#divinemischief

Loki’s in the middle of experimenting with an ice reversal spell, holding a transparent  bauble that is slowly melting and suspended in the air as clear water, which in turn transmogrifies into illusive snakes.  

He glances up from his work with a welcoming little smirk, and continues to writhe his fingers while setting aside the book that is a magical treatise on the subject.  

    “Come here, love, let me see it.  Who is organizing the endeavor?”

He studies the papers, multitasking with expertise, and hums.  

    “I’ll speak on the telephone with the captain.  Only to ensure that your survival lessons are not too realistic too early, although I am quite in favor of you training in such matters. Shall we put it as a tentative yes?” 

    “And what has your father said?” 

     “David?” 

Loki barely registers her son’s greeting, sweet and nurturing though it may be, when his quiet heartache is clear.  

The venom of a thousand black adders and the teeth of ten thousand she-wolves roil within her, prepared to mete harsh justice to the culprit.

Loki flicks her wrist with a sly grin and snow cascades from the ceiling, frosting the floor; yet it is show that is not cold, and vanishes after a few seconds without leaving watermarks.

      “Loveling, your wish is my command.”

Loki, ever slow to awaken, stretches and loops an arm around her witchling’s shoulders, and gives Thea’s forehead a kiss that somehow mingles tenderness and ferocity.  Each kiss from mama Loki is a vicious vow, a promise, of protection at all costs.  Still she smiles down at the girl like Thea is the cause for the sunrise.  

      “Yes, yes!  I must be mad to sleep in, aye?  Blessed Yule, sweetling,” she coos.  Her jade eyes are soft: the privilege of only her children.  

Five months along with the new addition, the veteran mother’s belly is plush and round, but not so large that it’s difficult to sit up and join the excitedly chattering child.  She does so with a wry smirk, brushing her mane of black hair behind an ear. 

     “What’s in here, love?  How prettily you’ve prepared it. What soft velvet this is, and mama’s favorite color.  How blessed I am today, to have a daughter who thinks so long and hard about what makes me happy.” 

She speaks all these words while quietly beaming, and opening the parcel.  And she gasps with a glee she needn’t feign as she draws the dagger.

She turns to Thea.

“Thea,” Loki greets his witchling, retracting his proverbial claws with his cubs, as ever. He magicks the mouse he was in the process of transforming into a salmon into a large tank; as a result there’s a furry gilled and finned chimera happily bubbling about within.  The rest of the magic he waves away in an iridescent, dissipating cloud, for Thea is right: he is delighted. 

 He leans down to lift her into his lap, and when he does, he takes the colorful chaos from her hands and examines it, rotating it every way.  

Loki climbs into Balthazar’s lap, entitled as a cat with its favorite human.  He deposits a beautifully wrapped parcel, in the hues of gold and turquoise, with cream patterns on the paper, on his lover’s chest.  

“Twas made known to me, and not via you,” he purrs, feigning scorn, “that your birthday recently came to pass.  Have a token of my love and gratitude.  You have made a nest for me, which is safe and warm.” 

He pets back golden blond hair and kisses the angel known to mankind as Barachiel on the forehead. 

“Go on. Open it.” 

Loki lifts his head from the book in which he’s been scribbling furiously fastidious notes; it’s a tome on advanced Midgardian herbology, one he pulled from the shelf in his ever-growing “Subsidiary Library” in Balthazar’s home, in order to examine his lover’s spice closet.  He’s secure in the knowledge that the angel will be unfazed by this dissection of his domestic interior.

“Mn?” he hums, and slips over, closing the book in the process.