Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

37 | The First Full Moon Of Spring

Loki had said he wanted to enjoy his last few weeks before the first full moon of spring, yet Odin and the rulers of the Vanir Kingdom seemed to have other ideas. He was sent several parcels, all bound tight with twine and sweet-smelling wrappings. When Y/N arrived at his chambers one morning, she found him sitting cross-legged upon the rug in his study, the contents of the parcels spread about him like maps about a sea captain's desk.

"What are you doing?" Y/N asked, greeting him with a kiss as she lowered herself to sit beside him.

He appeared troubled, but it was hard to match his mood; she could feel her curiosity bubbling away at the sight of the thick books.

Y/N has thumbed her way through much of Loki's library---slipped easily through the thin little paperbacks, waded through heavy hardbacks. She doesn't recognise these books, though. Even their dusty smell is different to those on the shelves...almost...spicy? She looked closer, easing a heavy cover open, and blinked, confused. The words are all in wriggly little symbols she doesn't understand. She half expected the words to writhe about before her eyes as though they're real little black inky worms.

Loki doesn't seem to understand them either, judging by the deep rift between his dark brows. "The Vanir have sent me papers to help me adjust to their ways of life."

Y/N's ears metaphorically pricked up. As depressed as the alliance made her, she could not quench her interest in foreign lands. "These are from the Vanir Kingdom?" she asked, taking some of the parcel's wrappings in her hands. She held them to her nose and sniffed; yes, definitely spicy. Like summer flowers and the colourful powder the royal cooks sometimes mix into flatbread.

Loki didn't seem as impressed. He had a sheet of parchment in one hand and kept looking between it and the book by his left knee, that frown getting deeper.

"Do you understand this?" Y/N asked, gesturing at the page that was clearly puzzling him. It too was covered in those tight little squiggles. They even seemed to go the wrong way---from right to left instead of left to right.

"No," Loki sighed. He waved the parchment in his hand frustratedly, like a white flag of surrender. "They gave me this to help me learn the language but it's all nonsense. You don't pronounce half the letters, and if they make a certain sound they group them together to make another letter. Their alphabet is almost twice the length of ours, and they don't use full stops."

He almost growled the last few words, and Y/N pressed her lips together to keep in a guilty little laugh. She pulled him into a cuddle and he fell against her gratefully, her hand gravitating automatically to his hair.

"You'll pick it up in time," she soothed, although it'll probably be a very long time, judging by the complexity of the page he'd been deciphering. Trying to decipher.

Then one of the other books caught her eye.

"This one's in Asgardian." She gently nudged Loki upright again, and pulled the book closer. In dull, font the title read simply read:

'COMMON VANIRIAN PRACTICES'

No wonder it hadn't caught Y/N's attention before now. The whole book looks dull, no pretty patterns pressed into the binding, no carefully painted covers, and---when she flicked through the pages---the diagrams are all merely two-dimensional sketches; hurried, almost rushed.

"Because it was written by an Asgardian," Loki stated flatly.

Confused: "But Asgardians haven't gone near the Vanir kingdom for thousands of years." Her page-flicking came to rest at a crude drawing of two men in headscarves doing a sort of bowing motion at each other. A thick paragraph rested below, explaining the greeting in detail. "How would they know all this?"