"Aye, do. Come, Fandral."

Fandral casts a confused glance back at Sigyn as she follows Thor.

"Fandral," Loki says, when they're out of earshot, "cannot a bit decide what she makes of this."

"I see that," Sigyn agrees cheerfully.

Even with no one else around, he doesn't drop the pretense of mild-to-moderate injury; he moves with a touch of stiffness that contrasts his usual efficient fluidity.

Eventually Thor and Fandral come back with Hogun and Volstagg, who found aurochs and killed one, so they get campfire-cooked aurochs for dinner anyway. They're pretty good. But could use some rosemary and onion.

They go home, dragging the landwurm head and one particularly shapely aurochs horn to be fashioned into one of the various things you can make out of horns, and Loki has Sigyn's silence.

Isn't that good of him.





Years go by. Loki works in earnest on learning to turn into a bird. And then she suddenly spends a lot less time on that because she has abruptly Discovered Boys.

If she has complaints about her gender role in Asgardian society, at least she does not have complaints about the bit where she is welcome to discover boys in any way that suits her. Midgardian girls - and to a certain extent Asgardian boys - are constrained in this manner, but there is no particular reason Loki (especially given that she is a princess who decapitated a landwurm in recent memory, and isn't half bad-looking either) should not sidle up to pretty faces (pretty whatevers) who are loitering in a way suggesting that they're open to liaisons and liaise with them. Not all of these people are boys - why not be thorough in discovering her preferences experimentally? She can, it's completely socially acceptable, isn't that novel, and she has plenty of leisure time - but it's usually boys. Thor teases her, a little - comparing her to Fandral. Loki just laughs.

She calms down after a little while. Not that she stops, but other interests reassert themselves. And the shine's worn off random pretty boys (occasionally girls - who knows when she might find an exception to the pattern) who are mostly interested in her being a landwurm-decapitating princess.




Fandral doesn't have any sort of commitment from Sigyn. They just sometimes fuck. Sigyn sleeps around, this is known, this is (when certain people are full of mead) discussed in slightly too intimate detail without even the saving grace of cunning rhymes. This is, if one wanders into the wrong alleyway in the right neighborhood, witnessed. If Fandral preferred that people personally known to her stay away from her sometime-boytoy then this should have been made clear years ago and it hasn't been.

Loki hasn't touched him because involving complications in the ugliest possible case of blackmail has seemed like a bad idea. But it's been a while now, and his silence has been absolute, even to her.

And she could teach him the alphabet.







But first things first. She corners him alone one day. She grins, gives him a minute to flinch or signal if he plans on doing so, and when there is no sign she should back off, she kisses him.

Well isn't that delightful.

Sigyn kisses back.

Good.

And after enough kisses to establish that this is a thing that is happening now she drags him off to her room - her room with all its bookshelves and notebooks stacked three deep on each one - and has her way with him. This is also delightful.

Snuggles?

Yaaaaay cuddlesome.

When slightly less postcoital but still pretty cuddly:

"Imagine," says Loki, "that you want to learn to write, and all you know is the alphabet - no words, no grammar, no concept of paragraphs or punctuation."