Corner
Picnic
"Who are you?"
The words are a cold, hard slap right in the face of my joy in this perfect moment. The sun rolls along the lush green hills, the sky is impossibly blue, the birds melodiously vocal, and it should be heaven but in that moment it's different and this time I can see the cracks.
"... what do you mean?"
She frowns, turns away. "Don't play with me." Her voice is flint and steel, far beyond my experience. "Who are you? You are not my husband."
I sigh. "It's... a long story..."
"I have time," she snaps, seems to reconsider and says; "Nothing here is real, except for you. And yet you are not my husband. Who are you? What is this?" She gestures angrily to the scenery, and for the first time I notice the desperation underneath her anger.
Nothing here is real. It hurts to hear it and yet... I knew, though desperatley wanted it to not be so. To think that maybe I'd found the one crack of happiness in a cold-dark Hel. Nothing here is real, no-one here is alive, and that means...
I change, and for the first time it hurts that I even can, that I slip back into my other form so easily. Feel bones lengthen and muscle thicken, hair rope and twirl, feel the pull of stitches and scars and the minute way the sounds change as my ears lengthen and scallop. It should not be possible, in this place of places, that I can exist like this. The wards and geas should hold the change back, and no scars like mine are borne in Asgard; scars outside honour.
Beside me, I hear Sigyn gasp sharply; she has not seen me like this before. My tail twitches on the grass, belying my nervousness, my irritation. I loathe that it takes effort to forcibly still it.
"I am Loki Laufeyjarson," I say. My voice has returnd to normal, the only thing about me that is smoother and richer in this form. "And I am you husband, and you were my wife. Until you died."
I tell her everything, since lies serve no purpose. About the cave, about Ragnarök, about the half-century I spent in the world of men. Sigyn listens quietly. She's very good at that.
I stop short when it comes to Sigmund; here and now the very thought of it, of him, feels like betrayal, and I cannot bring myself to voice it. I'm not sure who I feel I'm betraying; Sigyn that I should take another in her place, or Sigmund for allowing myself to be sucked into this dream. Maybe both; I was always versatile in that regard.
"But what then is this place?" she asks, and I find I have no place to hide.
"I don't know," I admit. "After Ragnarök Baldr went mad; he is trying to remake the world, but to do that i first needs to be destroyed. He destroyed the Third Seal, and Midgard is slowly sliding into Nifelheim. Everthing is falling apart, I assume this is some part of that, but I don't know why."
"It's a prison." The clarity of her answer startles me. I still haven't looked at her, can't look at her lest I risk disgust or horror or worse. Here, like this, I am a monster. Few in Asgard have ever seen a true jotun, and these people are not like those from the twenty first century with their movies and televisions and computers, to whom monsters and demons are things of awe; the antiheroes of the modern fable. There I am a pinnacle of dark and exotic beauty; here I am merely a foe.
"Oh, my love don't you see?" The touch at my arm startles me and I glance up without thought; Sigyn gasps somewhat at what is left of my ruined face, of corpse-bloat sewn lips and mirror-blind eyes of poison green. I look away quickly, but the touch returns -- more insistant this time.
"You must escape this false prison-dream, return to your true time."
I rest my head on my knees -- my clothes have changed with my appearance, though I suppose they were never really any different -- fold my arms around my head and close my eyes.
"Return to what? What does it matter what this place is when I am happy here?"
"Is there nothing in your world you would fight for?"
I hesitate, and she senses it.
"Who is she?"
I don't bother to ask how she knows because really there could be nothing else. Monster or not I am still a god, am still myself, and there is nothing on heaven on earth I cannot steal. Except, perhaps, hearts.
"You," I murmur into my knees. Then, louder, "In a way." I unfold, lay back spreadeagled on the grass, watch perfect white clouds drift lazily across that perfect pre-industrial sky. "His name is Sigmund, a thouroughly modern boy, but he has your soul. I met him by coincidence, at first thought I was mad, but... he has your skill with lies, and other things besides. And... I have found others."
"Does he... know you?"
I nod awkwardly from my position. "Baldr found us, and I assumed this form to fight. Sigmund guessed the rest."
"And he lives still?"
"I... don't know. I believe so."
"Yet you wish to remain here and leave him to his fate?" She's angry at me again. "Then you are truly not my husband. He would not hide here in falsehood like a coward and do nothing! You tell me now you love me yet would rather die with this false memory than find the bearer of my soul in your new world? You disgrace me, and you disgrace my husband. I know you not."
Few people would defend me, I know, and yet; "Even if I wanted to go back I don't know how! I don't even know how I got here in the first place!" I sit up, angrily, glare at the woman across from me. She looks grim and determined and utterly beautiful, and meets my dead-eyed gaze unflinchingly.
"You forget I see through your lies, lover."