A Bang and a Whimper

20

Odin thinks often. He does this because he has quite a lot of time to himself and Thor has mostly stopped speaking to him. Loneliness fueled his anger at first, but now he has mellowed and is starting to reflect on all that has happened. He knows why Thor will not speak to him. It is fairly obvious. He finds it interesting, though, that Loki gave him one final chance when he came to tell him to stop shunning Jenna. This was unexpected.

He tries to sneak glimpses into their lives from afar. He sees them return from Midsummer's Eve in their dew-stained costumes. He does not understood these celebrations or the villagers' obsession with the turning of the seasons and is a bit repulsed to discover that his son, now king, disguises himself to attend the revels. Over the course of the weeks following Midsummer, he observes a marked difference in the way Loki deals with servants. Something happened around the bonfire that had shifted him and Odin does not understand what.

Odin has come to understand one thing- there is much he does not understand. He does not understand Thor's adoration for the Midgardian woman. He does not understand how he thinks of her as no less than one of the Aesir. He does not understand why Thor so readily accepts Loki. And as time passes and he thinks more deeply on these things, he comes to realize that Thor accepts these things because Thor has figured out how to not care about origins. Thor has learned this from Frigga. And, he thinks, possibly from him in that he did open his heart to the infant Loki.

But Loki is no longer an infant and has made some very big mistakes. Some which are not mistakes at all. Odin cannot, he realizes, understand Loki. He never will. He thinks that this is possibly the conclusion Thor has also come to. Odin has pushed against this, and still does. Thor, on the other hand, has decided that not being able to understand someone is not a reason to stop trying. It explains a lot of why Thor left to go find Loki, despite knowing that his brother had locked his father away for decades to occupy the throne. There is no need to know why, just to love him and hope he can come home. When Odin figures this out, it is stunning. He has never considered that there might not need to be a reason. That things could be left unsaid, unexplained, and just accepted as they are.

He tries to apply this to his observations. To stop always seeking a reason and an answer for everything. His answers, it seems, are always negative. Loki is always looking for trouble. Jenna is always making mistakes. Thor is always undoing his hard work. And so he decides to try to stop those thoughts and see what happens.

When he does this, he discovers that he has been missing things. Jenna has started smiling again. Loki is careful, quiet, and gentle. Thor is a doting father and loyal friend. And a good king, even though he has only been one for a little over a year. And Odin wonders what else he has missed.

Stopping his own thoughts has another effect as well- he starts to see traces of magic all over the palace. Little things, most often. A butterfly on Thor's shoulder as he sits down to hold court. Tendrils of willow hanging from the corner of a room. Flowers on the edges of the wide halls. A vine curled around a doorpost. Grass in the library's aisle of off-realm mythology and lore. These things fade shortly after he notices them. But they are everywhere. When he first sensed them, he thought that they were surely the signs of Loki's trickery, and possibly treachery. But now that he sees them clearly, everything is of the natural world. He wonders why.

He begins to reflect back on the things he has judged most harshly. Jane. Loki. Jenna. Their revelry at Midsummer's Eve. Taking things only as they are, stripping his own emotions from them, he wonders just how wrong he has been. He hates this admission, that he has not been the infallible all-Father, but that in his old age, he has become even more rigid than he was when the boys were young. So he continues to watch to see which will be proven right- his unwavering stubbornness or these new observations that he may have been too harsh.