Fire and Ice
By Rey
The Warriors Three accidentally offended a very, very important person on Musplheim, the realm of the so-called fire demons. Thor entreated his diplomat of a little brother to solve the problem discreetly, without involving Odin in it. And, the dutiful if grumpy brother that he is, Loki goes. There, he finds….
Story note: Loki is 700 years old, in this story. Maturity-wise, he is comparable to a 10-year-old medieval working-class human for an ás or in the æsir's standard; but for a jötun or in the jötnar's standard, he is comparable to a 7-year-old modern human living a pampered life in a big city.
Author's note: Truly "fresh from the oven," folks. So please pardon me for any disjointment and other mistakes and please, please, please point them to me, so I can fix them. Especially in the latter part of the story, which I added on just tonight.
Started on: 1st November 2019 at 00:17 AM
Finished on: 9th March 2020 at 00:18 AM
"Thor had better be truly grateful," Loki grouses as he steps foot on Musplheim's hot, hot, hot soil.
"And be prepared with many favours for me," he adds when his whole body catches up in discomfort with his booted feet. It feels like his blood is being boiled, and his lungs and throat and nose being pumpd with soot-tinged hot air, and his eyeballs being both swollen to twice their usual size and pickled. The view that greets his watering sight is equally unappealing: gleaming, glowing red, orange and yellow everywhere, interspersed with just a few strains of brown and black. And he can even see simmering white that quails him viscerally at a distance ahead.
"Oh, damn. If I am meant to go there, I shall find any other way to complete this stupid mission."
Even now, even as he forces himself to take one step ahead of the other away from the Pathway and his salvation, he is beginning to heavily regret agreeing to Thor's pleas and cajoling for him to smooth over the Warriors Three's transgression against Logi, the heir to the throne of Musplheim. Going behind Father's back, at that, and without knowing the details of the said transgression. Only that there has been one, and it involves each of the warriors insulting Crown Prince Logi, and it occurred just yesterday.
And he has just found out that, here, in the realm of hot, melting, melted, fiery, steamy, ever-shifting, ever-erupting land masses, his seiðr works against him. It is too busy keeping him alive and safe to give him any directional reading to reach Crown Prince Logi.
Even now that his combined seiðr and mundane awareness is at its peak, it barely gives him any warning before the path that he has just trodden on erupts in fume and liquid fire.
`Damn you, Thor!` the hapless would-be diplomat rails, even as he involuntarily lets out a yelp and rushes onward, more recklessly than he would otherwise. `Damn me for falling to your pleas and bribes, too!`
And then, quite alarmingly and embarrassingly, with how he does not – cannot – really watch where he is going, he crashes against something… solid, but soft, but… `Hot hot hot hot hot!`
He leaps away by reflex, gasping, wide-eyed.
And then he sees that, before him, nearly twice larger than he is both up and to the side, stands one of the fire demons, in a semi-solid form that looks like freshly flowing lava drawn by seiðr into the vague form of an ás, complete with the bright rangy-red hue and the intense heat.
And, when the liquid lava made into a person talks, he realises – with mortified embarrassment – that it is in fact Crown Prince Logi, as he heard the voice before in preparation for this trip, stored in a memory crystal in the Hall of Records.
Worse, although the question is a simple demand for his identity, Loki cannot say or do anything to comply with it, it turns out, let alone starting to bargain for the Warriors Three. He is too busy trying to stabilise his own seiðr and body after the scare and the unprepared contact.
And worst, just as he manages to wrestle his composure into some semblance of respectability, he finds that Crown Prince Logi has shrunk into a short, non-quite-heat-exuding, solid ás-like form and created a stable area under and around them. He knows the kindness for it is; but still, it stings. `I am not a little child to be coddled so!`
He does his best in rectifying his childish faux pas, therefore, by greeting the foreign royalty in the Muspl tongue. He will show the Crown Prince that he is capable of representing Asgard at large and the Warriors Three in specific.
Well, unfortunately, a gout of liquid fire chooses the same time to erupt all round and under the platform, going as far as lifting it up for at least the length of his body before sinking it half into the volatile ground.
Loki flinches, squeaks, and once more scrambles to wrestle his wayward seiðr and posture back into some semblance of control, in the middle of his greeting.
And then, kindly, Crown Prince Logi points out that the greeting is actually a blessing for more fire in the home-hearth of the home that one visits; a gift of seiðr for more fire, a courtesy when a muspl visits another muspl's home. It is not simply a collection of half-meaningless words spoken only by norm and custom.
Another faux pas, while the previous one has not been rectified yet.
The flush that decorates Loki's face now is comparable to the heat and colour of the fire, it feels.
The self-generated overdose of high temperature intensifies when, just as kindly and even solicitously, Crown Prince Logi offers to escort him home and talk there, as though he were a child newly venturing into the world outside of his home and being overwhelmed by it.
Aside from the heightening embarrassment, now Loki is also put into a dilemma: To reject the care would be an insult to Crown Prince Logi, even when the rejecter is a prince himself, since the muspl so rarely leave their fire-wreathed world, and Asgard needs no more insults heaped on this personage by its citizens. However, to accept the offer would mean a far greater chance of Father finding out what Thor and the latter's friends so desperately wish to conceal, and, forget the bribes and favours that now no longer seem so good to cash in, it would only lead to a long, long, long time of unpleasantness for Loki himself.
"Mayhaps your highness could spare some time to converse in a more neutral setting?" The second prince of Asgard offers a third option, with fervent hope that his would-be rescuer will not be offended by the rather obvious redirection.
And then, before the Crown Prince can reply either way, the beleaguered self-invited guest notices the native's new attire: a thick, graceful, well-insulated winter outfit.
Winter outfit, in a land of molten fire.
A patch of whites and blues and greys and a smidge of green, amidst the landscape of reds and oranges and browns and yellows and a streak of white.
An outfit meant to Trap and store and recycle heat while the temperature is so overflowing with it.
It is like… a fish swimming in a tank of water, which is in turn submerged in a lake full of swimmable, liveable water.
Loki's mind stalls, again.
And, before he can recover much of his scattered wits, he finds himself being guided through the mouth of the path that he came out from.
Only, as he discovers next, their destination is not actually the small hot-spring cave just outside of Gladsheim proper, from which point he departed, but instead a forest of dark, gigantic, frost-layered trees with knobbly and crisscrossing roots.
He inhales sharply in shock.
And an alien but so familiar amalgamation of scents floods his nose, his throat, his lungs. It jars what feels like a dusty, dusty memory loose from the depths of the past.
He was here, once, somehow, wherever "here" is, before he ever began actively recollecting moments in his life. Because he knows, instinctively, that, if there were not so many trees around, he could be home already.
`But there is no winter anywhere in Asgard!`
He takes a second deep inhale, to confirm for himself and – hopefully – dispell the ridiculous notion.
Well, and to comfort himself as well, he has to admit, even just to himself. Because, indeed, the deep, sharp smell of winter here, with just a little bite to make it even more real, is somehow comforting.
He remembers hunger. He remembers loneliness. He remembers uncomfortable dryness, of all things. But he also remembers a huge hand laid on his entire and entirely bare front, intimately familiar and familially intimate.
And, on the third deep inhale, as he sinks further into the vague recollection, he remembers a deep, rumbly voice telling him a name, in a stuttering, pained wheeze: Loptr.
`My name? But I am Loki! … Am I not?`
A part of him wishes otherwise, still. The voice may sound male, but the visceral imprint that it leaves in him is…. `If I remembered Mother being pregnant with me, I'd wager that it would feel practically the same as this one does. – But how could it be? This does not make sense at all!`
He wishes that he could feel mortified, when he blinks back into the present awareness and finds the thickly gloved fingers of Crown Prince Logi swiping gently on his cheeks, one after the other, right under their eyes, and coming away wet. But all that he can feel presently is a deep, deep ache in his chest and behind his eyes, as well as a sudden, fierce, wild longing that exhausts him as much as it confuses him.
And then, as their eyes meet, the Crown Prince smiles softly and murmurs, "You are back home, child. Do not be afraid. Now, who are you called and where do you live? I shall return you to your mother or clan presently. They must be so worried."
The smile turns more teasing, then, and the muspl adds, "Be welcome in my home-planet, when you are older and well-travelled, or accompanied by a capable elder. I would like to see you and show you around, in that far happier and easier time. But for now, please do not use it as the object of your wager or a hideout for when you feel stroppy with somebody. It was not worth the hassle, was it?"
To that, Loki opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again, and ends up gaping most indecorously for a while.
"I… I am Loki," he says at last. But his mind shrieks, `Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!` to his further inner bafflement.
And the Crown Prince bops the tip of his nose chidingly, as though they noticed the supposedly incorrect answer.
Well, and as though Loki were a little child indeed, but the Asgardian youth cannot care less about it right now.
And then, suddenly and silently, somebody – a gigantic, greyish-blue-skinned, silvery-marked somebody – materialises behind the Crown Prince, mostly obscured by the surrounding colours and gloom.
And the longing, flaming as wildly and fiercely and unpredictably as the fires of Musplheim, turns even stronger.
"Ah, your transport home has arrived," the helpless ás hears, as if from afar. "Now, your monarch has spared some time to bring you home, so please tell them your name and where you live, would you?"
And, drunk and burnt by the longing in equal measure, Loki finds himself croaking out the name that spurred it all: "Loptr."
And, almost like the memory, a huge hand is laid on his front, mostly on his chest, and a soft, strangled, pained whisper fills both his ears and his mind, riding on a wave of the same power that drenches him thoroughly, as in his babyhood recollection: "Loptr, Laufey-childe."
The huge, strong arms that next gathers his quivering body close are almost expected.
Viscerally so.
`Mother,` his heart cries, and his dazed mind cannot contradict it.
Whoever he is, whatever he is, he is home, with his mother.