Chapter Text
Flame of the Forest
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And eat men like air.~ Slyvia Plath
1
Thor knew, but he didn’t share. His mother had told him, when as a child he used to be deeply saddened by Loki’s secretive distance.
Thor knew, but the knowledge was his and his alone; he would share it with no other.
*
Even as children Thor recalled Loki and him sharing a stranger relationship than most. They were the closest of siblings; yet a strange and unbreachable distance apart. Thor's love and devotion was absolute, yet he couldn't shake the notion of something self-indulgent about it.
He had watched his brother grow from tiny babe to slender sapling. He’d taken Loki’s tiny hands and shown him orchards of golden apples and where to find the nesting swallows in the eaves of windy turrets, and they’d played together; all the games that Thor could conceive within his youthful imagination. But even from young did Loki have a strange affliction of moods, a jolting fear of violent fires and loud thunder, and periods where he could not bear the company of any but himself.
Such periods of withdrawal always made Thor feel empty, and as Loki grew, his disappearances only increased. Thor lived through the days of Loki’s vanishings like nightmares, only waking up when his brother was returned to him.
Loki never explained himself, and Thor never succeeded in unearthing them from him. He returned the same way always; stiff limbed and pale as sheet, with damp lashes and the stamp of something brackish and scorched in his eyes.
But he returns, and in time Thor learned to see it as merely the way Loki is.
It was his mother who taught him the notion of patience. One morning in lieu of the lessons that Thor detested she'd descended to the study to sneak him away; had stowed poppyseed cakes and sweetbreads drenched in honey for a picnic that she bade Thor never to reveal on torture of pain or death. Thor swore upon his wooded broadsword, on Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr his beloved goats, and finally on Loki himself, which drew a smile from his mother that lit his heart.
That afternoon, in a sun-kissed corner of his father's private gardens did Thor learn from his Queen mother the shadowy nature of secrets: how secrets had a life of its own, once it was born. How one could be preserved, with it's own sanctity and rules - and with diligence, transformed for the better. Thus did Frigga ensure that the memory of sticky fingers and laughter, the fond stories she whispered to Thor in a gentle voice, would always reside somewhere within him, to keep him sane and grounded when secrets darkened with age, as they inevitably would.
Thor shared his secrets too, now that he knew what name to give these underground rivers in the yet forming caverns of his mind. And so he told his mother of his disappointment and anger at Loki’s disappearances.
He was to be surprised by Frigga’s reply.
‘It is I and your father who sprits him away from you,’ his mother revealed, and Thor’s mouth fell open at the revelation. ‘Your brother suffers from a grave illness, a seizure of the mind and body that requires exceptional caring. Because his body and soul is weaved by magiks not truly Aesir, he cannot be treated here.’
In Thor’s young mind, the dominant concern was not of Loki’s origin but his absence. ‘Why can’t we take care of him here, in the castle? Why can’t I go with Loki?’
And Frigga explained to him the origins of Loki. She told him of Fárbauti, who called down thunder and flame with his hands, and Laufey, most slender and beautiful of seiðr wielders. She told him of grim wars and their often bloody repatriations, the unknowing treasure even gods sometimes leave behind in ignorance. And Thor grew sad when his mother told him of Loki’s fits, how his eyes would roll back and his body would spasm whenever fire struck down the trees or thunder the skies, how he would scream under the restraints they had no choice but to put upon him. How his watchers had to be careful to put out any flames that the child inadvertently sparked in his fits.
‘His father’s gifts are powerful, but they do him ill, and it will take much love and patience from us to balm it into healing.’
‘I would protect him,’ Thor said earnestly. ‘I would keep all such things away when I am King, and all will be well.’ And Frigga smiled and kissed his brow. Then she told him further of how Loki could not bear to look so strikingly similar in appearance to the fearsome Fárbauti, and so they had doused the scarlet fires of his hair, to aid his peace.
‘I shall keep all away. Loki belongs to us now, and not to Fárbauti or Laufey,’ Thor considered these new thoughts, and found that it pleased him.
‘He does, but know always that secrets are tools sharpened on both sides. See that whilst they give you comfort and strength, they do not cut your brother; you know how easily he wounds.’
And Thor promised this, for he has learnt a great lesson and could not wait to practice it.
*
Thor horded his new knowledge to himself, turned ideas around in his mind till they were smooth as pebbles, and when Loki was finally returned to him, gathered parchment to himself and bade Loki sit on the shallow knoll a short distance away, so he might try sketching him with a head of red hair.
He wasn’t very good. Loki had tried to see, but Thor had used his new word, ‘secret’, and watched his brother’s face turn to stone. And so he rejoiced at how much easier it had suddenly become to enjoy his brother’s company, now that he could pass Loki such looks of knowing in his eyes and his brother would turn tractable, like a kitten held by the scruff of the neck.
As it turned out, this ‘secrets’ was a very good thing indeed, for it was something only they had together, Thor quickly having forgotten his mother’s role. Suddenly he understood why his brother held on to so many, whilst he had only one, precious as it was.
But Loki has long known the nature of secrets because his very existence is one. Thor will catch up; he was bigger, faster, older.
For a good number of months after the incident, Thor would squint at his brother whenever Loki looked away, trying to picture him as other, trying to peer into his soul and divine such things that Loki might hide from him.
He thought it would change everything, but in truth it changed nothing, and Thor looked around for more of these new kenings, these ‘secrets’ that hides in plain sight: worlds existing within worlds, but none was so interesting to him as his own.
It seemed that no new knowledge could be gained that was more fascinating to Thor as the secret of Loki’s hidden fire.
*