Frosty Fire

Loki was swimming a little deep into the ocean, staring at the vast, dark nothingness surrounding him from all sides as he headed back. He craved quiet, because his thoughts were screaming at him and he needed the weight of the sea waves passing over his body to keep him calm.

Nearing the shore, Loki halted waist deep into the water.

'What have I done? After a week's worth of charade, after all the orchestrated lies, I came this close to letting it all unravel. I conjured those daggers out of thin air right in front of her! I flung them with lethal accuracy! For sure she has suspected by now that I am no ordinary boy I pretend to be! All this show of power for what? Making a puny human cry like a little girl? It's not like he didn't deserve it, but was it worth it? What am I going to answer her? It is highly unlikely she would buy another one of my stories this time when she'd actually been there to witness how I acted out! This was a nightmare!

Loki was jerked from his thoughts by an ominous cracking sound erupting from all sides. The sea water surrounding him was turning to ice, spreading into the depths of the ocean. The waves halted as they left their liquid state and slowly transformed into solid ones.

'Oh, shit,' Loki whispered. His hands were blazing blue, his fingers looking like thin, frozen popsicles. 'No, no, no. This can't be happening!'

Frozen on the spot, Loki panicked. He couldn't move! He was stuck inside his self created icy cage! Nevaeh could be home any minute! What if she caught him? More importantly, what if he were still blue when he got caught? He instantly made himself invisible.

Loki sharply looked around; the sea was frozen as far as he could see. All he could think about was that he was not going to be held responsible for this. He needed to flee the scene of crime. Loki punched the icy surface, shattering it as he moved ahead to reach the shore. Soon into the venture, his knuckles began bleeding, but he didn't stop. The problem was that as soon as he broke the ice by his fists as he moved ahead, more ice glisteningly formed around him, erupting from his body.

'Oh, god,' Nevaeh's voice echoed on the beach. Loki's heart dropped; there she was, staring into the waters with horror in her eyes. 'I didn't do anything!' she said frantically, running towards the frozen shore. 'Loki!' she yelled, glancing all around the beach. 'Loki! Are you here?'

Loki thanked his stars he had the sense to be invisible when the time was right and none too late, but to his horror, she noted the spot where the ice was forming.

Everything happened so quickly; Nevaeh whipped out her wand and shot a revealing spell which hit Loki squarely on the chest, but his invisibility was no joke to reveal. On the down side, his silhouette was being etched in thin air due to her spell. Loki grabbed the pendant dangling from the neck around his chain, turning it into a dazzling green. He shot a hand behind him. The entire icy surface lit on fire. There was a thundering crack caused by Loki teleporting the heck out of there, forcing the frosty floor around him to fragment into flaky pieces which were being melted by the fire.

Nevaeh watched with terrifying confusion as the ice started melting and the sea began turning back to normal. Without halting to witness the full restoration of the beach, she ran towards her house. She needed to make sure Loki was safe. Having little patience to take the long way and use the front door, she jumped upwards and landed directly inside Loki's bedroom balcony, but he wasn't in his room.

'Loki!' she yelled, storming out to enter hers. 'Loki! Where are you?'

'Downstairs!' Loki's voice came from the living room.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she ran below. Loki was sitting on the sofa in his night suit inside a long, green, satin robe, eating noodles out of a bowl and watching TV. 'I realized, I hadn't eaten much all day,' Loki told her as he flicked through TV channels, 'I reheated the leftovers left from lunch.'

'I am so glad you are okay, Loki!' she said. 'I thought you were going to the beach!'

'I was hungry!' Loki said in a high pitched voice. 'You barely fed me today.'

'Stop with the jokes!' she snapped.

'Starvation is no joke,' Loki said seriously.

'The sea was on fire, Loki!' she said impatiently.

'What?' Loki laughed, as if she had a little too much to drink. 'The sea has water, Nevaeh.'

'I know, man!' she went on the porch to take a look outside. 'The sea was frozen at first, and then it caught on fire!'

'You are kidding!' Loki said, finishing his noodles and getting up to join her on the deck. 'How is that even possible?'

'I think it was an attack, or something,' she whispered cautiously, as if whoever had attacked was now hiding below the porch to listen to their conversation. 'There was a spot from where the ice was forming and someone was standing there! I shot a revelation spell and this shadow appeared. Then the whole surface caught on fire! There was a loud boom, and the shadow disappeared, shattering everything!'

'Who could've done this?' Loki hushed with wide eyes. 'I thought Earth was supposed to be quiet. This isn't quiet, Nevaeh.'

'This has never happened before! It was bizarre out there!' she said. 'I think it was some frosty fire demon.'

Loki blinked in silence for multiple seconds, for personal reasons. 'Or maybe it was the stone. We know it has its flair for unnecessary dramatics.'

'You know, we could run it by with Grace,' Nevaeh shrugged, 'it maintains balance in nature. Maybe it can help us figure it out.'

'You are reading too many detective comics! The beach is fine now, isn't it? And you think that notorious stone will help us?' Loki raised his eyebrows. 'We need to keep as far from it as possible.'

'Yeah, you are not wrong,' she shrugged. 'About yesterday, you mustn't take Grace's tantrum personally.'

'You told me what happened yesterday had never happened before,' Loki said. 'Were you lying?'

'Not really,' she said. 'One incident did occur, but it was nowhere close to what we experienced, and it was a long time ago, so it doesn't count.'

'Tell me about it,' Loki said automatically.

'I was seven years old,' Nevaeh began. 'Once every decade, there comes a day when Grace needs to rejuvenate. Back in the day, the basement had no high security door. I was playing around and picked Grace up—'

'You picked it up? Or attempted to pick it up?' Loki asked.

'I held it for a second, maybe,' she said, 'the next I was being thrown off in the air. It was a terrible fall. The entire room went dark and what looked like the devil's horns erupted in front of my eyes, scaring the hell out of me. I began crying and was instantly teleported near my parents,' she paused for Loki's reaction, but he was still processing it with a thin frown on his head. 'Can you believe it?' she prompted Loki for gossip. 'Grace tried to threaten me for entering her room! Maybe she was hinting that I was the devil who was interrupting her stony spa day! I hit my head and scraped my knee! I was so pissed! I didn't pay it a visit for years after that incident!'

'How exactly did you pick it up?' Loki asked. 'Your hand went through the rainbow wall?'

'There is no rainbow wall when Grace is rejuvenating,' she said, still waiting for Loki to participate in gossip, but he merely stared ahead with a somewhat quizzical expression.

'Huh,' he said.

'God, you're useless,' she muttered.