aloft, by wingbeat

[purposeful_glory]

Loki learns to become a bird.

She can be only one sort of bird, a swift, bad at takeoff from the ground but tireless and quick in the air - and who needs to take off from the ground when the transformation leaves one six feet in the air from a standing start? It would be nearly as hard to add another creature to this spell's arsenal as it was to manage the swift in the first place. She is satisfied with the bird for now; she slips out of the palace and flies, invisible, for hours, and lets Thor tease her about the assignations that must have kept her up late and left her tired in the morning.

(She sometimes has assignations too, but fewer with the first blush of hormonal need worn away. Sometimes Sigyn, sometimes whoever else. Mostly: flying.)

A few months after she has begun to spend time as a bird (and picked up the idea of teleportation, which will be desperately difficult but not, she thinks, outside her reach) there is a parade. They have these every few decades, on the bicentennial or centennial anniversaries of things. The queen, the king, the princesses, a lot of neatly marching warriors, decorative performers with competent dance steps and pleasing voices and desperately incompetent illusions, all winding around in a slow trek around the capital city to be looked at and wave.

It is somehow even duller to sit in a parade and wave and smile when she could be being a bird.

But she can't, not really, so she sits, smiles, tries to remember without checking her notes what this is the twenty-seventh centennial of exactly, waves her hand at the crowd.

And then there's a crackling burst of light and Frigg, the king, her father, has collapsed from their vehicle to the street.

The smoking staff of power aimed at them is just barely visible in the distance among the crowd. Thor has already seized her hammer; Thor will handle that -

Loki leaps after her father, to duck another blast, to see the extent of the injury. "HEALER!" she cries. "IS THERE A HEALER?"

Comments

[purposeful_glory]

"When we were little," Loki tells Thor, "I went wandering through the palace and found a door that was meant to be locked, left open, and in it the Tesseract, which I did not know not to touch. And it taught me."

[einridi]

"It taught you sorcery? But - you're my sister. A princess of Asgard. Proper warriors don't do sorcery. But..." she looks at her father. "I..."

[purposeful_glory]

Maybe she'll get it, maybe she won't. Clarifying that it only taught her the alphabet and it took many decades of mindbending work to get an actual spell - wouldn't help right now. Loki shuts her eyes.

[einridi]

Thor falls silent.

"You are a disgrace, but a fortunate one," says Odin. (Thor frowns, but doesn't say anything.) "We will see what comes of the investigation."

And Odin collects her concerned husband and sweeps off.

[purposeful_glory]

Loki relaxes, a little, when Odin is gone.

[einridi]

Thor remains lost and confused and unhappy.

[purposeful_glory]

"There's not a good reason why women don't do magic," Loki says softly. "And there never, ever has been."

[einridi]

"But... but it's... it's not right," she says. "Except... you saved Father's life, that has to have been right, I don't understand why Mother is so angry..."

[purposeful_glory]

"Because to save him, I had to know how to do it in the first place," sighs Loki.

[einridi]

"If the Tesseract taught it to you, then that's hardly your fault," says Thor. "It's... it's strange, but if you weren't using magic in battle, if you only knew how to heal, then... I suppose it's not wrong..."

[purposeful_glory]

"I have only ever cast spells in battle against the landwurm, and that only after it had already swallowed Sigyn."

...Let's see how she takes that before Loki explains how thoroughly it is her fault and how she can do other things.

[einridi]

Thor... struggles with this revelation.

"It's... it's better to use magic against the beast than to lose a friend to it," she says finally, with obvious doubt.

[purposeful_glory]

"That was my thinking."

She hesitates.

[einridi]

"...Loki...? What is it?"

[purposeful_glory]

"Well - I knew that this would be my thinking, if it came to it. I knew that if I had the choice of healing Father or letting him die - healing you or letting you die - or Sigyn, though I didn't know him then - I knew that given this choice I'd rather heal. The Tesseract didn't teach me entire spells. It taught me enough to build them. But I knew that if I needed healing, I'd want to have it - so I built it."

[einridi]

"I don't understand you," says Thor.

[purposeful_glory]

"I know. If I'd thought you might, I - I'd've -" Loki trails off.

[einridi]

"You'd have what?"

[purposeful_glory]

"Told you, I guess. Earlier. Without having been wedged into a healing in front of an entire parade audience. If I'd thought you'd understand."

[einridi]

She frowns unhappily.

[purposeful_glory]

"Maybe Sigyn can explain it better than I can. He understands."

[einridi]

"Well, naturally Sigyn understands," sighs Thor. "He's... Sigyn."

[purposeful_glory]

"He has some idea what it's like to look at your options and say excuse me, this must have been meant for someone else."

[einridi]

...Despite herself, she smiles a little at the phrasing.

[purposeful_glory]

"I told you about how they're the other way around, on Midgard. They don't have any magic to divide up, but everything else, backwards. There's no reason to have it one way and not the other. There's no reason not to have everything both ways. There is no reason why I can't be a healer and Sigyn can't be a warrior. We can, we are, it's only everyone else insisting that it's not done."