Spring INCOMPLETE
The souls of the dead are quiet things.
She supposes it would be more fitting, more *myth*, if they were not--if they howled and cried and bemoaned their fate. Those are ghosts, the undead, those who would not let go, and they do not come to her kingdom while they yet cling to life. In truth, the souls here do not even remember the life they have left.
Not much.
Hela does not often pay mind to the souls that drift in her kingdom, though much of what her kingdom does is protect them.
(No one is quite sure when the ruler of Nifelheim decided to protect the souls that gather in its mists, but then no one remembers a time there were not souls that needed protecting, either.)
The few guests who come to her kingdom--traders mostly--marvel at the souls. She supposes they are worth marveling at: gentle, drifting, each iridescent opalescence. They flit between forms half-ingrained as they shed their former life. Some tend to playfulness, but most simply wander.
Occasionally, she sees a soul as it fades, mist pierced by the sun. Reborn. It is less common a sight than she first expected--as cats will hide and die alone, so do souls rebirth.
XXXXXX
"...and they should be arriving--"
Hela looks up from the list she is examining as Leah stops speaking; fortunate, for her young aide has stopped, staring at the courtyard, and Hela would have ran into her. Hela frowns slightly, turning her attention to the courtyard.
Flowers.
From side to side, the entire courtyard is layered in flowers--roses and lilies, freesias that bend and barely bloom. Vines along the walls, vibrant bursts and sprays of colours, and above it all a single apple tree bent by the weight of its fruit. There have no scent though, and when Hela steps forward, little physicality but--
(*the freesias are staying, I want an apple tree there, no, you have the roses*)
--certainly another kind of -ality.
Hela knows the voice of that memory well.
"Stand aside, Leah," she sighs.
"I've never seen such a thing," Leah says as she moves, wide-eyed. "It's... it's lovely."
"Indeed," Hela says, for it is that. It is also fleeting rare--the spirits given to these sorts of display rarely do so where they can be disturbed, but then her foster father has always been drawn to fine things. Little is so fine as the palace of Nifelheim (not even Asgard's halls, though she is aware many would argue). "Watch carefully, you will need repeat this often I suspect. Gently."
It is not so difficult a working, to tidy up the garden. Not difficult, but certainly delicate to nudge a sprawled soul together once more. There is a sigh on the air that has nothing to do with the wind, a certain bit of resistance as Hela works her spell, and then all at once the garden shrinks and coalesces.
The form left looks a bit like her foster father, at least to eyes used to picking out the essences that follow a soul from life to life. The bare hints of long limbs and lines, presence quiet but no less amused, and *hot*. Fire, flickering and lapping but not threatening to burn beyond its home. Greens and golds, and, odder, a bit of blue--that, she does not remember from when she last Looked at him.
"You mustn't block the paths," she tells him.
She dare says he snorts at her before he changes form: bird, or bird enough, leaping into the air and flying away.
"He--it is a he?--seems very..."
"Lively," Hela finishes for her aide. "I suspect things will grow more interesting here for a time."
Leah's head is tilted back, watching as Loki's spirit settles high on a spire of the east tower, bright against Nifelheim's ever present clouds.
"An ur-soul," Leah says. "We haven't seen one of those since Baldr died. Will he hide, like that one, do you think?"
"If we were only so lucky," Hela says dryly. "Come, you will see him plenty. When are the Vanir arriving?"
XXXXXX
"Is he here?" Leah asks, hovering at the door.
Hela prods the wolf-shaped spirit at her feet with a toe
(*she is very good, look she agrees with me, Sheeba, where, fur under hands and a sorrowful brown ey--*)
and smiles.
"Tame for the moment."
"I've looked everywhere for him, do you know that? Yves is furious--the kitchens are in total disarray, it looks like a-a-a battle, or a temper tantrum--"
Hela prods Loki again, more sharply,
(*Come here, Fenrir, good boy, yes, let’s go before--*)
and the spirit rolls over, clearly disinterested in what she thinks of his behavior.
Leah sighs, collapsing down next to him, pulling him half in her lap and burying her face against his corpus. Loki's hum in the air is pleased, shimmer vibration that suggests a key, distant--D major, perhaps.
"Don't grow too attached," Hela says, rote more than anything.
"I know," Leah says, voice distant and a little dreamy. "He has such beautiful memories...."
Hela thinks of her foster father's latest life.
"They will not stay so," is all she finally says.
(She will not forbid this--Leah may still be young, but this is not the first spirit she has ever grown attached to. This accounting, this ability to love and yet let go, is important; one day, Hela hopes to name Leah her heir.)
"I know," Leah says. "He reminds me of someone, I think."
"Another life."
"Perhaps." She runs a hand through the wisp-fire that is a constant presence around Loki. "Yves will likely be by soon."
"I gathered. Take him with you--and for Urd's sake keep him *fed* this time."
XXXXXX
Hela leaves Leah to deal with the soul, and beyond the occasional prank, it is, for her, as if he is hardly there.
(She does not resent him; she loves him, as well as she loves any single person.)
At least, until he sets fire to a room in the palace.
"I don't know what happened," Leah tells her. "He was *fine*, sleeping and--"
The flames are hot, yes, but more interestingly to Hela, they are *blue.* Blue-white, eating at the walls of the palace, devouring the furniture and rug. The palace will be fine--he is hardly the first soul to ever lash out with such force, and Nifelheim is prepared no matter how rare the occurrence might be. But blue? This is not Loki's soul, not as she knows it.
"Another life," Hela says.
"Yes, well, this is dreadful." Leah crosses her arms, glaring into the room.
Hela smiles.
"Likely worse for him, to react this way. “