Red In The Snow : 4

4.
A Memory Of Red




Do you hear that? It’s the sound of battles fought and lives lost. It pained me to know that I am the cause of such despair.

A flashing memory of two boys running through these same woods. Childish quarrels. Echoes of laughter.

Loki closed his eyes.

The Mjolnir slammed into the curve of his cheekbone, into his head. There was a sound like cracking glass. Then blinding light, reflected hundredfold in each icy shard. The shattering screamed through the silence and shook the forest to its very roots.

When Thor regained his senses, he was on his knees, arms limp at his side. And his half-brother was gone.

The sun came in full force to break the shadows of Loki’s magic wintry night. It shone on all that was left of the god of mischief: a smattering of gleaming bluish slivers in the snow. And a memory of deep red eyes, red as blood against the snow.

It was some time before Thor was able to pick himself up and lift the weapon that had annihilated his sibling. He stumbled to the spot where Loki had knelt, still as an ice sculpture, just minutes before.

“No words will ever express this moment, brother,” he whispered. “So I won’t try.”

He gathered the fine shards in his large hunter’s hands; then watched as they melted away, leaving nothing but a cold wetness in his palms. He trembled. Roaring, weeping, he pounded the ground before him.

That was when he felt the hard glass surface.

* * *

The great Mirror showed Heimdall the mighty warrior kneeling in the snow, still as a sentinel himself. His golden hair and crimson cloak were vivid against the white.

The Mirror-keeper bowed his head. He knew the truth. Let it lie with the hunter, and the hunted. Let the passing of time bring what time may.

He looked again into the swirling depths of the mirror to see an unchanging future.

* * *

Three seasons had passed. There were times when the hunter felt tiny insects burrowing into the folds of his clothes, trying to make a home on the vines that had begun to grow over him. He would not welcome them. Neither would he budge.

He was a rock; relentless, soundless. A guardian awaiting the world’s end, or the end of his life, whichever came first. Let the grass grow and the beasts forage. They did not disturb him, nor he them.

HIs abandoned weapon lay by his side. Roots and leafy tendrils had locked it into place as they had locked him. Together they would ensure no one violated that which he guarded.

Before him, encased in glass and magic, was the still figure of a broken god. The very enchantment that had saved him now also imprisoned him. Impenetrable magic. Truly, Loki’s last work had been his finest.

Thor closed his eyes and dreamt of shadow-realms where hope lurked still.

~

Red In The Snow : 3

3.
Why Do You Not Run?

 

“You have eyes, huntsman, but you cannot see. He is the one. I see an end to darkness.”

So said the great Odin Allfather. So said Balder of the prophetic fever-dreams. Thor had doubted the Allfather before, but never his gentle brother Balder. The promise was this: with the death of the trickster Loki, and the events that his hand would set in motion, the Nine Realms would be safe from the Great War.

From darkness would come an end to darkness. In a way, it all made sense. But why must his hand be the one to wield that power?

He trudged on through the thickening snow. It didn’t take long for his trained eyes to see the lean figure standing between two birch trees. Even now his heart ached at the familiar silhouette.

“Can you not see me, brother?” he called heavily.

Slowly, Loki turned around. The constant cold had brought out the Jotun in his eyes, which gleamed a bright carmine.

Thor walked up to him. “Why do you not run?”

“I cannot run from you.” Loki’s voice was a whisper. “I would much rather run to you.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Loki pulled his otter pelt closer around his slender shoulders. “Why? Because I am capable only of lies?”

“Because I have been tasked to kill you. And with the eyes of Heimdall upon me, who answers to our father and all the ruling Aesir, I cannot walk away.” Thor hefted the hammer.

“Then, my dear brother, we must part ways.” Loki moved away. Thor paused, allowing him the few seconds it might take to flee- to fly - to shapeshift and slip away like the wind, like he’d done so many times before.

Instead his step-sibling knelt in the snow and shed his pelt. The pale hands reached up to unfasten the hooks of the snug leather collar.

“Just making it easier to remove my head as proof,” he said.

“No.”

“If you must do this anyway, brother, why delay what is your duty?”

“Loki…I…”

“Thor.”

“I…I can’t.” Thor’s massive shoulders shook as tears ran down his face.

The brilliant red eyes glittered like pools of blood. “Do it.”

“No, Loki.”

“I love you.”

I love you. Such sweet words in times of joy. Such cutting words, ridged and flaying, in a time like this.

Sobbing, Thor lifted the Mjolnir to his face and let his tears run down the steel surface. Never had it felt so heavy in his hand. He looked up to the skies - to all who might be witness - and cried out.

“See what you would have me do! What I will do to save you, cowards who dare to call themselves gods and rulers; who send a brother to kill a brother. I bid you bear witness!”

A thin shaft of light broke the dark skies as Loki’s frost charm crumbled. It shone on the blue that crept up over the trickster god’s neck and cheekbones, revealing his frost giant nature. The abandoned Jotunheim runt, the lost prince who walked between two worlds and belonged in neither, now to die as he was born.

Thor swung the mighty hammer.

~

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...

~

Red In The Snow : 1

1 .
Snow In Asgard

Hair as black as night. Skin as white as snow.

In his well-lit chamber, the hunter kneels.

The mighty Mjolnir feels heavy in his hand tonight. It was forged to be indestructible - one of the most-feared weapons of the Aesir. And soon it will crush his half-sibling into blood and shards of bone. This is his duty.

He has been ordered to slay the beautiful one who has wreaked much havoc in the heavens. To annihilate all but his head and heart, which are to be brought back on a platter. What cruel punishment that his death must come at the hands of the one person he truly loves.

Even now he imagines all too strongly the final scene. Those mischievous eyes widening as the head of the ruthless Mjolnir becomes the last thing they see. The same eyes, now lifeless and glassy. The twitching lips, so quick to slice with words, never to smile again. And the red, the neverending red, seeping into the grass, the hide of his boots.

At the end, all he will be left with is a warm heart and a river of black hair - black as night - spilling forth from a severed head.

Outside, it is snowing softly.

It never snows in Asgard.

So this is the god of mischief’s last act, Thor thinks. To rain frosty tears upon a land that has never known anything but the sun’s gentle glow.

The hammer-wielding huntsman, the golden son, heir to the throne, rises and goes to slay his beloved.

~ ~ ~

A Thor / Snow White crossover

Yes, I am writing fan fiction. BECAUSE I CAN. Deal with it.

.

30 Days Of Writing: Day 5

From a random challenge.

Word:

'Fall'

Let my story end with yours.

Let our bones melt into the rocks,

reduced to mortal earth and

skin and dust.

I will catch each painful drop

of your punishment;

I will bear the weight

of the world with you.

I will hold you until we

shatter beneath the weight

of fallen gods.

Close your eyes now, and hear

the hungry frost-hounds call.

They bay for the blood of the Aesir.

Close your eyes against

the faded cries of the

nerves that bind you;

What has been done cannot

be undone, but it can

be paid for

in blood.

Your children are calling.

The ocean boils with the

serpent's war-cry;

the black air howls with the

baying of your wolf-son.

The beautiful wrath of hell

is our clarion call.

No soldiers from the nine realms

will override your vengeance.

Lead your army of fire and ice

Ride tall as you exact your price
And I will ride beside you.

I will stand with you at the end of days

I will rise with you when your captors fall

I will die with you, and the great Valhall.

~

30 Days Of Writing: Day 4

(From a random challenge of random words, from which we are to create a story, a snippet, a poem, a ramble, a vignette...anything, really.)

'Snow'

~

We found him – her – in the snow. A mare with child, struggling to birth it, heavy with pain and her unborn burden.

My father raises colts into show horses for a living, and he’d begun grooming me to do the same. It was because of this that I managed, struggling, to guide the mare back to our stables. Her high whinnying pierced the black icy air as I reined her in.

She lay taut and struggling on the fresh hay I’d hastily spread over the stable floor. Here the air was warmer, moist with the remnants of past births (and a few deaths). I sang to her childish songs my late ma had cradled me with when I was a babe. Slowly she lost her strange fear; slowly she warmed toward me as I stroke her back, her belly, coaxing out the foal within her.

Even now through the fog of age, her eyes pierce me. I remember her gaze too clearly. The sharp, sentient, desperate eyes. She seemed to be helpless in her pregnancy. Which is unusual; all animals are born knowing how to spill forth life from their wombs. Humans wander into it fumbling and second-guessing, but not beasts.

I had barely a year of experience in my unskilled hands. So I did my best: I cradled her, sang beneath my breath, held her firmly and reached between her kicking legs as the final throes arrived and her neighing reached a crescendo.

I was not prepared for what happened next.

* *

For what seemed like an hour I sat there limply as everything I knew – about horses, about birth, about life – whirled dervish-like in the cooling air of the stable.

The mother’s eyes fluttered close; the slender body curled up limp and exhausted on the bloodied hay. Its offspring looked up at me with limpid eyes. A single snowflake landed on its perfectly formed nose.

It seemed there was nothing left for me to do.

I looked down at my suddenly-useless hands. This was nothing I’d ever been trained for.

Finally, I got up and wrapped the foal in a blanket. Whatever this creature was, it was a baby and needed shelter. That was when I heard it.

“Leave him with me.” A clearly human voice, heavy with post-natal fatigue and fading into slumber.

I knew better than to do otherwise.

They’d be gone by morning. When daylight came, they would be swept away with the wind, like a snowflake not meant to be caught by mere human hands. I had had a peek into something I was not part of; that I and my kind would never be a part of.

So I left the colt with its changeling parent. I stumbled blindly back to the familiar warmth of home, leaving this dream-like vision behind: a beautifully formed man, shivering just slightly despite his nakedness, embracing his newborn child – a beautiful, dove-grey, eight-legged foal.

~

30 Days of Writing: Day 3

(From a random challenge of random words, from which we are to create a story, a snippet, a poem, a ramble, a vignette...anything, really.)

'Restless'

“I’m telling you, I DON’T sleep. Least, not till it’s nearly time to wake. I drag myself from bed with every fibre of my being screaming for me to lie back down. I pour searing coffee down my gullet in some faint hope that it will do something. You’d think after three nights of the damn same I would drop dead from sheer exhaustion. But no! Come nightfall, I have the energy of a million suns. Who cares that the darkness beneath my eyes tell a different story? I am mad. I am magnificent. I draw insanely detailed doodles and dance and debate furiously over little things. Don’t try to tame me. I own the night. And the day will not defeat me.”

~

30 Days Of Writing: Day 2

From a random challenge.


'Accusation'

He looks at his captors with accusing eyes. A fallen messiah, an explorer of worlds, he speaks of the emptiness before us and how we can save ourselves. He sings songs in alien tongues. He touches your skin with graceful hands that have held unfathomable things. But he is a stranger in a strange land. He is not to be trusted. They have caged him without knowing that no cage can hold him. Already the planet is disintegrating. With or without him, we are hurtling toward our doom. He has come to warn us. But we will not listen. We never do. And so his accusations fall like wilted petals at our ignorant feet of clay.

~