Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

15 | Asgardian Soil

Y/N, Loki and Aasta know when they're getting close to The Palace because things start to look familiar—for Y/N and Aasta anyway.

Y/N points things out to Loki over the bow of the boat; the docks close to her village, the fields she'd run through as a child, the town her mother would take her to for the Spring Festival each May.

Loki watches with interest, asking questions and listening intently as Y/N spins him stories of her youth in the countryside. Eventually, he says, sadly:

"All my life I've lived in Asgard and yet I barely know it. The one time I left The City Centre, I was too upset to enjoy the scenery."

On the morning that Aasta knocks on their bedroom door and announces they have arrived, Loki is wrapped around Y/N's back, his breath a deep, cool breeze dancing about the shell of her ear.

They're cuddled tight together, the Asgardian summer air brisk and sharp compared to what Y/N has become accustomed to.

It is still pitch dark, but when Y/N's eyes have adjusted she can just about make out Loki's pale arm stretched languidly over her middle.

Heavier than Y/N, he seems to have moulded into the old under-stuffed mattress, Y/N's body falling backwards into the indent his weight makes.

"Loki," she hisses, sleep clearing from her head the instant Aasta's knuckles make contact with the wood.

He opens half an eyelid and groans.

She can feel it against her spine, the dead weight of his torso pinning her to the bedsheets.

"Did you hear that?" She asks.

Loki makes an uninterested sound.

"We're here, Loki. It's over."

"No," he corrects, his voice gravely with sleep, and something else. He curls tighter about her, holding her as though she's a rag doll. "It's only just beginning."

-- ❈ --

Y/N manages to persuade Loki to wake, and when they're both dressed, they convene with Aasta in the dark little kitchenette.

As not to draw attention to themselves, she has lit only one wax stick in the centre of the dining table. It struggles against the sooty Asgardian night, not even a slither of moon filtering through the cotton of the curtains, which are still drawn.

She's kept the stove unlit—as not to send up smoke like a beacon—so she passes them a simple uncooked breakfast of buttered bread and cheese.

"You eat up," she says, "I'll pack your things. Quick now. You'll need the darkness." In the low light, she glances at the side of Loki's face.

The hole in Frigga's spell is so wide, the blue taking its time but, little by little, inching up his neck, flowering below his earlobe like a bruise.

Y/N and Loki eat in sombre silence, the little room heavy with significance. When they are finished, they find Aasta on the deck, their bags packed and ready.

Fearing The Allfather will have placed guards along the more popular waterways to search boats for his missing son, Aasta has moored their vessel several miles from any known dock, on an unassuming bank shrouded by a thicket of oak trees.

The air is cold, the fishy, silty smell of the river creeping into Y/N's nose and the seams of her clothes.

She pulls her oilskin tighter about herself.