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“Loki would know the solution,” Odin said. “Where is he?”
His advisor gave him an odd look. “He’s gone, sir,” he said. “It’s Thor’s Day.”
Odin leaned back in his chair, perhaps considering; one of his ravens fluttered near his head, fluffing its feathers about his ears, and the tension that had leapt into his face upon hearing Loki was unaccounted for drained away. Loki was always missing on Thor’s Day; this had been going on for decades, if not centuries. Odin reached up to stroke Muninnn’s feathers and immediately Huginn was at his other side, leaning forward to whisper that he had seen Loki go into the stables. They were good birds. It was Loki who had given them to him.
“I think I’ll go and see him,” Odin said. There was silence for a moment before one of the younger delegates protested that no one knew where Loki was, and was quickly shushed by his seniors.
Odin, meanwhile, shed his marks of office and made a beeline for the stables. Someone - probably Frigg - must have indicated he did not wish to be disturbed, because no one followed him.
Inside the stables it was dark and warm and smelled thickly of that pleasant-unpleasant mixture of herbivore dung. Horse, yes, but goat too, of course, and Freyja’s cats had probably been around at some point.
Odin was not really surprised to find Loki in Sleipnir’s stall. They were… related, in a fashion, and Loki took such things seriously when he remembered them. Odin stood quietly in shadow for a while, watching Loki’s head bent over a book - a book! He had brought a book to the stables, where the rare and precious thing could get dirty or mussed - well that was Loki for you, taking rare treasures to all the wrong places, practically begging to have them stolen or destroyed, and meanwhile letting horses drool all over them.
Sleipnir noticed Odin first, probably smelling him, and jerked his head up. Loki’s arm promptly wrapped around his head and pulled it back down over his shoulder, pointing his nose at the book.
“No,” he said firmly. “Look here,” and stabbed the page with a finger from the same hand he had used to pull Sleipnir’s head around. Well, Odin employed good grooms, it probably wasn’t that dirty.
Sleipnir pawed the ground impatiently with a couple of fore hoofs and snorted. Loki jerked the book out of the way, probably too late.
“I told you not to do that,” he said. “Now attend. Here. Fehu. Yes, it’s difficult, but you’re doing wonderfully.”
“Loki,” Odin said, and his brother jumped at the noise, “are you teaching my horse to read?”
“He’s my son. Of course I am.”
“Why in nine realms would my horse ever need to know how to read?” Odin asked, moving to the gate of the stall where Loki could see him, and see he had not come as king or All-Father or warrior but simply as Odin.
“He’s not your horse, he’s my son.”
“If he were the highest noble in my court he would have no call to read! Do you know how many people in Asgard can read? Three! You. Me. Frigg. Three’s a decent number; why make it four?”
“Why not make it nine? Or nine nines?” Loki asked. “No, I don’t care. The point is not how many people can read. The point is: he is my son. He will learn to read.”
Odin almost responded, then bit his tongue and paused a moment, waiting for Loki to pay attention and his own temper to calm. “Loki,” he said gently, “how long have you been teaching Sleipnir to recognize the rune fehu?”
Loki did not answer.
“At least nine decades,” Odin said. “Muninn told me -“
“Muninn does not see everything I do.”
“Nine decades,” Odin repeated, his voice still gentle. “If he were going to learn -“
“He is my son!”
“And he is also a horse. He is a beautiful horse; a strong horse; the fastest horse in nine realms. But he is a horse. He will never learn to read. Do not try to make something of your son that he is not.”
“You would know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Loki snapped, and shoved Odin’s shoulder to get by him. He managed, in the same motion, to shove the book into Odin’s arms, but before Odin could turn to catch him, he was at the door to the stables - or some image of him was; Loki himself may have been an arm’s stretch away, or three realms, or in Sigyn’s arms, or perhaps exactly where he appeared to be.
Odin looked down at the book he was now carrying. From the roughness of the pages, he would guess that Loki had bound it himself; the cover was a fine enough leather, but the pages were thick, impatiently sieved. The letters, when he opened it, were drawn with Loki’s usual brusque competence, with each letter spreading across an entire page, a number of other runes scattered beneath it. Loki and Frigg both read automatically, their brains parsing runes the moment they saw them; Odin had to take a moment to sift through them, and he did not always choose to. He did not now; perhaps the message there was only meant to be shared between Loki and his sons.
He tucked the book carefully into an inside pocket of his clothes; it was no less precious for being handmade by his brother.
“And you?” he asked Sleipnir, who tossed his head and eyed Odin speculatively. “How do you like your reading lessons?”
Sleipnir would never speak to Odin. He was far from stupid and could make his desires known - usually for long runs across the fields of Asgard, occasionally for some sweet treat. He was quiet now, dropping his head; then he gave a few prancing steps, and then went still again, his head tucked lower.
“My brother has his fancies,” Odin said. “I will not interfere with him again. If you want him to stop, you will have to tell him yourself.” If Sleipnir could do so; Odin had no idea how well he could communicate with… whatever it was Loki really was. Odin had first seen him as a jötunn, and Loki had managed to produce jötnar who swore up and down they were his parents, but Loki was a liar and a shapeshifter and good at both, and Odin had seen him in many forms.
It did not matter what Loki was or would be; it mattered what he was now, and Odin could love that, if cautiously. He wished that Loki could see the world that clearly, or that he could share the method of looking at what was really there the way Loki had shared so many things he had learned.
“Horse,” he said to Sleipnir at last, “your father is as special as you are. Would you like to be combed?”