Chapter Three
Hope for the Hopeless
Damn this waiting.
If either Loki or Ellie had the ability to read minds they would have been rendered speechless by their shared thought. However, no matter how earnestly they wished for waiting to be damned, damned to the lowest depths of hell, the waiting continued.
Loki waited for even a sliver of his magic to be realized. Ellie waited for the fateful phone call from Corinne. After one week of looking out the window, glancing at the phone that lay motionless on the table, and any number of staring contests, both of them were beginning to lose hope.
Is it even possible for a god, a son of...a great king, to lose his blessed power? Loki thought idly, his tail swinging from side to side.
It has been five days. Five days. Almost a week. A complete work week. And nothing. Not a call, or a text, even a word. A letter would be nice.
As her hopelessness reached dangerous heights, she found herself writing more. She filled an entire notebook on her day off. Dozens of pages filled with words she could hardly remember. She returned to it now, three days past, bored and wondering if there was any phrase or page that could bring her success.
"Maybe I've reached my peak." She said aloud. She always felt better after she voiced her frustrations. "Maybe I'm just meant to be a waitress."
She hated the thought. She knew it couldn't be true. Waitressing wasn't an aspiration. It was an in between.
"So this is the in-between." She whispered. Resting her head on the arm of her couch she glanced around her apartment. As far as the in between went, it wasn't the worst place to live. A friend of a friend had introduced her to a woman named Clovis. Clovis was old, alone, and in need of a person to live in the studio above her garage.
It was a small studio, old fashioned and quite cute. The walls were painted sea foam green, the floors made of the same creaky wood. It was always cold during the nights, but Ellie did not mind it. As long as she picked up Clovis' groceries every Friday and helped her take care of the main house, she had access to a car and the place came fully furnished.
A large, probably too large, bed was pushed up against the corner wall, neatly covered in purple, flowery sheets. An old circular table sat underneath a large window. The couch was centered in the middle of the studio, it back facing the door. A low wooden table bent before it, books, sheets of paper, and a vase of dying flowers occupying the surface. The kitchen was narrow, each small cabinet filled with cracked dishes, mugs, and miscellaneous cookery.
Ellie sat in the folds of the couch, a thin blanket covering her bare legs, a book opened in her lap. She sighed. Reading was not turning into the distraction she sorely yearned for. Slipping from the cover of warmth offered by the blanket she rushed, barefoot, into the kitchen, stealling a bowl of fuit from the counter. Sliding back underneath the blanket, she suffered through a shocking shiver.
When she had signed the yearlong lease, she chose not to worry about the lack of any heating or cooling system. She was living in California now. As far as she was concerned, she didn't need a heating system. This December week was proving to test her limits. First the unexpected rain and now the cold. It seemed she had already forgotten her chilly east coast roots.
Pulling the book onto her lap, she opened it's folds once more. She was determined to be sucked in. Determined to forget about the phone call that it seemed would never come.
She grabbed a large nectarine from the bowl and unceremoniously pierced its reddening flesh with her teeth.
Loki found that staring out the window was the best way to pass time. He was watching a black bird preening its feathers on a tall pole. He no longer bothered to watch Ellie skitter around the apartment. His ear twitched at the sound of her socks shuffling across the wooden floor.
It wasn't her constant weepy sighs or the muffled fuzz of the tiny television that finally captured his interested. It was a smell.
A sweet smell. One that, unlike much of this dull realm, brought to memories of the home he could never return to. His defined shoulder blades hunched, his head rolling back so that he could gaze in the direction of the smell.
Damn.
The woman. She was almost asleep, her head resting against one of the small pillows that decorated the couch. In one hand, a large book was opened, resting in her lap. The other hand was stretched out, over the arm of the couch, a half eaten nectarine in her hand.
Loki's tiny pink tongue peeked out from between his teeth. His belly began to shake and shiver with uninvited anticipation. He had been ignoring his growing need for sustenance for days now. He could survive comfortably without food, but he knew that, if he were to regain his strength he would have to answer his stomach's call.
It had been easy at first, to deny his hunger. The only thing the woman ever offered him was processed, dried, all altogether disgusting food that belonged to the mutt. No matter how weak or hungry he felt, it wasn't enough for him to surrender to the brown and blackened crap.
Rising to feet, Loki hopped from the window sill to the small table top. The smell of the fruit was beginning to overtake his other senses. It was so succulent, so fresh, his could hardly contain a rumbling moan.
He dropped his head, his eyes alight, a desperate hunter stalking an easy prey. Confidence rolled off of his body in waves. He wanted to piece of fruit badly, badly enough to swipe it even though she had already taken bites out of it. Contaminated as it was, it tempted him from its place in her small hand.
His prejudices were no longer commanding him. As his stomach began to tremble, he leaped from the table to the back of the couch. Without a sound and hardly a breath he traveled the length of the couch and snuck forward. Sitting, he made sure not to disturb her arm and stretched his neck forward. Tentatively, he licked at the juicy fruit. The wild, sour taste flooded into his mouth. Losing all control he pushed closer and feasted on fruit. His stomach stopped its quivering and his eyes rolled back into his head.
His nectarine induced paradise was interrupted by a noise. It was soft, a whisper to his ear. What at first sounded like a breath was really a gasp. Loki's body instinctively froze. He could feel, far too late, that someone's eyes were on him.
Tipping his head to the side Loki felt his heart plummet. The mortal was watching him. A look of shock and amusement splashed across her face. One shapely brow was arched quizzically and a maddening grin was tugging at her rosy lips.
Loki didn't know why, he felt as if he had been caught in some humiliating act. He hissed low, warning her to wipe the grin away. She wasn't having any of that. Pulling the discards of fruit to her she stared at it and breathed a laugh.
"A black cat who likes fruit." She said. Loki was stuck in a sulk. The mortal, the human, the woman who looked more like a girl, was laughing at him. He was the one to laugh, he was the one to bask in the warm and gorgeous glow of some one else's embarrassment.
Ellie snorted. She had been trying to get the mangy little monster to eat something for days. Who would have thought fruit would be the magic food?
She tossed the pit and slimy mess of the nectarine into the bowl by her side and picked up another one. Taking a small bite out of it she held it out close to her side.
"Are you still hungry?" she asked sweetly. A part of her felt badly, he looked absolutly livid. Not with her, but with himself.
She knew cats were independent creatures. The fact that she caught him trying to feed himself, right out of her hand, must be upsetting him. She always knew animals were capable of more emotions than most people gave them credit for. The way this cat stalked around her apartment made her think that the creature was more human than feline.
The cat was ignoring her kinder tone and staring at her hand. The want in his eyes was pouring into the room. Ellie carefully guided her hand a bit closer to him, hoping to encourage him.
Slowly the cat gliding off the arm of the couch and over to her arm. He turned his head up to meet her eyes and glared. Ellie could read the look as easily as she could read the morning paper. Don't touch me.
For some odd reason, she felt compelled to nod. Then, Loki settled into the couch, his body sprawling across her arm, his front paws clutching at the fruit in her hand. As he began to enjoy his meal, a low rumble shook his chest. Ellie smiled.
Loki never did mind the cold. It took him years to know why this was. The thought of it haunted him and threatened to tear him apart from the inside. He was not born to the world of Asgard but to a race of demon giants.
Years of being indifferent to extreme winters used to be cause for pride, now he wished to be anything but tolerant.
The chill that Ellie kept groaning about was nothing compared to the winds of Jotunheim. He was quite comfortable in the dry cold that was Midgard's winter.
Still...After he had emptied the bowl of sugary, tangy fruit, he was overcome with the fullness of his belly. To content and bogged down to bother with the girl, he allowed her to run her hands through his fur.
For the first time in a long time, he felt warm. It sparked something inside him; caused an idea to play in his ever calculating mind. When she had left the couch and his side to cook herself a meager, he felt a surge of engery flowing through him. It was the heat.
It radiates off of her. It makes me stronger. If I stay near enough...
He hopped onto her nightstand.
The young woman was lost to sleep. Her arms were wrapping firmly about her pillow, her head heavy on the fabric. Her breaths left her in calm whispers, he could smell mint.
She was so fragile, he thought.
Was this why my brother was still taken with these people? Does their weakness amuse him? It must certainly boost his bloated egocentricities. That was well enough. But then...
He crawled onto the bed, intent on studying her face. It wasn't an unattractive face. Her features were delicate like that of Thor's human woman. Jane.
Loki felt a familiar pain thrumming in his chest. What could have possibly been so special about that mortal? What could have taken his brother and morphed from a babbling brute to a kingly gentleman. The thought shocked his skin and boiled his cold blood.
He had tried, for years unending, to understand his brother. To see something under all of the bravado that was worth imitating. However in the end he had been disappointed. His brother was always the fool, the un-thinker, the disrupter. It hadn't taken long for Loki to realize that he didn't want to be his brother. In fact, he wanted to be nothing like his brother.
No matter how much pride he felt for his own accomplishments, accomplishments that differed entirely from those of his brother, he could overcome the grand shadow that followed Thor like a loyal servant.
It seemed Loki was meant to live in the shadows. He had accepted it, even come to love it.
Until now. He had missed something. Something in his brother he could never see, but within a matter of hours that mortal woman had. That flighty, young, eccentric human, practically a child! She had seen what Loki could not.
It made him angry. It was an anger he didn't want to admit to. But now in the stiff, shadowy darkness the anger pushed past his carefully constructed walls. What could she see that he couldn't? What could she do that he couldn't?
She was human! Ellie was human! These women could hardly take care of themselves. Ellie scraped by, pretending to be content and happy. She could be floored by a mere earthquake. Dead and gone thanks to a well placed blow to the head.
He, the god of mischief, could move mountains, command them to speak and then wipe them away with a flick of his wrist. He could become anything. He could trick these humans into believing anything. They were ignorant, sloppy, foolish, and weak.
And here he was, subjected to depend on her to regain his powers. Stalking down the length of the bed, he glanced at the dog.
Stupid little thing...
Little was hardly the correct word to describe the mutt. He was stretched out on the bed, almost taking up the same amount of room as she did. With not much space, Loki settled into a tight ball in the turn of her legs. Almost immediately he felt white hot warmth spread through him.
Faster than he could have imagined, his eyes fell shut.
And he too was lost in a deep peaceful sleep.
Thanks for reading! ^_^