The Goddess of Fire: A Loki Fan-fiction

Walking Into Trouble

Spice's PoV:

"Come again," said Spice, brainstorming about the new riddle. Loki gave an exasperated sigh.

"Thanos said," began Loki, "that the Tesseract is in a place where the trees spell beautiful and the creatures represent horns of a dilemma in the local language."

"Alright," said Spice. "Horns of a dilemma means two unpleasant alternatives."

"Yes! That is exactly what it means! I never could have figured that out!"

Loki's sarcastic words made Spice roll her eyes.

"You are sure he said 'spell' and not 'smell'?" asked Spice, writing down the words.

"I am sure."

"Alright. So, you need the tesseract to go back to Asgard. In Asgard, you have the befitting weapons and technology to stop Thanos, am I right?"

"Yes. And this was a punishment for losing the Mind stone which was in the sceptre."

"Alright. Let's see. Spells beautiful. Did he say anything else?"

"He did mention that I would have a good time trudging through swamps and man-eating creatures."

"Swamps. Right. Beautiful in the local language."

Spice walked around the room while Loki poured himself another mug of coffee.

"I got it!" Spice suddenly screamed and Loki just calmly nodded. It bothered Spice that he wasn't startled enough to spill coffee. But at the end of the day, he was the God of Mischief. It would take more than that to startle him.

"So, you found the place?" asked Loki calmly.

"Yes. It is a place in India, particularly West Bengal. It is called the Sundarbans. It is swampy and the mangrove trees there are known as 'Sundari' which translates to 'beautiful' in the local language which is Bengali. And, the dominant predators there, which are man-eating, are crocodiles and tigers."

"How is Horns of a Dilemma fitting here?"

"Don't you understand? Well, it is swampy, and some places are alternates between stretches of sand and waist-high water from ravines. Now, the common saying is 'crocodile in water, tiger on land' which translates to Horns of a Dilemma."

"That was- very un-Midgardian like. It was clever." A smile widened Loki's lips and Spice smiled back, his soft smile somehow making her knees go weak. She reminded herself that this man was the same one who had broken her bones and had left her bleeding.

"Well," said Spice, warring with her emotions. "It wasn't difficult. Not for a person who has spent more than half of her life in West Bengal."

"You lived in India?"

"Yes. My mother was Bengali."

"That was- unexpected."

Spice just shrugged and set down the paper.

"Well," said Spice, pulling out two envelopes from her bag. "I guess these will finally come in handy."

She threw the envelopes towards Loki who caught it deftly. Inside was a passport with his name and all other legal details. A few more legal documents also fell out of the envelope.

"How did you make these?" asked Loki, knowing fully well none of the information other than his name furnished in the documents were true.

"It pays to have friends like Fury and Stark," said Spice, pulling a bunch of her clothes out of a cupboard and piling them into a suitcase.