Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house a loud hammering sound could be heard, along with occasional expletives.
Loki entered the living-room with some trepidation to find Sylvie at work. "Sylvie, what the… Are you nailing a Barbie doll to the tree?"
"It's a Ken doll," she corrected, witheringly. "Don't you know anything about the local religious customs?"
"What do you mean?" asked Loki, who didn't know very much about those but would never admit that.
"I read those leaflets Sharona gave us," Sylvie said, pointing at the pile on the coffee table, "and the tree god needs to be nailed to the tree. That's how he dies in the end." She put her free hand over her mouth. "Shit, spoilers."
"It's not a tree they nail him to," said Loki, with confidence of a man who knows far less than he realises, "it's a… a triangle. Or a cube. A shape of some sort anyway. Not the tree."
"Are you sure?" asked Sylvie, eyeing her crucified Ken doll.
"Yes," he lied. "The tree's for the birth, not the death. He was born under a tree."
"Like Yggdrasil?" asked Sylvie, pronouncing that much better than you or I would.
"Probably," said Loki. He sensed an opportunity to show off and even though he knew only slightly more than Sylvie did he was going to seize it anyway. "The tinsel symbolises the lightning of his storm powers - you know, like Thor - and the star on top of the tree is to remind his followers that his home planet orbits a star very much like their own sun. He's an alien, but an alien they can relate to."
"Aren't we relatable?" asked Sylvie.
"We are," he answered, with a certainty that ignored his own adventures in New York, "but he's more relatable. That's why the people who used to worship us now worship him instead."
They looked at the tree for a few moments, contemplative. They considered the nature of religion, and the fickle whims of history, and whether the Ken doll with a nail through his chest should have clothes on for the sake of decency.
Finally, Sylvie said, "I think I'll take the tree down."
Loki nodded. "It's making me feel like Thor's coronation did, but without the thrill of knowing I'd let in some Frost Giants to ruin his big day."
"I expect the thing with the nails ruined it eventually," said Sylvie, trying to cheer him up.
"Well, he probably deserved it," said Loki rather viciously. "What's he the god of anyway? Wood? Ha! I bet there are no fond Midgardian tales of this guy tying a goat to his own testicles!"
"There might be," said Sylvie, indicating the pile of proselytising literature they had been gifted with.
"Has he even fucked a horse?" asked Loki, warming to his subject (himself).
"I think this has gone far enough," said Sylvie.
~fin~