of shadows in darkness that i used to own

iv. aqua regia

Finding the girl's domicile proved a simple task for Loki.

She resided with her mother in a nondescript hut among several others, in a commoner's villa where Loki never before had cause to venture. A small grove, due west, littered the ground with apples. Inside, the living space was modest and spared of fineries. A single ragged fur tossed on a single small bed; walls unadorned and unmarked. Unremarkable.

The child Sif slept noiselessly beside her mother. She lay flat upon her back, her small hands balled into pitiful fists. (Impertinent even in sleep.)

She thinks herself fierce even now. Loki flinched; he stepped back thrice, narrowly missing the shaggy bed of straw clumped onto the cold stone floor.

A silver dagger glittered in his hand, freshly sharpened. Alive with his purpose.

That coveted hair, golden and beautiful, lay splayed before his eyes. Flowing and arrow-straight, it seemed to writhe—like serpents, like tongues, a flurry of sun-colored flame.

The girl was unworthy of that hair.

Like so many treasures he hoarded in secret, this was no different. Those many-splendored locks were a prize to be won. A splendid token purloined from battle; a precious goblet claimed from beneath the bloodred mouth of a king. And Loki would claim it. Steal that sun for his.

The dagger whistled in the air, a flash. (Once, twice, a hundred times.) Resistance from the cells. Magicked by his hand, Sif slept ever deeper. Loki shivered. His pulse could beat a hole in him.

The gold curtain loosened, spilled into his hand. The strands slipped through his fingers like entrails stripped from stars, diamonds ground into dust. Drenching his thief's fingers; smothering his beggar's heart.

(Envy.)

It was light that blessed her with beauty, the resplendence of that cursed hair. Only to remove her light, and Loki would know peace. His heart raced to portend his ruin, but still he did not halt the motion of his hand as it brushed the child's scalp.

Once the shadows had reached the hair that remained, Loki was already gone.

- x -

The world of dreams is steeped in sun—ebullient, hailed from the heavens, rained down to illuminate his every sin. Once, Loki had dominion over this place, remade in his image: an epicenter of mischief and mayhem. Not now. This, too, has been lost.

In this world of dreaming, this all-entrenching light, gold silk forms the fabric of every reality. Those scintillating siren's strands give way to black death that falls in waves about the young Sif's face. Loki stares as a weft is crushed gently, alluringly, by glittering teeth.

He moves to touch it, that black hair so unlike his brother's, his father's, all of Asgard's. It flutters just beyond his reach, tangled, as branches in a flood. Priceless even in losing the touch of the sun, for the night itself had taken up residence there. It haunted Loki then and it haunts him now. Untold treasure, lying just beyond the reach of his thieving fingers.

The dream-Sif taunts him, a devilish disposition framed in light-polluted fog. Felled bits of hair brush his ribs; her nails pierce his scalp. It is tortuous, intended to humiliate, to instigate his fury and set him to howling like a despondent dog. The dog she would make him. His restraints are solid and infuriating, leaching into his wrists deep like frost, trapping the lips that would claim and maim her, destroy her delicate, evermore.

Light spills from his head, that cursed antechamber of his desire. There would be no greater pleasure than to kill her, to ravish, to force the repent of her arrogance. To take her as his greatest trophy, this woman who lingers in both night and day, air and ground—refracted in light, reflected in sound.