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Loki doesn't tell anyone what she's doing. They'd be disappointed; she'd get in trouble. And it's not hard to keep it secret; this is hardly a new habit for her, writing incessantly in incomprehensible ciphers. She still diaries, still processes, still makes her decisions - and now she also spell-weaves.
It is a long, hard, painstaking process. She has to come at it from both ends - peer at possible combinations of her symbols to see what makes sense, and come up with a visualization of her desired end result so she knows what parts she needs to build. She's never done this before, and keeps having to go back and edit things. One of the fourth-tier parts has so many third-tier parts in it that she takes weeks of trying just to hold them all in her mind at the same time and make them snap together into a single object she can keep memorized in its entirety. She spends a stack of notebooks as high as her waist working out another fourth-tier part, only to discover that she's got a key "word" wrong and has to start completely over because it affects everything else.
When she starts, she resigns herself to the possibility that her spell will take an entire year.
This estimate is soon revised.
It takes half a century of stolen time and backtracking and double-checking.
But it will be worth it, she thinks, if her mother will love her unreservedly, if she can keep up with Thor, if she can put her scepter - now a bit short for use as a cane, for a child her size - aside and run and dance. (If she can do magic.)
And once she casts it, it will stay forever.
She has just about built herself from atoms; there are separate bits of this spell for each muscle in her body in its current shape and accounting for its future growth (she's been reading anatomy) and connecting them all to her mind, directly, commanding their obedience.
She assembles the ninth-tier pieces into a single, unified whole, and it shines bright in her mind, and she knows exactly what to do with it, from cube-inspired knowledge stamped as bright in her thoughts as though she'd touched it yesterday.
It's all together now.
She wills it.
She knows the difference at once though there's no visible effect - even in how she holds up her head, how the last page of her notebook feels under her fingers.
She wants to get up, twirl, leap, pick up her scepter and brandish it like a sword, run down the halls whooping and show Thor.
But she doesn't. It wouldn't do to be conspicuous. (Heimdall is watching; she can't read the cipher but she can see the results.)
Loki is going to have to pretend to have outgrown her clumsiness, spend the next ten or fifteen years still tripping occasionally but less and less. Maybe she should get new shoes; maybe she should ask about learning to dance. Some outward excuse. Something less sudden.
She sketches a plan in her non-magical cipher, and sets about enacting it.
(Meanwhile, she contemplates what spell she should build next.)
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purposeful_glory
"Well, fine, the ones who came back, but hadn't killed the bear. If you can't beat them, you shouldn't try the bear."
"Well enough," Thor says brightly.
Loki is satisfied; Thor might have a bad time of it trying to fight the warriors but they probably won't actually kill her. The bear has no such restraint.
Thor challenges one of them to a fight the next day.
She loses, but it's closer than anyone was expecting. Except Thor, who intended to win.
She loses, but it's closer than anyone was expecting. Except Thor, who intended to win.
Loki is appropriately impressed with the closeness of the fight, and decides she might need a better way to discourage going after bears, very soon.
Thor lapses in her neverneding encouragement of her sister's combat training, because she is too busy honing her own skills. She is even more aggressive during sparring than usual.
Loki does not require constant encouragement. She does, however, risk showing off a little to dodge excessively forceful blows when they practice.
Other fellow students are not so lucky; Thor sends multiple children, of their age or older, flying the length of the practice hall.
"You're in a mood, sister," Loki comments after this has happened three times.
Thor just laughs.
Loki has no further comment, although if the mood persists, she may suggest that Thor start sparring against groups - to spread around the damage more evenly, to up the challenge.
The mood persists.
The other children start ganging up on her of their own accord, and she is quite pleased about it.
The other children start ganging up on her of their own accord, and she is quite pleased about it.
Well, as long as she's pleased and no one has a head injury. Loki does not know how to fix head injuries yet.
Meanwhile, Loki is gravitating towards glaives. They combine all her favorite things about weapons.
Meanwhile, Loki is gravitating towards glaives. They combine all her favorite things about weapons.
And Thor has set her sights on the hammer - not hammers in general, but a particular hammer, one that currently rests on a pedestal in one of Odin's finest treasure rooms. It is reasonably common for a warrior to ask permission to lift it, but in the last several hundred years, no one who has tried has ever succeeded.
Loki has no comment on the hammer.
Many of her healing spells will share similar foundations, so she makes a lot of progress in the first fifty years of work on the suite, and she also has to re-do fewer pieces now that she has the graceful spell under her belt. She has one that should work on serious injuries by her five hundredth birthday; it's the simplest, and she expects at least another century to go by before she can cure disease. She might put the spell intended to address non-injury-based deterioration aside for a while, once its pieces no longer overlap with the others.
The only really old person she knows is Odin, who she would never dare heal and might not want to anyway.
Many of her healing spells will share similar foundations, so she makes a lot of progress in the first fifty years of work on the suite, and she also has to re-do fewer pieces now that she has the graceful spell under her belt. She has one that should work on serious injuries by her five hundredth birthday; it's the simplest, and she expects at least another century to go by before she can cure disease. She might put the spell intended to address non-injury-based deterioration aside for a while, once its pieces no longer overlap with the others.
The only really old person she knows is Odin, who she would never dare heal and might not want to anyway.
The children grow older. The ones Thor has been tossing across the room become her close friends; they have many small adventures together.
When Thor has grown to almost her mother's height, still a child but now close to becoming an adult, one day she challenges that lady to a fight again. And wins.
When Thor has grown to almost her mother's height, still a child but now close to becoming an adult, one day she challenges that lady to a fight again. And wins.
It could be nothing, but -
"Sister? Why her?"
"Sister? Why her?"
"No one's killed the bear yet," says Thor.
"...Sister, she went with three other ladies, and they failed, and lost friends."
"I am a princess of Asgard," says Thor, tossing her head. "You can come if you like."
Loki actually considers it. If the bear hurts her - or Thor - she can heal now - but -
"I don't think you ought to go."
"I don't think you ought to go."
Thor shrugs.
"Truly," says Loki. "I think you should stay home. ...But if you are going to go, I will come."
Thor beams a grin and hugs her sister.
Loki smiles nervously and hugs back.
She already worked it out when she decided what spell to craft: she'd rather a live sister who hates her than a dead one who didn't know she could have been saved.
She already worked it out when she decided what spell to craft: she'd rather a live sister who hates her than a dead one who didn't know she could have been saved.