Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

13 | Telescope

Y/N was so focused on this---how Loki seems to begin each step on the balls of his toes then finish them on the base of his heel---that she hadn't even noticed he'd come to a stop.

"Hello," he chuckled down at her, a rumbling curl of amusement as she bumped into his back and went the colour of strawberries.

"Sorry," she choked out, trying not to let her mind wander to what she'd just experienced; his torso is just as firm as she'd imagined it to be (not that she had imagined it, obviously). The entirety of her weight, plus the momentum of her brisk pace, had collided with the narrow pillar of Loki's body and he hadn't been thrown the slightest bit off balance. He hadn't even become slightly unsteady; he'd just looked down at her curiously, like she was a small butterfly that had just flown into him by accident.

Loki didn't seem to have paid Y/N's apology for invading his personal space any mind, maybe because he didn't see it as necessary, but mostly because he now appears to be thoroughly absorbed in something else. "We won't be able to see any planets because it's daytime," he explained, leaning over something long and heavy-looking.

Y/N figured this must be the famed 'telescope', but she knew it as the golden barrel-like thing she liked to make funny faces in whilst polishing its curved surface. She'd spent many hours in this room, rubbing fingerprints from the little dials, but had no idea what it was, or how it worked. In fact, up until now, she didn't even know it 'worked' at all. The fact that it was always so covered in fingerprints at all only puzzled her more.

"I thought this was some kind of statue I didn't understand," Y/N said, taking a step closer to it as the prince did something quite strange:

He'd dipped his head to the narrow end, where a little stub of metal branched off from the main frame, and was resting one eye against it. Y/N would have assumed he'd gone slightly mad, had one of his slender hands not been expertly fiddling with one of the knobs, turning it one way and then the next, each adjustment minute and delicate and laced with purpose.

As he turned it, part of the machine---for Y/N had realised that that's what this thing is---a machine ---moved slightly. It elongated, just a fraction, the largest part of it inclining a centimetre or two towards the pane of the window, then edging back again, like the neck of a tortoise retreating into its shell.

"It's not art, technically, but I think it's easily beautiful enough to be, don't you?" Loki asked, his face still lowered to the tapered end of the telescope.

Y/N nodded, then realised he couldn't see her.

He's still fiddling with things and squinting into that little stub of metal protruding from the skinny end of the gold tube.

"Yes." Y/N wasn't lying; it is beautiful, she'd always thought so, even if she didn't understand it.

Is there something inside it? Is that what Loki is staring at so intently?

"I like the big end," she added, watching the prince's slim fingers continue to turn various things. "The end full of curved glass that feels like looking into a giant eye."

Loki, satisfied with whatever he'd been doing, straightened, his mouth curved into a good-natured smile. This object is clearly one of his most prized possessions; he's obviously relishing in Y/N's curiosity. His passion for it---whatever it is---plainly goes beyond the fact that it's worth a lot of money, that it's cased in solid gold, and contains more glass than Y/N's parent's entire house. He's eager to show it off, and steps back to do so.

"You're kind of right, it is like a giant eye. But it's not full of glass; not in the way you're thinking, anyway." He gave her a knowing look, the edge of a smirk tugging one side of his mouth. "You were picturing it like water in a cup, weren't you? The glass filling the entire tube to such a point it almost overflows at this end---" He gestured to the large, curved bud of glass pointing at the horizon. "---You think that's why it's curved. Don't you?" He sounded amused rather than condescending. Like a kindly teacher walking through the thought process of a student's answer to a complicated math question.