I'll Follow You To...

I was made for loving you

Loki woke slowly. This dream wasn't fading as fast as the first one, but he knew he still had to fight to hang on the symbol Sylvie had traced out for him. Even though he'd much rather focus on the gentle brush of her lips.

At least he had been able to talk with her without them having to slice him open to get the message across. He made a mental note to ask Wong for the recipe, if there was any chance of doing that again he'd take it.

He lay there, eyes still closed, for several minutes until he felt something different over his mouth, the tickle of tiny crawling legs.

He blew out hard to prevent the fly from becoming his morning meal. The fly, who seemed intent on becoming someone's breakfast this morning, quickly returned to harass Loki as soon as it was able.

He raised his hand to swat it as it drew closer, still flat on his back, but it was plucked out of the air before he could strike by the flash of a long pink tongue.

He followed the tongue with his eyes up to his forehead, where the tiny purple tree frog sat working to swallow the fly that was almost too big for it.

How he had missed a frog sitting on him Loki didn't know but now he swiped his hand up over his face to dislodge it. It jumped in a smooth arc over his hand, landing on his stomach, then turned around, looked at Loki and chirped.

Curious, Loki carefully brought his hand to rest in front of the frog. This time instead of jumping over it, it hopped up on the back of his hand.

Loki sat up in bed and had a thought. "Trick, is that you?"

The frog jumped again, landing in Loki's hair before climbing and working its way behind his ear. It then began chirping out a song. 

"Good enough for me. Perhaps you're a shapeshifter as well?"

The song in his ear was quite loud but he was grateful for the company, so he found he didn't mind. 

********

Loki had gotten dressed and gone to find Strange to see if he could do anything with the symbol Sylvie had given him.

He had eventually found Stephen and the demon eating pancakes and drinking coffee in the dining room.

Strange took a keen interest as he had told him about the dream and what Sylvie had said.

Loki did have to fight to keep a straight face during his explanation, as when Strange was turned away the demon would take the opportunity to take a swig of a bottle of maple syrup. He repeated this a few times until he had worked his way through half the bottle. The demon then gave Loki a thumbs up for not ratting him out. He was beginning to think this other version of himself wasn't so bad after all.

They were now gathered in the summoning room. Strange was confident that the symbol was a location tag that could be used to summon a demon from a specific universe.

"If this works, we'll have a reliable way of calling specific demons. As long as a locator is present in that universe. I assume they've already marked the demon they want brought through. Hopefully, it's someone with a few more answers."

Strange set down the symbol in the appropriate place within the circle, then reset the wards.

"Maybe we'll meet another one of us!", the demon suggested to Loki with some excitement.