Thank you for the reviews! I really enjoyed reading them (and responding), it's so interesting to hear your reactions to various things in the story - otherwise I am writing in a vacuum. I hope you enjoy this next installment.
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Beneath
Chapter Six – Harbor
Loki grunted and twisted his long legs left and right, trying in vain to find some angle to turn them that would not crush his knees against the seat in front of him. With the ceiling uncomfortably close to his head, he decided this was even worse than the seats at the hockey game. Brown leather squeaked on the uncomfortable synthetic material covering the chair every time he moved. He had passed several more spacious seats, built for adults rather than the children these seats were apparently intended to hold, but none of those were available. With his superior strength he could have marched back up there, grabbed a random passenger by the shirt collar, and tossed the person out of the seat, even out of the door. After all, who more greatly deserved to ride in what passed for comfort on these things? He rested a hand briefly against his chest, over the dark green cloth of his shirt, feeling for the gem his mother had given him. He was the son of a king. Just not the one he'd thought all his life.
The seat next to him was empty. Perhaps he could push up the short metal bar separating the seats and turn sideways, stretching his legs out horizontally. He looked down at his legs again. Perhaps he could simply shorten them by a few inches for the duration of the flight. He'd never tried such a thing but didn't think it should be so difficult.
And then, just as a voice came over the speakers to announce a full flight, a woman's purse dropped onto the seat next to Loki. He looked up and saw an elderly woman, blessedly short, wearing sky blue pants and matching sky blue shirt with colorful butterflies on it, topped by tightly curled short white hair. She was trying to lift a small suitcase over her head to put in the storage compartment there.
"Allow me," Loki said, contorting his body to extricate himself from his seat and move into the aisle. His Asgardian upbringing had ingrained in him a respect for the aged, but his offer was borne of selfishness at least as much as by any kind of altruism – it gave him the chance to bring some temporary relief to his legs. The old woman let him take the bag and he placed it in the storage container effortlessly. He twisted himself around and took his seat again.
"Thank you, young man," she said, stepping out of the aisle and in front of her seat.
"You're most welcome," he answered with a nod of his head.
"That doesn't look very comfortable," she said, peering down at him from over her glasses, still standing.
"I'm afraid not," Loki agreed.
"Why don't we trade? You can stretch your legs into the aisle, and I can enjoy looking out the window."
He narrowed his eyes at her, startled. Why should this elder, of all people, show deference to him? Could she sense something about him? Something that was different?
"Come on, this is a three-hour flight. You won't be able to stand up after three hours of sitting like that." Her voice was firm, as though she were used to people doing what she told them.
Loki nodded and stood again, stepping into the aisle to let her in before settling in the aisle seat, where he could indeed angle his hips to the right and allow his knees to protrude a bit into the aisle. He'd never sat on worse in Asgard, but it was a reasonable improvement over where he'd been.
"I'm Emily," the old woman said once she was settled in her window seat.
"A pleasure, Madame…Emily. Lucas Cane," he said taking her bony wrinkled hand and kissing the knuckles.
"Goodness, such a nice boy," she said with a chuckle.
Loki snorted and answered with a cynical smile, "I haven't been called that in a very long time."
Emily pursed her lips and swept her eyes up and down his form. "Hmph, really? Well, you're just not letting people see the real you, then, Lucas."
Loki's eyes widened. He wondered if Midgard had some form of sorcerer he had failed to hear of. He looked down at his arm and the bare green cloth covering it. In its place he should be looking at intricate patterns of metal and leather intertwined with cloth all covered by a sturdy bracer. But beneath that the real him, the invisible him, was ice blue. No one saw the real him.
"May I ask…"
"Why not?" Madame Emily asked with a shrug as she pulled a paperback novel from her purse.
"How long have you lived?"
"Ninety-two years and counting."
Loki laughed, and even as he did so, he recognized how good it felt. The smile instantly died on his lips.
"Still got a lot of fight in me, too," she added.
Loki laughed again, shorter, quieter. A laugh tinged with bone-deep sadness. He had already outlived her by over 900 years, but he hoped to match her strength of spirit when he reached the equivalent of her age. If he managed to survive that long.
/
/
Jane's nose bumped the window. They were descending at last, after a nine-hour flight that had followed an eleven-hour flight. An actual bed was now in her immediate future, but Jane wasn't thinking that far ahead.
She strained to look for landmarks in the city below, lit up in the clear night. She couldn't even tell where the heart of the city was; it seemed to go on forever, little fingers of land sticking out everywhere into water of swirling blues and greens. She spotted the bridge first, though she wasn't sure how she knew it was "the" bridge, it just somehow seemed more prominent than the others. Then, just beyond it, jutting out into the water, was a little oddly layered blob of white. "It's the Opera House!" she said out loud, then bit her lip and glanced around, hoping no one had heard her. Her excitement beat back the jet-lag-induced headache she'd had for several hours now when two aspirin couldn't. She whipped out her phone, then remembered they'd already been told to turn off electronic devices.
The Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge drifted out of sight as their descent continued; Jane stared eagerly out the window the entire time. She was amazed at the scale of the city, and eventually had to laugh at herself and how accustomed to living in Puente Antiguo she'd become – Tromso had seemed like a metropolis to her. A minute after the plane touched down she started organizing her belongings, since one airport runway looked pretty much like the next. In no time at all she had her laptop carrier arranged and stowed in the little storage area under the seat in front of her and her passport with filled-in immigration card and customs declaration form in a death grip in her right hand, lest she somehow lose it. She had noticed the package of cheese crackers in her bag and removed them because of that video they'd shown just before they'd started to descend; she wasn't sure why Australia was so worried about her cheese crackers but figured they weren't worth a trip to the quarantine desk.
Her business-class seat permitted her a quick exit from the plane once the door was opened, and she wasted no time in doing so. Big blue signs in the corridors on the way to Immigration welcomed her to Sydney and bore images of the Opera House and palm trees, which surprised her, not having pictured Australia with palm trees.
She met her first honest-to-goodness Australian in person at Immigration, an older round-ish man who could have passed for Santa Claus if he'd put on the red suit, except Santa didn't talk like that. Jane stuttered out her answer when asked the purpose of her visit to Australia, and hoped her inability to answer properly didn't make Australian Santa suspicious of her. Luckily he just smiled, stamped her passport, and told her to enjoy her stay. She wished he'd said "G'day, mate," but figured maybe they only said that to men. Or maybe they only said that in the movies. Most of her deep fountain of knowledge of Australia came from childhood viewings of Crocodile Dundee on an old VCR. She couldn't remember seeing any palm trees in Crocodile Dundee. But it had been a while since she'd last seen it.
She'd pulled up every memory she could reconstruct of Crocodile Dundee and also reviewed what she could recall of the 2000 Olympics by the time she claimed her bags and made it through Customs sans cheese crackers. Getting a taxi was quick and easy and she was off, headed north into the city, on her first visit to this country, this continent, this entire hemisphere. It was summer here, and the nighttime air rushing in through the cab's open windows was perfect. They reached an area where pedestrians were out on the sidewalks, people out for an evening stroll without a care in the world, or at least so it seemed. Jane felt positively giddy. She knew nothing about this country and had only seen a handful of streets from the back of a cab on the wrong side of the road, but to her it felt like freedom. She was on the other side of the planet. There was no SHEILD around either to steal her work or to watch it like a hawk, no one to tell her she had to go here and she couldn't go there, just the freedom, the space, to do what she wanted, when she wanted, and no one to insist otherwise. She wished she could hop out from the cab at the next intersection and stroll along those sidewalks herself.
Of course it wasn't really so simple; she had a meeting tomorrow morning and another flight the next day. And Peter Larson had tried to insist that SHIELD provide her transportation from the airport. She'd burst out laughing – later, in private – at his reaction to her rather loud refusal.
She was looking to the left when the taxi driver told her to look right. She whipped her head around, and there was the brightly lit Opera House, now looking less like a layered blob and more like that beautiful structure she had always seen in pictures. The view was a brief one, and in a couple more minutes the cab pulled up in front of the Old Sydney Holiday Inn. She checked in, exuberance making her chatty with the receptionist who changed her leftover euros to Australian dollars and told her how to get to the harbor, and hurried up to her room with her bags in awkward tow. The room was more or less a typical hotel room – a bathroom, a dressing area, a couch in front of a TV with a small desk to the left, and a bed. She had asked for a view, so she left her bags by the door and went straight to the first window. When she opened the curtains she could see part of the Harbour Bridge. She raced to the other one, opened the curtains, and behind Door Number Two was the Opera House, in full view. She laughed out loud and shook her head in disbelief.
It was 10:30 at night, but she'd slept on the flight to Bangkok and a little on the flight to Sydney, and her body no longer knew what time it was anyway. She dashed back over to her suitcase, unzipped it, and pulled out a pair of brown sandals, jeans, underwear, and a faded orange Caltech T-shirt, one of the two short-sleeved shirts she'd packed. She made a quick trip to the bathroom, stripped off the clothes she'd put on in Tromso who-knew-how-many hours ago, and threw on the clean ones. Her hair was kind of a mess, but she re-worked the ponytail in the elevator on the way down.
Less than five minutes after leaving the hotel lobby Jane was standing in a big open circular viewing area, just concrete, a low wall, and a few benches. She guessed the temperature to be about 70. Having never seen the Southern Hemisphere sky, she was mildly disappointed that it was obscured by clouds that had moved in and further dimmed by the many city lights. To her right were the ferry wharves of Circular Quay, and behind it Sydney's modest skyscrapers, while closer in to the right was a cruise ship terminal lacking a cruise ship but still with a few people milling about a café and whatever else might be in that gigantic structure. But she could not take her eyes off the Opera House, directly across the small bay from her, the iconic image of Australia. And it was right in front of her.
A young Asian couple was talking quietly a few feet away from her; otherwise she had the area to herself. She stood for a while, then sat for a while, alone with her wandering thoughts.
/
/
Loki's eyes popped open, but he otherwise remained still. There was a soft chime above his head, followed by words. It took a few seconds for him to remember where he was and convert the words into meaning.
"-ask you to make sure your seat belts are fastened. Thank you."
He glanced down, his seatbelt was fastened. The plane shook a little. He frowned, adjusted his blanket, shifted onto his back, and pressed the control on his armrest to raise the seat into a reclining position. The television screen in front of him showed the location of the aircraft, approaching the "international date line." An artifact of the way in which Midgard marked time. He'd discovered that from his flight schedule – he left on a Monday but would not arrive until Wednesday, much later than the actual flight time suggested. He wondered why they didn't save themselves the confusion and call it the same time everywhere instead of using all these time zones. As though time could be zoned.
The graphic changed to show his arrival time, departure time, outside air temperature, and other little bits of information. It was childish compared even to Midgard's own current capabilities, their military aircraft and the SHIELD helicarrier. He wondered why the mortals tolerated it. Had his own plans succeeded, he would have given them better aircraft, better computers, the melding of technology and magic, in short a better way of living. All for the small price of recognizing him as their superior. Their sovereign.
But it was not to be, not now anyway. There was little point in wallowing in the past. The future was going to bring much more interesting things, and soon. Then he would determine a new plan.
/
/
Jane followed Young-Soo Park into a bustling building filled with food service counters and lines of people. She could get a seafood meal at any one of them, even a whole fish from the day's catch if she wanted. It was overwhelming.
"Where do you want to go?" Young-Soo called back from a few paces ahead of her as they picked their way through the crowds.
"You choose," Jane said.
Young-Soo led her forward and worked his way to the left. "How about this one? You can get beer-battered barramundi."
"Okay, sounds great." She'd already decided on barramundi for lunch, as they'd watched the trawlers come in to the Sydney Fish Market early that morning and Young-Soo had given her the rundown on some of the fish they were bringing in. "Barramundi" somehow sounded very Australian, so she figured that's what she should have.
Young-Soo, originally from Korea, had spent part of his childhood in the United States, then come back for graduate school at Princeton. Like Jane, he had found himself drawn to interpretations of theoretical physics that challenged conventional wisdom in ways that made the maintainers of conventional wisdom uneasy, and like Jane, he'd struggled to get his dissertation through the process and completed his degree with no support for continuing his work. A prolific inventor who filed several patents a year mostly as a hobby, he managed to pay the bills and continue his research thanks to a lens filter he'd invented that had been commercially developed. They'd kept in touch for several years, ever since they met at a conference at MIT at which they'd both presented papers while in grad school, but Jane hadn't seen him in person since he'd left the US.
He'd driven in early that morning from his house outside Megalong, some two hours to the west, and picked Jane up at her hotel. They'd sat outside at a small square metal grate table under a red and white umbrella and powered up their laptops side-by-side, catching each other up on their work and Jane filling him in on the research she expected to conduct over the coming months.
Paper plate of beer-battered barramundi and "chips" in hand, Jane threaded her way back through the crowd after Young-Soo, who'd gotten the same. He'd left his "esky," as he called it, on the table to mark it as taken, and pulled out two chilled bottles of beer from it when they got back. Jane set her laptop carrier down on the bench seat to her right.
"What do you think?" Young-Soo asked once she'd had a bite of the barramundi.
"Mmmm, pretty good," she said, nodding. "Not too fishy."
Young-Soo laughed. "I've never understood that. Why do you eat fish and not want it to taste fishy? Do you eat beef and not want it to taste beefy? Do you prefer chicken that doesn't taste like chicken?"
"I prefer fish that doesn't taste like…like algae or something. I don't know."
"Like algae? Have you ever had fish that tasted like algae? Do you even know what algae tastes like?"
Jane rolled her eyes at him and took another bite. "You goof-ball. You know what I mean," she said with her mouth full.
"No, I don't, really. But that's okay. I'm just thinking you must miss people giving you a hard time. Someone has to pick up the slack." He bit off a big chunk of fried fish and flashed her a puffy-cheeked grin.
"Oh, right. Yeah, I forgot, Princeton called last week and they want me to rewrite their curriculum and chair the astrophysical sciences program. And remember Dr. Fabian? He sent a three-page apology for holding up my dissertation with so many revisions. And The Astrophysical Journal wants me to take over as editor."
"I was thinking about applying to teach physics at Katoomba High School. Can I put you down as a reference?"
Jane laughed and let her annoyance melt away. Whereas she had always become combative in the face of the closed minds who wouldn't give her a chance, the rejection never seemed to bother Young-Soo, or at least he didn't take it personally like she did. He had talked her down from many a metaphorical ledge over the years, and she figured her sanity was intact at least in part due to him. "Okay, sure. Jane Foster, Ph.D., sole achievement since receiving doctorate – met a few people from Asgard."
"Well, how many people can say that? I haven't met anyone from Asgard. Nobody at Katoomba High School has met anyone from Asgard. I think they'll think it's pretty cool. Especially if I promise to book you as a guest lecturer. Will you be my guest lecturer?"
"Deal." She took a bite of fish and washed it down with beer, finishing off the bottle.
"You want another?"
Jane turned to him and started laughing.
"Okay, maybe you've had enough."
"No, no, I'm sorry, it's just…it's nothing. Actually I'll take water if you've got it." Another! she could hear Thor's voice booming, with every expectation that someone would come bowing to him and bringing him whatever he desired.
Young-Soo grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler and handed it to her. "You know, this is your chance, Jane. Don't go in with a bad attitude."
She sighed. "I know. It's not a bad attitude, not really. It's more like…"
"It's self-doubt."
"Yeah, I guess so. Maybe. I mean…just because people are giving me the time of day now doesn't mean they're knocking down my door."
"At least they aren't boarding up their own anymore."
"But I don't know how much of this is really me, my work, and how much of this is SHIELD, you know? I mean, did I earn my way in the door, or did SHIELD hit it with a battering ram first?"
"Who cares? The point is you got in. Nobody can call you crazy anymore, because some of your crazy ideas have been proven correct. Now it's up to you. SHIELD's not down there with you. You got the opportunity, you just have to take advantage of it."
They fell silent for a while, polishing off their lunches while Jane sank deep into thought. "Don't think I don't see your ulterior motives, Young-Soo," she said once she'd wiped her mouth and fingers with a napkin.
He looked at her with curiosity.
"You're just buttering me up to make sure I run your little tests for you."
"Ah. Is it working?"
"Mmmmm, yeah. It's working. But listen, if I start going crazy, you better keep it up. You better e-mail me."
"I will. I'm going to have a lot to tell you about."
"Oh yeah? Like teaching at Kuh-tuh-whatever High School?"
"Katoomba," he said, sticking his tongue out at her and looking extremely yet endearingly silly for a moment in his glasses and Princeton T-shirt with chipped lettering. "And it's beautiful there, it's a big tourist area actually, I wish you had more time. I'd give you your own personal tour."
"You're the one who doesn't have any time. I've got all day."
"You need more than a day, but I am sorry I can't be your tour guide this afternoon."
Jane shrugged. "That's okay. I'm just so glad you were able to meet me at all. And I still can't believe I'm actually sitting in Australia, eating some fish I never heard of before, looking at variations in neutrino decay rates with you."
"Best day ever."
"Yeah," she said with a good laugh. It had been a while since she'd been able to really geek out with somebody. "But wait, so, were you being serious, is something going on?"
"You could say that. My mother got me something."
She squinted her eyes up at him, wishing she had a pair of sunglasses. "What?"
"A wife."
"What?"
"It all happened when you were hidden away wherever it was you were. Then when you started talking to the outside world again and you said you were stopping by Sydney I figured I'd wait to tell you in person."
"I know you said your mom wanted you to get married, but…do they have arranged marriages in Korea?"
Young-Soo laughed. "It's not exactly arranged. More like…assisted. She set us up and I actually liked her. But her parents don't want her marrying some crazy Korean who lives in the Australian boonies keeping weird hours and wearing T-shirts and short pants every day. That's why I'm looking into teaching at Katoomba High School."
Jane almost spit out her water. "Wait, you mean you were serious about that?"
"Sure. I like teaching. And while I won't put you down for a reference, you don't mind if I drop your name, do you?"
"I really can't imagine how that could possibly help."
"The only thing I've got on my CV since the doctorate, other than a dozen rejected journal submissions, is one commercialized patent. And you've got the Asgardian thing and some fun research you're helping me out with, at least. It couldn't hurt."
Jane shook her head and smiled, then slowly dragged the story of his sudden bride-to-be out of her friend.
/
/
Loki strolled around Sydney Cove, slowing and lingering in the higher points, the elevated Circular Quay Railway Station, the top of the stairs near the Opera House. His vision was excellent, and his eyes were well trained. He turned for a moment from the tourists and locals out enjoying the mild sunny weather and let his eyes sweep over the Opera House again. It was a short, squat building made of simple off-white tiles, three buildings actually, he supposed. The architecture was unusual for Midgard…but elevate it a hundred feet off the ground, perhaps stretch it just a little taller, and he could almost picture it on Asgard.
Asgard. He tightened his jaw, felt his chest similarly constricting. He flexed his long slender fingers, remembering the feel of Gungnir when it was first laid in his hands, its weight, its cool surface, the power humming in and around it. His fists closed around air. Everything had been possible in that moment. Everything he'd ever wanted, everything he'd never even realized he wanted until that moment.
He took a deep breath, forcing his lungs to expand with the influx of warm Midgardian air. A new opportunity would present itself, and it would be here. He had laid the groundwork. He was ready to begin playing his hand. He was already playing his role. He'd arrived in Sydney in the morning and taken a taxi directly to Queen Victoria Building, which he'd seen advertised at the airport and which seemed likely to have sufficient selection in the type of clothing he felt most comfortable in on Midgard. He'd flirted aggressively and shamelessly with one young saleswoman in particular, who'd then given him her total adoration and attention and helped him select a number of outfits that would cultivate the image he wanted to project. Loathe though he was to accept any advice from Thor, he knew Thor was right about dressing to fit in. But that didn't mean he couldn't look good. Or have a little fun. The saleswoman was young, easy to manipulate, and probably would have said yes to a marriage proposal by the time he left.
In a shoe store he turned his back on the leather he would always prefer, made easier since this mass-produced leather footwear could not compare to the individually fitted boots he had made on Asgard. He selected three pairs, testing them only on his left foot, to the chagrin of the salesman. He next purchased some personal care items, the standard things he knew the typical man here to have, and a suitcase to pack it all away in. It was incredibly bothersome to actually have to carry all these things, though, so he made his way to a men's room, changed into a deep green long-sleeved slim-fit "henley," pleated tan "dockers," and a pair of particularly curiously named tan "boat shoes." His old clothes and all his new purchases he then waved his hands over, shrinking them in on themselves until they disappeared from view.
He emerged from the bathroom unencumbered and ready to begin his search. The new materials he wore felt reasonably good and judging by the price tags the makers were among the best this realm had to offer. The clothes did not project the power and status he would have normally liked, but he had to admit they were comfortable and well suited to their purpose. Certainly the boat shoes were much more forgiving on his sore foot than the tight-fitting boots.
As his last stop before leaving Queen Victoria Building, he'd stopped to get his hair cut in a shop near the men's room. He could have done it himself, it was a simple little thing, but for some reason something he'd never been good at. So he paid a mortal woman an egregious amount of money from his treasury of repurposed Canadian dollars to make a few snips at the locks of black hair that had grown longer than he typically wore it. The short hair, the new clothes, and the practiced cordial smile made him look less like the Loki this world had glimpsed, and if he needed anything more to conceal his identity he had plenty of tricks up his sleeve.
He'd walked northward through the business district, toward Circular Quay and Sydney Cove, and even enjoyed it despite the pain in his foot. He thought of it as reconnaissance, in a sense. Sydney had been on the list he'd drawn up with Clint Barton's help. Had he won victory in New York and had the rest of the world not fallen in line behind it, he would have eventually made it here to this continent nation and asserted his rule upon it by force. He stopped for a moment, now on Elizabeth Street, and inclined his head to look up at a particularly tall building on his left. Yes, he thought, right about there.
Someone bumped into him, mumbled an apology, and continued past. Loki stared at the man's back with raging indignation. Do you know who I am? You would have knelt before me, right here! You would have begged me to spare your life. And I do not think I would have. He clenched his fists, felt the energy around him grow heated, but resisted the powerful urge to harness and release it. The consequences to him would not be worth the short moment of satisfaction in making this insignificant faceless nobody suffer.
He resumed his progress north, reminding himself again to focus on his goal.
It was mid-afternoon, and the Opera House was to his back, the sun shining in his eyes. He made his right hand into a shade and peered across the little harbor. And there it was. Just a speck really, nothing a mortal eye could have recognized. His goal. And it was looking straight at him.
/
/
Jane strolled around the little tourist stands at Circular Quay, a big dopey grin on her face. Nearby a group of street musicians was playing rock music with a weird mix of western guitars and a long, deep-throated didgeridoo, to remind her she was in Australia if she ever somehow forgot. She stopped to watch a ferry pulling in, returning from Taronga Zoo according to the sign. Jane wondered if they had kangaroos there, and koala bears. She wished she had time to go there, but then there were so many things she wished she had time for. Rather than race around trying to cram a week's worth of experiences into an afternoon, she had decided to stick with the area around the Opera House, and so Young-Soo had dropped her off near Circular Quay before heading off to a meeting with the developer of his lens filter. She liked it here; it was relaxing and exhilarating all at the same time.
The ferry started to disgorge its passengers, and Jane turned to her left, glancing toward the sun, which had grown quite bright in the afternoon. She squinted her eyes.
"I've got a fix for that, right here!"
Jane turned further to her left, saw a young man in his twenties motioning her over. He was ridiculously cute – tanned, blond, muscled in his T-shirt and shorts. She could imagine him being one of those Australian life guards from some TV show Darcy had gone on about when she'd told her she was coming here. Why not? She walked over to him and his little stand outside one of the souvenir stores.
"Sunnies," he said, pointing to an array of sunglasses and holding a pair out to her.
"Sunnies, huh?" she asked with a laugh. She took the ones he was offering and took a look. White plastic with "I love Australia" and the Australian flag printed on each arm. She put them on and looked at herself in the tiny mirror he held out to her. She looked positively silly, and positively joyful.
"They look good, yeah? Where are you from?"
"The US. Yeah, okay, I'll get them. I do need some sunglasses. Sunnies." She had a pair already, actually, but they were the expensive kind and carefully packed in her suitcase. She didn't have any that said "I love Australia" on them. "These are pretty awesome."
"They're pretty Aussie," he said with a lifeguard smile full of impossibly white teeth. "Come see what else we've got. I bet you need a T-shirt too. Maybe a hat."
Jane rolled her eyes and laughed, pulling her wallet out of her laptop carrier. This guy – this kid – was flirting with her. "Okay," she said, paying for the glasses. Nothing wrong with that. Even if it was just to sell her more stuff with "I love Australia" written on it.
In the end she walked out with a bright blue T-shirt with the Australian flag emblazoned on the front – the Union Jack in the left corner, five stars representing the Southern Cross on the right, and a larger extraneous star underneath the Union Jack that the lifeguard had shrugged his shoulders about when she'd asked. She thought about pulling the T-shirt on over her red tank top, but decided to wait and wear it the next day. She did however decide to put on the matching blue bucket hat, with a colorful Union Jack in front and the Southern Cross on both sides with Australia written in cursive on the rim. It was total tourist overkill, but she didn't care. She also walked out with a couple of suitcase-friendly gifts and a picture of her and the lifeguard/souvenir salesman on her phone.
She wandered back over to the band and listened for a while, then threw her change from her latest purchase into their donations box. Then she continued on a little further, toward the cruise ship terminal, still free of cruise ships. Sitting on a free bench she pulled her phone back out and thumbed it to the picture with the blond lifeguard. She clicked "share" and sent it to Darcy. She'd get a kick out of that.
She put the phone away and looked up, across the water, in front of her and to the left. The Opera House. Sydney. Australia. The Southern Hemisphere. Tonight, with a clear sky forecast, she would see the Southern Cross and the rest of the Australian summer sky. She bit her bottom lip, wondered with no particular urgency what she should do next. She hadn't yet walked over to the side of the cove that the Opera House was on, maybe she should do that, see what it looked like up close, what it looked like on the inside. Maybe she would walk over to the Harbour Bridge and join the other tourists in climbing it, as Young-Soo had suggested. But for a while longer, she was content to just sit and stare across the water.
/
/
He circled around her, very closely, but staying in the flow of pedestrians, until he stood several feet to her left and just a little behind her. He could watch her easily, but she could not see him without turning.
Like so many others around, she was barely clothed, in a sleeveless red shirt, tan shorts that went half-way to her knees, sneakers with no socks, and a floppy blue hat atop her head. Her hair was pulled up in some kind of tangled knot at the base of her neck. She sat there doing nothing but looking vacantly ahead, at the Opera House. She was pretty enough, he supposed, but clearly had no concern for her appearance or the image she projected.
There was nothing formidable about her. Nothing imposing. Nothing unusual. Nothing even particularly interesting.
She let out a sigh, and then, unexpectedly since no one was there for her to talk to, she spoke.
"Pinch me," she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear.
Loki pursed his lips, holding back a sardonic smile. He wondered how she might react if he obliged her.
And then she turned.
Not directly to him, probably to the bridge barely in view beyond him, but once she'd turned his way, her eyes jumped to him, moved off him, then darted back toward him again. Something in her face changed, the beginnings of recognition.
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Reviews appreciated! In the next chapter (and I hope you don't mind these teasers!), Loki finds who he's looking for...but it doesn't go exactly as planned. Also there's a Thor-Loki flashback which was lots of fun to write.
Addendum: Meant to note - I had the privilege of visiting Sydney around a year ago or so, and elsewhere in a "campervan" = US "caravan" or "minivan" up the East Coast. (With Juicy, for you Aussies & I think Kiwis too (?) who may know it.) I LOVED Australia, had an awesome, awesome time there. Many of Jane's moments in Sydney are my moments (adjusted for her character). And where Jane goes in Sydney, I went. I even had the beer-battered barramundi. So this was lots of fun for me; it was nice to be able to finally "write what you know," at least a little! Very unfortunate that Jane only has one day. If I could have sent her up to Australia Zoo, Brisbane, Moreton Island, Fraser Island, the Bundaberg Rum Factory, Cape Hillsborough, Airlie Beach & the Whitsundays, the Billabong Sanctuary near Townsville, Millaa Millaa Falls (sigh!), Kuranda, Cairns, the Daintree, and the Great Barrier Reef...well, she would have loved it as much as I did. Australian Tourist Bureau: my free plug for you.