Okay, I tried to make this chapter humorous. I really did. But… THE FEELS, you can't escape the feels. ;_; Next time I'll try, I promise!
"Egh, how do you stand this?" demanded Loki after stepping in the fourth pile of horse excrement that morning.
"I watch where I step." retorted Nala. Loki shot a glare at her but her back was turned. He wondered how he had gotten himself into this mess as he scraped the offending substance off his boots with the end of his pitchfork. "Don't bother, you'll step in two more before you're finished." she called from across the aisle. All three horses had been turned out in their pastures and the task of mucking out fell to both. Though hard, it was simple, and left Loki's mind free to wander. One of the thoughts that most often surfaced in his mind concerned his future. How long would he stay with this woman? He uttered an Asgardian curse when a fleck of mud flew on his face and grimly thought it wasn't going to be too long.
"How's it going over there, antler head?" Nala had fallen into the habit of making up degrading nicknames for Loki when the occasion presented itself, and hearing a foreign-sounding curse from across the aisle told her that her plan to kick Loki out as subtly as possible might work afterall. The plan was conceived a few days after she ran him over and had been working itself out in her mind ever since.
Loki remained stubbornly mute as he angrily stabbed at a pile and heaved it into the wheelbarrow in the aisle. Mucking a stall consisted of removing any feces and damp patches of straw and replacing the bedding you took out. He had finished the first part and stuck his pitchfork in a bale of bedding straw, sitting down to relieve his cramped muscles. Though he was sure his father had some other form of Midgardian punishment in mind, Loki was sure that nothing was more degrading than being a prince one minute to physically removing a horse's feces from its own bed and carting it away because it was too stupid to do it by itself. It didn't help that they were particularly large, rolled all over the place, and had a strong odor that, by the end of the day, pervaded his clothes and seemed to cling to his skin.
He wondered, not for the first time that day, if everyone on Asgard was watching him. Laughing. Taunting. Flaunting their luxury in his face, eating the choicest morsels and drinking the finest mead. Envy was not an emotion that usually crossed Loki's mind, but it flickered on the periphery of his thoughts even after his mind turned to other, less pleasant topics. Over and over again he returned to the torture the chitari inflicted on him. It wasn't an experience someone, not even a god, walked away from unscathed. It wasn't just holding a hot iron to his skin, which they did do, but the mental agony that infused his every fiber while it wasn't being lit alight with pain. The smell of hot iron, the touch of it to his flesh, all was forgotten when his dreams, his very soul, turned against him every night and ripped him apart from the inside, literally and figuratively. He not only learned to fear pain, but sleep as well. Being immortal, it hadn't troubled him before, but now that he was mortal, he wasn't sure how it would affect him.
Loki shook his head, like a horse ridding himself of flies, and pitched straw back into the stall. He had to admit, if only to himself, that the smell of a fresh stall was quite pleasant. After a while, one got used to the smell of horse manure. And stalls didn't take too long to clean. Though it wasn't enjoyable, it wasn't the worst task he could have imagined himself doing on Midgard, and quietly chucked at the thought that Odin sent him here to be punished. Was this really punishment? He hated mortals and their short, pointless lives, meandering through them without purpose or dignity, stupid and blind, craving subjugation yet refusing to believe so. They angered him beyond reason for their stubbornness and stupidity. And now he was living with the very being he hated. It was like a person from the heart of a city being forced to live with cavemen.
"Don't forget to bank the sides." Loki started. Nala had suddenly appeared by his shoulder, watching his progress. He didn't know how long she had been there but guessed it wasn't too long.
"I haven't finished yet." he snapped, tossing more straw in the stall and raising the sides of the bedding so the floor looked like a bowl. "I've been doing this for a few days, I think I know what I'm doing." as soon as the sentence left his mouth, he realized how pathetic he had become. Arguing over his competency at mucking a stall. He wasn't just a god in a mortal body, he was becoming a mortal in a mortal's body.
"You're learning well, young apprentice." Nala said smugly, leaning against the stall door. Loki glowered, feeling her golden eyes boring into his back. He hated the humiliating names she gave him. 'antler-head,' 'young apprentice,' 'snow white,' and 'negative nancy' were some of her favorites. Loki didn't get the meaning behind half of them yet when he thought about her using them and him actually learning to respond to them made him cringe with shame and disgust. Pathetic mortals.
"So what exactly does one do with horses?" Loki asked, changing the subject.
"Don't you have horses on Ass-grind or wherever the hell you came from?" Nala replied, suddenly wondering what life was like for the banished prince before he tried to take over the world.
"It's Asgard." Loki replied venomously, suddenly protective of the realm that had banished him. "And we only used horses for transportation."
"So did Earth, until the car came along."
"Ah, I remember. Silly, bellowing, smelly things they are." Loki stuck his pitchfork in the wheelbarrow.
Nala raised an eyebrow. "And I suppose that's why you felt the need to blow New York sky-high?" Loki's shoulders tensed and he gripped the pitchfork handle with such force that his knuckles turned white.
"If you ever bring that up again you won't live to see tomorrow morning." his voice was calm, yet there was a bit of a waver in the tone, suggesting he came incredibly close to losing control. Nala backed off, silently dumping her last pile of soiled bedding in the wheelbarrow, unwilling to push him further.
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