Winter's Treasures
By Rey
Chapter summary: More often than not, street children were not street children at the beginning. One of Tonder's lower denisons proves it true.
Chapter warnings: The confusion of genders and pronouns continues, likely till the end. Also, warning for aftermath of war.
28. Tonder, Part 2
After such reception both from the "uppers" and the "lowers" of the city, Loki was very, very, very leery of trying to find shelter in this underground trap. He knew nothing about this place, and Avlar was likewise clueless, and they had to think about Eðlenstr and her life-support system, too, and such reception was not at all kind to these limitations.
Unfortunately, after spending so much energy in first bringing the skiff down as safely as possible, then shielding it and them, then navigating the city, then running around being chased by those hooligans, and all without sufficient rest and sustenance during the only time they could afford it, he now felt very, very, very weak indeed. In fact, Avlar had been dragging not only Eðlenstr's mobile bed but also his tired body, these past few streets or so.
But even Avlar had limits, apparently, for the former prince of Asgard soon found himself draped over one corner of the life-support box, after the boy had suddenly stopped dragging them along.
"We… need… shelter," he forced himself to say – slur, rather – when the boy staggered along the length of the box towards him. They were still stranded at the side of a street, after all, although they had long moved away from the main thoroughfares, and this street was not empty, nor was it a dead end. It was yet too exposed for even his far diminished preferences, let alone taste, thus it was not at all safe to spend even a candlemark in, to him. Who knew, more of those hooligans might be around to rob them off their meager supplies.
But Avlar shook his head, and plopped his behind on the not-so-clean pavement near the life-support box with a rather definite air, and Loki could do nothing but to imitate him.
And a moment after, as if the movement had been a permission, oblivion enveloped him at last.
O-O-O-O
Loki woke with a start from sleep – or was it unconsciousness? – and found that he had been moved from where his sorry company had been forced to halt in their aimless meandering. The tiny room he found himself in was not better than the street in cleanliness, but it was private, at least… if he did not count the jötun now looming above him, who was taller than Ovrekka but not as tall as Eðlenstr, whose hand was still on his bare chest.
The aforementioned jötun said something, then, while retracting their hand and straightening up, but it was in Ýmska, and Loki recognised only a few words in it.
He was well practised in asking for someone's identity, however, by now, so he did, semi-purposefully evading the question that had been thrown to him at the same time.
Unfortunately, the jötun seemed to be as agile as he was in avoiding questions, for they fired away yet another question instead of introducing themself.
And they motion at Eðlenstr in her life-support box while doing so, he could see, as he had been laid beside the said box, with Avlar taking up the space opposite him on the other side of the box.
He sighed. "What do you wish to know about her?" he relented. He had been rescued by this jötun, after all, most likely, and he would like to think that he was honourable enough not to be difficult to his rescuer, at the very least.
Unlike twice before.
`And here's to the hope that I will not cause this one's demise or suffering, as well.`
O-O-O-O
The Norns loved toying with him, it felt to Loki, or the universe was smaller than previously thought. Because their host – Eðýgr Eðlúgra-childe – was apparently close kin to Eðlenstr, who was the youngest womb-sibling of their mother, and Eðýgr had spent their life until slightly after the war being fostered in Útgarð, and in fact had grown up calling Laufey their nar – their aunt or uncle, just a step below their mother in importance and responsibility, from what he understood of the jötnar's strange culture.
"You should not have left, I would say," he remarked quietly upon the revelation of that last point.
The jötun sent him a look which seemed to be comparable to a raised eyebrow, but Loki persisted. "You had a good life, with the Monarch. And if you were that close to the Monarch, the Crown would have your welfare seen to even after the war, I would wager."
"What made you flee the care of your own blood kin, then?" Eðýgr returned dryly. "That argument could also be made against you, you know."
Loki looked away. "What about you, yourself?" he retorted. But even as the words escaped his lips, he realised how lame and laughable they were.
His cheeks burnt with chill that seemed to replace heat in this body, when Eðýgr did let out a chuckle to that, flat and short-lived as it was.
And he wished he had never asked, when the jötun indulged him with an explanation – yet another one, while he had not yet offered any of his own.
Eðýgr had been a reminder that family could harm one another grievously in various ways, or so they said, and they left it at that, noting only that it was the reason why his mother's womb-siblings and beyond would rather they be raised elsewhere. And they had grown up loved and cared for despite the rejection, as they had still had their mother Eðlýkkú, a broken creature though she had been by then, and Eðlenstr who'd visited often on her way to visit Voðen her friend, and Eðlúðr the eldest of the siblings who had worked – had been working, as far as Eðýgr knew it – as Laufey's personal guard, and even the Royal Family themselves as some sort of caring and friendly relatives.
Only, then the war had broken, first the civil war then Asgard had waded in. Eðlýkkú – broken, but still aware of who had saved her all those centuries ago – had died shielding a pregnant Laufey from the first blatant, direct assassination attempt. Then Eðlenstr had brought the grieving Eðýgr running away to a safer place on Laufey's order, and the child had returned post-war to the only home they'd known only to find far-too-shaken people and their beloved nar no longer pregnant, with an ugly, cursed wound on the belly instead. Laufey had been just a shell, then, losing… her?… first-and-last children all at once and in such a manner, and Eðlúðr had nearly committed suicide, perceiving that they had failed utterly in attempting to prevent such from happening to their monarch and their friend. So, even more distraught, especially since Eðlenstr had somehow been banned from setting foot in the palace by a grieving Angrboða, Eðýgr had set out with a kind family among other families who then scavanged for life as they traded salvageable things and reunited scattered folks. Their path had brought them to this city… and the city had turned them away, just like the village on the way from the ghost town had turned Loki and his company – they had been children! – away just before a hailstorm. The children had been permitted to stay, in this case, but the adults… no.
And, throughout the centuries, harsh living had wittled down the size of the scavanger caravan, while their children left in Tonder had had to fit in the mould to survive, clumped together and ushered here and there absent-mindedly by well-meaning but overworked and understaffed carers.
And Eðýgr hated moulds, after what had happened to their mother… which Loki was beginning to get an inkling of, by now, despite them being close-mouthed about it, so they had chosen to become a street child instead.
He shook his head. He had had a family – no, two families – and he had forsaken them all, while Eðýgr had lost both of theirs despite trying to cling to them. Who was the poorer between the two of them?
And, more importantly, what was this jötun going to do to him once they knew what he'd done to Laufey?
He shook his head again. This was not the time to wonder about dark things. The real, present situation was already dark enough.
And besides, Eðýgr was tracing lines on his body that he had done his best to hide with slow but precise strokes of a finger, and their eyes were too solemn and too knowing not to really know who he might be – who he was.
He was sadly proven true a moment after, as Eðýgr murmured almost too low for him to hear, more to themself than to him, "Loptr. You must be Loptr. Lost, not dead. Not the other one. Nalla showed me the other one, once, before I went with the caravan. They never got to grow up, but you did, you do."
They cupped his cheek, then, and looked deep into his eyes. "You fled Nalla? Why? They missed you so. They were so hopeful, when they knew they were bearing the two of you."
Loki's breath hitched. `No, I did not flee Laufey,` his traitorous mind whispered. `No. I killed him – her. I killed my mother.`