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It's that one. That one right there, on the top shelf near the window.
Frigga stretches up onto her toes. It’s a strain, and her calves cramp a little from the effort. She can only barely reach the book at all; she's tall for a woman, even an Aes, but her sons have long since shot past her. They’ve grown into giants, into strong trees inching ever skyward.
If she pushes up onto the ball of one foot and reaches as far as possible, she can just hook a finger inside the book's binding… into the fabric edging at the bottom of the spine.
She's mildly surprised to find she's actually able to inch the thing towards her.
Finally, after a little more fiddly work, she can really get a purchase on it. She guides the leather-bound volume carefully down with one hand and - as quickly as possible; it’s no small thing and, thick and heavy as it is, the book is far too much for her to balance long that way - then both until at last she's cradling it against the dirt-smeared bodice of her dress.
The leather itself is still supple. It’s soft and dark, long protected by its neighbors. Even where by all rights the thick pages’ upper edges should be filthy and faded there is only the lightest coating of dust. Frigga turns slowly away from the ornate bookshelf, holding the book perpendicular to her shoulders, before gently blowing that last little bit away.
Frigga crosses to Loki's reading table and props the book carefully on its spine while she takes a seat. She doesn't let the thing fall open, exactly - she guides the leather-bound covers down until the backs of her hands rest on the dark wood - but nonetheless she wants to let the pages part where they may. The book needs to choose her starting point for her.
When it does, she cannot help but smile as she smoothes its pages flat. The runes running down the leftmost page in neat, perfect columns spell out a charm of eternal friendship. In the margin adjacent to the last column, in neatly rounded childish script, Loki has written "for my brother, that we may be together always."
Well, not exactly.
If Frigga shifts her weight on the bench and twists to look across the page's surface rather than straight down upon it, she can see the original words Loki (with, at the time, his child's command of seidr) had only managed to nearly eliminate: "...that he may never leave me."
~
"But I want to do magic," Loki had protested, stomping his little, slippered foot in stubborn anger. "I am not prince of penmanship; I am prince of Asgard."
Frigga had bitten back a grin. "One moment," she'd assured the (obviously equally frustrated, for all he'd summoned the relative maturity not to stomp or whine) tutor. "I’ll handle this."
"Darling," she'd said to Loki, squatting to look her pouting little boy in the eye, "this is the first step to making magic. You must master your pen before you can safely cast." She'd leaned forward then and kissed away the frown wrinkling his small forehead. "You would not wish to accidentally fill your cup with manure instead of milk, now, would you?"
"No," he'd conceded, not even cracking a hint of a smile, "but I still don't see how the two things are connected. Magic is amazing. This," he'd added, shaking his little golden pen and splattering droplets of ink everywhere, "is stupid."
"Oh, no," she'd gently corrected. "Power is useless unless it's controlled. Magic is nothing more than a kind of power; your words - both spoken and written - are the tools you'll use to shape it to your will. The only tools, my son, like it or not."
Loki’d stood there, still frowning, with his little arms folded tight across his chest. My little emperor, she'd thought, fondly. "Besides," she'd reminded him after a minute or so of charged silence, "you like mama's writing, no? Would you call me stupid?"
On the heels of a pause that had lasted nearly too long, Loki'd finally shaken his head. He'd been in dire – if adorable - need of a haircut, dark curls flying everywhere. "No, mama," he'd told her sadly. She’d struggled not to pull him to her bosom and hug him silly.
Parenting Loki had always meant walking the fine, fine line between reining her youngest in and crushing his spirit. "I'll tell you what," she'd suggested, brightly. "You and I shall work on your lesson together, and then tomorrow you can show Mr. Larsson what you've accomplished. Will you do that for me?"
~
For her, Loki had mastered two runes and six of his letters. He'd spent a full two hours hunched over the parchment, tongue poking out between his pink lips and fingers white with strain.
"Beautiful," she'd told him when at last they'd set aside their pens. "Now, lay your palm across mine - just like that, perfect! - and read what we've written aloud."
He'd dutifully worked his way down the page, stumbling only very occasionally, and she'd silently marveled yet again at both his fledgling intellect and his will. On the last word, she'd given his seidr a gentle nudge and between them they'd set aloft a butterfly.
"Oh my," he'd breathed, eyes huge. "Is it real, mama? Did we make it real?"
"My darling," she'd assured him, "when you believe in something, it is as real as you want it to be."
~
Unlike Thor, who was still scribbling near-illegibly long after he'd graduated from childish toys to staves and wooden shields, Loki had taken quickly to the art and craft of writing.
In return Odin had collected pens, or rare bits of wood and stone to have crafted into writing implements, during his diplomatic travels and bestowed them upon his lithe, dark-haired magpie of a boy.
Loki had cared for his gifts as though they were the crown jewels.
Frigga knows they're all still here in her son’s chambers, even the ones much too tiny and fragile for even her smaller hands. One of the first protective charms Loki'd ever cast had been upon the box that to this day holds them.
~
She flips carefully through the book’s thick, cream-colored pages, smiling to herself as Loki's writing progresses from childlike to precise to nothing short of incredible. So, too, his spellwork develops into an art form that is always uniquely his and yet still draws from a well of ancient power that reaches all the way down to the roots of the tree… and back to the very dawn of time.
~
Loki’s margin notes are the first to change. Frigga turns another page to find that her son has traded emerald green ink - his trademark forever, since she'd first thought to try bribing him with prettier tools - for forest green so dark she'd first thought it black. The words themselves, too are less cheerfully scholarly; instead they’re darker too, and angry.
From the dates noted her boys had been on the cusp of becoming young men when Loki'd committed these particular thoughts to history.
All these years later his growing jealousy still leaps off the page.
Not more than a few pages farther along, his seidr takes a darker turn as well. Where once he'd focused exclusively on art and beauty, on growth, on happiness, by now Loki was clearly hurt and full of wrath. It’s all here: The spell that had blackened Sif's close-cropped hair, so – according to Loki’s notes - she would not seem as attractive to his brother; the one that had changed bread to frogs and frightened Lady Kristoffson so terribly.
Thor had grown brash and beloved; Loki had grown dark and derided.
He had hidden it well, though. That, or, Frigga admits to herself, sadly, none of us paid enough attention.
~
Much of the latter half of the book is blank, still awaiting its master's lovely pens and even lovelier writing.
Something keeps Frigga searching, long after Loki’s notes stop. She turns page after empty, creamy page until she's leafed all the way to the end of the volume.
The very last page, the one that faces the dark green endpaper with its embossed seal, is not blank. Instead it bears the usual combination of runes and notes. This entry is dated, in the true work of art that is Loki's modern-day penmanship, shortly after Odin had gone to his rest.
The spell itself, she isn't able to make herself read... not after she recognizes, two lines in, that it's the one her husband uses to release the Destroyer from its bonds and let loose its fiery wrath upon those who would do Asgard wrong.
Nonetheless she knows that she owes it to her son to read his own words printed beautifully underneath.
Mother, if you are able to find this page, it reads, I am gone. Frigga's breath catches in a tiny gasp. No. It cannot be. But weep not, Loki writes on, for I have spared the universe a monster.
There is more, but her eyes are far too full of tears to read it.