"And we had a long talk, he revealed to me that he is planning to visit me. I mean, a real surprise for me, can you believe it?", admits your friend excitedly, carrying her hands around her face, which had taken on a very strong and evident red colour, which testifies to how much the whole soulmate thing had gone to her head.
The situation was quite simple, but at the same time complex: we all have a soulmate. At some point in our lives, they should reveal themselves to us, simply by talking. We don't know their names, their faces, but only their voices. This is how we know the person with whom we are destined to spend the rest of our lives.
And yet, it happened to everyone, but not to you. At the school canteen table, around you, the girls and boys talk about their halves, about how maybe some had already had the opportunity to meet them.
Since there is no way you can enter into the conversation, no matter how much your friends try to know something, asking you questions that you would not have been able to answer without having had the opportunity to talk to your soulmate, you prefer to dissociate yourself. You keep reading the book you bought a few days ago, based on Norse mythology and who else but Loki. Not that you were a believer in religion under any circumstances, but the interest was born purely from the millions of stories you had seen thanks to the Marvel films, which have always been one of your greatest passions. Whether it was TV series, comics, books or movies, you were always willing to devote your time to the world of superheroes as long as you can remember.
Page after page, you read about what happened to Ragnarok, about how Loki simply wanted to make it clear that he was not a monster like many people drew him, that the only way he could make his voice prevail over others was, even though he was part of the family of the Father of the Gods, by committing mischief.
To interrupt your immersion between pages of myths, tales and magic is the one who never stopped talking about her man. She claps her fingers on your shoulder, trying to peek at the pages, only to ask you "What are you reading?".
You close the book, to show her the green cover on which there is a large golden inscription quoting "Loki: the myth of Ragnarok", making her immediately roll her eyes to the sky. Immediately afterwards, however, you both burst out in a loud laughter.
"I thought it was something much more interesting," she says, taking the book out of your hands so that she could leaf through it quickly, carelessly. "How many strange drawings."
"It's interesting to me, what's wrong with it?", you take the book back quickly, so you can put it in your backpack, away from her clutches.
"Join in the conversation instead of being alienated all the time!", she takes you back, in a maternal way, but you don't like it in any way. She holds an eyebrow up and looks at you, nodding her head towards the group of people who pay no attention to you.
"I don't understand why you have to be so rude. You know I don't have anything to say about it", you murmur to her, narrow teeth, before you can leave the table and head for your class.
The rest of the school day proceeds very slowly but quietly at the same time. Going home was a relief. You had planned, with your family, a movie night like so many others, the only difference being that it was up to you to choose what to watch for that time - and you didn't miss a chance to immediately choose the first Avengers movie, probably one of your favourites.
It was fun watching it all together, no matter how much you had to listen to the complaints of those who just couldn't stand Tony's superiority complexes, how boring those aliens were or how bad Loki had been and deserved such punishment.
It was an excellent debate. There were those who wanted to judge him, and those who, like you, knowing the rest of the filmography and the story, tried to make others understand that he would actually become a very good character, despite all the fake deaths and everything else about the God of Mischief. After all, it's easy to understand how conflicted he can be as a character, and how much he can be within the reach of very few people.
"You can't tell me that he'll have redemption if they've made a whole film about him introducing aliens to New York and killing poor people for no particular reason!", they tell you, frowning, with excellent remarks. But you just shrug your shoulders.
"On the next movie nights I'll show you that it's not what you say. Promise me that you will let me choose what to watch and you will change your mind. Guaranteed", you try to convince them, showing off the best of your smiles. Hoping it will lead to a good result, even if they look each other in the eye, ready to respond in unison.
"No way."
Meanwhile, on another planet...
Trying to understand what they were talking about was not easy. He began to believe that he was life and deathly attached to an insane person, probably with a little bit of madness, and that it would be fun to look for her far and wide, but then he had to silence his thoughts and rely on the last of his options: asking his brother for help. As much as he hated the idea of even having to listen to him for even more than a moment.
The most particular aspect of the whole question of the soul mate was the fact that the woman to whom he was linked seemed to know him. She talked about him all the time. She spoke of him as someone who through redemption would be able to show the whole world that in reality, deep in his heart, he was not as bad as others might think. Those were different words. No one had ever spoken of him in that way. He liked to listen to her because he seemed to recognize the tones of his mother in those of a girl who, although she did not know him, saw something different in him. But how, and above all, why? After the whole question of aliens and imprisonment, it seems difficult or even impossible to him that a human could fight against others to defend his name. Yet she did. She was constantly arguing with other people, who he hadn't yet been able to identify in any way, saying that "probably if he had a little more love from his father, none of this would have happened. How is it that a woman from another kingdom could understand this, yet his own family was still struggling to accept this sad and harsh reality?
He had not yet managed to communicate with his soulmate, unlike Thor, who communicated every day with a Midgardian woman with whom he had already promised eternal love. Therefore, he is probably the only one who can be useful to him in such circumstances.
Sitting on his golden throne, the God of Thunder chatters in a low voice, and noting the absence of people in the room, Loki supposes it is the woman in question. So he pretends to cough for a moment, drawing his attention. "Sorry to interrupt you two lovers, but I have a question to ask."
"I'm sorry, I have to leave you for a moment," he says, muttering a few more incomprehensible words that Loki wouldn't listen to anyway. "It's strange that you are asking me for help. What happened?"
"About the question of the soulmate...", he begins, step by step approaching the throne, to take his place on the stairs leading to the top of the room.
"Have you two finally spoken?!", he exclaims, more excited than either of them could even imagine. While Loki brings one hand to his forehead, surprised and at the same time embarrassed by all the joy that Thor seemed to emanate in knowing his brother in a relationship, the other closes his eyes and murmurs an excuse with tight teeth, aware that he has done too much.
"Back to us...", Loki resumes the reins of the conversation. He turns towards him, barely shaking his head. "I'm afraid I can't understand who I'm tied to. She's always talking about something like... movies, I think, and comics. I don't know what it is."
"Midgard!", he answers him immediately, rising from the throne. He ties both arms to his chest and bursts into a loud laugh, and Loki already knows what's going to happen. "There are a lot of things like that on Midgard about us, especially me and the Avengers. I doubt there are anything like that on any other of the nine kingdoms, at least as far as I know. It is very common on Earth."
"Midgard?" Loki turns his nose up, reminiscing about all the last moments he spent on Earth, the invasions and captivity, the fighting with his brother's companions. Certainly, it wasn't an easy day. But all in all, quite fun, by his standards. Every now and then he needed to cause a bit of chaos around the nine kingdoms, otherwise, what was the point of being in possession of such powerful magic and not being able to exploit it in any way?
"It seems that the fate of the Odinsons is linked to planet Earth, brother," Thor reaches out his arm and opens his hand, calling the Mjolnir to power. In the blink of an eye, it is in his fist. He throws the other one as if it were a feather, to pick it up by the handle. "I'm going to visit Jane, will you come with me?".
"Thank you, but I have other things to do", he replies, then looks at his brother asking Heimdall for help and, a moment later, with a beam of light, disappears, leaving him on those stairs with his mind full of thoughts, theories and so on. If until then he had imagined a prosperous future with some sorceress, worthy warrior or other important figures from the kingdom of Asgard at his side, right now he really doesn't know what to expect. And above all, after what happened on planet Earth, how could he have managed to make his soul mate believe in his not being such an unpleasant creature? Would his past have preceded him? Would she be willing to believe in a God? Even move to another planet? Would he be able to really show himself for what he really is in her eyes?
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I just wanna read some really good comments. Once again, thank you for all the love. Hope you will like it.
Giada. xx