Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

1 | The Prince

No one usually disturbs Y/N as she sleepily slides a damp mop over the steps of Asgard Palace.

That's her job; to clean the entryway. To scrub the stairs of footprints until their smooth surface is polished enough to reflect vague outlines of clouds.

Y/N has to do this during the early hours of the morning so the vestibule is ready for its busy day ahead. 

This means she has to drag herself out of bed before the sun, and trudge outside with various cleaning equipment hanging off her arms, only the moon to light her way. By the time she is finished, the skin of her hands is raw and chapped and numb from the cold.

She doesn't mind, really. 

She likes watching the little streams of water run off the step she's sponging at and dribble onto the next one, then the next, and the next. The gold colour of the staircase shines through the suds, making it look like they're melting. 

She likes being awake for the dawn chorus; creatures declaring that they've survived the night by bursting into vibrant song. 

And the sunrises. 

Y/N usually finishes scrubbing just as the sun begins to stain the sky a delicate pastel peach; she takes a seat on the top step and observes as streaks of pink appear and start slicing the horizon to ribbons.

It's also better than her last job. 

Most jobs are better than her last job; Y/N was hired---originally---by the head cook of the servant's quarters; a coarse-looking woman as large as a steam train and twice as loud. 

She is called Ylva. Ylva never bothered to learn anyone's names, just barked 'girl' or 'lad' from across the room, then---if she failed to be heard over the roaring ovens and boiling pots---she'd hurl some kind of vegetable in their general direction. She liked putting salt in everything until it was as bitter as her personality, flinging orders around to assert dominance, and cleanliness.

In Ylva's kitchen, cleanliness was the paramount concern. Oatmeal for five-hundred servants could burn to a crisp and she wouldn't bat an eye, but may the gods forbid you spill said oatmeal on a shiny countertop, or let a drop fall to the spotless floor. 

Y/N's job was mainly to peel things and then cut various other things, but she spent a lot of time trying to mop up stains before Ylva got wind of them and reacted by blaming it on---and then firing---the closest individual.

Maybe it was this---Y/N's newly implanted instinct for tidiness---that got her promoted to tending to the front steps by the head of housekeeping, and then promoted again soon after that.

She hadn't seen her second promotion coming, literally and figuratively. She'd just finished working her way along the length of the last of the many, many steps, and there it was. 

Or, rather, there he was.

He must have been there for some time. 

Y/N hadn't noticed him approach, although she should have done. 

He was almost two meters tall and dressed in thin moss-coloured linen; an utterly ineffective shield against the frosty air. And he was the Allfather's second-born son, although that thought registered peculiarly late in Y/N's mind.

It's not that he didn't look like a prince, he just didn't look like a prince of...here. He's the only raven-haired child in a family of blondes. Most males in the realm are stocky and hardened from manual labour, whereas he is lean and lithe, and, despite the year-round onslaught of vibrant midday sun, his skin remains as pale as porcelain.