Winter's Treasures
By Rey
Chapter summary: When one trickles, one floods. Secrets and veiled truths are no exception to this.
24. Angrboða, Part 3
Loki was now fully awake, fresh from the admitedly good if trying bath, and presentable for once in seemingly a very, very long time, with his hair trimmed and combed back using supplies his captor had pulled from out of nowhere. He had been stuffed into something that was surprisingly so very soft and comfortable – if a little worne – while still resembling his old travelling attire, which was now nowhere to be found. And, presently, he was cocooned in a huge, worn-soft blanket which was tied together with a little bit of his captor's ice.
Clever. Tying him up without binding him to anything.
Irksome, too, because Avlar was totally free. The boy was seated nearby on the same icy 'picnic blanket' that Loki himself and their packs were occupying, akin to that Ovrekka had once pulled off when they had yet retained some will and energy to do so in that desperate, disastrous journey a long time ago.
But he also could not deny that he felt totally at home, somehow, in some way, ridiculously. There must be something in the clothing – supple but strong leathers with good but unobtrusive stitching, died pale green, with soft silky fabric as its inner lining – or in this fluffy light-grey blanket that could easily cover his captor from head to toe without leaving anything out, for him to feel this irrational sensation. – A subtle spell? Some hallucinogenic powder?
He only stirred when his captor strode back to the camp from where the skiff was parked, a small distance away. They spoke quietly with the four other huge jötnar who had been standing at the edge of the camp, occasionally throwing a look at him and Avlar down on the ground. And now he could see – truly see – that the five of them wore the same uniform leathers of a black skirt-like loincloth, a silvery pouch belt, a black sleeveless, collarless shirt without any laces with low cut at the neck and back and two crests tooled in red on the left and right on the front, and a silvery skullcap with yet another symbol at the front, done in black-and-blue tooling.
More importantly, there were subtle variations on his captor's uniform – the thin purple-green band along the rim of the skullcap, the thin, short silver-and-gold braided leather stitched on each shoulder, the decorative silver stitching along the hemline of the whole uniform….
And most importantly, his captor seemed to bear the difference in quiet strength and graceful power; something that not even Koðrati had achieved, or maybe just had not shown in his presence. And the deference the four other jötnar showed them was… was….
Suffice to say, it was all that he could do, not to give a deferential bow of his own, when the said jötun at last approached the patch of flat, smooth, crystalline ice he and Avlar had been seated on. Because the gait, the air of quiet dignity, the slow but sure steps….
`Norns damn it.` – Clutching at the blanket from inside, he took a bow.
That monster looked all too graceful, all too dignified, all too much like Odin for a monster.
He and Avlar were not in the clutches of some radical, subversive militant group, apparently. No, they could not be. This was… different. The underlings were too trained, too disciplined, too quiet, too… civilised. And their leader….
Their leader was letting out a sharp, very displeased-sounding hiss.
Loki stiffened, fighting not to flinch, caught still in a bow.
He did not expect what came out of the jötun's mouth next.
"Straighten up, youngling."
Shocked, pained, simmering with fury.
"You do not know how to play, but you know how to grovel?! What did Voðen do to you?"
`Voðen. – Đinyé? – Lékonnar Voðen. – If 'konnar' means 'king', then 'lékonnar' must mean something pretty close to it – 'prince'? But if this one dares to so freely speak a prince's name in fury, with such an 'I am your father so obey me boy' tone, then….`
"Býkonnar Angrboða," he breathed, stunned and overwhelmed and so very confused. – That was the last name associated with "konnar" that he knew, thus far; the name of someone that might have more power and rank than the Voðen that was currently castigated so severely in absentia; also the name that had been mentioned several times – several times more than Laufey's name, even.
And, in response, the giant looming before him roared in wordless rage to the sky, with huge fists clenched and all; maybe even with mouth snarled open and sharp black teeth bared, quite like the barbaric monster æsir stories always portrayed about the jötnar, except when they talked about delicate, petite ice maidens.
Avlar darted to behind him, laying convulsing hands on his shoulders as if ready to yank him back somewhere, anywhere. However, Loki could do nothing but freeze on the spot, and not because he was bundled in the blanket at that.
He realised now, he had never, in his unwitting, unwilling stay on Jötunheim thus far, heard a jötun roar like that, at him or anybody else. Not even the rude, ruthless one who had barred his little, pitiful company from entering that village between the ghost town and the midway point.
He had not properly appreciated the lack of it thus far.
His captor – Býkonnar Angrboða? – whoever they was – was gone, abruptly and – all too frighteningly – silently, and Loki could detect the hasty, crude, painfully obvious construction of silencing ward afar not half a moment after.
The four underlings – personal bodyguards? Random foot soldiers of the Crown? Royal guards? – spared him and Avlar a glance, but then separated to their apparently previously assigned posts: two guarding the skiff for whatever reason and two others prowling the parameters of their camp in ever widening circles.
The only ones left in the camp proper were a largish patch of smooth, level ice that nonetheless felt pleasantly like a textured picnic blanket, two runts – the larger of whom was hunkering down behind the smaller – and a couple of painfully recogniseable packs parked on the edge of the said "picnic blanket," all drowned in an awkward, tense silence.
It reminded Loki of the increasingly miserable and minimalistic camp he had made with his companions in that journey so long time ago, before they had been too exhausted and jaded to make a camp at all, before their fragile comradeship had been broken – maybe forever – by a series of bad turns of events.
He had never thought he would have missed jötnar – monsters.
Then again, he had never thought he would have so readily been accustomed to peaceable – or at least not roaring like a wounded nesting bilgesnipe – jötnar, not until it was yet another piece of the past he rued.
Avlar came out from behind him after a long while, skittish like a spooked colt, and darted towards the packs only to drag them to where Loki was still seated, now bowed in his fluffy prison for an almost entirely different reason from before. The boy did nothing with those large, bulging items for a long moment, choosing to scrutinise Loki instead, but in the end opened his own pack and rummaged for what turned out to be a stone containers full of the jötun milk-shards.
Loki shook his head emphatically when the open container was silently proffered to under his nose.
He was too nauseated with fear of the jötnar, again, to stomach anything, let alone those that came from them, especially if literally so.
And the milk in ice-shard form, it reminded him too much of the gentle care and crooning sweet words and unconditional acceptance that had welcomed him here all too briefly, of all that he had so greedily and thoughtlessly taken without any shred of appreciation, let alone gratitude.
And the bumbling warm love that yet another had showered on him: equally unconditional, equally whole-hearted, scorned for its earnestness and honesty….
He felt sick, and the sickness clawed his innards mercilessly, inescapable – because how could he escape himself.
Jötunheim's version of "nighttime" had long fallen, and a fierce, bitter wind had been blowing steadily through the landscape for the better part of it, making Loki grudgingly grateful for the protection of the head-to-foot travelling attire that was not his own doubled with his fluffy prison. His stomach had been protesting the lack of nourishment ever since he had awoken from his latest bout of unconciousness, and his body had been punishing him for such with weakness of muscles and seiðr and thus less protection against the perpetual cold of the harsh realm; but still, until now the thought of touching a meal, especially something prepared by the jötnar, was yet repulsive for him.
Ironic, that he found himself unable to even think of parting with both the travelling attire and the blanket, despite the fact that they were of most probably jötun make, and maybe even a jötun's hand-me-down.
He felt too at home with them, somehow, for that to happen.
A pair of huge, muscled, powerful arms suddenly and silently picked him up and wrapped themselves sidewise round his cocooned self, as if a child seeking solace from a favourite squishy toy, or a mother cuddling her infant, just as cold-and-hunger-induced drowsiness began to plague him. The expansive, muscled torso the arms were attached to trembled faintly but ceaselessly, yet the cradling embrace felt neither weak nor crushing.
A moment after, the bit of ice holding the cocoon together dissolved, and it was only the gently cradling arms that barred him from freedom.
Still, he dared not move even a nail's breadth anywhere, and refused to look up into his captor's eyes, let alone screamed for help that would never come, although he could acutely feel a heavy gaze boring down on him.
And then his captor rumbled lowly, in their previous calm tone but without the levity that Loki had not realised had been there till it became absent, "Ask your questions, child. I cannot guarantee that I can answer all you wish to know; for various reasons, but for what I can answer, I shall answer with the truth as I know it."
The faint tremor racking the huge, muscled frame enveloping him was not condusive for questions, Loki thought. He could be so easily crushed within this living cage, should his captor deem his questions overly rude or upsetting. But would the huge jötun consider his lack of questions offensive instead? Besides, this was the chance he had been waiting for so long, was it not? Nobody had ever offered such a generous boon to him here; not either of his caretakers, nor his previous travelling companions, nor the Grand General, not even Lúkra – who had been supposed to educate him in the first place, he had assumed. Such a chance had been a rare thing even before he had been shucked off into this land of monsters, at that, come to think of it again.
Well, he had to admit, if only to himself, that at times he could be as reckless as Thor was.
"Who are you?" he whispered, with his eyes locked on the left-hand symbol on the front of his captor's vest.
"Are you addressing me or your House's crest, child?" The retorical question sounded tired and a smidge exasperated, not pretending at all to be indifferent, although still in a level enough tone that Loki did not worry overmuch.
"My House's crest?" he echoed, intrigued and apprehensive all at once.
"Your House's crest," his captor affirmed, but said no further.
Loki fought not to show any sign of exasperation. He was not going to fail at this game, if nothing else. To that aim, he did not look up as implicitly requested, either.
And to that move, his captor let out a – very undignified – snort.
Caught off guard and very much startled, he looked up at last, wide-eyed.
A pair of mellow garnet eyes met his, deeper red than all that he had seen or glimpsed thus far but crystalline clear, beautiful in their own right and ever so intelligent.
They were crinkled slightly at the edges in wry, subdued mirth.
He looked back down, huffing.
"Are you so opposed to your own kind that you would not even meet your interlocutor's eyes, child? Will our relationship be forever filled with tricks and secrets and avoidance?" His captor sounded as agrieved as before they had bellowed to the sky like a maddened bull, but thankfully more tired than angry.
Loki stiffened, nonetheless. To cover up the telling reaction, he moved about, as if he was torn between snuggling deeper or squirming free of the blanket.
He froze, again, when his neck was caught firmly in the crook of the giant's elbow. With how muscly and strong the arm felt, parting his head from his shoulders like a ripe cluster of amna from its softened fruit-twig would be rather easy.
They were at an impasse once more.
His captor seemed to realise that at the same time, for they then said, after a deep sigh that seemed to radiate exhaustion and even transfer some to their captive, "What about this? You introduce yourself to me, and I shall in turn introduce myself to you?"
"What do you know of me?" he parried.
"Do you promise to speak the truth as you know it, and the whole of it?" was the returned stipulation, offered as his captor sought to meet his eyes, wherever the latters roamed.
Loki could not help it. He let out a whine of frustration. – Thirsty, hungry, thwarted at every turn, treated like a baby and an adult at the same time, while being surrounded by the feel of something – or someone? – that his basest instincts seemed to have known and welcomed, and now being cornered by a question with no good answer, it was too much of a chore to maintain the image of an implacable, respectable adult ás.
It had already been far too late for that, anyhow, by now. Weeks too late, judging from the scattered information he had gotten and his own calculation about the time.
So, in the end, as realisation set in, he just went all out.
He gave his captor the eye contact they had been chasing after and boldly replied, "Are you going to kill me afterwards? I would rather live. Too many people have died for me to forsake life by now."
His captor frowned, thought for a moment, then said, "It depends on your crimes… and also what your dam and monarch will say."
At least they were honest about it, as they had promised earlier.
So, fed up with his own evasions, his own deceptions, his own half-truths and everything else, Loki spoke,
And spoke, and spoke, and spoke….