#traveling_classicist

[imagine-loki]

Loki's Daughter

TITLE: Loki’s Daughter CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 13: The Grimoire of Curses AUTHOR: traveling_classicist ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Avengers: Endgame AU Loki that gets away with tesseract has been using it to explore the universe. During his adventures, he comes across a little girl with developing but oppressed magical abilities. Intrigued (and subconsciously lonely) Loki keeps her around. RATING: T

AO3 Link: Here NOTES/WARNINGS: None for this chapter. Enjoy!

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Loki had scoured over his new collection of books on curses. He was becoming increasingly frustrated with each discourse he picked up; more frustrated and more discouraged. Kuna, on the other hand, enjoyed her new freedoms. The freedom to explore where she wanted, eat when she wanted, sleep when she wanted.

She could even play, something she had always really wanted to do but was always forbidden from doing. The strangest part of all: she didn’t have to work. Ever. In fact, Loki actively stopped her from cleaning, tidying, cooking, or any other attempts at non-child-like behavior, and promptly pushed her outside to play.

Loki had even begun to teach her how to read and write. He had spread out a large piece of paper in front of her and taught her how to hold a quill and dip it in ink and write out the Asgardian futhark. She had never been so excited in her whole life. She memorized the whole futhark in just a few minutes. She learned how to write hers and Loki’s names and the names of her toys. Loki was a good teacher. Kuna was convinced he knew everything there was to know.

Now, she was able to write whole sentences and read short stories in their storybooks. Loki even made up stories for her to read which were her favorite.

One day, Loki sat in their hammock grumbling at another book, while Kuna swatted at an imaginary beast with a stick. She had learned to be quiet when Loki was reading because he wanted to concentrate on his books, so she kept her stories about slaying imaginary beasts inside her head.

“Arrgh, I’ve had enough of this!” Loki slammed the book closed.

Kuna jumped, dropping her stick. Her shoulders drooped and her head hung low. She looked up cautiously, afraid she had caused his angry outburst.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t yell like that. What do you want to do today, Kuna?” he asked.

“Me?” she asked, shyly.

“Yes, you,” he said. “I can’t take any more of these bloody books today. So, what do you want to do?”

Kuna had never been asked this question before, so it required much thought. She walked over to the hammock and crawled into it beside Loki. She tapped her finger against her lips in thought.

“Mmm. Will you teach me how to fight monsters?” she asked finally.

“How to fight monsters,” Loki repeated.

Kuna nodded, excitedly.

“That’s very specific.”

Kuna continued nodding.

“All right, come on!” Loki jumped out of the hammock. It flipped over, depositing Kuna on the ground. She hopped up, undisturbed, and ran for their satchel with the silver dagger.

Loki snatched it up. “Nope!” He stopped her at arm’s length with a hand on her head.

She giggled, trying to reach for the satchel.

“You’re going to learn with this.” He gave her the wooden dagger he had bought for her on Tenanci’i.

“Aww,” Kuna pouted.

 “Stand up straight!” Loki commanded.

Kuna stood as tall as she could. Loki adjusted her feet until she stood about shoulder width. He positioned her left hand on the hilt of the dagger.

“When your other hand, your off hand, is empty, it’s going to balance you,” he said. “Don’t let it fall to your side like a dead fish.” Kuna chuckled at this. “Keep it up and always moving. You can use it to punch with, like this,” -he showed her a quick jab- “or to block.”

Kuna copied his movements. He began to call out actions for her to do, holding the dagger in a downward position in her left hand. When she was able to do this on command, Loki began teaching her movements with the dagger.

“It’s not all about stabbing, even though that’s pretty fun,” Loki said.

Kuna giggled, pretending to stab him.

He laughed and gently took her wrist, positioning the dagger in different ways. “You can slice and cut, forward and back, up and down, hack, and even stab with a dagger,” he explained, moving Kuna’s hand with each word. “They’re very multifunctional weapons. You can even throw it if you’re in a pinch.”

“But then I wouldn’t have a dagger anymore.”

“Very clever,” Loki said. “It should never be your first move if this is your only weapon. And there are better weapons for throwing anyways. Only throw this if it’s your last resort and you know you’ve got a clean shot. Otherwise, you’ll be in trouble.”

“Hmm.” Kuna weighed the wooden dagger in her hand. She turned it over and made a swipe at the air.

“Good,” Loki said. “Now, faster. Put more power behind it.”

She made the same movement again, swinging harder. “Don’t lose control,” Loki instructed. He readjusted her stance, and she struck the air again. “Better.”

They continued with different moves and attacks until Kuna was out of breath.

“Take a break,” Loki said, giving her one of their canteens. He smiled at her. “You learn quickly. I don’t even think I picked up a weapon this fast.”

Kuna could barely contain her happiness. She took the canteen and drank. The cold water felt good. She laid back in the grass under the trees.

“Do you think I could fight as good as you someday?” Kuna asked.

“Let’s find out,” Loki said. “Come and get me.”

A wooden knife, like a giant splinter, dug into the ground to the right of Kuna’s head. She gasped and rolled to the side, grabbing her own dagger. She came up on one knee and looked for Loki.

“That was impressive,” he said. Kuna ran towards his voice. He rose up out of a bush. She jumped up and slashed at him, but he disappeared.

“Hey!” she cried as she crashed through the bush. “You can’t use magic!”

“Why not?” his voice came from behind her.

“That’s cheating!”

“There’s no cheating in a fight, little raven,” he said, laughing as she bounded through another illusion. “You have to use what you’ve got. And I have magic.”

Kuna fell through another Loki. She stood and looked around. Something hard hit her in the back of the head.

“Ouch!” She looked down at an acorn rolling at her foot and frowned.

“And I have acorns,” Loki taunted. “What have you got?”

Kuna looked at her dagger. It wasn’t really helping her if all the Lokis were ghosts. Another acorn whistled towards her, this one from her right. She swung the dagger and blocked it with a satisfying thwack. A smile spread across her face.

“Don’t celebrate too long,” Loki chuckled from behind her. “Or you’ll be dead.”

She whipped around and dodged Loki’s arm as it came down to hit her. She stabbed at his leg, and he disappeared just as she had expected him too. With this Loki gone, she ran to the bushes to her left and pounced into them. She came down on an empty patch of dirt and twigs.

“Too slow!” Loki sang.

Kuna growled. She ran to the nearest tree and climbed up into the branches.

“Now, we’re using our brain. I was beginning to think you forgot it was there,” Loki taunted her.

She followed the sound of his voice and jumped through the trees towards it. An acorn smacked the back of her head. She turned to find the Loki that threw it and saw two Lokis, one in the tree and the other on the ground.

“Now, concentrate,” they both said. “Which one is me?”

Jumping towards the one in the tree, she made a quick jab at him, which he easily avoided. He gave her a good shove, sending her forward off the branch. She stretched out her arm and grabbed a lower branch, swinging to the ground. She felt a thump on the ground behind her and turned, slashing wildly with her dagger at the Loki that had dropped from the tree, but he disappeared.

Another appeared behind her, then another and another until there was a circle of Lokis surrounding her. She turned in a circle, trying to figure out which one was the real one. They each smiled at her devilishly.

Then a blue glow began to radiate from one of the Lokis to her left. A soft, lilting melody drifted on the air. She turned and leapt onto the glowing Loki, slashing at him. She crawled up his body and onto his back like a monkey.

“Ahh!” he screamed. The other Lokis vanished. She had caught the real one.

She raised her hand to stab him, but he caught her wrist and pulled her off his back.

“Aww,” she whined.

“So close, little one. Very impressive but I’ve been doing this a lot longer than yo-AHHH! DID YOU JUST BITE ME?!” He let go and she dropped onto her feet, giggling. She skipped up to him and stabbed him in the tummy with her dagger.

“Stab! I win!”

“Agh! I’m dead!” Loki yelled. He fell backwards dramatically. “Blah!” He stuck out his tongue and closed his eyes and made his body go limp.

Kuna walked over and put a foot up on his chest, raising her dagger to the sky. “I’ve defeated the mighty Loki!”

“Surprise!” Loki grabbed her around the waist and pulled her down. She squealed.

“No fair! You can’t come back to life!”

“Oh, but that’s sort of my thing, love,” he said. “I can’t believe you bit me. Come here! Let me see those teeth!”

“Grrrrrr!” She growled at him, baring her teeth.

“Do you have fangs?!”

“Raaawr!” She opened her mouth wide enough for Loki to see a row of sharp teeth, like a big cat’s, running back into her mouth.

“You have got fangs!” Rolling up his sleeve, he examined his wound. “Do you have venom in those? Am I going to turn into a Kuna, now? How have I never seen those chompers you’ve got in there?”

Kuna smiled big. Only one set of her sharp fangs was visible in her smile, the rest were hidden. She growled at him again and snapped her teeth, not able to control her giggles.

“Yeah, all right. You’re very ferocious,” he said. “But no more biting! Not me at least. Bite anyone else.”

“But you said I should use what I’ve got.”

“I did say that.”

“So, I could bite in a fight?”

“Yes, it’s rather effective actually,” Loki said, rubbing his arm. He picked up the canteen that was laying on the ground and took a drink. “How did you know which Loki was me?”

“The tesseract told me,” Kuna said, flipping her dagger in the air.

Loki spit out his water. “The what?!”

“The tesseract! I concentrated on trying to find you like you said, and the tesseract told me which one you were.”

“How did it do that?” Loki asked, a serious tone in his voice.

“Y…You were glowing, and I could hear the tesseract singing so I… I knew it was you.”

Loki sat in silence for a moment, thinking. Kuna pulled her legs up to her chest.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

“No, you didn’t,” Loki said.

“Are you mad?”

“No. You did exactly what I would have done. I’m just concerned with how the tesseract is affecting you.”

“Why?”

“It affects people differently. Sometimes in strange ways. I’ve not known it to ‘sing’ to anyone before.”

“I like the way it sings.”

“What does it sound like?”

“Like, um, hmm��” Kuna wasn’t sure she could make the same sounds as the tesseract did. She tried to hum like it but the noise she made was not at all like the tesseract’s pretty sounds. “That’s not right. I can’t do it like the tesseract does.” She shrugged.

“Hmm. Well, I don’t hear anything.”

“Maybe your ears are clogged.”

“That’s probably it,” Loki said, chuckling.

She nodded and tried to flip the dagger in her hand again. The wooden blade smacked her hand and fell to the ground. She frowned at it. Loki picked it up.

“If that had been real, you would have lost fingers,” he said. “Watch carefully.” He flipped the dagger in the air and caught it effortlessly. “It’s all in the wrist.”

He smoothly turned the dagger over and offered the hilt to Kuna to try. She took it. She timed a toss of the dagger and it flipped gracefully, catching it by the handle this time. She smiled and looked up at Loki.

“Well done,” he said. “Just wait until you can do it with two at the same time.”

“Ooooh,” Kuna breathed.

Loki conjured two daggers and showed her a smooth double dagger flip. The glint of the daggers shown over Kuna’s face. She was overjoyed. She could not wait to start training with two daggers. She wanted to be just like Loki.

“I wanna try!” she said.

“I don’t think you’re ready for these yet,” Loki responded. “Weapons like these need to be treated with respect. They’re sharp and they’ll easily cut off those fingers of yours or more if you’re not careful.”

Kuna frowned.

“You’ll get there, little raven,” Loki said, tussling her hair. “Come on, let’s go inside and get something to eat.”

At the thought of food, Kuna happily bounded past Loki and jumped through the door. Loki had finally figured out a way to keep the door open, so he did not have to awkwardly squish through the awful honey-like material. Kuna bounced around the tent, gracefully avoiding the stacks of books Loki had left everywhere. She parried and jabbed with her dagger at invisible enemies.

Loki made her a sandwich from their supplies as she played. He frowned at the basket that kept their food. It was getting dangerously close to being empty. They would need to teleport somewhere to get more supplies soon, but there was enough for them to eat for the rest of the day.

He handed Kuna the sandwich as she hopped by. She barely stopped as she began stuffing bites of it into her mouth.

“No, no. Come, settle down,” Loki scolded. “You’ll upset your stomach, jumping around and eating like that.”

“Hmm,” Kuna mumbled and plopped down across from Loki. She held her sandwich in two hands and took big bites.

Loki frowned at her. “Do you even taste your food?”

“Mmm-hmm!” she nodded, cheeks bulging with sandwich. “It tastes so good!”

“Fair enough,” he said, taking a dainty bite of his own sandwich. He picked up a book and opened it setting it on one leg while he ate.

Kuna watched him. She sat up straighter and crossed her legs. She remade her sandwich, which had fallen apart in her eagerness to eat. Sitting up tall, like Loki, she took a small bite of her sandwich and chewed slowly. Loki turned a page and took another bite of his sandwich and Kuna did the same.

Loki caught on quickly to this game of pantomime. Without looking up from his book, he raised his sandwich to his mouth, Kuna following his movements. Before taking a bite, he lowered his hand and turned another page. He could see Kuna frown at being denied a bite but lowering her sandwich into her lap as well.

He lifted the sandwich again to his mouth and then looked across at Kuna. She stopped cold as if caught doing something bad. Loki lowered the sandwich, keeping eye contact. Kuna copied him. He quickly jolted the sandwich back up towards his mouth and Kuna did the same. His eyes narrowed. Then he smiled.

In a quick movement, he tossed the sandwich over his shoulder. Kuna gasped. Loki raised his eyebrows at her, daring her to copy him. She shook her head and shoved the rest of the sandwich in her mouth. He rolled his eyes and laughed.

“I don’t waste food,” Kuna said, mouth full.

“That’s very good,” he replied, revealing his own sandwich that he had hidden in a quick invisibility spell. “Neither do I.”

Kuna’s mouth fell open, chewed food showing on her tongue.

“Eww, gross, Kuna! Swallow that!” Loki laughed.

Kuna giggled and swallowed her food.

“Speaking of, we’re starting to run low on food,” Loki said, his tone changing.

Kuna glanced around nervously.

“It’s fine,” Loki consoled her, seeing her anxiety. “I mean to say, we’ll need to go shopping for more. I’m not going to let you go hungry.”

This comforted Kuna. “Where will we go?”

“I’m not sure yet. But I think we’ll need to pack up camp and move entirely. I don’t want to stay here for much longer.”

“Oh, but I like it here.”

“It is very peaceful here, isn’t it?”

Kuna nodded.

“But I think we’d get bored if we stayed here forever.”

Kuna cocked her head to one side, confused.

“Well, it’s nice, sure. But there’s no one else here but us. No creatures, no people. No excitement. I think we’d get bored.”

“Hmm.” Kuna thought about this. The excitement she had had with Loki regarding creatures and people so far had been mostly scary and life-threatening. “No, I like it here. I wouldn’t get bored.”

“I bet you would.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“You mean to tell me you don’t want to see all the beautiful planets out there in the universe? All the systems and stars and galaxies?”

Kuna thought even harder. All the beautiful things the tesseract had shown her had captivated her mind and visited her dreams for nights. She wanted to see them all.

“Is it safe?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Loki said. Kuna paled. “But you have me with you and I’ll keep you safe.”

She relaxed a little.

“And now that you’re learning to fight, you can defend yourself, too.”

Kuna nodded, thinking about their lesson and her dagger.

“So, what do you think?”

“I guess so. As long as we’re together.”

“Always,” Loki said, smiling at her.

They spent the rest of the day relaxing. Loki attending to his research and Kuna studying her letters. As the day wound down, Kuna had her supper and fell asleep on her bedroll, cuddling her toys. Loki, surrounded by stacks of books, lit a small, dim orb of light with his magic so he could continue reading without disturbing Kuna.

He looked across the several stacks of books around him. He had taken hundreds. When they were in Odin’s study, he had seen how difficult it was for Kuna to catch all the books he was tossing to her in his raven form, so he had begun storing them himself, whisking away entire shelves of books into his pocket universe in some cases. As long as they were in the sections about curses, he could figure out if they were of use later.

Loki reached for a new book but bumped another stack with his elbow. It fell over, scattering across the floor. He grit his teeth at the sound and peeked at Kuna. She turned over and squeezed her dragon. Loki let out a sigh of relief and then groaned at the mess on the floor. He started to pick up a few books, when a large black volume caught his eye. It was quite old, embossed with ancient Asgardian runes that had been rubbed nearly clean of their golden sheen. However, what caught his eye was not the antiquated runes of a long dead language but deep cuts in the leather of the cover in the modern Asgardian runes.

BEWARE

DO NOT OPEN

EVIL RESIDES

“Well, that’s a little dramatic,” Loki said.

He picked up the ancient tome and sat back slowly onto the floor, crossing his legs. As he held it, he could feel a dark resonance emanating through his aura. He looked closely at the book and found it was not black leather at all, but that the book had been heavily burned. The ends of the pages too had been blackened in the flames. At some point, someone had tried to remove some of the charring on the cover, but the book would have been a total loss by any library’s standards.

“Seems like someone tried to burn you,” Loki muttered. He turned the book back over to the eerie message carved into the front. “And you clearly resisted.”

The graffitist had tried to destroy the embossed title of the book, but the restorer had succeeded in revealing what was left of the title.

G—M—IRE –F C—ES by ——————- ———————–

“A “Grimoire of Curses”, you say? You sound perfect. I’m gonna open it,” he said, deviously. He could almost hear his father admonishing him for not heeding the rather specific warning on the cover. “I don’t negotiate with book defacers. Or book burners.”

He gently opened the cover, and the title page confirmed his guesswork.

GRIMOIRE OF CURSES

BY

THE QUEEN OF DEATH

“’The Queen of Death’,” Loki read. “How delightful.”

He chuckled at the author’s absurd name and then flipped to the next page.

It felt suddenly as if a lump had caught in his throat. He swallowed hard. The more Loki read, the heavier his chest began to feel. The resonance he had felt in his magic before began to grow. The air felt thick with each breath he took. It felt as if a whirlpool had started in the page break and was slowly sucking him in. He shook his head and blinked, steeling himself, strengthening his aura against this onslaught.

The book was clearly cursed itself and he was certain for any novice sorcerer it would be impossible not to be corrupted by it. But he was no novice. He let out an exasperated breath.

 “You won’t hide your secrets from me.”

The book seemed to react to his determination. He felt a pain in his head like he had been hit with an axe. He felt cold. He’d never felt cold. He shook his head and glanced up at Kuna.

“I’m doing this for her,” he said under his breath. He felt the thickness subside and turned to the next page.

He searched the book for Kuna’s curse, his shaky finger tracing down the lengthy column of curses in the table of contents.

“Curse of agony, blah, blah, curses of fear, of frenzy, da, da, da, of lies, of leaping, oh my, of melting flesh? No, no, no, Loki, we’re here for a reason,” he stopped himself, pulling his eyes away from the page and taking a deep breath before looking back again. “Da, da, da, of poison, oh, of possession. Stop! ‘T’ where are the ‘T’s””

He stopped abruptly on an entry:

CURSE OF TIED TONGUE

As he turned to the pages and began to read through the ritual for cursing an individual with a tied tongue, the blood began to drain from his face. He clenched his jaw so tight his teeth began to hurt. The heaviness he had pushed out began to creep back over him. His ears began to ring. With each step he read to this vicious ritual, a pit in his stomach grew.

“Restrain the victim, if possible, for they will struggle incessantly to escape. Some form of hypnosis or mind control will also suffice. For ease of the caster’s concentration, keep also the victim’s mouth gagged for the duration of the ritual, except for final steps.”

Loki tried unsuccessfully to block out the image of a restrained and frightened Kuna from his mind. He grunted in frustration and forced himself to focus.

“Force the victim into a state of agony - by any means of the caster’s choosing - whilst chanting the following incantation which bars them from speaking of the caster’s chosen subject.”

Through the din of ringing that had begun in his ears, Loki thought he heard Kuna scream. His breath caught in his throat as he sat up hard against the wall. There was absolute silence in the tent, save for Loki’s ragged breathing. He looked at Kuna, fast asleep on her bedroll.

“Kuna?” he whispered.

“Mmmm,” Kuna hummed softly in her sleep, undisturbed.

Loki closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. He opened his eyes and looked down at the book. He felt exhausted. Slowly, he opened the book again to the page he had been reading.

“When the ritual is complete, the victim can be released. They will no longer be able to speak of subject of the caster’s choosing. Instead, the action will be replaced by the agony the caster forced upon them. Persistent attempts by the victim to speak of the subject can result in eventual amnesia in its regard. Examples of successful states of agony include pain of the body (specific or generalised), inability to breathe, inability to speak, inability to form coherent speech, etc, etc.”

Additional agonies had been scratched in the margins in different hands and inks.

“Sudden onset of singing, dancing, sleeping.

Frenzy.

Fear.

Death.

Melting flesh.

Combine ‘agonies’ to increase power of curse.”

“Gods,” Loki cringed.

He scanned further down the page, looking for how to reverse the curse. Not seeing it, he turned the page.

“UNTYING THE TONGUE”

“Gross,” Loki muttered. He ran his finger down the page, reading the instructions.

“This doesn’t seem so bad,” he said. “Actually, seems rather easy. We could do this tomorrow. Or now.”

He noticed a smudge at the end of the page and leaned closer to see. The dim light he had conjured was not the best for night reading. The little orb of light bobbed around the ceiling of the tent, occasionally flickering.

“Come over here, you stupid orb!” Loki whispered aggressively at the floating sphere. “You’re supposed to be over here! By me!”

The light tottered over, bumping into the wall as it drifted towards him.

“Useless thing,” Loki grumbled as the light settled over his head.

He leaned in close to see the smudge was actually an indication of a footnote.

“Ugh, of course, there’s always a bloody footnote.” He rolled his eyes and searched for the footnotes. The more digging he did in the book, the heavier the feeling in his aura became, and the more agitated he felt. Finally, he found them, buried in the back of the book.

“Here we go,

Only the casting sorcerer can lift a tied tongue curse. Death of the caster does not release the          victim from the curse.”

Loki looked up, staring blankly across the room. He sat up and slowly closed the book. He stood and walked outside the tent into the crisp night air. His fist was clenched tight, his teeth near to cracking under the pressure of his jaw. He looked down at the book in his hand. His whole body now shaking with anger.

He threw the book as hard as he could, letting out a shout as he did. The book sailed kilometers into the darkened horizon. Loki growled and hissed. He felt the sting of tesseract energy as a portal opened beside him and the book sailed through it and smacked him in the face.

“Arrrrgh,” Loki growled. He glanced back at the tent, and Kuna still asleep inside. He swung the book around in frustration. Opening another portal to a random place, he stuck his head through and screamed with all his might.

He felt no remorse for the humans on the other side of the portal, whose dinner he appeared to have abruptly and loudly interrupted. When he had finished, his energy felt clean again, free from the book’s dark grip. His mind felt lighter, though he was still racked with rage over the conditionality of these curses.

He returned to the tent. Kuna had not moved. Loki stood over her for a moment, watching. How could someone do something so horrible to someone so small? What threat could she possibly pose to anyone to justify such drastic measures?

He shook his head. It didn’t matter now. What was done was done and he was going to undo it. He stretched and popped his back. Laying down on his bedroll next to Kuna, he watched her chest rise and fall with her gentle breathing. He pushed a lock of hair off her face and pulled the blanket up to her chin. With a flick of his hand, the dim light he had been using to read by went out and he fell asleep.

***

Kuna’s eyes opened slowly. She felt a weight on her side that had not been there when she fell asleep the night before. She looked down and saw Loki’s arm draped over her. She smiled. Very, very slowly, she turned over onto her other side to face him. She put her head on his chest and snuggled close. He didn’t push her away this time. He was still asleep.

She drifted in and out of sleep for a bit, savoring cuddle time with Loki. Light began to shine in through the windows of the tent. Kuna wondered how long Loki would sleep in. She was normally up before sunrise.

Her stomach growled. She grimaced and looked up at Loki, watching him. Carefully, she wiggled out from under his arm, replacing her toys under his arm where she had been. He snored softly but did not wake.

She stretched and yawned, then flinched at the sight of the room. There were books scattered everywhere. Loki had clearly been up reading last night. Kuna got up and started picking up books and stacking them in neat piles. She lined the walls with them, so they were out of the way. Each stack was perfectly level, spines facing out.

Finished with this task, she looked around for something else to do. Her eyes landed on a rogue book. A big, black book with scratches on the cover. She walked timidly over to it and knelt down to pick it up. Her hand hovered over the book, suspended in the air like it was repelled by a magnet. She shook her head and stood up. Something felt wrong about that book. It felt magicky. Stepping just outside the tent door, she picked up a stick and returned to the book and pushed it with the end of the stick over to the wall.

She looked over at Loki, cuddling with her toys on the floor. She had grown impatient with Loki’s excessive sleeping and so had her tummy. She laid down and crawled close to him.

“Loki?” she whispered. He did not stir. “Loki,” she said again, a little louder this time. Still there was no response. She apprehensively raised a finger and poked his arm. He snored on. Kuna frowned.

“Loki?” she asked again, a little louder. He turned onto his back, taking her toys with him. Kuna jumped and dove under her blanket. She peeked out from under to see if he was angry, but he was still asleep. Crawling closer once more, she poked him in different places, his arm, his leg, his chest, even his face, but he did not wake. She lifted her finger again and moved slowly towards his hair.

“Don’t you dare,” he said, a smile creeping across his face.

Kuna erupted in giggles. Loki sat up. He held out the stuffed animals in his hand and looked at them, confused and laughed, then grabbed Kuna putting her in his lap. She squealed with joy.

“Loki! Loki! Loki!” he mimicked, over and over, poking her chest and sides and neck. Kuna could not contain herself, she was giggling, trying to poke him back. He set her down and shook his head, laughing.

“What? What is it, child?” he asked, still laughing.

“I’m hungry,” she said, sheepishly.

“Are you?”

Kuna nodded.

“Well, we’re going to have to fix that, aren’t we?”

She nodded some more. “Yes, please.”

“Let me see here,” Loki said, as he searched the basket for some breakfast for Kuna. He pulled up only a small bit of bread. “Oh, is that it? I think it’s time for us to go shopping again.”

“Did you eat dinner last night?” Kuna asked him.

“Hmm? Oh, no, I was reading for a long time and the book was very frustrating and–” Kuna pushed Loki’s hand with the piece of bread back towards him. “And… I must have forgot. Kuna, you’re going to eat this. Don’t worry about me. We’ll go shopping today and get more. I’m fine.”

“You have to eat too,” she said.

He gave her the bread. “I’m fine. Eat this for now.”

“You eat.”

“No, you eat.”

Kuna stood and shook her head. “No, you.”

“Kuna–”

“You! Ah!” She pointed at Loki and then opened her mouth and pointed inside.

“You’re becoming very stubborn,” he said. “Who knows where you could have gotten that from.” He took a small bite out of the bread to pacify the defiant child. “Oh, you cleaned. You didn’t have to do that,” he acknowledged the tidied tent.

Kuna shrugged. “I don’t mind. But I think there’s something wrong with that book over there.”

“Which one? The black one?”

She nodded.

Loki gulped, choking a bit on the dry bread. “You didn’t open that one, did you?”

“I didn’t, I swear!” Kuna said, dropping to her knees and putting her hands over her head. “I promise! I didn’t open it. I promise!”

Loki sighed. “No – it’s all right—I didn’t mean to scare you like that. I—I just—oh, please don’t cry.”

“I promise I didn’t look at them without your permission!”

“It’s all right. I believe you. Please, don’t cry.” Loki reached forward and put his hand on Kuna’s shoulder. “I’m not upset with you, I promise.”

She looked up at him and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Scooting closer, she reached out to him, and he picked her up, setting her in his lap.

“Is that book bad? Will it make me blind?” She sniffled.

“No, no, no. It won’t blind you, darling, but it’s not a very nice book. I think it’s been cursed.”

Kuna shrank in his lap, staring at the book. “Did you open it?”

“Yes. But I’m a very powerful sorcerer so I know what to do with books like that.”

“Throw them away?”

“No!” Loki chuckled. “You don’t want to throw a book away! What if there are incredible secrets in there?”

“They should stay that way,” Kuna whispered.

“Oh, where’s your sense of adventure, Kuna? That book,” -he pointed at it- “gave me the answers to what we were looking for.”

“It did?”

“Yes. Well, sort of.”

“What did it say?”

Loki had fallen into a trap. “Um, well.” He feared unintentionally setting off Kuna’s curse by telling her about it. “It gave me instructions on how to help you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, that’s why we took all these books.” Loki was surprised by her lack of memory regarding the reasons they had gone to Asgard.

“How can a book help me? You’ve already helped me so much. You freed me and you gave me food and clothes and toys and–”

“Yes, but… well.” He ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck. Kuna looked up at him inquisitively. “That book is a book about curses. All the different kinds of curses and how to perform them. That’s why I didn’t want you to read it.”

“A cursed book of curses?”

“Precisely.”

“That sounds scary,” she whispered, wrapping herself in Loki’s cape. “How is that going to help me?”

Loki hesitated. “Well, Kuna, I think someone on your home planet may have cursed you.”

Kuna’s face went blank, expressionless. She turned grey. She shook her head, first a little then frantically, side to side.

“Now, now, everything’s all right,” Loki consoled her, gently rocking her.

“No. No!” she whispered. “I’m not cursed! It’s not true!”

“Shhhh,” Loki whispered, rocking her. “I’m going to fix it.” He gently stroked her hair and hugged her, holding her tight.

“I don’t have any magic, sir!”

Loki closed his eyes. He had triggered her curse. With time, she calmed down, clutching a handful of his hair. She sniffled and occasionally let out a sob.

“Look at me, darling. Do you remember who did this to you?”

“No,” she whispered.

“You told me once someone hurt you with magic,” Loki said. “Who was that?”

Kuna shifted uncomfortably, rubbing her arms. “Sometimes when I was bad, my masters would use their magic to punish me. It hurt a lot.”

“Mmm,” Loki nodded, hugging her again. “I’m sorry, darling. They were horrible people. I doubt were ever truly ‘bad’.”

Kuna stared at the ground.

“I’m guessing these Masters don’t let slaves use magic,” Loki said.

“Oh no!” Kuna exclaimed. “For a slave to have magic is the worst sin imaginable! If a slave has magic,” -she shuddered with fear- “all the masters slaves must be culled, and the slave’s family too.”

“My, that seems a bit much,” Loki said.

Kuna shook her head. “Slaves shouldn’t have magic. They would use it for evil things.”

“And who told you that?”

“The Masters,” they both said in unison. Loki nodded.

“Yes, I’m starting to understand,” Loki said, rolling his eyes. “What sorts of evil things would a slave use magic for?”

“Slaves are weak, and magic makes weak people do bad things. Slaves would use magic to trick and steal and kill people.”

Loki put both hands on either side of Kuna’s head. “My child, you have been brainwashed.”

Kuna put her hands on Loki’s. “No one’s washed my brains!”

“No, it means that these Masters on your home-system have forced you to believe all these things that are not true so that they can continue doing whatever they want to you.”

She gasped. “With magic?”

“Mmm, no. Propaganda can be just as powerful as magic.”

“Propa-what-now?”

“Propaganda. I’ll explain later, what’s important is that they are very wrong about slaves and magic and you.”

Kuna looked down at the ground again. She did not know what to think. The Masters had never been wrong about anything. Ever. At least, not that she could remember.

“Kuna,” Loki said. She looked up at him. He wiped the tears off her cheek with his thumb. “I know this is a lot to take in. It isn’t easy learning that your life has been a lie, believe me. But I’m going to make things better for you. Do you trust me, darling?”

Kuna nodded and hugged him tight.