Winter's Treasures
By Rey

Chapter summary: It's all a pile of little miscalculations on so many parties. But at least, for now, it's still manageable… right?

13. Miscalculations

Being loomed over by people many times one's size while one was laid back naked for a medical examination was always unpleasant, in Loki's opinion. Now, he found out, being loomed over by jötnar while in the aforementioned situation brought him past the unpleasant stage and straight into primal terror. Unfortunately, before he could kick and punch and wiggle his way free, one of the jötnar – the ones from yesterday late afternoon from the training hall, in fact – had taken it into their huge, clawed hands to restrain him physically, by help of yet another one.

He was all too surprised that, after all the fuss, what they – or rather, the remaining two – did was only to cast what sounded and felt like medical diagnostic spells on him, plus one for… anchoring a scanner?

Still, once he was free and somebody – something – else came into view, it took him just half a second to scramble to the edge of the hard, cold surface of the huge stone table and jump down to the floor far below with a shriek of "Monster!" vibrating in his throat.

"Sorry! I apologise, all right? I thought you knew the procedure! Hey, Bump? Where are you going? Do you want to go out there naked? Please don't! You are not yet fully recovered! Please don't use your seiðr yet! Oh oblivion…."

True, the use of even just a simple cantrip for telling direction to the outside already made Loki stumble hard in sudden weakness and dizziness. However, compared to the possibility of having to endure yet more of such a frightening, humiliating ordeal, this was a perfectly acceptable price to pay.

A statement that he sadly had to revise heavily a moment later, as he collided hard with a pair of giant shins and fell sprawling on the smooth icy floor.

And blacked out.

And regained consciousness in those arms again, as if he had never expended such an effort to flee in the first place.

It mollified him a little that, whoever the newcomer was, they seemed to be giving his muscled cage quite a talking-to in Ymska, one that made the latter cringe like a thoroughly scolded boy after a particularly messy prank.

And then, down below, a familiar – and surprisingly welcome – voice piped in during the lull of the tirade, speaking in simple Ymska that was most likely deliberately formed thus for his benefit, "Look, elders, Lokyé is awake!"

Avlar. After seemingly endless days of wondering where the boy was….

"Bump?" his holder immediately babbled, in Allspeak, while taking a step back from their irate interlocutor. "I apologise, all right? It shall not happen again. You are going to the paediatrician for the next check-up. These healers were simply for convenience's sake, I admit. I was just feeling too tired and thus reluctant to go farther away to make an appointment with the paediatrician. They just happened to be in the training hall. These were battle healers from the war with the æsir, and they happened to pass by the town."

He shook his head wildly to it all, regardless of how more dizzy it made him feel.

"You need the check-ups, you know," the muscled cage wheedled. "I shall not have you sliding back to that frightening state when you were firstly brought here! Your amma will chop me into pieces! And Elder Anga will likely dance on the remains…. Please have pity on me, at least?"

"You already ruined the first conscious appointment for them," the irate interlocutor pointed out in a much more gravelly voice than hers was, in somewhat accented Allspeak, sounding more disappointed and worried than angered at present. "What made you think they will trust your judgement again and agree to go to any healer with you?"

His holder cringed again, but seemed to be semi-gracefully acknowledging the chastisement, by not saying anything back.

"You have your duties, youngling, and you have been postponing them for a while. Get on with them, now," the newcomer said at length, sighing heavily. "I shall bring these two to the library for the day."

His holder reacted with a third flinching motion on the word "youngling," making Loki wonder vaguely about… her? His?… actual age, and if that word held a negative conotation here, but he was otherwise entirely too interested with the word "library" to care.

"But Bump hasn't eaten yet, Ma'am," the muscled cage complained worriedly. "The healers took some time."

Loki could not care less about this, too. He had been starving before coming here, and the prospect of more hunger sat unpleasantly in his stomach, but the promise of seeing a jötun library for himself was assuredly much more important than any missed meal right now. He had never even thought that a race of monsters could have anything resembling a writing system before that memo she had slipped for him, and now it seemed that these… that they… had organised collections of writings!

So he squirmed and elbowed and punched and kneed and kicked and even bit his way through the firm, muscled arms caging him, regardless of the squawked complaints the owner of those arms were letting out, and stopped only when the newcomer plucked him under his armpits right from those arms with the admonishment of, "Repare your relationship with the little one tonight, Eðlenstr, but for the time being do your own assigned duties, for Ymir's sake. Caring for a little one does not excuse you to be slothful."

Loki was dangling awkwardly on thin air far away from the ground now, naked and under the mercy of a totally unfamiliar jötun. Not any improvement from his earlier predicament, especially when the new jötun's all too discerning, all too critical pair of red, glowing eyes looked him up and down as if apprising the worth of something, not a sentient being capable of being mortifyingly embarrassed and freaked out.

And then the newcomer continued, in a reproving thunder that sounded much like a high military officer berating his hapless underling despite the appelation of "Ma'am" Eðlenstr had given… him? Her?…, and it was his previous holder's turn to be under the flat but shrewd gaze.

"You did not even dress them after the examination. Were they even dressed before the examination? Or did you just let them run naked everywhere? – Were you planning to do anything good today, youngling? Did you treat them like this all the while they were under your care? Whatever have you been doing this moon-turn? And you were the one who begged me to assign you minding duty for this specific one for the duration of their stay in Tora. Have you even asked for your charge's name? Or have you just been calling them that inane thing that is not even a proper name?"

"They were dressed, before, Ma'am!" Loki's previous holder squawked weakly. "The healers wanted a thorough examination, Ma'am, so I undressed them. I was going to redress them before breakfast just now." She scuttled backwards without turning her back to the newcomer, rummaged somewhere, and came up with something that she pressed gently against Loki's waist.

And then, she seemed to change tactics, from a military underling to… something else, not just more informal but also more intimate: "See? I was about to bathe them, first, Naðyé…. I thought it would be a treat…. At least let us have breakfast together, please, Naðyé? It will be our first ever! I can deliver them to the library after that. The other one, too, if you would let me. Please?"

The newcomer's firm, if softer "No" to Eðlenstr blatant grovelling sent mixed emotions flooding into Loki's mind. Compared to the far taller jötun and how deep and stern and authoritative they sounded, despite the notion that they were a woman, Eðlenstr truly seemed like a bumbling adolescent idiot.

But a caring, sincere idiot that he was more or less familiar with – much like Thor, when the moment struck it.

An unwittingly cruel one, at times.

A condescending, babying prat out of – dare he say – a sense of love, not only duty.

Homesickness rose above all others once more, after a rather long absence, threatening to make him physically ill.

How grateful he was when the newcomer put him back down on the floor at last and even let him choose which clothing he wanted to wear: the one provided by Eðlenstr, or his own that Avlar had told the newcomer was stored in his pocket dimension during the two's journey.

In response, he retrieved one of the outfits on his size that Ovrekka had found those ages ago in the clothing storage of their "gannha," which they had asked him to wear once he had arrived in Tora, from his pocket dimension. Here was Tora, after all, although he was not fully certain that such enclosed attire would be appropriate for city use among the jötnar, given that Avlar was currently wearing only a simple white loincloth. But he wore the slim-fit, pale-coloured, fancy – if rather rough-stitched – knee-long cargo breeches and fur-and-leather sleeveless, low-necked, front-laced vest anyway, to remember the gentle care that he had firstly known in this land of monsters, and the boy sincerely trying to be a man that Ovrekka had been.

He must admit, at least to himself, that he also did this partially to retaliate against the disastrous healer appointment Eðlenstr had pulled on him this morning.

And judging from the wounded noise she made behind his back, flavoured sweetly by Avlar's poorly stifled snickers, Loki had his revenge.