#lokiverity

They were waiting for the storm to clear. Harsh temperatures and chin-deep snowdrifts made the pass impenetrable by land. The wind chased them down the side of the crater whenever they flew for it. Thusly they waited, ruffled and low in the nest, quivering with each gust of the cold, arctic breeze.

Beneath them, on level with the earth, ice wolves skirted around the frozen lake.  They traversed the unsteady ground in a small pack, heads low and watchful. They moved for the crater path as well.

“Enough of this,” the magpie grumbled. Chest feathers ruffling, she plucked up the bauble’s chain in her claws and took flight once again.

The wind took its cue to blow more harshly. Clouds of sharp, glittering ice swept up from the lake and pelted the would-be trespassers. The wolves laid low, and the magpie herself fluttered off-course. She aimed her freefall for the path, dumping herself into a snowdrift more than halfway up the crater.

She shifted forms as she sat up in the drift. Shaking snow from her dark hair, she gave an elaborate shudder. “Well, that was interesting,” said Loki. 

From the chain around her wrist, the bauble glowed, releasing a wisp of life. The wisp solidified, as much as a shade could. Verity turned to her friend with a pinched glare. “How many attempts has this been?”

“Twelve. Perhaps more, depending on whether you count the approaches from the frozen sea.”

“I do.”

“Very well. Sixteen, then.” Loki lifted a brow, conceding. She straightened her loose coronet and, straightening her furs, hauled herself up unsteadily. With a quick summoning, she grasped her staff from midair, and used it as a walking stick.

The crater grew steeper the higher they climbed. Loki carried them forward, sluggish yet determined, while Verity hovered encouragingly nearby. She feared Loki would set off an avalanche with her efforts. The snow here was hard-packed, yet without warning it crumbled and swept downhill. Loki seemed nonplussed, however. She kept her legs and the staff kicking forward, buried up to her chin in her furs.

Finally, when the lip of the crater approached a steady eighty degree incline, Loki paused for breath. The wind clutched at her hood, clawing for her to drag her away. She lay down flat against the crater face and closed her eyes, brows knitted against the ice grit endangering her breaths. 

Verity hovered over her, helpless. Despite her incorporeality, her hands darted futilely for her friend. At this height, having travelled this far, she hesitated to speak. “Loki … We don’t have to do this.”

“You need your body back,” Loki replied dully. Her breathing panged.

“But are you sure it’s even worth it?”

“See for yourself.”

A sharp, short gesture guided Verity toward the crater. Attentive to the limits of her confines, Verity floated up the final heights of the mountainside.

The scene below took her breath away. She turned to find Loki climbing, slow and steady, up beside her.

The Raudir basin was one of the few places in Jotunheim protected from the nature of the realm itself. The icy winds here could never cut into its depths with enough strength. Snow melted before it could fall in force within the crater, pooling instead as crystalline lakes along its centre. Cut off from the rest of the realm, life had a chance here to thrive.

Verity had never seen such unfrozen land upon Jotunheim. She turned to her friend, found her watching with a grin. Loki patted the place where Verity’s shoulder would have been, had she been corporeal. “Come, now. Let’s go.”

Loki vaulted the last lip of delineating the crater, and came to rest on a stone face lightly powdered with snow. With the hard work done, she closed the gap with the rest of the crater. Taking a long look, she spared Verity a grin before leaping out into the basin.

In a fell swoop, Verity was flying, gliding down the inner face of the crater at great speed. Loki whooped and laughed as she tobogganed through the snow. Her arms acted as rudders, veering her side to side from rocks and trees. Verity flinched at each approach; Loki tended to keep her course until the last moment, then dig in her hands and slide away.

When her velocity petered out, Loki came to rest beneath the fog line, not far from a forest of unfrozen trees. Once more she dusted herself free from snow. Glancing back, she waved for Verity to follow.

The thicket was unlike any Verity had seen on Jotunheim thus far. The trees here were a dingy grey hue, and almost seemed normal, compared to the vast woods of frozen treants found in the world beyond. The rustle and crash of underbrush belonged to prey animals, now, not ice wolves or scaly frost beasts. Birdsong flittered softly overhead, muffled like ghosts in the fog.

They walked deeper into the iron woods, to where the trees grew taller, the fog thicker. If Verity could feel anything, the press of nature upon her would make her feel tight and small.

The trees gave way to a delicately woven fence line, made from branches and living trees alike. Trinkets hung on a rope around the fence. Smoke came through on a breeze, carried from a fire beyond the fog. 

Loki pushed aside a curtain of lichen hanging from a branch, and stepped into the circlet of wood. “Keep quiet, in here. Let me do the talking.” She offered Verity a friendly smile that did not quite reassure. 

A stone pathway came into view, marked out by tufts of healing grasses beneath the snow. Fur pelts were stretched on racks around the front yard, in various stages of treatment. Ahead came a low hut made of iron wood, its front an open face entrance. The smoke came from a fire at the path’s end. A shade sat on the fire’s far side, its features obscured.

Verity bristled. Something in here reeked of a lie.

Loki called out a hail in approach, and once she received a curt nod took her place beside the shadow at the fire. Verity confirmed the shade was a Jotun, with long braided hair swept beneath a leather hood. She watched them approach with bloody red eyes.

If Loki was afraid, she kept it well-hidden. Warming her hands over the fire, she turned to the Jotun with an amicable smile. “Much thanks, friend. Hard to believe you can keep such a splendid corner of the world to yourself.”

The Jotun grunted, her lips peeling back from thick tusks. “Not thought I would see you again, Trickster.”

“Ah.” Loki’s mouth twisted. “Well, the world remakes in odd ways. The strangest patterns resurface.”

“By force or design, I wonder.”

Loki mumbled, “Don’t we all.”

The fire snapped between them. The Jotun resumed braiding beads onto a thin rope. Verity bore it with forced calmness. She knew the Jotun was watching her from the corner of her eyes.

Finally the Jotun grunted in interest. She flicked thick fingers toward the bauble on Loki’s wrist. “Your revenant, who is she?”

“A mortal,” Loki replied quickly, “left without form at the end of the world. It was the safest way to ensure her survival.”

“Safest,” the Jotun mumbled, forcing another bead onto her braid. “But not the best. I thought I’d taught you better than that.”

Loki’s smile twisted into something sour. She shook herself free from whatever was curling her grin. “It was other ages, other lives, Angrboda. Who I am now hardly knows who all I’ve been.”

The Jotun, Angrboda, did not seem to care. “You’ve forgotten what matters, Loptr. Now your mortal hangs upon the precipice of unknown.”

Verity felt the chill again, the one that came with lies and half-truths. She looked for something to say. “Do you remember the world before?” she asked. It was rare, in this remaking, to find people who knew of their past lives.

Loki shot her an atypical, unhappy look. Angrboda, however, seemed pleased. “Our past cycles inform our futures,” said the Jotun. “I see many things, child. It is how I knew Loptr would bring you here.” 

With that, Angrboda set aside her braid. She plucked up a length of wood and delved it into the fire, pushing aside logs and embers alike. From deep in the flames, she dragged out what looked like a stone. It sizzled in the snow at Loki’s feet, cooling to the angry, red shade of a welt. Of blood.

Verity’s gaze wavered; for a moment, the heat lines looked like a heart beating.

To Loki, Angrboda said, “It is what you came for, isn’t it? Take it, then, and begone.” She waved the wooden stick, dropped it into the fire. Angrboda took up the rope again and resumed her braid.

Loki touched the heated stone tentatively with her foot. She spared Verity a sympathetic look. “It will be a while until we see each other again, my friend. Know that what I do, I do for your sake. I hope you’ll forgive me, in the end.”

Verity frowned, speechless. “Loki, what—” she began. But her friend picked the fiery stone up in both hands, and with a quick beat swallowed it whole.

Verity felt the world spin, suddenly akimbo. Stars sparked in her gaze. “Loki,” she mumbled as she fell, tumbling to the earth, landing in a place that was soft and warm and dark and closed.

Loki can tell that she is panicking, what with the weight of the end of the world crashing down on her at once. He brings her someplace safe, conjures up a space familiar. Lays her upon the couch in her old apartment and hands her a cup of tea. He waits until the china in her hand stops rattling against its saucer, until the beverage has paled to lukewarm before deeming her steady enough to say, “This isn’t your home. Not the real one anyway.”

But she already knew that was true. This apartment—this world—sings its indiscretions in every glance she takes.

This is earth, but none of this is real.

When she’s ready, Loki leads her outside. Through a downtown devoid of traffic, down sidewalks that lead nowhere. Leaves fall from trees Verity cannot see until she turns her head. Beside her, newsstands and hot dog carts pepper the streets. Like the roads and the shops before them, these places are empty, deserted of those who might possess them.

Yet Loki extends his hand towards one such cart, comes back to her with oversized hot dogs made with all the fixings. They eat; Verity laughs at an anecdote Loki offers about a pig. The oddity of the gesture passes.

But then the same happens at the cafes they frequent—foodstuff appears from the corner of her eye, set upon the table between them by unseen hands. She eats, but she remembers tasting nothing. Tasting everything. Every meal is delicious, and warm. Empty and full.

Loki tours her through the world she had locked herself away from, once. They go shopping. And ice skating. They take long trips through the zoo, watching the animals there. Verity remembers laughing at the monkeys, and grinning in awe at the svelte lines of the tigers. But when she looks back at the exhibits, they are empty. Sometimes she cannot see them at all.

The niggling ache of a lie rings within her head, casting echoes through her form.

If she cannot tell truth from a lie, then who is she after all?

When it becomes too much, Loki leads her back to the apartment. Settles in on the bed beside her, a thick tome in hand, a heavy quilt draped upon them both. Verity folds in upon herself and listens to the tales read to her, feels the verbal lies harmonize with the visual ones. Her consciousness drifts outside her body. She can’t remember falling asleep.

“Verity.” Whispered. The scuff of a blanket, shook to rouse her from sleep.

Verity opens her eyes. Her form has gone grey. Transparent. She’s back to a ghost again.

She would scrub her eyes if it would have any impact, but it won’t, so she sits here instead. Loki watches her with helpless worry, hands clenched to the bedding around her in place of an overwhelmed hug. The God of Stories in distress.

“It’s hard,” Verity admits, wincing at the ache behind her eyes. “This place is real. At least, as real as any place in the Void. But its rules are different. Its truths aren’t like the ones back at home. And everything gets … noisy inside my head.”

Loki crosses his arms, pensive. Tea has appeared on the bedside table once again. He grabs a steaming cup. “We should move, then,” he says at last. “Somewhere more scientific, perhaps, where the rules might better carry over. Have you ever been inside of an atom before?”

She laughs, her strength returning in a flush of delight. She’s seen it all and still sometimes Loki surprises her.

The hum of the lie sings through her, falling sotto voce as Loki ushers her from the bed.

“Stay back,” Verity Willis tells Thor, as if she is somehow capable of stopping a god from enacting whatever he wishes. As if her friendship with Loki has given her grounds to order the crown prince of Asgard.

But Thor listens. He stops partway into the room, sets his axe to the floor. He smiles weakly at his sibling, his palms upraised in peace. “Can we talk, then?”

Loki tetches, shrugging so strongly her curls spill over the broken horns of her circlet. “I thought that was the point of this meeting. Unless you are deceitful, and truly wish to end me for my crimes.”

“I mean you no ill-will,” Thor answers peaceably.

The mortal turns, nods minutely. Loki unfolds from her place against the wall and takes tentative strides towards him.

They can meet as equals now, perhaps. Now that Thor has become the Odinson, his failures displayed to all the realms in the loss of his name. Loki may yet be the instigator of unspeakable crimes, but he—she—is not alone in weakness. She has promised she has changed, and after the countless times Thor has permitted her former self to trick him, he can extend trust at least one last time. Trust enough to buoy them, for her having met him here.

“I did not listen,” Thor begins, lowering his hands. “Last time we met. I followed the rage in my heart, wilfully forgot my love for you. I want…” He struggles, trying to pinpoint his piece of mind. “I have heard tales of what you’ve done, what good you—the two of you—have wrought across the realms. Would that I could hear them from the God of Stories herself.”

Loki relaxes, at last, at this. She offers him the smile she’s kept at bay, her face belied by wonder. Even her mortal grins, though its warmth is reserved, meant for Loki alone. 

Another step, tentative this time in its hope for what may change. Loki wants to come closer, Thor sees; she craves his approval. But it is an old habit now, one that dies with the clasp of her mortal’s hand. Loki turns, her bright mood shining upon her friend.

“What say you, Verity—have you the mood for another retelling?”

Verity rolls her eyes and sighs. “Leave out the ‘thous’ and ‘thines’ this time, please? I’ve seen you texting; emojis are your native tongue.”

Loki wriggles her brows at this, coaxing out the remainder of her mortal’s loving grin.