alphabet challenge - z

[felicitygs]

 Totally totally went with a bit of Thor thought from the OTP challenge regarding gods and what they are, how they appear as they do, and what lies beneath. Man, I am so in love with this universe it’s not even funny.

 

Z - Gods

 

There was a time before Midgard and its mortals, when the stars were nearer and one did not need the Bifrost to step and leap between the realms.

 

Thor does not remember much of it; he was yet young then, but he remembers this: gold and light and the feel of wings. He remembers storms, storms that would blow stars out and tear planets apart, and racing across time close on the heels of something vast.

 

Rules and form and shape–too tight, too close, sometimes–didn’t occur until the mortals, and then it happened all so fast, like a blink between one moment and the next. 

 

Thor knows, distantly, the reason they stopped going to Midgard was the worship–intoxicating, heady worship, which both sharpened the senses and restricted them to what the mortals chose to emphasize. There was a time, long past and much younger, when Loki sat at his side and whispered dark things–whispered about Asgard being a mask, about how Aesir were only coiled and slumbering beasts, that all the rules were meant for breaking and they were not half so strong as they could be. Thor had listened, and frowned, and told Loki to stop with such treasonous talk.

 

There was ever something dark in his brother.

 

Now, after the fact, Thor can recognize the signs, but then Thor is more given to considered thought than he ever was before, when charging in was usually enough to win the day.

 

The Aesir are light. When their edges blur, when they are wounded and driven to fury and clawing their way to freedom, their forms are thunderbirds and lions, great golden beasts of summer heat and summer storms that light the sky up like suns, concentrated brightness.

 

Aesir are not horned.

 

Thor ever ignored what Loki looked like, because Loki could manipulate fire and heat as well as any Aesir, and surely there was nothing to be said for that. But Loki is also vast and dark and cold.

 

Loki is horned.

 

Loki is shadows and poisoned fang, scale and fur, and sharp, ridged horns that rise above his head. When the bounds of what makes Loki appear human are pushed and cracked, Loki is huge, a twisting beast that bites foe as often as friend, a wolf that would swallow the moon for daring to reflect the sun, a terrible horned god that would ride in hunt and devour all in its path.

 

Thor does not know–does not remember–what the Jotnar look like when pushed to their edges, but he suspects they look a little like Loki. Only a little, because they are merely cold and proud.

 

Loki’s shadow, for it is shadow, is wrapped tightly around a core of destroy, a core that burns and blazes with the light of a star as it explodes, that Thor fears that one day the darkness will vanish and Loki will burn the world down for no other reason than he can.