Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

27 | A Giant In A Copper Tub

Modest in size, the walls of Y/N and Loki's room are clad with unpainted panelled pine wood, its sandy colour shiny with varnish and aged to a deep honey. The floor—hidden by several hand-woven rugs—is warm below their feet, heated by the kitchen a floor below and the occasionally groaning plumbing.

The room boasts few items of furniture; a wide, stocky bed frame flanked with two identical nightstands, a sturdy chest of drawers, and a circular table no bigger than a wagon wheel to double as a place of dining and writing.

The space has the usual minimalistic, impersonal air of a rented room, the surfaces devoid of homey, personal clutter; but it is cosy, a few items carefully placed to take away the chill.

The wall farthest from the door sports a flat carving of a bear, and a little vase of seasonal flowers and grasses sits sweetly in the centre of the small table. A single fur pelt adorns the lower half of the bedspread, the duvet topped with a patchwork quilt and thick, knitted blanket.

Dangling from a metal fixture, a lit oil lamp hangs over the pillows, its flickering glow welcoming Y/N and Loki to their room like a hand waving in greeting.

Despite her aching back and almost obsessive fantasies about a goosedown mattress over the past several days, Y/N barely gives their dry, inviting temporary bedroom a distracted second glance.

Her eyes remain fixedly on Loki and the little old book he holds aloft in one hand.

He'd torn off his nonchalant facade as soon as their door had shut with a thud. Now, he almost buzzes with excitement, his eyes alive and green as sunbeams through leaves---unnaturally bright amongst the firelight and closed curtains.

Y/N blinks. "What do you mean, you can read it?"

"I mean, when I look at the words they make sense. The barmaid is right, it is a diary, look." He opens it. 

"Today she visited her grandma. She says she baked a pie for her but her dog ate it from the basket and she cried." 

He flips to another page. "She doesn't like the girl next door, she says she's stuck up and rude." 

The next page. "She earned several of—their word for currency—working as a...I don't know this term, but she mentions organising books." That crease appears on his forehead, the one that divides his brow in two when he's thinking. 

"She also attended a building where she---and many other children---spent most of the day getting taught by an elder. Like having a tutor, but for the entire village. She had no choice but to attend, it seems, and she wasn't happy about it."

"I would have loved a tutor," Y/N points out sullenly. 

Comparing the Jottuun girl's childhood to her own, she realises with surprise that they mirror each other quite perfectly---although Y/N's pie was once snaffled from the window sill by hungry crows, not a dog, and her small village didn't receive any formal tutoring. Living with her parents, washing laundry with her mother and fixing trinkets with her father, she had never worried much about such things---but that changed during her first few months in Asgard's city centre. 

Surrounded by more learned folk, it quickly became apparent that the nine realms are much larger and more complicated than Y/N had ever fathomed. She had blushed furiously when Yllva realised she did not know how to divide a gallon of milk between several dishes, and turned chilli-pepper red each time Alfdis chastised her for using improper grammar or cutting words with her 'country' accent. 

And yet, when Y/N tries to imagine someone rounding up all the children from her village, herding them indoors, and making them sit still long enough to teach them anything, the image appears silly and glimmers with an idealistic sheen.