Strikhedonia: The pleasure of being able to say "the hell with it."
Loki is well aware by all standards that frost chickens are supposedly an endangered species, but from the looks of his childhood backyard, it certainly doesn't look that way. Just this morning, three goats went missing and fourteen small fires have started up along the edge of the perimeter, fires that refuse to be squashed out by the constant drifts of snow falling down from the iron sky.
Loki scoffs to himself. And Thor wonders why he ever left.
Speaking of Thor, the great oaf is rolling around with Modi in a huge snow drift a few yards to Loki's left, their laughter hanging in the air like icicles and making Loki smile despite himself.
He rubs absentmindedly at his stomach, where the baby is twitching, a little silver fish under his skin, or that's the way Loki prefers to imagine it.
A herd of frost chicks erupts from a particularly large snow drift about a hundred meters or so in front of Loki, and Helblindi sits down in the snow beside his little brother, sobbing into his hands, something about how he was nowhere near ready for children and how did Loki handle this sort of thing he just wasn't ready not at all.
Loki snorts. Helblindi looked to have become a father, at least three hundred times over, if he was eyeballing the number of chicks scattered around the property correctly.
Loki feels the new baby kick, sending a shock up through his throat, erupting from his mouth as a spout of flames. Helblindi stops from his pouting long enough to gape open-mouthed at his brother, before rubbing at his eyes and asking if Loki could do it again.
Loki opens his mouth to protest - he certainly isn't a trained dog that can do tricks on command - but then the baby kicks again, and he shoots out a jet of flame that almost singes Helblindi's perfectly shaped eyebrows off.
Helblindi covers his face with his ever-present scarf before grasping Loki by the shoulders and pointing him in the direction of the snow drifts.
"To hell with it," his brother mutters, muffled underneath the thick wool of his scarf, "just melt the whole damn backyard, that'll take care of it."
Once the entire backyard is relatively snow- and chicken-free, Helblindi risks a glance to where the remaining frost chicks are running around, little flames alight on the edges of their blue feathers. He narrows his eyes, watches with a sadistic glee as one of the chicks just pops, decimates itself, in a miniature inferno.
He smiles and turns to tell Loki that it does appear he's turned out useful after all, when Loki points out the window with a shrug.
The chicks, popping like popcorn, are starting to arise from their untimely ashes, bigger, redder, angrier, and significantly uglier than before.
Helblindi sighs as Loki magicks a pitchfork into existence and hands it to him.
"It is your inheritance, you know," Loki reminds him, as he shoos Helblindi out the door, ignoring his brother's protests, and, later, ignoring his brother's screams of "BACK, FOUL BEAST!"
Darcy asks what exactly is going on outside, cuddling a blissfully oblivious Henry to her chest, and Loki just shrugs and tells her Helblindi is in one of those moods again.