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The breakfast room was crowded; it seemed odd to Loki that there were so many vacationers in the middle of what seemed to be basically nowhere. He maneuvered his way through the tables until he found an empty one. Aeslin had opted to stay in the room; she’d had nightmares the night before and planned to spend an exorbitant amount of time in the shower scrubbing them away. It wasn’t uncommon. She’d had several in the last week, and Loki had woken almost every morning to the feeling of her curled against the small of his back, no matter where they’d started the night before. She’d been hopeful this morning that she was through the last of them, but that remained to be seen.
Loki read through the newsletter provided by the hotel as he ate. He looked up as a couple approached his table.
“Morning,” greeted the man. “Mind if we join you?”
A shrug. “Not at all.”
They took seats across from him and were soon joined by another pair. They crowded around the table with an easy familiarity, and the first man indicated the paper Loki was perusing.
“Ever seen one?” he asked. Loki flipped the paper over to read the back; he hadn’t gotten to it yet. Wildly inaccurate sketches of constellations, presumably charming stick drawings of chairs and coffee mugs, with two words sprawled across the top in a cheerful, swirling script. The Geminids. He looked over the top of the paper at the man, who grinned.
“The meteor shower,” the other clarified as he glanced around the room. “I guarantee it’s the reason half of these people are here. The land around here is so empty that there aren’t many better places to catch one. The other tourists are doing some kind of scientific conference, I think.” He stuck his hand across the table. “Jeremy.” He leaned around the table. “Lily, Caleb, Petra, and the one over there swearing at the waffle machine is Sam.”
Loki shook his hand briefly and nodded around the table. “Loki.”
A wide grin. “Nice.” Jeremy pointed to the blond girl he’d introduced as Petra. “Pete’s a history major. Sam’s in geology. The rest of us are astro-nuts. UA. What about you?”
“Just a road trip,” Loki replied. “Headed for the coast. My companion’s not exactly a morning person these days, or I’d introduce you.”
“Well timed road trip, man,” replied Caleb. “Shows don’t get much better than this. You should come with us. We scoped out a really good spot yesterday. Middle of nowhere, no light pollution. It’s perfect.”
“I’ll ask her if she’s interested,” Loki answered, intrigued himself.
Jeremy reached into his pocket and extracted a pen. He scribbled a phone number onto the bottom of the paper, then shoved it back toward Loki. “We’re meeting up with a group from NAU, so we can caravan. Shoot me a text if you guys are in; plan is to leave around eleven tonight. Show doesn’t really pick up for a few hours after that, but Doctor Baker likes to do Q&A sessions beforehand.” He smiled again, an infectious grin that Loki recognized as coming from someone with a passion for their studies. He’d worn it himself more than once, and he found himself smiling back.
“It sounds interesting. I’ll see what I can do to convince her,” he told him, gathering his dishes and standing. “We’ll let you know.”
“Dress warm,” Petra piped up. “It gets below freezing after dark.”
Loki nodded his thanks, swung by the counter to grab Aeslin’s breakfast and waved goodbye as he made his way back to the stairs.
***
Aeslin read the flyer as she picked at her breakfast, her face thoughtful. “That time already? I can’t believe it’s been almost a month.”
“Apparently.” He nudged her plate casually closer; she hadn’t been eating enough, and they both knew it. She gave him a rueful smile and reached for the bagel.
“You know I’ve never seen one? I always say I’m going to.”
A grin. “I think that settles it, then. I haven’t either.” At her look, he laughed. “Well, not here anyway. Finish your breakfast. We’ve got shopping to do.”
***
They spent most of the morning exploring a sporting goods store, with Loki carefully checking off each suggested item as they acquired it. A brief stop to get a few groceries, and Loki loaded them into the back of the vehicle next to the neat pile of board and card games they’d accumulated, the thick stack of blankets and other items for the star party, as well as her spare boots, his jacket and a few books safely tucked away for good measure. He stared for long moments, his arm going automatically around her shoulders when she came up next to him.
“Everything okay?” she asked, following his gaze into the cargo area. “What is it?”
“A life,” he replied, a peaceful feeling spreading through him. He smiled down at her. “It’s a life.”
***
The group met again in the parking lot of a now-closed store; a few more cars had been added, and an older man made his way through the chattering students. “More!” he said. “Welcome! I’m Will Baker.”
“Thanks for having us,” Aeslin replied with a smile.
“Wouldn’t be the same without a few extras,” Baker told her. “Caleb’s shameless in recruiting, and Jeremy’s almost as bad. Some of the best students I’ve ever had. Public astronomers, both of them. They see no need in studying the stars if they can’t share them, too. They were thrilled to find out this was your first show. Not an astronomer?”
Aeslin grinned. “Everything but.”
Loki shrugged in response to the other’s expectant look. “I’ve dabbled here and there.”
“Well then. Let’s get a move on!” Baker clapped his hands, drawing everyone’s attention and handing out maps.
The drive was long and a bit dusty, but Loki barely noticed. As they got further from town, he found his eyes drawn out the window, staring at the night sky splashed above them. They’d done some night driving, but nothing like this. The only light came from the cars behind and ahead of them, light that faded almost immediately into the dark, cold night. The jagged country around them reminded him a little of Jotunheim, but the memory was only troublesome until he reached over, his hand coming to rest on her knee. The lean muscles in her leg relaxed and tensed as she maneuvered the car down the back roads, and Loki allowed the feeling to ground him. Memory was only that, ash and smoke beside the living, breathing tempest next to him.
A constellation of red-glowing flashlights greeted them as they met up with the group that had come earlier. Loki and Aeslin made their way to the edge of the gathering, until two figures that eventually revealed themselves as Jeremy and Sam beckoned them closer. A spot had been cleared for them, and for the next several minutes, they busied themselves with setting up; ground blankets, thick pillows, and a substantial number of blankets. The fact that Loki wore no gloves or hat in the freezing weather drew some notice, but he just smiled and said the cold never troubled him.
They sat and chatted easily with the others, Aeslin tightly wrapped in blankets and firmly ensconced in Loki’s lap. The conversation went from stars to history to university studies to the inevitable, gentle academic one upmanship that Loki recognized from his days at the Warehouse. Aeslin’s accidental night spent in the dolmens near Agneash was beaten by a literal landslide from Sam, which was in turn trounced by a highway rollover with no fatalities except a thousand headless teddy bears that had kept Lily from presenting at her first astronomical conference. “It was worse than a blizzard,” she said, laughing helplessly. “Stuffing everywhere. They didn’t get it cleaned up for hours, and not one person believed me until I showed them the news.”
“Can’t beat that,” Loki admitted.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Petra said casually. “You probably could. What with the alien invasion and all.”
Loki gave her a smirk and a salute with his free hand. “Game, set and highly classified match,” he replied. “But it doesn’t count.”
“Point to me for a good guess, though. At least tell me this,” she continued. “Those… people that helped. You’re the good guys, right?”
“So they tell us,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve never much worried about details like that, myself. There was a job to do, and we did it. You don’t question your mechanic’s motives, do you?”
“With their fees?” Caleb answered. “I do. Every damn time. But you guys? Nah. I don’t question a thing.” He glanced at Aeslin, who watched him from her nest of blankets. “I read the interview they did with that cop, where they reviewed the footage. It pretty much spoke for itself.”
Aeslin chuckled. “Jake.”
“That’s the one.” His face was a mix of curiosity and a little embarrassment in the light from his flashlight. “How did you do it?”
A grin. “By giving myself the sweet holy mother of all headaches,” she said. “And my arms burned for days. I don’t recommend it.” A faint swirl in her eyes, and a few kernels of popcorn rose from the bag near Caleb’s knee, spinning lazily around each other like a solar system as they dropped into his outstretched hand. “But it’s kind of like that.”
He closed his hand around them and let out a breath. “That’s crazy.”
“You’re telling me.”
Every pair of eyes then went to Loki, who smirked a little. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I’m just a highly trained nuisance who was in the wrong place at the right time.”
A murmur of noise from a different part of the group, and Jeremy looked up. “Show seems to be starting, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Take your seats.”
Loki lay back, propped on the stack of pillows with his head in one hand. Aeslin shifted, pulling the blankets around her and resting her head on his stomach. He gently pulled the knit cap from her head, replacing it with his fingers as he combed them through the cool silk of her hair and along her scalp. He glanced down at her profile, lit softly by the starlight and with a faint smile on her lips, and he didn’t bother to push down the swell of happiness that bloomed from somewhere beneath where her head lay. He looked back up, a grin on his face, and watched in perfect contentment as the universe rained down around them.