Echoes of the Frost

Ch. 5: "Everyone needs a home."

In short order, while Odin shared dinner with his son in a private dining chamber in the finest restaurant in town, all the arrangements were made. King Gullveig's agreement to their extended stay was secured, morning meetings were rescheduled, Frigga was informed, nightclothes and fresh day clothes and other necessary items for tomorrow were provided, accommodation was arranged and inspected for safety by additional Einherjar.

On the ceiling where they dined was projected a three-dimensional illusion of the diner's choice; Loki spent the first ten minutes at the table flipping through the options and getting up and looking at them from different angles. "Choose one and settle down," Odin finally said, and Loki quickly did so. The boy did have more self-control than Thor, usually. But Odin could not much fault a young boy for his energy. Sitting still did not come naturally to Thor, and had not come naturally to him either at this age and for a long time after.

"How does it work, Father?" Loki asked, staring up at the orange-flowered vines blowing in the nonexistent wind above them as soup bowls were set before them.

"Manipulation of light and other forms of energy. You'd have to ask the creator to know more precisely."

Loki nodded. "Can we?"

Odin laughed. He should have expected that. "Perhaps someday you can track down whoever designed it."

"Mother could do it herself," Loki announced, voice full of pride.

"Yes, I'm sure she could."

"Do you think she would, if I asked her? For my chambers?"

"You can ask her when we return. Eat your soup before it gets cold."

"Yes, Father."

/

/

Loki was full of wide-eyed curiosity, yet well-behaved, as they walked the lush lamp-lit grounds of the inn to their own cottage. "Cottage" of course was a quaint word for it; the protocol clerk had sought out accommodation befitting Asgard's king, or as close as she could come to it in this town, several hours' ride from the capital. The property aimed for, and thus far seemed to achieve, rural luxury. The whole experience, restaurants and inns, was an unusual one for Loki. The boys did not often visit the other realms, and though they'd been to Vanaheim most of all, if they stayed overnight it was usually with Odin's younger brother, their Uncle Ve.

The proprietor and one of the Einherjar led them through a door and into a spacious comfortable living chamber that Odin doubted they would get any use of given the hour, and a few minutes later departed, leaving Odin and Loki alone.

"Shall we go look around?"

Loki gave an enthusiastic nod, though Odin thought he had to be getting tired; it had been a long and busy day. They found first an outdoor living area with a soaking pool, a firepit, an expansive grassy lawn, and a garden that stretched as far back as they could see. Next they came to what was for an inn an enormous bedchamber with its own sitting area and large bathchamber.

Loki darted over to the bed, atop which Odin's nightclothes had been laid. "Where are my things? Didn't Mother send me something to wear, too?"

"Of course she did. We haven't seen everything yet. This cottage has two more bedchambers. You can choose whichever one you want."

"Oh," Loki said, looking down at the bed.

"You prefer this one? You can have it if you like. As long as the other chambers don't have only small beds."

"No. It's not that. It's just…well, I thought we would be staying in the same bedchamber."

Odin watched Loki, who was tracing a finger along the corded seam of the bedspread and had not yet looked up again. He was reminded of a story Frigg had told him, from the boys' first visit to Vanaheim, most of which they'd spent with their mother at Ve's home. Loki was three; Thor, he thought, had already turned four. Thor had run about with abandon and generally made himself a gregarious nuisance, but Loki had for no apparent reason been nervous and held back, sticking close to Frigga. On their first night there, which Odin had spent in official accommodation in the capital, Frigga had woken to screams of such terror she'd thought her children were either being stolen or murdered. She'd torn into their room to find a bleary-eyed Thor trying to comfort Loki and Loki inconsolable. All because of a tree visible through the window, apparently. "Aren't you a little old to be frightened of a new place?"

"I'm not afraid," he said with a quick shake of his head, looking up now. "I just thought…when I was little, and you were gone somewhere and you took Thor, I stayed with Mother. And we would talk. She would tell me stories. And I thought this was kind of like that." He looked around the room again, then shrugged. "I'll go find my room."

Odin watched him go, deep in thought. Loki was twelve. Closer to man than infant. It was a childish thing, was it not, to want to sleep in the bed with one's parents? The last time he'd shared a bed with Loki – with either of his sons – was when Loki was about five and Frigga had insisted. It hadn't gone well. Loki had slept between them, startled Odin awake with his restless sleep, and nearly gotten himself seriously hurt for it. Ever since the Ice War, Odin did not respond well to being unexpectedly and suddenly woken.

But on the other hand… "You have to talk to him, Odin. Make the effort. Don't just let him live in his world while you live in yours." Odin wasn't sure what "world" Loki lived in, but he certainly hoped it wasn't a different one from his own.

They could have gone back to Asgard. Heimdall could simply have brought them right back to the bifrost, and they could have ridden back to the palace, spent the night, then come back to Vanaheim in the morning. Odin had elected to remain here because he knew if they did go back to Asgard, they wouldn't have returned; he would be surrounded with his duties and all the people and things that would remind him of them…that would remind him of the frivolousness of this time he was spending here.

They didn't go back to Asgard, because Loki was so clearly enjoying himself. And because so was Odin, more than he'd expected. And what was a few hours' delay?

So they were here, together, and if this day was meant to be for Loki to spend time with him, time Frigga believed he needed…

There was that, however. It still bothered him, this idea that Loki needed something and therefore must receive it, when Thor didn't need it, and didn't receive it. Would this be the only time Loki's feelings were hurt, or he became angry, or got into a fight? This was part of growing up. And learning to handle such situations appropriately was part of growing strong. He could not cancel meetings with fellow kings because Loki's feelings were hurt.

The meetings were already canceled, though, and here they were.

/

/

Odin found Loki in another room further down the corridor. "Let's go outside for a little while."

"All right," Loki said with nod and a smile that seemed quite grown up. "Can we get in the bath?" he asked when they reached the patio behind the cottage.

"No, it's too late. But you'd better get in the regular bath when we go back in. You still smell of horse."

Loki laughed.

He set them off into the lawn and then the garden, expecting the entire time that any moment Loki would take off at a run to explore on his own, but the boy never left his side. It made Odin smile, even if part of him thought Loki should take off to explore on his own.

"The nightwhistler has begun his serenade. Time to go back," he said another twenty minutes later.

"The nightwhistler?"

"Don't you hear it?"

"That one?" Loki asked several seconds later after another repetition of the high-pitched warbling "twee-oh, twee-ohhhhhh twee-twee-tweeeee."

Odin nodded, and told Loki about the tiny yellow-breasted bird that lived in the upper branches of the oak trees here as they made their way back inside the cottage. "This way," he directed.

When they reached Odin's chambers, Loki stared for a moment, then turned around and grinned. "This is perfect!"

Odin chuckled. "We'll see what you think in the morning. Your mother tells me I sometimes snore."

"That's all right. I won't mind," he said, running over to the bed on the right, where his nightclothes now lay. The inn's workers had moved one of the other smaller beds into the room, which was large enough that both beds fit without feeling crowded. It was a special occasion. It would make Frigga happy. It would make Loki happy. And Odin, as he'd realized – or rather, remembered – today, really did enjoy seeing Loki happy.

Odin got changed while Loki bathed – Odin would bathe in the morning – and by the time Loki came out wrapped in a towel over his nightclothes, Odin was already settled in bed, mentally reviewing his schedule for the next day, as he did every night in bed.

"Do I still smell like horse?" Loki asked with a grin as he came up beside Odin.

He leaned forward and sniffed. "You smell like honey."

He laughed. "That's because the soap has honey in it."

"I hope it didn't leave you sticky."

"It didn't," he said, still laughing, but then he abruptly fell silent. "Do you think somebody nice will buy that pony?"

"Probably so," he answered. That pony would cost enough that anyone who bought her and wasn't nice to her would be quite the fool.

Loki draped his towel over the leather bench at the foot of the other bed and climbed in.

"Good night, Loki."

"Good night, Father."

Odin brushed two fingers over the little console on the bedside table and the lights went out.

"Father?"

"Yes?"

"Will you tell me a story?"

Odin thought back to the storybooks he and Frigg used to read the boys when they were still young children. It was a strange request from a twelve-year-old. "I don't believe I remember any of your old stories," he finally said. It wasn't quite the truth – some of them were etched into his brain for life, whether he wanted them there or not – but neither could he quite bring himself to dust off Purple Serpent from Loki's early childhood and tell it here tonight.

"Not one of those. One of your stories. Maybe…something you did with your brothers."

Ah, Odin thought with a nod in the dark. He supposed he could do that. He was several years older than Villi and Ve, though, so it took him a moment to think of a story to tell, and one that was appropriate to bedtime. "Very well. A short one. Did I ever tell about the time Villi went missing, when he was seven?"

"No," Loki said, and even in the darkness Odin could make out the widening of his eyes. "What happened to him?"

"Well, not so long ago, it was an exceptionally hot day on Asgard…"

/

/

"Good morning, Father."

"Good morning, Son," Odin said, looking up in surprise. He hadn't heard Loki wake. He supposed he'd expected a yawn or some movement.

"You have a lot of work?"

He looked down at his lap, covered in documents. He was in a large soft chair between Loki's bed and the wall. He'd woken early as was his custom, and while the cottage actually had an office, he'd decided to set up here instead. He hadn't seen either of his boys sound asleep in years. "I always have work. Better to do things now than put them off until later. And since you're awake…"

"I'm up!" Loki proclaimed, throwing back the covers and bounding out of bed.

/

/

"But even though the fog was so thick, you could still see the lights on the other side of the river?"

"Exactly," Odin answered, sipping at his juice. They were taking breakfast served in their own cottage, ready to leave it and pick out that gift for Frigga once they'd eaten. "If we hadn't…well, I'm sure we would have survived, but we would've been wandering around lost and hungry for much longer."

"But then you still had to forge the river, right?"

"Yes. And it wasn't easy. It took all of our ingenuity, all of our strength," he said, explaining how he and his brothers and friends had fashioned ropes and worked together to cross a raging river that had flooded its banks. "Then we kept our eyes fixed on our goal…and we made it there. Freezing and looking like drowned rats, but we made it."

Loki laughed, slathered another muffin with enough apricot jam for four muffins, then set it down without taking a bite. A funny look came over his face as he fixed his gaze on Odin's eye. Or more precisely, his eye and the gold covering where the other one used to be. Odin had seen that look before. It had precipitated the talk, which Frigga had thankfully rescued him from. More uncomfortable questions were coming, he suspected.

"Does it affect your vision?"

Odin's eyebrow went up. It wasn't the type of question he'd expected. "I suppose it does. Not as much as it used to. In the beginning it was quite an adjustment."

"How so?"

He thought back. It was twelve years ago now, and while it had felt incredibly strange at first, he'd long since grown accustomed to having only one eye. "It restricted my field of vision. I could no longer simply look to my right; I had to turn to my right. It was disconcerting."

Loki pressed his hand over his right eye; Odin watched his left eye look right, this his head turn around far to the right, then back and forth several times. "Weren't you afraid that someone would sneak up on your right and you wouldn't see him?"

"I was somewhat…concerned. That I would be caught off guard. But the greater challenge was that it threw off my depth perception."

"What's that?" Loki asked, hand still over his eye.

"The ability to determine how far away something is. Things look…flatter. As though they're at the same depth. A bit of a problem when a Frost Giant grows an ice dagger and a second later aims it at your head and you misjudge its distance. Thankfully in time my vision adjusted."

Loki's eyes – his uncovered eye at least – went wide as Odin spoke. "Will you show me?"

"All right," Odin said with a chuckle. He picked up his spoon and held it out; watching him, Loki did the same. He thrust it forward, across the table and straight toward Loki's nose; Loki flinched back and swiped his spoon in front of his face but too close to it, missing Odin's spoon entirely. "Try again." Loki didn't flinch this time, but he still swiped too close.

"I understand what you mean. Your spoon sort of looks like it's in the same place as your hand, and I know it's not, but I'm not sure exactly where it is. How close it is."

They tried it a few more times, Loki managing to knock Odin's spoon off course twice, but it was luck rather than purposeful. Odin soon went back to his juice and a few last bites of poached egg, while Loki, who had apparently forgotten his jam-drenched muffin, turned his own spoon around and moved it toward and away from his nose at varying speeds, all the while keeping his right eye covered.

Did it hurt? Did it bleed a lot? Did you see it happening right up until your eye was ruined? What does it look like now? He wasn't sure if Loki remembered the one accidental look he'd gotten at his eye socket when he was much younger. But these were the questions he'd expected to be asked, at some point. That, and How did it happen? They had never really asked, neither Loki nor Thor. Once, when they were very young, when they had taken note that other fathers, other men, did not wear a covering of gold metal over one eye. Even then, Loki had asked, and Thor had confidently announced that their father looked like that because he was king. "Your father's eye was hurt fighting in the Ice War," Frigga had corrected them. They'd never pressed for details.

Odin was glad. Loki's other father had taken his eye. And had Laufey not made the decision he did, to cast out his undersized son, Loki would have been raised to despise Asgard, to despise him, to despise Thor. War, perhaps, would have come again, pitting Thor and Loki squarely against one another, instead of them being the brothers and best friends they were now. Raised on Asgard, Loki's cleverness and wit would be honed and shaped, all the other necessary skills alongside it, and he would be an asset to Asgard and to Thor, instead of an enemy. A good brother. A good son.

"That's why they put blinders on horses sometimes, isn't it?"

Odin took a deep breath and focused back on his younger son, who now had both hands up, shielding his vision from both sides. "To limit their field of vision so they stay focused on what's before them, yes. But you can't mimic that. Your eyes aren't positioned like a horse's."

Loki's hands formed circles and slid further back to the sides of his face, laughing in what was really closer to a giggle. Then he sat back and sighed.

"Is something wrong?"

He shrugged. "I feel bad for that pony. Did you hear what they said, her keepers? That she doesn't have her mother or father anymore? I think she must be sad and lonely."

"I'm sure she isn't. There are plenty of other horses around."

"Not her own age. And not her family."

"Family can be what you want it to be. It doesn't have to be who you're born to."

"Maybe not," Loki said with a frown. "But the Rimaldarsons Horse Farm isn't a home. It's a place where horses wait and hope to have a home. Like…like they're staying at an inn for years and years and years, with other horses staying there, too. But most of them are grown, and I guess it's probably easier for them. Everyone needs a home. Even a pony."

Odin watched as Loki started essentially playing with his food, mashing down the edges of his muffin with his fork, then further mashing that down into the plate. Dear Frigga would surely know some kind, reassuring thing to say to Loki; Odin knew he lacked this particular skill of hers, to always know the right thing to say to the boys, and in particular to Loki, whom she called "sensitive." Odin did not know what to do in particular with "sensitive." It wasn't a word often applied to himself. He wished Loki weren't quite so "sensitive," and he hoped it was something he'd soon grow out of. On the other hand…well. Perhaps there was no other hand. But regardless, Odin cherished his inquisitive "sensitive" raven-haired little boy, and cherished this time they'd spent together. He hoped it had meant something to Loki as well, that his son felt no more doubt in him as his father, that the words those boys had spoken were dismissed and forgotten. Loki would choose a decorative box for Frigga this morning. Odin would have to choose something for her as well. She deserved it. And he was in a generous mood.

"I'll be right back," Odin said, rising. When he returned a few minutes later, Loki hadn't shown any further interest in actually eating his muffin, so Odin announced that they were leaving. Loki put his palm to his eye and got up to join him.

Loki wasn't what Odin had wanted, what he'd intended in those first few years. But that was all right. Time had passed, and even in just these twelve years it was clear what a foolhardy idea that had been. Time had changed him. Made this boy trying to learn to gauge with one eye the distance of his spoon and worrying over the fate of a horse he'd only seen for a little while yesterday truly his. Not just a suffering child to be helped, to one day return the favor.

Laufey had thrown this child out like refuse. What a foolish, foolish creature Laufey was.

/

/

Odin stood back and watched as Loki approached the mahogany filly at what seemed approximately one step per minute. Loosely tied around her neck was a dark green bow. Tankran Rimaldarson waited off to the side, barely keeping his excitement in check.

Loki turned around just as slowly as he'd moved toward the horse. "Has…has someone bought her, Father?"

"It appears so," Odin answered, amused by Loki's reaction.

"Who was it?" he asked, eyes sliding over toward Tankran and back again.

"Actually…I bought her."

Loki's eyes got wider and his breathing grew heavier. "You did?"

Odin pressed his lips together. Can he really not believe it's for him? "I did." Part of him wished to see just how long it would take before Loki finally worked up the nerve, or whatever exactly it was, to ask if it was for him, but the larger part of him just wanted to see the look on his son's face when he knew for certain it was. "Happy birthday, my son. I thought perhaps you could be the one to give this pony her home."

Loki's whole face was transformed by joy as he rushed forward and threw his arms around his father, and Odin chuckled quietly while Loki gushed his thank you's.

There were conditions, of course. If Loki wanted to bring this yearling home as his own, he would learn from the stablehands and shoulder much of the responsibility for taking care of her, and, as she grew, for training her. He could not make Asgard her home, then ignore her when he grew bored or found some other interest.

"I'll never abandon her, Father, I swear it. I won't let you down. And I won't let her down. Oh, thank you so much!" Loki said, wrapping his arms around Odin again, then running over to the filly and wrapping his arms around her neck.

Thor would be envious. Odin knew he would have to figure something out there, and fairly quickly. But not just yet.

Loki came running back. "Father, can I name her?"

"She's yours. You can name her whatever you like."

Loki bit his lip and ran back to the filly, where he appeared to be "discussing" her name with her.

Less than an hour later but far behind the initial schedule for the day, all the formalities had been taken care of and they left the Rimaldarsons Horse Farm. In Odin's pocket was a small package holding a bracelet, under Loki's left arm was a larger package holding a shimmering rectangular blue and green glass box, and in his right hand was a gold-threaded rope, by which he led the newly-named Lifhilda.

What a foolish, foolish creature Laufey was.

The end...for now.

Well, obviously things didn't stay quite like this when Odin and Loki got home. You got a bit of a hint of that early on in the chapter; Odin knew they wouldn't. But he enjoyed this day almost as much as Loki. I hope you enjoyed it too. Please consider dropping your thoughts in the review box below!

BTW, if you happen to get the urge to read my stories in age-order, Magic & Mead is next. For reverse age order, Moving to Alfheim comes before this.

Story connections and probably more than you want to know of behind-the-scenes: So, those of you who hoped Loki would get to have that pony...yep. Lifhilda makes an appearance in the not-yet-released Thrymskvida story, and she's mentioned in a couple of chapters in Beneath, including the flashback chapter titled "Knives," for those of you reading that. I found a picture of a pony that looks pretty much as I was picturing Lifhilda; I'll try to put it up on my Twitter soon ( ninepen). This story (ch. 1-4) was written for a long time and one day I just decided since I was almost done with the story I would just take the day or two necessary to write the ending, and then that's when I started releasing it. The eyepatch thing, and Loki trying to understand how it affects his father's vision, came to me a long time ago and I knew I'd use it in this story. And the ultimate idea weirdly enough was inspired by an interview I've never forgotten, from a couple decades ago with the talented actor who played Patch/Steve on Days of Our Lives, him talking about how difficult his knifefight scene was because he had to wear a patch and it badly threw off his depth perception. The bow thing and Loki's reluctance to let himself believe it was really for him - that's actually my story. Though it wasn't a pony. Purple Serpent makes an appearance in another not-yet-released and unfinished story, Any Other Child; it was Loki's favorite book when he was in the 2-3 age range, and he had the stuffed animal to match. Purple Serpent, in case you were wondering (and in case I never actually write all of Any Other Child), is a scary snake who turns out to be a friendly snake - the good guy. The tree-in-the-window incident is also from Any Other Child. Loki slept in between Mom and Dad the night after he nearly drowned - if you've read a certain couple of my other stories, Beneath in particular, you know what happened there.