for: agile

[treachery]

[ Where the seeress Gullveig, thrice-burned by Odin's flame and thrice-reborn by Vanir seiðr, first infiltrated the Æsir borders and precipitated the Æsir-Vanir War, a great golden statue now resides. Protected by Æsir and Vanir spellwork alike, it stands eternal vigil before the ancient defensive walls, proud and untouched by time.

As a child, Loki had been drawn to the statue. Not only did his teachers and his peers alike treat the memory of Gullveig with both revulsion and respect (a duality to which Loki had been acclimating, even then), the site itself is girdled with spells cast by the finest magicians of the realms. He had spent hours testing the potency of his seiðr against the magics protecting Gullveig's statue from harm.

The night that Thor had received Mjölnir, Loki succeeded in blasting the statue to pieces. He'd been punished severely for it; even so, Loki had taken a disproportionate amount of pride in the destruction.

Time has passed, the statue has been reconstructed, but Loki continues to haunt the clearing about the statue. This morn, he stews in a dark mood. Sif's shorn hair has been scattered to the winds over Ægir's seas, only a thin plait of it left amongst his spell-things, and yet his mind will not quiet. The sun has already risen into the sky; by now, the silver shears left at Sif's bedside must have been identified as Loki's. Thor will be looking for him, perhaps flanked by the Warriors Three and the Lady herself. Or perhaps she will choose to come alone to defend her lost honor, per the mandate of her defiant self-reliance.

And she will find him here, as all of Asgard knows of Loki's fondness for this spot.

It would require only a thought to disappear from Heimdall's sight into the magewoods of Álfheim or the caves of Svartálfaheim for a time, and yet Loki remains as he is. He cannot stand victorious over Thor nor Sif if it devolves to blows, but the Silvertongue has ever yet been more than the sum of his flesh and blood and bones.

The sun climbs higher in the sky. Loki stands at Gullveig's feet, his shadow indiscernible from hers. ]

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[treachery]

[ That goes without saying — Loki is not Thor, to believe that all of Asgard is simply a smorgasbord to feast upon. No, when Loki takes, when Loki steals: he does not have to believe himself deserving, because he has never needed justification to soothe his own mind. The mortals once called him the God of Chaos, after all. ]

If I had taken Fandral's hair instead, would you not have laughed? If it had been Volstagg, or Hogun, or even your beloved Thor himself?

[ Now Loki's placid manner slips, and there is the faintest promise of anger in his furrowed brow. Still, his voice is calm, and his hands very still. Let her think about her own many and varied failings, and let her repent for them — and only then will Loki regret hurting her so. ]

No. You would have laughed at the jest, named me again a mischief-maker and a trickster, and you would have forgotten it by the next morn.

[agile]

[ he has a point, and sif wishes to strike out against him for pushing her into a position where her hypocrisy will be revealed. ]

It is different. [ she manages it through gritted teeth. the one thing she always assumed loki would understand, the only thing they would have in common, was how hard it was to integrate themselves into a society where they felt they didn't belong. taking on the normal role of a female asgardian was not what sif was made for. ]

The loss of their hair would never incite the fury of their father. [ sif's furious loki quite possibly broke the thread binding her father's tolerance of her boyish adventures and her allowing to participate in such things. her hair held so much of herself, of what she was meant to be in asgard, that losing it only seemed to demonstrate how far she had fallen from the asgard norms. it's the only thing to be proud of, the one thing she's allowed to be proud of, that isn't her ability in quite possibly winning against thor, the big-headed, in a fight. ]

It is different for me, Loki.

[treachery]

[ That's precisely why he'd targeted her. That she would scorn him even though they faced the same adversity from those that supposedly loved them best; that the world would seek to change them both, and she could not see that he suffered the more for it. But she had everything that he did not, in Loki's mind — Thor's constant companionship, glory, honor, a life far and away from the nights spent burrowing into the earth with seid and mischief. That, in and of itself, is unforgivable.

So this, this is what Loki is becoming — cruel not for cruelty's sake alone, but no less harmful for it. ]

Why? [ Loki asks, softly, pushing off the statue. He begins to circle her, slowly, one measured step after another. ] Why would your father value the hair of a warrior, of all things? Why is it so very different for you?

[ He's silent for another moment, completing his lazy half-circle about her. ]

Answer my questions to my satisfaction, and perhaps then I will help restore what I have taken.