Red In The Snow : 2

2.
Death In The Woods




He will bring you down without mercy.

 
Death, from the one person you cannot kill.

The Norns had spoken. And the Norns never lied.

Loki looked up at the sky with a small smile. He liked the effect of the snow against the dark, towering silhouettes of the night-time forest. As far as a spontaneous trick went, it was pretty good.

He hadn’t spent much time crafting the frost-fall. Ice came naturally to him.

It was, after all, in his blood.

He closed his eyes and walked on, stretching a hand ahead of him to feel ahead. Recently he had begun to practise this useful trick of seeing with his senses, not his eyes. It was a trick Blind Hod had taught him. Now he was a greater master of it than Hod was.

He could run. He could rush through the woods like a whisper. But why prolong the hunt? They both knew how this would end. With the heart now beating within him in Thor’s hands and his head on a tray. How lucky that he would be attending this year’s grand feast, after all. Albeit not in the manner he’d have liked.

And how far could he go? And where? He, whose strength lay in magic and manipulation; not in battle-rage or endurance. Once, when he'd collapsed in battle, his brother (half-brother) had picked him up and continued fighting. Loki had spent the rest of the fight slung over Thor's shoulder, glad for the warm, well-muscled shoulders he clung to.

There was nothing to cling to now.

His outstretched hands, an extension of his keen senses, called to the wild. A fawn who had strayed from its mother gamboled up and brushed against his knees. A grey-winged bird - Loki had a fondness for birds - flitted through the boughs to hover above his shoulder.

Then something else came.

Heavy footsteps in the snow, the pace and gait all too familiar.

The huntsman had arrived.

Death, golden-haired and glorious, will come for you in the night.

A small knife-like smile broke the quiet of his face...

~