Day 2 - Monster Under the Bed (Thor & Sylvie, SFW)
Something was amiss in Thor’s chambers. He’d discovered his door ajar upon returning from his afternoon history lesson, and felt with a tingle on the back of his neck that there was someone waiting inside.
“Hello?” He called through the crack, but no one answered, so he shoved it the rest of the way open and crossed the threshold with his fists held ready.
He glanced around, noticing a few things appeared to be knocked over and out of place. But by who? And why? A muffled snuffling sound pricked Thor’s ears in the quiet. He paced closer to the bed, and the sound grew louder, and louder still when he crouched down. He dropped onto his hands and knees, and peered under the bed.
He almost startled at the face staring back at him from the thin space. The face was deep blue in color, the skin decorated with ornate ridges, and the red on red eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. The creature’s expression pinched into a sob, and a fresh set of tears followed the tracks already lining her face. Thor matched posture, laying down on his side with his arm serving as a pillow, so the face was no longer sideways, but upright to his eyes.
“I think I’ve gotten a bit old for hide and seek, sister,” He said.
Sylvie gave a wet sounding laugh and managed a wan smile, and he was all at once glad that he’d suppressed his surprise at her ancestral appearance; it was not the first but the second time he’d seen it, after all. The first had been a terrible day, decades earlier, when she had been dangerously sick with a fever too high for her physiology to handle. Mother and Eir enchanted an ice bath so cold it burned Thor’s hand when he touched it, and so he screamed bloody murder when they went to submerge her in it. He knew she was a Frost Giant, but fear overrode logic in his young mind, and he had to be restrained by Odin as she was being lowered in.
But after only a moment in the icy liquid her skin had flushed a deep azure, her terrible shivering ceased, and she’d been able to truly rest for the first time in days, Frigga holding her head to make sure it didn’t slip below the surface in her sleep. “Sister looks weird but pretty,” he recalled saying, while stroking her long, dark hair.
She looked no less so now, if a bit disconcerting when found hunkering under his bed.
“What happened,” Thor coaxed.
Sylvie freed one arm enough to wipe at her nose with her sleeve. “I wanted to show off to the other kids in my botany class today, so–don’t lecture me–I tried to perform a revealing spell for them. It turned back on me and…and it revealed what is under father’s enchantment.” She rushed through the last part, stumbling over her words.
“And what happened next?” Thor scooted a few inches closer and offered his hand, palm up. She took it. Tears welled in Sylvie’s crimson eyes once more.
“They c-called me a m-m-monster,” She sobbed. “I ran right here, because people kept staring at me.”
When looking for safety, she’d come to her big brother’s room. Thor squeezed her chilly blue fingers. “Want me to punch anyone in the nose?”
Sylvie laughed. “No, they’re too little compared to you, it wouldn’t be right. And I’ll get them later, I’ll put snakes in their shoes.”
“As long as no snakes are harmed in the process. Are you ready to come out? You can stay in my room as long as you like, this is a safe to be blue space.”
Sylvie offered her other hand, and he took it and dragged her out from her hiding place. Her tunic and leggings were rumpled and dusty.
“If you want you can rest here with me a bit, and then I’ll go get mother to turn you back, so you don’t have to walk anywhere else like this if you don’t want to.”
She nodded and sniffed, so Thor kicked his boots off and climbed onto the bed, seating himself with his back against the headboard. Sylvie crawled in after him, and laid down with her small head in his lap.
“I can tell you a story, how about the Midgardian one about the bird women who lure sailors to their deaths.”
“They’re called sirens, and I’m too old for stories, but sure.”
“No one is too old for stories, Sylv,” Thor said, and proceeded to tell it with as many embellishments as possible, making sure that the sailors of the Midgardian seas were the villains, pirates invading the siren’s lands, and the sirens weren’t monsters but people defending their home. He stroked her hair all the while, until her breaths were long and even with sleep. He carefully relocated her head to a pillow, and pulled his boots back on.
“If you’re a monster, you’re my little monster,” Thor whispered, then slipped out into the hallway to go find their mother.