“I didn’t ask to ascend, Loki.”
“You didn’t ask to descend either,” he answers, sharp and sincere.
My heart falls onto the floor between us, and I scoop her up carefully, aware of the damage to her.
Month: October 2026 Page 1 of 3
I pull my dress skirt, dragging the hem through the dust of the unfinished house where he and I meet.
“I love how you dress easily naked.” Loki teases and toys with the laces of my corset that I left untied. I blush from his notice and attention.
“I don’t want sex. I want everything else. The undress, the mess, the romance, the sky overhead and inside me, the universe. I want my pale face shadowed and my lips swollen. The act of mating itself is pointless to me without the dance that surrounds it. Orgasming is a reaction, not a result. I hate the pettiness of looking towards results only.”
“You want to tip overflowing. Not to be emptied, but enjoyed. And why is this troubling to you?” he asks, tender mischief in his voice.
“It’s not. It is. It’s fucked up because it’s not the game or the sport. It’s the realness. Like when you sip your coffee, and I watch the devil detailed across your lips, and my heart can’t take it. Beautifully mundane and intricate.”
“You’re a poet, darling. That’s all. Nothing shameful in that.” His eyes flash.
“Yes, but there is, because the frustration is unnecessary and toilsome and also possibly immature of me to hold so much desire and not have an end plan.”
“You love the ordeal and appreciate confluences.”
“Yes. And the ordeal of just life, too. It is quite the ordeal, and I find it very attractive, hot and sensuous, like sizzling steak crusted in herbs. Why go through the trouble? Because the trouble is the best part.”
Loki makes the slightest hm sound of pleasure, and so do I.
“I love exploring my psychology with you.”
“I know, sweet girl. I love that you do.”
Aren’t I lucky?
Isn’t she lucky?
Who does she think she is?
Who the hell are you?
Who do you think you are?
Their knives cut through the cords holding me bound in popular opinion.
“You worry too much about what others think of your privacy and mine. I gave you the green light to do as you wish. I only said I would not stop your growth.” Loki slices through my self-cherishment.
“You think I don’t have my fucking boot on your ex’s neck? I do, sweetheart. It’s personal to me. Me, not you. What I do is my responsibility. You are clean. You are free.”
“You are ready. You just doubt yourself as a reflex, a second nature,” he spits.
My fear shrivels as Loki shakes me from its grasp.
“Nature creates and takes away,” I say wistfully to Loki, watching leaves fall gently from the trees.
“No, dear love. Nature simply is and holds no perceptional motive.” His chin rests on the top of my head.
“A process.”
“Yes.”
“I am a process.”
“How does that feel?” he asks.
“Better.”
“Those who covet the High Priestess don’t understand what a High Priestess is,” I say, working through something snagged inside.
“Go on,” Loki urges.
“A divine processor of nature, darkness, light, and life. The experiences of these, to hold the intuitive wisdom the ancestors held and carry forward that wisdom in the ways she is gifted to do so, from her very ancestry.”
“And?”
“Be a priestess, be a priest. There are traditions for these callings, laid out and exemplified. The High Priestess might step into tradition, but she firmly grounds herself in embodying boundaries and restraint, discipline where there is none or only a weak pouring of it. Liminality, her playground, but drawing the circle within that liminality is her call forward.”
“Why would anyone envy her, Loki? She should be mourned.”
“Why is that?”
“Because she’s been touched by too much darkness and light to be integrated into society. She’s cast out. She’s an outcast. A veiled one. A flickering flame fed by otherness.
“And no one actually desires to be the High Priestess. That’s why the reverence is there. It’s fear and respect, and a dropping off of that responsibility to someone formed to handle it with the Divine differently than everyone else. She’s carved out, gutted, and put back together again to hold so much unheld.”
He snaps and flicks a spark of fire at me. I let it burn and consume me to ashes.
“What am I?”
“You tell me.”
“A monster.”
“Beautiful slut love. Carnivorous whore. Curious dark. Gorgeous heart and well-imprinted, kneed one. Your every tear is made a rough diamond, grown from the ash and pressure of being too human than human.”
“Don’t worship me.”
“Let me.”
He licks his lips, the patience gone from his eyes, and I see Loki’s promise never to allow me to make myself a bastard of his ilk.
And I know he lies.
I wave my hand through his mirage and find him sitting silently in the shadows.
I sit beside him.
“I can’t save you from the mistakes you wish to make. I can guide you through your unmaking.”
“I will never believe your promises.”
“Fair.”
“Teach me. Please.”
He motions to my soot-covered feet peeking from beneath the hem of my dress. I realize I wore white to a funeral and laugh.
“Do you think I’m pretty without makeup on? What do you prefer?”
“I think you are beautiful, and your self-expression is beautiful. Wear makeup. Wear nothing.
Whatever you like, darling.”
“Do you like when I wear makeup? What do you prefer?” Loki asks.
“I fucking love it. It’s somehow natural when you do.”
“Because I’m not trying. I’m reacting to myself.”
Cedar bites my finger,
snake-scaled leaflet.
Green scenting and tree blood, sticky.
An offering for the trickster.
Salting myself, coarse friction,
dissolving granules
of earth and sea.
My skin hums, exposed to sensation.
My heart burns.
My mind intent on simple ritual and result.
I hum a funeral song for the departed
and the blessing of what once was.
“I want you to take my rose and tear the petals into pieces over your bed,” Loki instructs.
The rose I had offered him is given back. I do as he says.
“Now sleep in it.”