Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

25 | Supper In The Sky

"This must be that place Ylva told us about!" Y/N exclaims, the name just escaping the tip of her tongue. "The last village before the border. What's its name? Wettersby? Wembly?"

"Willoughby?" Loki offers, smiling because he knows it'll bug her he managed to think of it first.

The hill Willoughby has sprouted from is so steep that, by the time they reach the top, Y/N, Loki and Fox are a little red in the face, their breath coming faster and shallower than any of them care to admit. Like the rest of the village, the inn perched at its summit is made entirely of wood, the overhanging roof tall and pointed like a hat popular within the gnome community.

Rainwater slides smoothly over the flat, thin flint tiles, set glistening by the warm light glowing behind the panes of round windows. They're placed in equal intervals along the first floor, with narrow bay windows lining the ground. They look out over the valley, but Y/N doubts anything is visible from inside; the afternoon is so gloomy it's indistinguishable from nightfall, the sky bruised all over by clusters of fat grey clouds. 

As they lead Fox to the stables, the smell of dinner seeps from open windows around the rear of the building, setting the nostrils of both man and beast twitching hungrily.

Leaving their mare with a young, friendly-faced stable girl, Y/N and Loki brave the rain once more.

They find 'The End Of The Road's' porch protruding unsettlingly close to the cliff edge, the ground sodden beneath their feet. Its source is the building's own guttering, several wooden pipes pouring a steady stream down the wall onto the floor, saturating the very mud it stands on. It must do this often because a hairy sprouting of algae has cultivated in a green smear amongst the torrent.

"That's reassuring," Y/N points out, gesturing to the sloping porch roof.

There are several gaps where tiles used to be, the ones managing to remain protruding at jaunty angles like teeth in a child's gummy mouth.

The missing tiles are lying in shards about the foundations, and Loki nudges one with the toe of his boot. It cracks below his foot like a brittle bone. "The wind must torment this building like a Nidhogg," he points out with a tone of disbelief. "One strong gust and we could just ride it to Jöttenheim through the air."

Y/N shakes his arm—which she had been gripping with slight paranoia, the notion of the weather picking up and whisking her away a very real concern. "Don't say things like that!" With furrowed brows, she leans over to eye the saturated beams supporting the unsupported half of the building. They're as thick as pine trees but pocked with woodworms. "...How are they supporting themselves?" 

Half of the front step has crumbled away to lay in slate shards amongst the rocks, the remaining half a foot jutting out like a broken nail.

"It's a feat of engineering." Loki quips cooly, but his hand closes protectively on Y/N's as she mounts the step all the same—as if he expects it and his partner to slide off the muddy grass into oblivion. "Or hubris."

--✽--

As soon as they step inside, the howling wind and battering rain fall silent, their ears immediately embraced by a warm and comfortable silence.

They stand for a moment, dazed, their clothes silently dripping onto the doormat.

Even though he has just stumbled out of the woods, is soaked through, and carrying his possessions like a vagrant, Loki still boasts an unshakable air of nobility. It clings to him like leaves on a tree that the wind just can't manage to strip away.