Enamoured with a Mortal

Chapter Three

As soon as her name left my lips I felt like cursing at how ridiculous it had been. Everything around us was straight out of a flawed memory, so it stood to reason that she would be too. It would have been easier to let the memory fade as the seiðr that rebounded from the spell dissipated. That way I couldn't torture myself any further than this. And yet I still called out to her. Something about her presence almost willed me to. Perhaps it was the thought of it not being real that allowed me to do so. Maybe part of me had just rationalised that it didn't matter if it was a memory induced by a rebounded spell, so there could be no harm in calling out to her. It's what I would like to believe. Although I couldn't help but feel like it came from another place. Some deep illogical part of me that just craved her presence so much that it was willing to be in pain just from the idea that she could be near me. A part of me was so consumed with the need to get her back that I was incapable of rational thought. But such ideas are harmful, such ideas get people killed through my own incompetence. Just two days and I was already unravelling. It was dangerous. So when her whole body stiffened and she turned to the sound of my voice I couldn't help but stand completely shocked.

This should have been nothing more than some flawed and faded memory of a time where things were a whole lot simpler. It didn't matter how deeply I craved her response, an equal part of me prayed she would not. Then I could simply punish myself with the memory of her close to me and learn to cope with the disappointment of a failed spell. Such notions were too commonplace to be complicated to experience. My own self-doubt, the incessant voice telling me I was cursed to lose everything I loved, those things were comfortable. Known. Her somehow being here, being present, was not. The knowledge that she was right here, hearing me, seeing me, and yet so far away, was something I wished I could erase from my mind. So when she did turn it felt like the pain in my chest would be never-ending, partially because I knew the hope I'd begun to feel would only be crushed. The worst part is that she didn't look like the Kaya that left either, instead she looked just as she'd done on this day. The black Midgardian leather suit she hadn't worn around me in months clinging to the curves of her body, the golden Asgardian necklace I conjured for her sitting around her neck. Her hair more golden, the seiðr of Asgard yet to fade its colour, and no strand of my hair present either. Almost everything about her would have made me believe she was a memory, and yet her eyes... her eyes gave it away.

They stared at me with such panic and confusion, a look I'd never seen on her face before and it shook me to my core. It wasn't just the look on her face either, her fear and turmoil was almost palpable. It coated the seiðr that hung so thickly in the air around us, her terror feeding into her magic and making it almost volatile. Soon it no longer mattered to me that this shouldn't be possible, or that it may not be real. My legs moved without thinking and a second later she went to move to meet me, but her legs wouldn't carry her further and gave way. With a flash of seiðr I was at her side. The moment our skin touched it was as if I was a child struggling with the power of my seiðr all over again. I couldn't rein it in, my seiðr swirling around her in a burst of bright green. It settled around us, finally calming down as both of our seiðr slotted together. Two pieces of the same source finally feeling whole once more. And for one of the first times the fact that I couldn't fully use my seiðr, that it wasn't a part of me, didn't terrify me. I still felt comfortable and safe, and some part of her clearly did too. As she stabilised, so did the memory that existed around us. It became more real, details coming together firmly. The sky and water dulled slightly, the trees and wind became more real. It was as if the landscape around us focussed into reality. Still as it had been the day I brought her here, but less flawed, less mortal.

"Loki?" It hadn't been that long since I last heard her voice, yet it felt like a lifetime. "I-I thought y-you." She took a deep breath, forcing herself to become calmer, hands clutching at the fabric of the shirt at my chest and my right arm. "When I felt your seiðr I thought you were here, but you aren't, are you? Why are you on Asgard? How... how?"