Everybody talks

I haven't written this in forever and I had a sudden fancy to start again. For the love of God, if you like it, review, or I probably won't write more.

Camouflaged in a grey burlap cloak, which did next to nothing to keep out the frosty biting winds of the northern Vanaheim winter, she walked into a seedy tavern at the edge of town.

She had not encountered any Dark elves in three days. The Vanir forces were fighting them back, and thousands of elves had taken to their ships and fled Vanaheim. The small village bore the marks of their occupation, however. Some buildings had been burned to the ground, their charred back ashes dispersing through the city in the cold winds. A giant pit, perhaps twenty by ten yards and ten feet deep, had been dug into the frozen ground just south of the tavern; men worked all day under the grey sky to bury the dead, mostly men but some women and children too. Most hadn't died in combat; the elves wouldn't have bothered fighting the peasants in a small impoverished town like this. No, they had died a much worse albeit less grizzly death of starvation. Hunger, the silent killer. Some of the bodies were stripped naked, collarbones and ribs protruding against papery thin skin. Itriel looked onward, unbothered.

Her hair was in mats. She had chopped most of it off with the knives she had stolen from the keep in which she was inprisoned. She was at an age where, without her hair and in the baggy unisex cloak, she was virtually indistinguishable from a boy. She was, however, old enough to realize that missing her monthly blood meant trouble. Catastrophe, for the situation she was in.

"Moon tea*", she said to the middle-aged woman who had set up an herb shop in a dirty corner of the tavern. She presented the women with not coins, but a jeweled dagger, which technically speaking probably cost enough for ten thousand pounds of the herb. Under normal circumstances, a starved young girl buying moon tea would have caused large amounts of suspicion, but the grey-haired woman just grunted, took the dagger and handed her a small sack.

She exited the shop and walked a half mile past the burial pit to the dilapidated barn in which she was hiding. There she brewed the bitter tea, drank, and waited.

Loki was desperate-no, starved-for her attention. That's why he was flirting with Ona Svensdottir, the eldest daughter from an extremely wealthy merchant family who was staying at the palace to be another one of Frigga's ladies-in-waiting. She was an attractive girl, with curly dark hair and a well-shaped rear, and she was just as beautiful as Itriel, or so he tried to convince himself. He was still supposed to be angry at Itriel, from that idiotic prophecy, so he ignored her completely on a generous day and made sharp, sarcastic comments to her on a less generous one. Truthfully, he had been told byher everything he had, deep in his heart, expected to hear. And now that it was confirmed by Itriel's questionable sorcery, he was secretly terrified.

Loki had just walked off sweaty and bruised from the fighting pits, where he had been sparring with Fandral, when Ona approached and lavished him with praise for his ingenious fighting. And that's when he saw Itriel give him the look.

Frigga had recommended that Itriel only spar with Sif and the other female warriors (of which there were few) and she had shrugged, complacent, or rather just carelessly agreeable to Frigga's wishes. Itriel had not had an easy time in Asgard. Everyone talked too much at court, and in speaking of Itriel, they were ruthless. Loki wondered what kind of girl she had been like at her home in Vanaheim, but here she hung her head and didn't say much.

But as soon as Ona walked away from Loki, cheeks flushed and smiling flirtatiously, he saw Itrielfrom the other side of the fighting pits. A new friend of hers, whose name he didn't recall even though she was the daughter of one of Odin's high-ranking officers, was helping her off her horse. And all the while, Itriel's eyes were locked on Loki's in a stony glare. He would have thought it was because of the way he generally treated her, but she usually didn't bother making eye contact with him, even during his unfriendly jibes. He saw Itriel say something to her friend, who turned to look at what seemed to be Ona, and vehemently shook her head. Is she prettier than me? Itriel had asked her friend. Tell me. Honestly.

NO, Itriel, not if Hel is hot. Why do you like him? He's a complete bastard, and isn't even attractive. You'd have better luck with his could be a queen one day, yet you focus only on Thor's cock of a brother.

The pain in her abdomen was searing, hot in contrast to the biting winds that entered through the cracks in the old barn. She hadn't started bleeding yet and it had been hours.

She coughed raggedly. From travelling and sleeping in the cold, she had caught something, perhaps pneumonia. She felt feverish and light-headed, and didn't know if it was from the moon tea or the cough. She spat blood into the rotting, frosty hay that littered the ground of the barn. If only blood could start coming out the other end now.

She crept to the outside of the barn to draw water from the icy well and drank straight from the bucket. Maybe some water would help her sickness. Going back inside, she tried to sleep under her ragged cloak on the straw ground.

"A dance?" asked Loki, eyebrows cocked, to a lone Itriel, who was sitting at the end of the banquet table.

She said nothing, but got up grudgingly.

"I saw you at the pits today," Loki said to her with a smirk. "You seemed to be paying attention to Ona and I."

"Yes, you were in my line of sight," Itriel said carefully. What in the hell did he want? Was I looking at him too... jealously?

"Oh, you stared too long is all."

And that was it. She snapped. "Just looking at the pathetic child who can't take my prophecies like a man. Poor Ona, if only she knew how childish you are. She wouldn't want to marry some prepubescent little boy."

Loki grabbed her shoulder roughly for the second time in the past month. "I. Am not. A child. And you will not treat me as such. Quit playing games with me, you jealous petty quim."

Itriel pulled away. The other dancers did not seem to notice their argument, and went about twirling on the banquet floor. "Petty? I'm petty? When you're the one throwing a fit over prophecies that may not even come to pass? I should tell your mother about the way you have been treating me. I know you'd be scared of her wrath. I knew from the moment I met you that you're just a spoiled brat prince**."

Loki's face automatically went blank at the mention of his mother, just for a short second. Oh, she really knew how to push his buttons. He said the only thing that came to mind. "Then why did you accept my offer to read my future?"

"Because I saw something different in you. But unlike you, I can admit that I was wrong."

With that, she broke the dance and slinked out of the ballroom.

*I stole moon tea from GoT.

**Brat Prince. Anne Rice. Amirite?