Who: Loki What: Dream! (narrative; aka, Erin randomly couldn't sleep until she wrote this?) Where: Dreamland, then bedroom, then space-between-spaces, then random field. When: NOW. (7/18, ~1am) wHY: I dunno. If someone can tell me, that'd be greeeat. Rating: Moderate? It's got some weird imagery about freezing to death in it? IDK.
One of the more useful aspects of Loki's lineage was his inability to feel cold - or, really, heat; warmth registered a great deal more easily, but his body seemed to regulate itself easier, shifting temperatures to a neutral state, cooling him when he was hot and simply ignoring the cold entirely. It was that which sometimes made him wonder how he had never questioned - how he had never even entertained the idea that he might be something other than Aesir. The others were chilled to the bone by even the mild winters of Asgard, by the snow-covered peaks of mountains - never mind a trek into Jotunheim - and yet Loki had never been truly cold (not until he had come here, not until his powers had been stripped from him and he'd understood what physical cold was). Now, it was what drew his attention to the fact that this was a dream.
He was cold.
Immediately, he focused on leaving the dream. He was strong enough - it was not difficult to control his own dreams once he was made aware of the fact that that was, indeed, what they were. And while he did not remember what had come before the realization of the fact that he was cold, he knew it had to be a dream, so he knew he should break out of it. His mind was more powerful than the average human, and even they could do it. It was simple. His figure in the dream stilled, and he extracted himself from the shape of his body, drifting above and beyond, surveying the scene he'd found himself experiencing in his slumber.
Loki stood with his hands outstretched, ice creeping up his skin - not the blue hue that took over his shape when the Jotun in his blood emerged, but actual crystals of ice. The scene had stopped when he'd pulled himself free, and he frowned in confusion at the half-story it told.
At his feet was a body, familiar and precious and he could see even through the ice that encased her that it was Darcy, and that she was no longer alive. There were other shapes in shells of ice, too, and he drifted through the frozen scene with a growing sense of unease and confusion. Here, it was Emma, clutching a bundle that he knew was Aislinn in one arm, her frozen hand around the smaller one of her son, pulling him with her. Trying to flee, to save her children. Halted by the creeping chill and ice.
Frigga, too - his mother, by love if not by blood. She stood tall and regal, chin up and facing down whatever had happened with confidence. With strength despite her fear.
Others, as well. More shapes - dozens, ice-sheathed shapes dotting the area, some running, some standing still, some on the ground clutching at themselves...
He turned back to his own shape, an anger building inside him that he could not quite direct anywhere - it was at himself, but he knew this, he.... it wasn't real, here. This was not reality, and he could not be angry at himself for something that he did not do. He knew that. But still, it was there - impotent anger beginning to boil.
That anger soon turned to horror as he realized that the dream version of himself was not to blame for this - at least, not directly. He had not noticed the details - the subtle facets of his own expression were not something he often saw from this perspective, were not something he had truly studied beyond how to form those looks, to look a certain way to create a desired reaction from others - but he had never truly seen his own eyes that full of a genuine fear before.
Nor had he noticed the small blue item sitting on the ice-sheathed ground.
Behind his form. Behind those who had tried to escape.
He was fleeing, too.
The feeling of being slammed back into his own dream-shape as he lost focus on being separate was as dizzying as the realization of what was happening. Within the confines of the dream once more, he was once again cold, an unsettling chill spreading from his hands - reaching down, reaching for Darcy - to his forearms, spreading from his feet to his legs, starting from his edges and sinking into him, digging sharp chilled claws into his being and tearing him apart inside. He could feel his blood freezing, crystals expanding inside and creating fractures. Fissures. Spaces where there should not be spaces. He was rupturing from within, little by little, every second a terrifying, frigid agony. He grappled violently at the freedom he had experienced a moment ago, tearing himself from his dream-body and throwing himself into awareness before the end of the dream could drag him under.
Awake, now, Loki found himself pushing back blankets, the tops of which were now spiderwebbed in thin ice crystals. His mind was already weaving webs of shielding around itself, trying to contain the bleed of his panic before it could distract anyone else; his feet hit the floor and then he was gone, to the space-between-spaces. He rarely came here, himself - though he sent many items here, set them here so he could retrieve them later. It was not safe to enter between-spaces often; time did not exist here, and if he stayed too long he would have no way to be certain.
He would not stay long.
He crossed a space of nothingness to where he had sent the Casket of Ancient Winters. It sat as it usually did - a faint humming not-voice in his head and a swirl of blue-black inside the crystal box, but otherwise quiet and still. No ice spreading from it, no clawed sentient cold prying at the edges of the void to escape. It was simply an item. An artifact. A weapon.
He left it in the void, where it was safe from any other hands - and from his own, he hoped - and slipped back to real spaces, to grass underfoot and thick, warm summer air, to stars and moonlight instead of empty blackness or deadly ice.
It was not real. It was simply a dream, and it meant nothing. He knew this. Still, he was certain he would not be able to sleep any longer, this evening - though he did not remember the beginning of the dream, he had no desire to experience it again, nor anything similar.
Perhaps it was best if he did something productive, for a time.