Sloughing

Loki looked unusually drawn, standing in her doorway.

“Mother, may I speak with you? I-if you will allow it– mother–”

Frigga dismissed her handmaidens without another word. There was more than enough to busy them elsewhere, and it was clear the child was distressed. He’d always been the more talkative one of her sons – Thor had made him spokesman on more than one occasion, bidding him relate some boyish event in dramatic fashion while the other participants looked mutely proud of themselves or interjected with colorful details. As he’d gotten older, his speech had cooled somewhat, from an explosively enthusiastic torrent to finer, more artful speeches, but he had never been reluctant to talk, unless his pride had been wounded. Seeing him choke over words was distressing. Frigga bade him sit on her lap. He was approaching the age where children blushed and grew indignant at that, but he made no protests, doing so only gingerly, pulling on his tunic.

“My child, you may speak freely.”

Even so prompted, he remained silent. Frigga stroked the hair from his face. No one had yet combed it for him; by his trembling he must have made haste straightaway to his mother’s quarters. Her own hair hung over her shoulders, half-braided; during the pause that ensued Loki’s small, spidery hands had begun trying to finish the job. Such a helpful child.

“Did someone chase you here? Loki, you don’t have to play those kinds of games, even if Fandral and your brothers–”

“I was changing my clothes for the morning, and Thor wasn’t there, and– and this–”

He acted like he was uncovering an infected wound, lifting the bottom hem of his slightly too-long tunic. (Frigga made note of that, quietly, as well as the uncertain flicker of an illusion clearing away, of unknown type.) There was fresh blood spotting his grey breeches.

“You’re bleeding–”

His face crumpled, and his response came in a thin whisper. “Yes.”

Frigga would confess it. Her first thought was a horror, one no mother would willingly entertain. But in the same alarmed intake of breath, she remembered it. This particular son of Odin was not… constructed the way other sons were.

Never mind that she hadn’t borne him. Loki was her child, and she attended to these things. If handling the babe before he’d been old enough for a nurse hadn’t brought the matter to light – she had thought for a moment, even, that that circumstance was why the child had been discarded to start with. Not the hearty male heir that Laufey had wanted, and Odin was determined to raise him as just that. Perhaps hoping an unmanlike prince might disdain war. Frigga had thought long and hard about the taking-up of this child. She hadn’t considered this. Monthly bleeding had not even begun for Frigga until a later age than Loki was at, only a pale sprout of a child, and that had been impossibly long ago, so long, and he was a skinny, sporting lad, not like a girl at all except in that regard. Perhaps a Frost Giant could offer a better explanation, but this was a difference she doubted even all-knowing Odin had considered.

“…oh, my son,” Frigga sighed, and embraced him. Loki went slack for a moment, clinging to her like he had as a much younger boy, but when it seemed to go on too long he jerked away, wide-eyed.

“What’s the matter? What is it? A disease–”

Frigga’s mouth pressed into a tight line.

“A matter relating to women and their magic,” she said.
His eyes flashed. “What?”

“Courses, as Midgard has tides. They will be infrequent, I should think, but –”

“It’s going to happen again?” He stumbled back, still tugging on his own clothes alarmedly, and another rusty stain became evident, on the green cloth of his cuff twisted up in his hands. His eyes searched her face for some kind of reassurance, and suddenly he demanded, “Mother, has this happened to you?”

Frigga smiled – not at his distress but at the earnestness of the question. One day, might he find a particularly understanding wife and share stories.

“…not in some time, but yes. It isn’t shameful, it comes to many in their time, it only signifies that…”

You will one day become a mother? This did not seem like it would be of much comfort. Perhaps living among the women of Asgard he might have been better prepared, but as far as Thor and his friends were concerned, that would have been laughable. And how would he have understood? By the standards of a race of gods, he might know much about other things, but – what if this body grew to repulse him? The possibilities of that magic which thus far had shown as only tricks – wicked tricks, sometimes, but pranks and amusements – extending so far gave her a pang of concern.

“Your magic will only become stronger,” she finished.

“I don’t see the relation,” Loki said sourly, but some of the tension ebbed away from his face. His hands ceased to knot. “Can it be staunched altogether? Everyone’s going to notice–”

Perhaps with a spell, but Loki experimenting with that particular aspect of the healing profession seemed profoundly unsafe.What the future held for a boy like that, she could scarcely imagine, and she doubted looking into the matter too much would calm anyone’s nerves.

“If there is pain, tell me, I will speak to Eir in confidence. The blood won’t come out easily, but it will, and I’ll show you what to do while the bleeding lasts…”

There were no ceremonies today, no pressing engagements; Frigga was free to explain the subject at greater length if it were necessary, and teach her son what his father hadn’t.