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Loki is more celebrated for killing the wyvern than she has ever been for anything else in her life. This was completely predictable, if... exasperating. At least it is a thing she legitimately did if you ignore the long-ago cheating to be able to even learn to pick up a glaive.
She has the wyvern's tail barb fashioned into a dagger; it will produce no new poison on its own, and much of what it had leaked out when she cut it off the beast, but it remains particularly dangerous and will do for the first few times she uses it, and it's possible she will be able to refill it along the grooves through which natural wyvern-venom would have flowed if she finds a kind of poison she'd like to use.
Her mother honors her both with the gift of a new weapon, Lævateinn, and with the opportunity to name her peculiar eight-legged foal that she intends to ride into battle when he is older.
She calls the horse Sleipnir (he's a very cute foal, if... leggy...) and she's thrilled with Lævateinn. It's a glaive... and an axe and a scythe and a spear and a staff and a pitchfork and any other longish melee weapon she can think of; it will change in her hands, its length and blade and weight, as she likes. It is old - well, it's indestructible, and never needs sharpening; it has had every opportunity to become old - and now it is hers. She loves it.
Being an official adult is pleasant in many ways; in others it changes little; and in a few it is wearing and irksome.
But she doesn't mind being able to go along when the frost giants make incursions into territory on Midgard. Odin does not much care about Midgard for its own sake, as far as Loki can tell; she only wants the giants confined to Jotunheim. Loki's motives are different (and would not much matter even if they contradicted outright: princesses are supposed to show up on campaigns of war).
To Loki's immense convenience, the Asgardians outnumber the giants by nearly ten to one and no one she cares about in the least is lethally injured such that she'd feel obliged to mysteriously heal them. The giants are driven away and it is made clear that they are to stop harassing the short-lived people of Midgard.
Loki finds herself charmed by the humans. They're technologically primitive - the Asgardians like a low-tech aesthetic, are rather dominated by this preference, but that's not the same thing. They live and die in, not an eyeblink exactly, but a medium-sized period of time. They keep their souls outside of their bodies and shaped like animals, and the children's can change, which is peculiar but endearing.
The campaign is over in less than a week, and that long only because the frost giants are dug into the mountains. Loki's new toy gets plenty of exercise. She finds it useful to spear it into targets and change it before hauling it out of them, as long as she's not surrounded by many opponents; when she is, she does well to curve her blade for tripping. Her fallback is the favored glaive shape, but Lævateinn's ability to get longer is invaluable against such - well - giant enemies.
They win, the giants leave, the Asgardians prepare to go -
"Mother?" dares Loki. "By your leave I would stay here - no more than a few years. To explore. I am curious about the ways of the mortals and about their world."
purposeful_glory
"...If you wish," says Odin. "Mind that you remember where to stand when you call the Bifrost to return you to Asgard."
purposeful_glory
"I will be able to find it by the stars even if I become completely lost," Loki assures her.
"Good."
That seems to be the extent of Odin's commentary on the situation; she returns to checking that the rest of the expedition has been collected and is ready to stand on the Bifrost site.
That seems to be the extent of Odin's commentary on the situation; she returns to checking that the rest of the expedition has been collected and is ready to stand on the Bifrost site.
purposeful_glory
Loki looks for her sister, next.
(Her father of course is not here.)
(Her father of course is not here.)
purposeful_glory
"Likewise! I like this world, and have asked Mother's leave to stay a while. She granted it," she adds. "It will not be long, though, only two or three years."
einridi
"I will miss you, sister!" This is grounds for another hug. "I hope you have many interesting adventures!"
purposeful_glory
"Does wandering around watching the humans go about their business count as an adventure?" inquires Loki, hugging back.
purposeful_glory
"Then I almost certainly shall have a prolonged and lovely adventure. I'll tell you all about it when I get back."
purposeful_glory
"It will probably go like this. 'I met a great many mortals, and their entertaining little soul-animals, and traded stories for what of my dinner I did not hunt down myself, and in this way I passed the years since I last saw you.'"
purposeful_glory
"Perhaps I am. I will enjoy being strange away from Asgard, for a while."
(Now that she actually, really, truly has her permission to stay she is a little giddy about the idea of being so beyond Odin's sphere of caring-about-anything. She can probably do magic openly right in front of the Midgardians and nothing will happen.)
(Now that she actually, really, truly has her permission to stay she is a little giddy about the idea of being so beyond Odin's sphere of caring-about-anything. She can probably do magic openly right in front of the Midgardians and nothing will happen.)
einridi
Thor hugs her again, then waves and traipses off at the sound of a distant shout from their mother.
purposeful_glory
Loki hangs around the war camp long enough to see it packed up and see everyone off.
And then she notes her location and its nearby landmarks, and - goes.
She doesn't spend all of her time loitering around the mortals. There are animals to hunt (because she does need to eat) and landscape to wander. She uses flat illusions to process her thoughts and uses scarce notebook space only for things she has to remember later.
Sometimes she does go among mortals. They've got their genders back-to-front in these cultures (at first she thought they were going by the genders of their - "daemons", as they turn out to be called, but no, even when these match their humans, it is the men who fight and rule on Midgard), and they do no magic, so there is no advantage to being seen as the weaker sex while she's here. She goes about in male (adult, redhead, why not) guise most of the time, accordingly, although she thinks nothing of amusing passing children by revealing her true form if she happens to feel like it. Their daemons tell her a lot about their personalities. She sometimes neglects to display one for herself - let them think she has an insect hiding in her armor if they must - but sometimes she feels inventive and conjures up one that would withstand no touch but needn't fear such impropriety. Snakes and foxes and falcons and, once, when she is particularly whimsical, a small wyvern complete her disguise.
She is not a bard, but she does have access to stories they have never heard about fantastic faraway things well beyond the borders of the typical Midgardian's imagination, and these she tells - sometimes with embellishing illusions to set mood or illustrate visuals, sometimes unadorned. She tells them fiction and non-, neglecting to distinguish between them, sometimes filling in the latter with bits of the former where her memory fails or her audience looks bored, typically referring to herself in the third person when she features at all.
It is well past the point where she starts hearing her own tales recited by others in taverns and meadhalls that she realizes the Allspeak has glitched on her by reversing the genders of pronouns she utters, the mistakes thoroughly compounded by the local culture. They're talking about Odin the "Allfather", among other inaccuracies.
Her propensity for neglecting to stay put in her assigned gender has remained in these retellings, which is amusing until she realizes that someone has mangled the story of her naming Sleipnir thoroughly enough to believe her the literal mother of an eight-legged horse. The grasp on biology the Midgardians have is apparently negligible. She is put out but sees no realistic way to issue a correction.
She stays three years and two months, and meanders back to the Bifrost site, and calls out to be brought home. She loves it here - but wearies of conserving paper with such care, and longs to get back to her research and her sister and her tutors, even if it means being back within reach of Odin and Asgard's notions of right behavior.
She remembers to dismiss all her illusions first.
And then she notes her location and its nearby landmarks, and - goes.
She doesn't spend all of her time loitering around the mortals. There are animals to hunt (because she does need to eat) and landscape to wander. She uses flat illusions to process her thoughts and uses scarce notebook space only for things she has to remember later.
Sometimes she does go among mortals. They've got their genders back-to-front in these cultures (at first she thought they were going by the genders of their - "daemons", as they turn out to be called, but no, even when these match their humans, it is the men who fight and rule on Midgard), and they do no magic, so there is no advantage to being seen as the weaker sex while she's here. She goes about in male (adult, redhead, why not) guise most of the time, accordingly, although she thinks nothing of amusing passing children by revealing her true form if she happens to feel like it. Their daemons tell her a lot about their personalities. She sometimes neglects to display one for herself - let them think she has an insect hiding in her armor if they must - but sometimes she feels inventive and conjures up one that would withstand no touch but needn't fear such impropriety. Snakes and foxes and falcons and, once, when she is particularly whimsical, a small wyvern complete her disguise.
She is not a bard, but she does have access to stories they have never heard about fantastic faraway things well beyond the borders of the typical Midgardian's imagination, and these she tells - sometimes with embellishing illusions to set mood or illustrate visuals, sometimes unadorned. She tells them fiction and non-, neglecting to distinguish between them, sometimes filling in the latter with bits of the former where her memory fails or her audience looks bored, typically referring to herself in the third person when she features at all.
It is well past the point where she starts hearing her own tales recited by others in taverns and meadhalls that she realizes the Allspeak has glitched on her by reversing the genders of pronouns she utters, the mistakes thoroughly compounded by the local culture. They're talking about Odin the "Allfather", among other inaccuracies.
Her propensity for neglecting to stay put in her assigned gender has remained in these retellings, which is amusing until she realizes that someone has mangled the story of her naming Sleipnir thoroughly enough to believe her the literal mother of an eight-legged horse. The grasp on biology the Midgardians have is apparently negligible. She is put out but sees no realistic way to issue a correction.
She stays three years and two months, and meanders back to the Bifrost site, and calls out to be brought home. She loves it here - but wearies of conserving paper with such care, and longs to get back to her research and her sister and her tutors, even if it means being back within reach of Odin and Asgard's notions of right behavior.
She remembers to dismiss all her illusions first.
The ever-watchful Heimdall gives her a nod of greeting when she materializes in the dome of the Bifrost.
"Welcome home," she says.
"Welcome home," she says.
purposeful_glory
"Thank you," says Loki.
She decides not to say for everything.
She decides not to say for everything.
Heimdall nods again, and stands aside to give Loki a clear path to the door.
purposeful_glory
Home she goes, then.
She would visit Thor first but she supposes she really owes her father, who wasn't there to say goodbye.
She would visit Thor first but she supposes she really owes her father, who wasn't there to say goodbye.
Her father, predictably, can be found at his loom.
"Welcome back!"
He ceases weaving and gets up and hugs her.
He ceases weaving and gets up and hugs her.
purposeful_glory
Hugs!
"I am sorry you were not warned about my little vacation; it was something of a last-minute request."
"I am sorry you were not warned about my little vacation; it was something of a last-minute request."
"So I gathered. No matter. Did you enjoy yourself?"