st_ratagem | [Child adventures!] Ancient times

[Child adventures!] Ancient times

They weren’t actually supposed to be outside of the palace grounds. Father and Mother both agreed, nine was too young, and Thor had only just started arms training. But Thor had wanted to ‘test his courage’ and apparently that didn’t just mean ‘leave the palace’, it had meant ‘leave the palace, take a skiff, go to island ruin with a door in it, far enough away that you could barely see the spires’.

It was exciting, yes! Still Loki was in trouble much more often than Thor, and he was deeply complicit in the escape thanks to a lot of illusions, was still nervous. Mostly about being blamed if something went wrong. “Did one of the guards tell you about this place?”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"To defeat the sons of Odin," Thor says easily as they continue their journey home. Thor is still leaning on his brother, though his bloody wounds had begun to scab over. "He had heard of the both of us."

Loki nodded slowly. “That works. The other creatures living in Yggdrasil stopped listening to it, told it ‘why should we care what you say? you can’t even defeat two small children’. It made the squirrel mad, so it had to prove it could, too, beat us. But it couldn’t.” It was a good story, the kind of epic thing people would want to believe, especially since it was about Thor.

Father wouldn’t be fooled, for sure. But if the story was good enough he might let it go?

"I like it," Thor says, grinning. "It might be better if we could sneak in, though. I'm sure I'll be fine in a few hours, right?"

Thor looks down at himself to assess the damage.

“Maybe!” He was already a little better, wasn’t he? Not bleeding so much. “And we should sneak in. But if we don’t own up, Heimdall will tell on us. Which is fine, it’s later instead of now, but we should both know the story for later.” Because Heimdall didn’t understand fun.

Thor nods. "Okay, I think I got it." A beat. "You're sure Heimdall would tell on us? Maybe he won't. He has all the universe to look after."

Loki made a face. “Heimdall always tells. He hates fun.” Or at least he hated Loki’s definition of fun.

"But we've never asked him not to tell!"

“Oh, he’d tell right away if you did that!” That’s how people worked, especially kill-joys. “As soon as he knows you want him to keep his mouth shut, he’ll decide we’re keeping secrets. Which we are, and he’ll tell Father. Because duty or honor or he thinks I’m going to kill you.”

"If he sees all, he knows that isn't true," Thor protests.

“Seeing isn’t knowing. It’s just seeing.” Loki shrugged as best he could without digging into any wounds or jostling Thor too much. That’s what illusions were about, a lot of the time. Give someone something to see or not see, so they’d know things that weren’t true. Or wouldn’t know things that were.

There had to be ways around Heimdall. Someday he’d find them. “People see things and learn what they want from them.”

"If Heimdall can see everything, he can see us having this conversation right now," Thor points out, leaning a little more on his brother. "He could be listening to our conversation!"

"He knows I'm on to him. He knows I know what he does." So it didn't matter if he was listening. Loki hadn't said anything that needed to be secret. Even the squirrel story wasn't about being plausible, it was about being too epic to gainsay.

"Okay, then we won't ask Heimdall to play along," Thor decides, though his perception of Heimdall is obviously higher than his brother's. "Are we sneaking in, or are we not?"

"We're sneaking. Nothing ventured, nothing gained." In this case, they wouldn't know if they could get away with things if they didn't try. "You're going to need to be quiet when we do, brother. I'll make us invisible."

"I can be quiet," Thor argues loudly. "So don't act like I can't be!"

“So you yell at me about how you can be quiet?” Loki had to grin, it was Thor all over, “Well played, brother.”

"Well, maybe you shouldn't give me reason to!"

“Still yelling,” Loki pointed out ‘helpfully’.

Thor huffs, then snaps his mouth shut. If Loki wanted him to be quiet, he'd be quiet, then!

Loki grinned at his brother and squeezed his hand, then sketched what, to him, were very clearly a series of tune shapes. As he got better, more practiced, he wouldn’t need his hands or the runes, mother said, but for now they helped.

In this case, they helped the brothers disappear from sight.

Thor clasps Loki's hand tightly; they disappeared as much from each other's sight as they did everyone else's. If they lose touch, they'll likely have to grope around blindly for one another again, and that would be noisy.

And right now, Thor's trying not to be.

"Should we just slip through the front with everyone else?" he asks, quietly, breathily. There are many, many people out and about the palace grounds. The place is usually bustling with activity during daylight hours. "It should cover up any noise we make. But if we bump into anyone..."

Well, even Loki's invisibility couldn't do much for that.

Loki actually shook his head before remembering invisibility. Fortunately, because invisibility, no one saw it. Then he whispered, "No. I know another way in. It's this way." He started to move and tugged Thor's hand so he knew which way this way was.

Technically it was one of several servants' entrances, handy to the kitchens. When food was being delivered in the mornings or at night when leftovers were being handed out, it was busy. The rest of the time, the door was open but almost no one used it. Very useful for someone who wanted to come and go, and maybe get an apple at the same time.

"How did you know about this place?" Thor whispers, mentally recording their journey for future reference."And why didn't you tell me?"

"I like knowing how things work." Know the rules to break them well, Mother said. "So I pay attention. It's not like this is a secret at all, you know." It wasn't a secret, it was just a thing nobody paid attention to except the people who used it every day. And Loki. And probably Mother.

"It's a secret if no one tells you about it!" Thor's voice doesn't go above a loud whisper, but afterwards, he makes a deliberate effort to bring his voice down to a normal whisper. "I don't want us to keep secrets from one another, okay?"

(no subject)

st_ratagem - 2018-11-02 02:48 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

st_ormbreaker - 2018-11-02 04:45 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only