Winter's Treasures
By Rey
Chapter summary: Can a broken mender mend broken things?
20. Broken, Part 1
For days on end, the only company that Loki knew was that of the mostly unresponsive Avlar, the harassed-looking and tired Grand General Koðrati, Tora's Head Priest, Tora's Head Healer, the couple of priests and healers who had the seiðr-giving or check-up duty at that time, a handful of silent and mostly unintrusive guards who were kept on rotation each day and night, and someone else who delivered meals and ice-shard milk for both Loki and Avlar. The last person was supposed to take care of them in a more personal way, too, but Loki had managed to convince the nosy busybody to leave them alone. He took the duty up for the both of them, especially for Avlar, who often spent his spunge-bath time just staring into space until Loki nudged his back, and who would only relieve himself when Loki had firstly dragged him to the privyhole.
The books – Loki's and Avlar's – had long been returned to the library by the same meal bringer, given their lack of interest in learning, or even curiosity to know more. The contents of Loki's pocket dimension were still nowhere to be seen; but maybe it was a blessing, with how his Asgardian attire was included in that lot. He did not need more hassle in relation to that thorny problem.
He needed no more hassle, and he needed no more blood on his hands, although a little or much more of it would likely not matter, after that one murder he had committed in his misguided sense of loyalty to Odin.
The meal bringer tempted him and Avlar with small, second-hand toys at times; and those the said meal bringer refused to return to wherever the old, simple things had been found. – A chipped stone model of a transport skiff, polished smooth and dull in colouring by time, and lightened with the application of just a single passive seiðr rune hidden beneath what was supposed to be its steering station; a packet of stone construction toy with three pieces missing; a stone spinning top with motion-triggered colourful lights on its flat, circular surface, painted anew – or so it seemed – with a cheerful green hue and played with the help of a leather string; a bundle containing small, sturdy wooden sticks, bits of leather string, scraps of rough cloth and a sewing kit, with which he might build a toy tent or a stick figure or the like; a musical instrument – small for a grown jötun – made up of tuned metal bars that were arrayed on a hollow stone table-like platform, to be hit with a pair of sturdy wooden rods tipped with a metal ball each to produce sound….
He ended up throwing none of the toys out himself, after the meal bringer had refused to return them to wherever they had come from for him.
Avlar, surprisingly, was the catalyst for the new decision.
Loki had made the fluffiest stick figure he could manage from the available materials, when staring at Eðlenstr's unmoving, lifeless-seeming body had become too much, inspired by her snow-doll that had not melted back into snow even now, and Avlar was never seen without it afterwards. Then again, the snow-doll that had become the inspiration for the stick figure was never out of Loki's reach. Both figures could be seen propped up beside each other oftentimes, just like their owners, although none of them saw anything resembling playtime thus far.
At another time, one of the more playful guards, purposefully coming out of obscurity, skipped and jerked and rolled the skiff toy along Loki's thighs and arms and back and shoulders, accompanying the dramatisation with a surprisingly good vocal rendering of a skiff's machine in trouble and a pair of pilots bickering inside. He swore he wasn't smiling ever so slightly right then; although, he did try the same trick on Avlar once they were truly alone with just the insensate Eðlenstr in company, for the sake of a pale spark of curiosity, and that boy did smile, however vaguely.
He made a new stick figure with the materials – greater in number and variety – that the meal bringer freshly delivered to them at yet another time, plus an open-walled tent to house it in, thinking of the toys he had sometimes made for the street children in Asgard.
Avlar took both and – silently, as ever it had been after that fateful day – tucked the previous stick figure in Eðlenstr's limp hand. He added Loki's snow-doll after a while, putting it in her other hand; and, somehow, for an unknown reason, Loki felt a pang on his heart, beholding the sight.
Recently, the latter tried playing the musical instrument, softly, searching for the wordless melodies his two caretakers had so generously sung for him when he had unknowingly needed it. He swore Eðlenstr's look of agony melted a little just now, as he at last managed to run a more or less smooth piece on it, even though it was far from the music he had aimed for.
So he played it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, with more variations and adjustments until it became one long, complicated piece.
It sounded a little jagged, still. But then, his two – sometimes three, sometimes more – audience never seemed to mind.
Maybe they knew that the player himself was not whole, or wholely there.
"Elder," Loki greeted Koðrati one evening, quiet and hollow but speaking for once. The hour was late and Avlar had long gone to bed; but, as per usual, Loki himself was seated beside the coffin-like box that held Eðlenstr's body.
He was eyeing the milk-pale body, now, especially the chest area, which was decorated with sets of three lines in both geometrical shapes and rather intricate swirling patterns, and had lost its womanly contour, to his inexplicable sadness. He only looked up when, silently, the huge jötun picked him up and cradled him close.
"Did you wish to ask me something, little one?" the Grand General prompted after a while cuddling him, which seemed to comfort the jötun much more than it did Loki himself.
Loki obliged them. "Why do Avlar and I keep getting milk with our meals?"
"To date, I am yet to find any one of Ýmir's Children who does not like the milk given by their elders," was the amused, fond answer, which still sounded wrong in Loki's ears after all this time, coming from the mouth of the grand general of monsters.
He shook his head. "It… it is from your own body, not a farm animal," he tried to explain. "Why would you share your body like that with a stranger? Even if it is indirectly shared as with the ice chips?"
"I… heard, that there are… wet nurses… in Asgard," was the bemused rejoinder. "Do they not share their own milk with a stranger's child? Directly, at that?"
Loki shook his head more vigorously, getting frustrated; although, like all other emotions he had been experiencing these days, the frustration was only a distant point in his mind, in his heart. "Wet nurses are for babies. I am not a baby, and Avlar is even older than I am, at least as counted by years," he pointed out. "We can eat. We do eat, in addition to… sipping on the milk. But your first response is always giving milk. It… happened, also, with… with…," he swallowed hard and tensed up in Koðrati's arms, "with my… caretakers. They never bothered with trying to feed me ordinary meals, especially…."
`Especially Eðlenstr, the self-proclaimed milk factory, who went as far as tricking me into suckling like a recalcitrant babe, at first,` his mind continued, but the big lump in his throat prevented him from finishing the sentence out loud.
Koðrati's red, glowing eyes were smiling sadly at him, with warmth and intelligence and affection that made the solid crimson orbs so sentient. "Tell me the truth, little Loki," they said softly, knowingly, "which meal do you like best, the milk or that tender meat stew you were given this evening?"
Loki looked away.
Koðrati took it as the answer.
They were not wrong.
And then the explanation came, as the Grand General retreated into the sectioned-off part of the large bedroom that contained the cot plus a sleeping Avlar in it.
"Our milk is the best, most luxurious meal that one can have, and neither monetary wealth nor even the highest status in any realm can afford it by force. There is no set age in which one can or cannot receive milk from their loved ones. It is produced only when one holds fondness, however slightest, to the receiver. It applies triply so when it is given directly from breast to mouth.
"At its best, with a proper bond involved in the nursing, especially that of a dam and their womb-child, it is literally the best meal you can have in your existence. Although, sadly, many people take it for granted."
The huge jötun seemed to fall into some internal reminiscence afterwards, absently rocking a contemplative, blanket-wrapped Loki in their arms.
"What is the worst that can come from it?" the captive asked when the Grand General seemed to bestir themself out of the memory lane.
The huge head looked down, and the gaze darkened. – Loki fought not to flinch away from the stormy look. He had asked the question; he would hear the answer.
And the answer did come, mesmerising him in its deadliness, both in context and tone.
"The best poison in all the known realms," Koðrati said, his voice and expression hollow and dead. "It can be produced only once, and it kills the producer as slowly and thoroughly as it does the receiver. But while the receiver can dodge it entirely, or maybe even heal from it with the application of the opposite substance, the producer can never recover from ever making such a substance from their own self. Madness is the ingredient; an utter certainty of love and hatred, melded into one. It tears the person apart long before it tears the body into pieces. – To date, I have only ever seen one sample of such substance, and the husk which produced it. It is that… rare."
Loki looked away, at last, and down to his blanket-covered chest. "Oh," he mumbled, nearly inaudible even to his own ears.
A faintly trembling hand combed his scraggly hair, even as Koðrati collapsed into an ice chair of the huge jötun's own making, seeming to be thoroughly spent by the dark narration somehow.
"You cannot give milk yet, little one. You are not yet old enough, developed enough for such gift," the Grand General said at length, knowingly, as, succumbing to the hypnotic sensation of claws gently scraping across his scalp, Loki began to relax. "You are not recovered enough yet, also, both in body and in mind. How can you give something of yourself when your own self sorely needs it?"
"No," Loki mumbled. "No, I will just poison her. I… do not want that. I thought…. I thought I could. I thought it might help, like it did me."
His captor tensed a little. "Why poison, little Loki?"
"In Asgard…. They…. We…. All we hear in Asgard is how monstrous the jötnar are."
"Are our people not gathered together with Lékonnar Voðen, there? I have been having the impression that they keep close tabs on all the halflings who chose to live there or elsewhere, and those explorers who do not wish – or do not yet wish – to come home. Did you not live with one of ours, or even with Lékonnar Voðen? Surely none of ours would tell you such horrid tales? Even after all the losses in that senseless war?"
"I do not even know who Lékonnar Voðen is."
Koðrati huffed. "Do not play the fool with me, little Loki." Then they seemed to change directions and raised Loki's chin so that their eyes could meet. With all seriousness, they asked, "Do you hate Etta?"
"Why would I think of giving her milk if I hated her? I…. It is all new to me. How can males breastfeed anyone? But if it were possible, and it could help her, I thought…." Loki stuttered from his brief, indignant tirade to an awkward, embarrassed stop.
`They asked you a valid question,` his mind admonished him, meanwhile. `You have just said that all jötnar are monsters… and Eðlenstr is a jötun, however much you wish otherwise.`
Koðrati let out a sigh. "This," they said, "truly shows how you were not raised by our people." They tapped the tip of Loki's nose gently with one claw in admonishment and for every emphasis. "Do not bring Asgardian concepts of genders and gender roles here, little one. We, Ýmir's Children, are of only one gender, neither male nor female, although we do have two sexes in each of us.
"Most will pair off or form more complicated child-bearing relationships in adulthood, whether temporary or not, and they will take the role of either the bearer of children or the giver of seed, but those roles are always interchangeable in such relationships. We can even bear a child entirely on our own, should we wish to, although it is usually inadviseable for many reasons.
"For this fact, and for the fact that many of the male sex in other realms are bumbling oafs (in my personal opinion), we consider ourselves as female should we be required to put ourselves in a specific gender, and being called a male is rather an insult to us. I shall leave the more intricate and in-depth explanations to your dam, however, unless they say otherwise."
Loki stared up at them, horrified, breaking up even more from the wall of blankness he had been maintaining for a long time. – How could such a weighty topic diverge into the monsters' version of the Talk?
How would Koðrati presume to ask Laufey to explain such a thing to him, anyway? Did the jötnar have ghost-raising ability?
Mortified embarrassment soon turned into a far deadlier kind of mortification, on that thought. – `They do not know that I killed my own mother.`
He fled to the cot on that realisation. He could not bear touching anyone; or being touched, for that matter.
If the Grand General was to execute him when they found out what Loki had done to the king – queen? Monarch? – that the said general seemed to hold so much respect and fondness for, it would be best that the both of them distance themselves from each other beforehand.
A monster – of all monsters – deserved no affection, anyway, even one born from the monarch, and especially one who had murdered the said monarch in cold blood.