Loki X Reader One Shots || 𝐹𝐿𝑈𝐹𝐹 + 𝑆𝑀𝑈𝑇

Loki's POV (first person) 'Girl With The Gold Earring' ((FINAL) Part 4)

I pour a generous amount of gravy over my steamed vegetables. I can almost see them soak the moisture up in real-time, their dry wrinkles rehydrating like a sponge.

A place has been set for my brother but he's not here. He's very rarely here; I don't know why the servants bother re-setting eighteen pieces of cutlery every mealtime. Why take it away? Just leave it.

Even though his absence is not unusual, I find my mouth spitting some words before I can stop it:

"Are we not blessed by the company of the future king?"

Mother doesn't rise to my thinly veiled (admittedly childish) provocation. Pretending she didn't catch my tone, she answers as if my question had been genuine: 

"Well, I heard he was to return this morning, but a raven came about midday to say he'll be staying a little while longer—" Delicately, she slices off a slither of mutton from the monstrous beast occupying the centre of the table.

The paper-thin meat curls over, folding itself onto her plate like a ribbon.

"As you know, your father will also be away for quite some time; he's travelling south, all the way down to the border."

I don't point out that I didn't ask.

"Take some bread, darling." She pushes the platter towards me. 

They're solid little spheres, a pale, sickly white on one side and a waxy, shiny orange on the other.

It's like this whole meal is made of modelling clay.

My teeth squish through a honey-glazed carrot.

It's as hard as modelling clay too.

We used to have this dollhouse in the playroom when I was a child. It's still there, I think, waiting for the next set of children to wake the tiny wooden family from their tiny wooden beds and walk them stiffly about their little rooms.

 The dollhouse was Mother's, and her mother's before her, and so on, so the paint on the father's face had started to peel away, and the little platters of food were all starting to look like peasant foods; the roast boar turning to a soft pink cut of ham, the tarts turning to simple yellow pies, and the bowls of caviar to hearty oatmeal.

Mother sent it to a man in town who makes beautiful, intricate doors and chairs and tables and things from wood (I think he made the oak mirror on my dresser; the one patterned with carved leaves and tiny creatures). 

He gave the dollhouse a fresh lick of paint, but I didn't like how the father's face looked when he was handed back to us. 

His grey beard and friendly eyes had been dabbed over with a clownish, leering mouth, and the food had become garish, iridescent primary colours.

Thor and I stopped playing with the dollhouse after that.

"You should have painted them," I remember him saying. "You would have done it much better."

For some reason, that stuck with me.

If Thor were here, would I tell him about the woman on the steps?

Probably not.

I don't think he'd understand.

He's never been obsessed with a woman; they're obsessed with him. He courts whichever one is within close proximity and forgets they ever existed if they leave his immediate field of vision. 

I mean this literally. At the last Winter Ball, I watched him attempt to seduce one woman, then start from scratch with another just because the first crossed the room to refill her plate with shrimp.