Sorcha's Secret World, Part 2: Mystery and Mischief.

Chapter 8, Loki: suddenly a forgiving god.

The move to Jotunnhold took longer than planned.

As anyone who has ever converted a building or had major construction work done knows; it always takes twice as long and costs twice as much as you had originally estimated!

The silver lining was that Doc Lee's team had plenty of time to finish their work in the hold. Besides the room where they had found Loki's uncle, there were a few more rooms behind the cave-in.

To all our surprise, one of them was a portal room which contained three portals. One of those lead to a secret portal in the catacombs underneath the castle in Jotunnheim and was hidden there by clever magics, which is why Loki had never found it. The other two portals had collapsed into rubble, but whether that was done deliberately or simply caused by the ravages of time was hard to tell.

The other room contained stacks and stacks of Jotunn tablets, a veritable library far larger than any military building would ever possess. Loki spent a few days trying to read as many as he could, but as time went on he got more and more frustrated.

"There is no rhyme or reason to them! It is as if all the written materials ever created by the Jotunn race were thrown into one big pile!

Shopping lists, diplomatic treaties, romantic prose, works of fiction, training manuals, love letters, military reports... it will take me years to catalogue all of this!"

Loki surmised his uncle had tried to save as many tablets as he could and had brought them all to the hold to preserve as much of Jotunn culture as he could before taking his own life. It was an amazing insight into Jotunn culture and everyday life, but an enormous undertaking to sort out, catalogue and translate.

Doc Lee offered to lend Anthony Ryan, the language expert in his team, to help Loki. But the Jotunn written language was far more complicated than any language known on Midgard, and Anthony struggled to grasp even the basics. Loki was an impatient and indifferent teacher and was so hard on poor Anthony he was more of a hindrance than a help to him.

The young man didn't give up and doggedly tried to learn the ancient and alien language by himself.

Eventually, the day came when it was time to move. Doc Lee and most of his team, bar Anthony Ryan who was staying behind to study the tablets, had cleared out the day before. They had plenty of photos and video footage and Loki had graciously gifted them some of the weapons, armour, tools and other items to study. There was more than enough to keep the Doc and his Team busy for a long time.

"I'm almost going to miss him," Loki admitted. "It was so nice to have someone around to have an intelligent conversation with every now and again."

"Hey!" I said, feeling rather insulted, and I elbowed him in the ribs. Loki just giggled in reply.

Doc Lee was only a phone call away though, the two of them determined to keep a line of communication open to share their theories and findings.

The living quarters themselves were a marvel. Once inside it was hard to believe you were in a giant military compound underneath the ice and snow. The rooms were warm and cosy, decorated in an eclectic, almost bohemian, style that resulted from compromising between Loki's taste and mine. It right away felt like home, it felt like us.

The kitchen was all mine, with a huge cooker, a large wooden kitchen table with comfortable matching chairs and plenty of storage.

The sitting room had deep cushy chairs and sofas, a huge fireplace, and a state-of-the-art entertainment system.

The library was a work in progress, with big plush chairs and wall-to-wall bookcases reaching from the ceiling to the floor. Over the past year, Loki had collected up so many books that our little cottage had stacks of them everywhere. Now each of his and Jessie and mine's books had a home on the multitude of shelves, with plenty of room for more!