Dark times left dark memories inside minds, none of them illuminating and, more often than not, said reminders only left room for darker thoughts to enter and fears to grow. All understandable, of course. Who wouldn’t be just the slightest bit fearful of poisons after what Loki had gone through? Perhaps being born into an infant, in that case, had been sweet relief for the time being. Sigyn had almost been grateful that it had occurred, thinking that if whoever or whatever had done this had taken the time to get to her, others (such as her tortured husband) had no doubt been taken to a safer place.
That being said, she’d much regretted the loss of her motor skills. It was hard asking for things when one’s mouth decided to go against orders and do whatever the gods it wanted to do instead of forming intelligent vowels and consonants as she had wished it to. But in time, she’d grown and life after life had brought her through trials and errors, into the arms of her beloved and out of them again. And finally, it brought here here, crouching before said beloved and, thankfully, in a much more accepting time.
It had been hard for Sigyn to pity or sympathize with those whose worlds were confined to such tiny states of existence. Their rules stacked on top of one another - more often than not, those who put them in place claiming to be speakers of the gods when in fact, they simply weren’t - until they practically buried themselves alive in an attempt to be considered worthy. They did not know the will of the gods. And, sadly, once Sigyn pointed that out in attempts to help them, they never reacted pleasantly.
Ingrates.
But be that as it may, there were things that still did and always would transcend the lives they had been cast into. Though it was never guaranteed that they would meet again, that just made their meetings sweeter and more meaningful. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, the proverb had once said. And it held true. As for human weddings, Sigyn cared not, though the sentiment that Loki would tie himself to her in such a way would no doubt be appreciated.
She leaned into his hand, smile still on her face as her greyish-green eyes took him in, searching for signs of wear and tear or trouble. As he touched brows with her, Sigyn raised her hands to clasp Loki’s face between them, fingers having been slipped out of their gloves in favor of finding pulse and life. “I am well in all ways this time around and all the more for having seen you. I think society has gotten a bit…looser in comparison to the last round.”
Sigyn chose not to close her eyes as her counterpart had done. Her eyes remained open and observant, as though trying to map each inch of skin and save it to memory, reveling in the mere sight of the one she loved. She didn’t want to miss a single breath this meeting. “And I, you. The world seems unable to compare to you, my dear.”
It had been a relief of the torment, truly. But the be reduced to infancy had been a whole different kind of torture. He had been controlled, and told what to do, and punished for following his nature unjustly. And he died. He died and he was reborn and he died and he was reborn and on some days he wondered if Odin hadn’t just decided to create a new torment for him - for how could he escape mortality and raise Ragnarok? It made him wonder about the fate of his family and his children until he saw them with different faces under different names and realized that they all suffered this cycle of death and rebirth.
Bothersome.
Loki sympathized very little with the mortals and their ideals and ideas. He cared not for what they considered to be improvement, considering to himself that all they were doing was destroying themselves while a god who called himself benevolent did nothing but sit back and allow what he called his creations to do as they willed. And if that meant swearing at him, cursing him, blaming him or turning their back on him, he cared not. He wondered how any omnipresent being could stand the insult.
But never mind all that.
Sighing at her touch, flesh-on-flesh and beautiful, he opened his eyes again to watch her speak; watch her eyes animate and take him in, her lips move and form the words that tumbled from a precise tongue and a voice beautiful and song-like, if not the wrong pitch. He smiled at her mentioning this society’s standing in morals they had once been firmly against, bumping noses with her playfully as response before full-out grinning at her last statement.
“Oh, yes, of course it is. Everything becomes dull when I am not allowed to play my best - but it has been dreary and grey without you to show off to.” He moved his hand from her cheek, wrapping his gloved fingers instead around her bare ones. Bringing the captured hand to his lips, he kissed the backs of them once, gentlemanly, before turning it palm-up and pressing a kiss to the middle of her palm devotedly. “You must tell me everything you have been up to. Last I saw you, we were dragged from our beds and burned for being unnatural creatures. I wish for happy memories and the sound of your laughter to replace the sound of screams and rioters.”
It always left the question, each reincarnation, from baby to child, youth to adult, adult to dust, who had sentenced them to such a fate? The more Sigyn observed, the more she questioned it. Though certain faces were missing, others had joined them. The Norse gods had not been the only ones, just as Loki and Sigyn had not been the only of their group, to suffer this habitual state. It left more questions than answers in her mind. After all, what had the power to place gods in such a state?
Surely it couldn’t be the humans.
Not the humans who were bound to the rules. The same humans who, through their own rules and their own pettiness, had dragged two lovers from their beds in the middle of the night to burn them. Not the same humans who often found it hard to forgive those who were different from them. No, they were the ones who had always been subservient. They’d always knelt and bowed down and never questioned…or had they?
But that, just as the certain past stories - such as what each reincarnation had for breakfast - were neither here nor there at the moment. Right now, Sigyn was content to simply bask in the wonder that she had found Loki once more. And this time, Odin willing, they wouldn’t be dragged out to a bonfire nor would the smell of their burning flesh incite cheering from a crowd of…well, Sigyn, there is no need to go spewing insults at this point in time, now is there?
It was the tiny attentions that always stood out to her. Loki, when he was with her, was the pinnacle of those romance movies so many fancied. That tiny, playful way bestowing little affectionate nudges and kisses, tiny and often on the side, it seemed as though most people wanted it. Sigyn was glad she had it. She nudged his nose back in return, getting oh so close to kissing him, but drawing away instead to keep her brow against his, eyes searching his with a kindness she could truly feel.
At the kisses to her palms, she leaned in to place one on his forehead, lingering there for a moment as she let herself laugh. “Well, let me just see…poison specialist in this life, a store owner in the last…though that wasn’t entirely easy to come by. I must say, life’s been dull without you, but I’ve gotten by. I’ve seen some wonderful things. The invention of man grows and…has its moments. I do miss Asgard, though. No amount of steel can replace it. And you? How has life been treating you?”
