"And how do you know I won't just kill you?" He asked.
"Because you need me. Without my survival skills and knowledge, you won't last a week in the Alaskan Bush. Once summer rolls around we can retrieve your precious stone and I'll let you leave, a...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it's necessary to stand out in the cold."
"And who said that?" Loki asked, rolling his eyes.
"Aristotle," I said with a smug grin. Loki and I were in the middle of a 'my philosophers are cooler than yours' argument and I thought I was winning. Of course, there wasn't really any competition, since Loki seems to prefer Earth's anyway. But it was still fun to boast about something that Earth does better than other planets.
"Surely when Aristotle said that, he hadn't yet exposed himself to tempatures quite this extreme." Loki was laying next to me on the fur-covered-tarp we laid out on the ground. It was the winter solstice so I thought it would be fun to lay outside and watch the northern lights to celebrate.
"Maybe not." I replied. "But his logic is solid."
"As usual." Loki said, knowing I was right. Aristotle was, after all, the one who invented logic, alongside all the other great thinkers of ancient Greece.
It was quiet once again, and despite the mind-numbing cold, the stars were perfectly dazzling. The Milky Way was clearly visible, streatching across the sky in an array of colors. All the stars seemed to ark out from it, and occasionally we'd see one shoot across the sky like a silver bullet.
"Here on Midguard-" Apparently that's what Earth is called on Asguard "when you see a shooting star, you're supposed to make a wish."
"How peculiar. Why?"
"No idea." I answered him.
After a few seconds he spoke again. "Okay, I've got mine. What's yours?" My eyebrows shot up in surprise at his willingness to play along.
"If I tell you, it won't come true!" I gave him a cheeky grin and he bumpped me with his elbow, smiling himself.
Several more minutes passed in silence as we laid there, trying to fight the chill as much as possible. We were laying on a tarp covered with fluffy pelts, and we each had multiple blankets on top of us. However, even though we were bundled super well, the firdgid air did everything it could to pierce our barrier. But on the bright side, the snow underneath had perfectly molded to the contortions of our bodies and it felt like we were laying on a cloud.
It was hard to believe that winter was officially halfway over. I suppose time flies fast, when you have someone to distract you.
Any other season, I would have been happy to reach the Wednesday of winter, but this night, I just couldn't find it in my heart to celebrate. Winter was halfway over, but so was my time with Loki. Whenever I thought about him leaving, my chest tightened and my stomach knotted. I finally understood what those Hydra agents meant when they told us emotion is a weakness. I had let myself go weak for Loki, no doubt about it, and now I was paying the price.
"What bothers you?" Loki's sudden voice jostled me from my thoughts. There he was again, observant as ever and going straight to the point.
"Nothing." I said it so quickly that I didn't even believe it. Loki surely knew it was a lie, and the racing of my heart probably just confirmed that fact.
