“Everyone must travel farthest with themselves.”
—Midgard Proverb
I’d had focus once. Thoughts.
Now I was never asleep.
Never awake.
Was I real? I knew I was real when the venom touched my skin. I could reach out and touch a drop. Remind myself. Add a scar to the tips of my fingers. My name. I was a goddess, I reminded myself. Not of Fidelity, no. I didn’t want that. Of Nothing, of nothing. Sigyn, once. That was real. If I’d been given another name, would I still be real?
Loki saw things that weren’t real, I knew that. The venom had taken his right eye, left it milky and white, and it stared into the distance, always. That was when he started talking to ghosts. He spoke to them, and they spoke to him. Angrboda. Fenrir. Narvi. Mother. Brother. Hel. He cried and screamed and fought with them. And I could do nothing but watch.
What had we become?