Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

24 | The End Of The Road

Y/N and Loki quickly fall into a rhythm and make good progress.

They both lag, at first.

Y/N soon discovers that, after years of mopping and scrubbing, her arms are irritatingly stronger than her legs. Her biceps taut with a wiry strength, she can hoick her backpack onto her shoulders easily—but her calves are more accustomed to edging around furniture than hiking. Her first week in the woods is spent alternating between riding Fox until her backside becomes sore, and walking next to her until her legs become sore.

Never having to walk further than the palace gates, Loki's lazy, pampered body also struggled at first—although he did so silently and without complaint. However, his giant's legs rose to the challenge eagerly, and it didn't take long for them to grow energetic and strong.

Each time the sun rises, he spends more time walking beside Fox than riding her, and even slips any extra supplies they gain into his already bursting pack until the straps are stretched and fraying.

Every few days they run into a small town, usually built around mining, felling trees, or fishing.

In the first village, Y/N kept her eyes low to her boots, expecting to see a sketch of her face pinned on a lamp post with the rune for

'WANTED'

inked in oversized, important characters.

But, as she'd dropped a few coppers into the butcher's bloody palm he'd given her a tip of his hat, and the greengrocer passed her an amiable smile along with her produce, and the apothecary asked after day from below his bristly beard---and she realised she'd been vastly overestimating her own significance. 

No one saw Y/N and Loki leave the Vanir Palace. 

And no one spotted them scurry into the night with Fox—besides Yllva, who Y/N is fairly sure will trample any guard who dares get between her and her promised promotion.

The only person who knows Y/N and Loki are an item is Frigga, and unless Her Majesty exposes her son's private and deeply personal paintings to the royal guard—which Loki assured Y/N his dear mother would not—a sketch of his accomplice cannot be produced. 

With this reassuring knowledge held comfortingly to her chest—and with no sign of a wanted poster plastered with her face or otherwise—Y/N flipped her hood down off her head and allowed herself to relax and enjoy all the northern territories have to offer.

She has not had the privilege to travel much in her life; only from her family's cottage in the countryside to The Palace—and of course, recently to The Vanir kingdom—but she's already developed quite a taste for it.

Despite their remote locations far up in the blunted hills of Northern Asgard, she finds each village to be well-maintained and amply supplied. They appear to produce the majority of what they need right here in the woodlands, and import by cart what they can't from the closest villages. Isolated and rural, each collection of rustic, sturdy buildings boasts their own unique charm and a sense of simple country life. 

The people prove to be friendly and welcoming and not unused to strangers. They quickly recognise Y/N as not one of their own, and, in an amicable, good-natured way, ask her where she comes from and where she plans to go. 

At first, Loki remains deprived of their acquaintance and hospitality; his skin becoming more and more like the sunny sky as the days slide by.

Dispirited, he mills about the outskirts, leaning leisurely against a tree while Y/N sidles into Ragnervick, Norfolk, and Trügan for supplies.

She fills her pack at the local market—and drops Fox in at the blacksmith for a new shoe if need be—then pops into a tavern for a fresh, hot meal. Requesting that the barkeep serves the food on folded newspaper, she sneaks the sweating parcels out to where Loki is hiding and, in the fresh woodland air, they eat cheesy baked potatoes, pies, and fried fish perched on a fallen tree trunk or cross-legged on the soft ground.