.-.
Beneath
Chapter Two Hundred Twenty-Two – Flame
"So this is what a thousand years of junk looks like, huh?" Jane asked when they made it to the tiny bedroom, its "wall" back in place, where most of Loki's belongings had been stacked while she and Frigga had been in the elevated station. Everything was in boxes now.
"Mmm…I think around seven hundred years since I last thoroughly cleaned it out. And it isn't junk."
"You told me you didn't need any of it."
"That doesn't mean it's junk." He picked up the book on top of the nearest stack. "Rabudrog's Twenty-Third Treatise on the Fundamental Relations Among the Nine Realms, With Special Attention to Muspelheim and Jotunheim. All right, some of it's junk." He waved the box away.
"Who's Rabudrog?"
"A stuffy old man who writes one of those approximately every ten years. Svartalf."
"How'd you wind up with his book?"
"I visited him. Some of his works contain offhand references to interesting theories of magic. He was flattered that I came to visit and gifted me with that drivel. Decorum didn't permit me to decline it, so I tucked it away and forgot about it."
"Are you sure it's all drivel? What kind of relations do the people of Muspelheim and Jotunheim have? Can the people of the lands of fire and ice even go to each other's realms?"
"Not that kind of relations. Physical and metaphysical."
"Biological similarities?"
"Yes," Loki said, sending away another box of books. "Among other things."
"Magic?"
"Magic…yes. In part." More boxes of books disappeared. He wasn't sure how he'd accumulated so many. He did have bookshelves in his chambers, as well as a personal collection housed in one of Asgard's libraries. He had no need to stuff them away like this, other than perhaps a few he considered particularly private.
"Maybe it wouldn't hurt to read about that."
"About…. No. Jane…." Loki shook his head. "No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want to."
"You sound like you're ten."
Loki stopped in front of the next box and looked over at Jane. "You're lucky I like you. Otherwise I would not put up with this harassment." He turned back to the box, back to Jane, and hoped she would take the hint. Jane being Jane, she didn't.
"I just think it might help you to know something more about them. Even if Asgard only knows them as 'the enemy' now, that Svartalf guy thought there was something interesting about them, more than just how to kill them."
"Some people have foolish ideas."
"I hope you're not calling me foolish."
"No. Ignorant, perhaps, but not foolish."
"You're lucky I had a teacher who made sure we knew the difference between ignorant and stupid. But I think ignorance is exactly the problem here. And since when do you prefer ignorance?"
"I do not prefer ignorance. But I cannot learn everything, can I? I prefer to learn worthwhile things."
"Can you honestly tell me you don't see anything at all worthwhile in learning about the Jotuns?"
Loki paused, a yes on the tip of his tongue. Because it was Jane, though, he decided he should give it some actual thought. "There are probably some things it would be worthwhile to learn. Asgard will be forced to deal with them again in seven hundred and fifty years, sooner if Thor pursues his foolish idealistic notions. I know that's not what you're referring to, though. Concerning me personally, I can't imagine there's anything worth learning. You have in mind learning about myself? Learning about the people I came from? No. I reject that. Farbauti was living in an ice cave. A primitive existence. And who they are has nothing to do with who I am. Your words, remember?"
"I remember," Jane said with a sigh. Loki's back was to her again; he turned away every time he was done talking, a clear signal that he meant for them to both be done talking about this. But she had to keep trying to get through to him. Nobody else was going to talk to bring this up – nobody else he would listen to. "I meant that. I still do. But I also think knowing more about them might help."
This time, Loki just ignored her, lifting an item or two out of a box, putting it back in, sending the box into the closet.
She bit her lip. Eir had told her not to tell anyone else about this. But that was meant to protect the privacy of a woman already dead, presumably along with any living descendants. If anyone needed to know, it was Loki. If anyone was unlikely to be tempted to spread it all over Asgard, it was also Loki.
"Did you know there was a Vanir woman living on Asgard who was one-fourth Jotun?"
When Loki turned around and laughed, the expression he wore was what she might have expected if she'd told him – or rather a fellow citizen of Planet Earth – that Santa Claus was real.
"Who's been telling you such tall tales?"
"It's not a tall tale."
"Tall as a Frost Giant."
"Eir told me."
"Eir," Loki repeated after a moment. "Eir told you."
"That's right."
That made no sense, because Eir wouldn't lie. However, she could have been lied to. "I don't suppose she mentioned who was telling her tall tales."
"The woman who was one-fourth Jotun. And I think Eir would know if it wasn't true, don't you?"
"She would not be easily deceived in such matters. Still…that hardly seems possible."
"I know, but obviously it is. Eir said both of the woman's paternal grandparents were magic-users, so maybe they could change their appearance, like you can. Or at least their temperature. I don't know. But it means that a Jotun and a Vanir got to know each other and fell in love and had a family. Don't you think there has to be more to them than you give them credit for?"
"Quite an assumption you're making. Or did you hear the details on this supposed romance, too? Unplanned pregnancies are rare on Asgard, but not so uncommon here, are they? Even if unusual, the birth of a child does not necessitate anyone getting to know anyone else, much less falling in love. And perhaps the Vanir woman was forced."
"Thanks for bringing that into it," Jane said with a grimace. "Eir didn't tell me any details, but that's not the impression she gave. You don't even know which parent was the Jotun and which was the Vanir."
"Well, I can't imagine any Vanir man wanting to—." He didn't finish the thought; there was no need to be crass. Jane would know what he meant, regardless. "When did Eir have the opportunity to tell you about this unlikely woman I've never heard of? And who is she? What's her name?"
"I got sunburned, at the treaty signing. Eir made up a cream for me. Like she did for you, when you were a kid. And I asked her what she knew about Jotun biology, how it's different from Aesir, or Midgardian. If she knew how to treat Jotuns. Like if Farbauti got hurt or sick while she was there."
"Did you now. Well, it seems you have enough curiosity for the both of us."
"Eir didn't tell me the woman's name, or anything else about her. She's not alive anymore. But she didn't want anyone to know her family history. Probably because she was living on Asgard and didn't want her or her descendants to face that prejudice."
"It wouldn't endear her to the Vanir, either."
"Eir consulted her when…well, I guess when you were first brought to Asgard. She didn't specify when, exactly."
"What?"
"She would have needed to know how to treat you."
"But I was—. I was changed. I changed. I was no longer one of them." Unless there were more things he didn't know about? Things his mother had held back, told him that was all when there was more, because he'd been barely holding himself together? Eir wouldn't lie, not in the sense of fabricating information, and not simply because a truth was difficult or unpleasant. His mother, without question, would look him straight in the eye and fabricate away, if she thought it was protecting him. "Why has she told you these things and not me?" he asked, frustrated with the entire situation. He'd kept himself apart from others as much as possible while on Asgard; the price for that was ignorance of much of what had gone on around him, and no, he was not fond of ignorance.
"Because I asked, Loki. Have you?"
"In fact I have."
"You—. What? You have?"
Loki glanced around him. The task at hand had been all but forgotten. He waved away two more boxes without checking what was inside them. It didn't matter. He had to take them all with him regardless. He could finish everything in minutes if he focused. He was not focused, however, so he sank down on the bare mattress in this pitiful excuse for a bedroom.
"I asked my mother."
"You did?" Jane sat down next to Loki in the narrow space already cleared of boxes. "What did you ask her?"
"I was…disturbed. After returning from Jotunheim. They were awful."
"Who?" Jane asked when Loki fell silent. He'd shown no inclination to talk about that trip before, and it had to have been traumatic. She'd already told him, back at that tavern on Asgard, that she would listen.
Loki gave a strangled laugh. "All of them. Primitive barbarians. Farbauti, at least, is intelligent, in a crafty sort of way, but she seemed to be the only one."
That he had encountered them in the middle of a civil war, that they might hold a tiny bit of a grudge against him for trying to blow up their planet, that Loki's birth brothers might hold even more of one for also killing their father probably all had something to do with how Loki had experienced Jotunheim. But now wasn't the time to point any of that out. So far, he wasn't saying anything he hadn't already told her on Asgard. And that he thought they were 'primitive barbarians' was hardly news.
"I would have grown up amidst that. What would I have become? I can't even imagine it." Loki interrupted his own gloomy train of thought with a laugh. "There's no need to, though, because what I would have become is dead. Did I tell you it was Farbauti herself who left me to die? For my own good, according to her."
Jane shook her head, not trusting herself to say a word in response to that.
"Perfectly understandable, of course. I was too small. Raising me would have been a challenge, and she was busy. And to be abandoned thus is an honor. A privilege. She was affronted when I failed to show gratitude for her great kindness." He looked down to the floor, then back to Jane with a big smile. "She told me she loved me. Then hastened to clarify that she loved the baby she left to starve to death, not me."
"I'm sorry," Jane said, on instinct. She didn't know what else to say. No one's idea of meeting a birth parent went like that.
"With that as an example of her love, I shudder to think what experiencing her hatred might entail."
"I hate that you had to go through it alone."
Loki choked off a laugh. "Far better alone than having Thor hear all of that nonsense, too."
"I could have been there."
"Much too dangerous. But it was fine, in the end. I had a goal. All I had to do was stay focused on it. And dealing with that woman certainly made me better appreciate the one who raised me."
"Your real mother." Loki had told her at the tavern that Farbauti had said Frigga wasn't his real mother. Whatever else Farbuati may have said or done, that comment had to have been among the worst.
"Without question."
"She could have been there."
Loki allowed himself a few seconds to imagine that before responding. "My mother is genteel. Serene, beautiful, elegant, always perfectly poised. Kind, compassionate. Forgiving. But her soft exterior belies a warrior's core. She would have spilled Farbauti's guts for saying she wasn't my real mother."
"I guess that would have been a problem," Jane said. Her tone was joking, but she remembered the conviction behind Frigga's declaration of hatred toward Farbauti. Frigga was probably capable of enough self-restraint to avoid committing murder in the heat of passion, but Jane had also experienced Frigga prepared to spill her guts when she was seen as a threat to the woman's children. Frigga putting a sword to use in that scenario on Jotunheim, against Farbauti, wasn't that hard to imagine.
"It would have complicated negotiations. But you asked what I asked my mother. I suppose it wasn't so much about Jotunheim as it was about me. I didn't know anything about them, you see. No one on Asgard does. Only what we need to know. And I was tossed into the middle of their war, and into the middle of…of that so-called family. I wanted to be anywhere but there, but I had no choice. I had to be there. I had to stay and listen to that woman, to accommodate her. She wanted to see what I look like, as one of them. I let her."
"That's, um…invasive."
"It's even worse. She wanted me to undress. To see my chest. It was unpleasant, in the extreme. And all those things she spoke of…I told you about it, some of it. That's what I asked Mother about. What she saw of them in me. What came from them, what managed to cling onto me no matter how many times I bathed, without my ever knowing. What you called nature versus nurture."
"And?" Not reacting to Loki casting Jotunheim – and himself, in a way – as filth to be washed off wasn't easy, but Jane didn't want to derail him from whatever he wanted to get off his chest now.
"And nothing. There's nothing of them in me, not anymore. A few oddities from my childhood that went away when I was very young and have mostly faded from memory. I have left behind any trace of influence or control that the Jotun nature had on me. At least according to my mother."
"You don't believe her?"
Loki inclined his head and fixed Jane with a pointed look.
"She doesn't have any reason to lie to you now."
"Of course she does. She wants to spare me pain. She knew what I wanted to hear. Nevertheless…I think it most likely she told me what she believes to be true. And perhaps she's even correct. I think…it doesn't concern me as much as it did then."
"Really?" Jane asked, studying Loki's face with surprised curiosity. Maybe he was only saying that to avoid another lecture from her – part of the reason she had avoided a lecture just a moment ago. "Concern" didn't begin to cover how Loki felt about being born Jotun, about what it said about him.
"I was certain there was something inherent in me, that I…that no matter how justified I thought my actions were, and even perhaps still do, in some cases…because of me, that family has suffered."
"You mean your family. And what are you getting at?"
Loki started to object, but then realized he didn't see any point in doing so. If he wasn't a parasite, then what was he, exactly? The question he had no answer to. A quandary for another day, and perhaps a less consequential one than he'd once thought. "Baldur was the strongest piece of evidence, wasn't he? What kind of person kills his younger brother, not even of age, over petty jealousies? Only a wretched one. A soulless barbarian. Someone with a Frost Giant's skin deep beneath the Aesir."
"You wove all that together? Your inner Frost Giant made you kill Baldur?"
He shrugged – a deflection, because when Jane said it, it sounded foolish. "It made sense at the time. Every decision I've ever made, the bad ones, the seemingly good ones that turned out otherwise…perhaps my inner Frost Giant, as you put it, led me there. And what terrible places might it lead me in the future?"
"But you didn't kill him."
"But I didn't kill him." He paused, realizing with some surprise how easily, how calmly, he'd said it. Not trying to convince himself, not full of anger or denial while knowing it was in the end his fault. Parroting Jane's words as a simple agreement of fact, rather than clinging to them as a lifeline in a churning sea. Conscious thought, of course, stirred up the doubts, and the second repetition, he knew, would lack the unquestioned conviction of the first, but not fixating on it wasn't so difficult. "And since I didn't kill him, I had to reevaluate."
Jane nodded in understanding. She'd known Loki was having thoughts like that, questioning how much of who he was stemmed from where he was born. He'd shared a little of that with her. But she hadn't realized how far he'd taken it. She shouldn't have been surprised, though she was. Taking things far – very far – was par for Loki's course. "No inner Frost Giant."
"Perhaps not. Not a powerful one, at least. As my mother said after I returned from Jotunheim, they have no control over me."
"You have control over you."
"Mm." He did now, at least. No orders, no threats, no restrictions, no enchantments. Equally important, the more intangible sense that his own thinking was clearer and more reasoned than it had been for some time. The period in which, looking back, it felt like not even he had had much control of himself, was over, and he hoped never to endure such a thing again.
"I'm so glad you went to her. That you were able to talk to her about it."
I wanted to go to you. The thought was instantaneous, a rush of emotion right behind it. His need for her that day, that moment, had nearly overwhelmed him, a need no less than the air in his lungs. Instinctive, almost primal – a shapeless, irresistible, inexorable tug.
He recognized the shape of it now. She had become, against all odds, a close friend, even an intimate friend. The extent of his trust in her, far above and beyond anyone else in the universe, would leave him gasping for breath if he pondered it too long. He could tell her anything. He could laugh with her and he could cry with her.
But ensconced within that desire to go to her, to be with her, flickered another, mostly out of direct view, his eye drawn to it only on rare occasion. He was fixated on it now and it left him mute. Perhaps it had never entirely been extinguished from an hour earlier, when he'd pulled back from her camera and found himself yearning for her in a way he never would have imagined. Given fresh oxygen the flame was roaring to life, stronger than ever, threatening to engulf him.
How had he not seen this? When he'd asked to be sent to Jane, how much of his desperate need for her had Heimdall seen? Had the Gatekeeper understood more than Loki himself?
He was hyperconscious of her nearness – their thighs almost touched. The pull was physical.
It wasn't the first time. He remembered sitting in a carriage, longing to touch her. Another need, another near-irresistible longing, different from now. Or not. He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of much at the moment. At the moment, not much mattered beyond this tiny space that he occupied, he and Jane.
He was sure that her presence – her nearness – grounded him.
He was safe with her.
He wanted her.
"I'm at peace because you're here," he'd told her on Asgard. He knew what he was saying even then, if in a hazy sort of way. Now they sat side by side on a small bare bed, indoors, in a land that hadn't seen the sun in months and wouldn't for months more, but any remaining fog had been burned off. He knew exactly what those words meant, and he knew exactly what he felt. And she was right there, looking up at him, waiting for him to say something – what had she just said? – but she was no less forbidden wide awake than she was when asleep in that carriage.
Control. They'd been talking about control. He had that now. He would not put his hands anywhere they should not and could not go. Not even his little finger. Even that much, that stray finger deliberately brushing against her leg, had not been permitted. It was wrong, and he'd known it; he would never have dared had she been awake.
"Are you okay?"
His lips parted, the swelling of emotion within him hungering for release, but he had no ability to distill it all down into something as mundane as words. Even had he the words, words could no more stray into impermissible ground than hands.
"Yes," he said, then repeated it to sound more like it was true. "Just thinking."
"About what?"
"Thor," he said, shifting a little away from Jane, then standing.
Jane waited. Loki had seemed flustered, unsettled in some way, and she hoped Thor hadn't said or done anything hurtful about Jotunheim. Thor had told her about the trip the two of them had made, but he hadn't said much about Loki, mostly, it seemed, because Loki hadn't said much to him.
"Sometimes I used to think I was cursed to have Thor for a brother. And then I thought I was cursed that he wasn't, or rather that I wasn't. I suppose one useful thing I learned on Jotunheim…there are worse brothers out there than Thor."
Jane cracked a one-sided smile, uncertain whether that was entirely a joke or at least in part a sign of some degree of reconciliation with Thor. Loki was more distant now, and not just physically, glancing over at her with a broad smile – maybe more of a joke then – and making another box vanish. But then the smile fell away.
"Not that— I don't mean—." Loki stopped. He had little experience with being thoroughly tongue-tied, and he could not ascribe his fumbling solely to the distasteful subject. Clearly he had not quite managed to recover from the moment before, and his efforts to return to the task at hand had failed to sufficiently redirect his attention.
"Thor's not your brother?" Jane supplied with a wan smile.
"No," Loki said swiftly – too swiftly. He pressed his lips together to prevent further verbal flailing and gathered his thoughts. "That's not what I meant. I meant that other people have worse brothers than Thor, and that I don't count myself among them. Helblindi and Byleister are both saddled with a worse brother."
"I understand." Watching Loki scramble to ensure it was clear he didn't consider the Jotun brothers his brothers when no one would expect that he would anyway was sad, but she did understand. And maybe meeting them had made him reevaluate his relationship with Thor after all. "Did it help any?" she asked, getting up to join him although she couldn't really assist with his belongings at this point. "Having Thor there with you? Or did it just make it harder?"
He turned a damaged bracer over in his hand. It wasn't his, and he'd been trying to remember where it came from, as an exercise in mental discipline. He gave up on that, replaced the bracer and sent the box away, and tried to give Jane's question just enough consideration to be able to answer more or less honestly, and most importantly, coherently. "Mostly harder. Though there may have been a moment or two when he prevented me from killing the brothers. While killing them would have been immensely satisfying, Farbauti didn't abandon them to starve to death, so instead of inviting me back for a pleasant little chat and a casual disrobing, she may well have ordered me executed. All in all, then, his presence was probably a benefit. No need to tell him that, by the way."
"Did you talk about it with him at all?" Jane asked. She would never be comfortable with off-hand mentions of satisfaction in killing, but didn't see any use in confronting him about it.
"No. Well…a little, right before we left to come here."
"Really? So that's what you two were talking about. That's good."
"We weren't discussing feelings, if that's what you're thinking. It wasn't personal. I conveyed all the information I'd gleaned there. For better or for worse, he's king, and a king needs to know his enemy."
"Maybe Asgard and Jotunheim don't have to stay enemies."
Loki shook his head. "Thor is…he's used to getting what he wants." He sent another box away, possibly with a tiny bit more force than necessary. "But not even for Thor does the cosmos realign itself to his every fantastical whim. I wasn't exaggerating when I said they spoke of cutting us apart and sewing us back together. They hate us, and we hate them. They will never trust us, and we will never trust them. It's as simple as that. If Thor tries to pretend that's not so, then the Frost Giants will remind him of it in some memorably painful manner. Or else his own people will. No one on Asgard shares his delusions."
Jane had seen for herself that not everyone on Asgard approved of Loki returning the Ice Casket to Jotunheim, but ultimately, didn't everyone prefer peace to war? Especially after a war like the one Asgard had just endured? Maybe the Asgardian perspective was different. But Thor, she thought, was the embodiment of Asgard and Asgardian ideals; Loki had basically said so himself. And if Thor's perspective could shift, surely others' could, too. Of course, those others hadn't found out that someone they loved was born Jotun, and Thor couldn't tell them about Loki, and if he did, apparently a lot of the Asgardians would see that as an indictment of Loki rather than a reason to reconsider their ingrained hatred of Jotuns. "I hate politics," she blurted out.
Unguarded laughter burst out and in its wake, Loki finally relaxed. "So you've said."
"I have?"
"When we were trapped in Niskit's secret basement and I gave you a brief history lesson on Svartalfheim and Alfheim."
"Oh. Well, still true."
"You should have considered that before you became involved with an heir to a throne."
"Yeah, well, he left that part out when we met. So did you, by the way," she said, lightly smacking his arm with a book from the nearest box before returning it.
"Entirely irrelevant. Unlike him, I'm retired from politics. Not by choice, mind you, but…." His face fell as he rapidly sobered. True, when he'd returned to Asgard – in chains – Odin was literally sitting on the throne and precisely zero seconds were spent discussing whether it should still be his. Just as Thor's friends had ignored his explicit order, just as Heimdall had ignored and even forgotten about his order removing the Gatekeeper's citizenship, upon his return no one seemed to remember that the throne had been his. But it had not been taken from him by force. Odin had woken, and in normal circumstances would have reclaimed the throne as a matter of standard protocol. His own decisions had ensured they never reached that point. The throne hadn't been taken from him. He had let it go.
He had let go.
His vision tunneled and his heart raced. Such grandiose ideas he'd once had! An evolution in the order of the realms! A colossal cosmic jest. All for naught, all lost. He'd thought he lost everything. His family, his home. His pride. His past, his present, his future, his very name. He could still feel the thrum of Gungnir, the clench of his fist around it, the ever-weakening pull of the destroyed bifrost. He'd clung to hope even more tightly than to Gungnir, that pragmatic Odin would see the wisdom in what he'd done where Thor, softened by a mortal world and a mortal woman's embrace, did not. He was Odin's son, and he had proven it.
"No, Loki."
He'd been unable to imagine any alternative. Unable to see past that single moment in time.
"Are you sure you're okay? I didn't hit you that hard, did I?"
Jane's voice drew him back to the present; she wore a tentative smile and worried look. He had no idea where all that had come from. "You hit me?" he echoed, certain he couldn't have been so caught up in his own unsettled mind that he missed being struck.
"With the book?" Jane said, gesturing vaguely at the box on the bed.
"Oh. You, ah…," he began, pausing to muster a smile. "I thought a fly landed on my arm."
"No flies at the Pole. But seriously, is everything okay? You're drifting off a lot. I mean, I know you've got a lot on your mind."
He opened his mouth to spin some tale, but before the first word made it out he decided to tell her the truth. There was a rawness in it, sometimes, when he opened himself to her and gave breath to the things he normally kept so tightly locked away, but there was also something inexplicably, yet undeniably, valuable in it. He had this much with Jane, at least, and this much he would not give up.
"I was thinking about when Thor destroyed the bifrost and I fell. When I let go."
"Oh," Jane said in genuine surprise, then gave herself a mental kick. She was certain there was something more appropriate to say than "oh," but she was drawing a blank. Loki had told her more than once that he didn't want to talk about this. And she didn't know how to talk about this.
He picked up the book Jane had bumped him with, one of the ones filled with his illumination practice, and opened it to a random page, eyes skimming over the work without really taking it in. Having somewhere else to look helped. "I regretted it, at times. When I was with Thanos and his minion. But I regretted it for the wrong reasons. In the wrong way. I regretted that I survived. I'd simply abandoned one form of torment for another."
"You, um…you regret it for different reasons now?"
Loki turned that over in his head as he turned the page in the book, then reconsidered and closed it with a thud hard enough that Jane flinched. "Sorry," he said, offering her a smile and replacing the book. He didn't need to hide in its pages. Not from her. "No. I don't think I regret it, precisely. It happened. And I don't know what would have followed if it hadn't. It's more that I'm grateful I survived."
"Me, too," Jane said in relief that only grew as Loki continued.
"Everything that's happened since…to be sure, not all of it good…I don't regret as much as perhaps I should. What we did here, what I did here, even when it didn't work or it was…. Trying to save Baldur, for example. I failed over and over. It was like a waking nightmare. But if I hadn't tried…"
"You never would have realized someone else was there. You never would have learned the truth."
"Exactly. And now more adventures lie ahead," he said with a deliberately cheerful tone. That he was able to speak with Jane about such dark times did not equate to a desire to dwell upon them. He had spent enough time mired in the past; the future now deserved his attention. The future would not be without its challenges, but he had one, and he'd meant it when he said he was grateful.
He cast a glance around him, this little segment of a tent in a frozen desert that had become so central his life, only briefly meeting Jane's eyes.
Some parts of his past he wished did not have to be so.
/
I kept tweaking this even after pasting it in here! I don't like this "late tweaking" because it can result in certain types of mistakes from not catching little cascade effects of changes made. Hopefully that didn't happen here but I'm too tired now to go back and do another read-through. Expect the next chapter in the next few days...since it was originally part of this one. :-) Would've been the longest chapter yet if I didn't cut it. I don't want to overpromise but I am hopeful that the lag time between chapters (after the next which is an atypical situation) won't be as long, I've been doing better lately at getting back to my "must write every day" rule.
[Timestamp for my memories: Larry.]
Timestamp (though not of today) for me and maybe, sort of, someday, for everyone, last week an idea for a novel came to me. An idea of the sort that likely reflects the influence Tolstoy and Dostoevskiy have had on me, or maybe it's something innate in me, in what I'm drawn to, in how I think about and process things. I mention the big T&D since it's a "big idea" novel, with the "big ideas" forged in a lot of anguish over world events right now, and in turn over what is "humanity." I'll keep it at that, but, someday, hopefully, I can do some justice to such a novel, and if I can manage that and some of you happen to read it someday, well, you can say you saw it here first. :-) I don't have characters or a plot for this yet (not at all the normal way ideas for novels normally work for me), but the one very loose idea I've had for it so far would incorporate also a lot of what I've written about here, for Loki, namely questions of identity. (This was a very surprising but somehow also warm and fuzzy realization for me.)
Previews for Ch. 223 (or as I still think of it at the moment, Ch. 222b, ha): Well, Jane and Loki talk! But also, the drama at the Pole never quite ends. (Poor Wright, and Selby, who occasionally echoes Wright's dislike of drama, though I think it's far less true of Selby than it is of Wright, who genuinely, truly, sincerely, does not like drama.)
Excerpt:
"Something's going on," Loki said, his pace slowing.
"What do you mean?" Jane asked, glancing around and seeing nothing amiss.
