Above All Shadows [Loki Timetravel fic - Completed]

18. Kin

'Uncle Loki!'

A child giggled. A small hand closed around his bicep and attempted to shake him awake. Loki groaned. This was it, there would be no more sleep this morning. He had never spent much time in the company of children, but the past week had been educational.

He opened his eyes to Hyndla's wide grin. She was the elder of Byleistr's two children and had quickly accepted Loki as her uncle. Loki had surmised that his integration into the family was no great upheaval for her. She had grown up surrounded by aunts and uncles from both her mother's and her father's side of the family. Loki, personally, still found it peculiar to be referred to as an uncle. To his knowledge, neither Thor nor Hela had ever produced an offspring.

'Hello, Hyndla,' Loki said. 'What can I do for you this fine morning?'

'Mother said I need to stop being a nuisance to her and that I need to tell you to keep us entertained until the afternoon,' the girl replied in a somewhat flat tone.

'I bet she used those exact same words too.'

Hyndla nodded, looking pleased with herself. Loki, on the other hand, remained unnerved by this habit of repeating what she had heard word for word. He suspected either her father or her grandfather had taught her to do this, which suggested that they used her to gather information. From what Hyndla and her younger brother had told him over the past days, neither Laufey nor Byleistr had much time for them, which the children lamented. There was an opportunity in that. Young informants craving positive attention from their elders could bring great gifts and asked very little in return.

'What's that?' Hyndla picked up Fandral's rapier. Loki had sharpened the previous night and had left it out atop the wooden chest that stood at the foot of his bed.

'It's a sword.' Loki carefully pried the weapon out of the girl's hands. 'Haven't you ever seen one before?'

'Can't you make a weapon out of ice?'

He frowned for a moment. 'I don't know, never tried. Where is your brother?'

'He's playing,' Hyndla replied, her eyes still on the rapier. 'I don't see why you couldn't do it, everyone can.'

'Is he playing with the model? I don't like how quiet he is.'

Loki nudged the girl out, hid the rapier, then pulled his blanket over his shoulders and wrapped it tight around him as if it were a cloak. Remaining in his Jotunn form kept him from feeling the worst of the cold, but the mornings were still too chilly for his liking. He yawned as he strode out to his sitting room. Or rather, Helblindi's sitting room. Practicality reigned in an era of wartime restraint and Loki had been handed the quarters previously occupied by his younger half-brother.

The rooms remained largely as Helblindi had left them, which Thrym, Byleistr's younger child, had taken advantage of. Helblindi had been fond of his niece and nephew, so he had fixed up some of his own old toys for them. There were well-armed soldiers, howling hounds and ferocious beasts to choose from, but the light of Thrym's life (and Loki suspected Helblindi's once upon a time) was a large model of Utgard carved out of oak and dressed with a thin coat of paint.

The model had been a boon to Loki. He had peppered the children with questions until he got a good sense of the city's layout. He had hoped also the model would help him narrow down where Thor was being kept, but there he had only found disappointment. At first, he had danced around the topic, then asked the question outright. Neither Thrym nor Hyndla had an answer for him. Either the children genuinely didn't know or had been coached not to tell him.

'What are you up to today, Thrym?' Loki asked.

The boy set down the warrior figurine in his hand. 'Helping protect Jotunheim from the enemy.'