, stuttering, then windmilled their hands impatiently like a pouting child indeed. Focusing their gaze on the window-like long but narrow opening set beneath the roof of their shelter, they plodded on after a few more false starts, "Rannar, whom everyone called Ranyé, was one-thousand-four-hundred-and-fifty, when Asgard came to Ymir's land. I was two-hundred-and-twenty-two. A group of æsir pigs wandered into our village, or maybe they did branch out there from the frontlines of the war, and… well, I did not remember much from that day, and I was always thankful about it, but Ranyé remembered." They drew a rattling breath, sounding much like the avalanche of the last ice scree heap Loki had poked out of boredom on the way here. "Our parents and my elder kin-sibling were fighting with the other villagers. Ranyé hid me with their ice. I was too frightened to form my own and maintain it. They stood beside me. They could not use their ice well while they were still shielding me, but they tried. An ás was about to club me. Maybe it thought I was an ice rock, or it indeed wanted to bash a toddler into pieces. But Ranyé went forth and stabbed it on the middle. I could not remember much from that moment on, just cries from the pigs and from Ranyé. I was crying, myself. I could not help it."
They were silent for such a long time afterwards that Loki thought the gruesome, most possibly propaganda-riddled tale had ended; but then they said quietly, barely audible to his ears, "Ranyé made themself big and killed five of the pigs. They were crying all the while, Elder Vrelkki said. Elder Vrelkki aided Ranyé and helped me back home, even as they tried to defend Rekki at the same time; Elder Vrelkki, I mean, because Rekki's parents were out on the frontlines with the Royal Family and therefore could not do it. Ranyé was never the same after that, in body and in spirit. They returned to their original size and trained their ice for fighting and shielding. Then they went to Útgarð when they were two-thousand, to enlist with the army. They made themself big again, but it stopped half-way because there was too little seiðr in the land to power the shift, after the Anchor had been stolen, so they planned to lie that they were already three-thousand and came from some mountain or sea, with the smaller peoples. They were sent back home with the Monarch's decree to guard our village, though, instead of being incorporated in the main armed forces like they had hoped. They lost their additional bulk for lack of will, after that, and never regained it because their seiðr had been strained too much and too often earlier. Until a moon-turn and a half ago, when the destroying light came down, Ranyé was never taller than I am despite their age. They were never a child, either, after killing those pigs. You remind me of them, in part."
Loki could not think, let alone say anything to that.
Avlar did not seem to expect any response from him, all the same. Weeping quietly, perhaps remembering their lost family afresh, they curled up fully inside their bedroll, which was in turn picked up and rocked about by a solemn and silent Ovrekka.
When Loki tore his gaze away from the surprisingly, starkly sentient, gentle tableau, he found that the two other jötnar had already burrowed into their own bedrolls long beforehand, with their clothes strewn rather haphazardly beside their respective cocoons.
It was as if those two had desperately wanted to escape the tale without fleeing their shelter, but had not sought to prevent Avlar from telling it.
From completing their bargain.
A little child still, if the information these monsters had given him so far had any merit, and they had completed the – hard, unbalanced – bargain they had struck.
Brokkr, the so-called best dwarven smith in all Nedavellir, ought to have learnt from this child monster, regarding honour in business deals.
A memory of Odin's utter wrath, on finding his second son – no, no, his stolen child monster – tied up in a ventilated box like an exotic pet, delivered through various places before reaching Asgard, with a magical thread sewing the young lips shut, sent him spiralling into a feeling of homesickness so strong that it choked him up.
`I have no home. I have no family.` The litany repeated again and again and again and again and again in his mind, but to no avail.
`I failed at everything. I still do.`
And the dam burst.