The Lokistone

Lokistone 8

For the LAST section, I listened to the Thor Soundtrack: Science and Magic. Religiously.

VVVVV

CHAPTER EIGHT

"It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped."

-Anthony Robbins

Jane closed her eyes and took three very deep breaths of morning air as she walked, ramming her hands in her pockets and lifting her face to the eastern wind. She opened her eyes and blinked, glancing up at the wide, ascending valley in front of her, and the gray mountains to either side. Again, low clouds covered the sky, and the breeze twisted and slithered uneasily through her hair and clothes.

The grass swished around her boots as she tramped. Sometimes she clenched her jaw, other times she restlessly ran her hand through her hair. She shook herself, then did it again. It didn't help. Her legs still felt like jelly, and her stomach was one hard knot.

She hadn't slept for more than a couple hours last night. The whole time, she had turned onto one side, then the other, tangling up her sheets, then throwing them off, then scrambling to pull them back on, only to shove her pillow onto the floor. All at once, she would feel fevered, then ice-cold and sweaty, then fevered again. But she knew she wasn't sick.

Hour after hour, her thoughts had spun around and around one action, and still wouldn't relent, no matter how fast she walked. Those same fresh memories—anxiously rehearsed in her mind five-thousand times across her bedroom ceiling—washed up again in front of her vision, almost obscuring the real grass and rocks.

Last night. A haze of candlelight, homesickness, and adrenaline.

Of actually getting up off the floor and going right up to him.

Of touching his face...

Running her fingertips across his eyelid and cheek...

Jane's hand burned and she squeezed it into a fist inside her coat as her heart pounded like a rabbit's.

"Stupid," she bit out. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."

She couldn't calm down—her heart rate got faster—which made her legs feel even more unsteady.

"Yes, stupid," she continued to berate herself. "Stupid for lots of reasons, you idiot."

None of it had really sunk in by the time that she had crawled into bed—but as soon as her head had hit the pillow and the house had fallen into deep silence...

Jane suddenly wanted to kick something, but when she jerked to a stop and looked frantically around for something to kick and saw nothing but grass—she felt nauseated. Her eyebrows drew together, she pulled her hand out of her pocket and pressed it to her stomach, then her chest. She made herself close her eyes again, made herself open her mouth and take deep breaths...

She fought it, but some sort of strange, throbbing sensation had somehow invaded her ribcage and gone down inside the deepest part of her. And no matter what she did, it just got worse.

She heaved out a voiced breath—a strained, exasperated sound—and put a hand to her forehead.

She needed to do something. She needed to be out of that house, out here, in the wind, doing something. Besides storming off to who-knows-where.

She opened her eyes, glanced over at an outcropping of rocks, set her jaw and started that way.

LLLLL

Loki opened his eyes.

He stared up at the dingy brown ceiling. Cloudy, mid-morning daylight filled the room.