▸ Column · Asgardian court fantasy — Loki, God of Stories, answering a noblewoman's letter about her hunting-cat and her suitor
LOKI replies.
The letter
God of Stories — I keep a great grey hunting-cat named Gerald, who has been the only male permitted in my chambers these six winters and met every prior suitor with the indifference of a bored emperor. But the night the warrior Marco first stayed, Gerald stole one of his boots, bore it to the ash-pit, and buried it with ceremony. Since then he has twice swept Marco's mead-horn from the table while holding his gaze, wedges himself between us each night like a small furred portcullis, and last Tuesday I found him seated upon Marco's open writing-tablet, having apparently dispatched half a message to Marco's commanding officer. Marco is gentle and adores cats — which seems only to enrage Gerald further, as though kindness were a slap. I love them both. Must I parley with this beast, and if so, what in the Nine Realms does he actually want?
Loki replies
Darling, you have not written to ask about a cat. You have written to me about a creature who ruled alone, comfortably, until a brighter thing walked in and threatened to be loved — and I would recognize that beast in a crowd of ten thousand, because I have shaved in his mirror.
Note the detail you nearly skipped past: it is Marco's kindness that enrages him. Of course it does. Indifference Gerald could have ignored. But affection? Affection invites him to want something, and wanting something that can be taken away is the one game your aristocrat cannot bear to lose. So he strikes first. The boot, the eye contact, the treasonous little letter — that is not war for territory. That is a small king burning the bridge before anyone can cross it and find him wanting.
Do not negotiate as with an enemy; he is not one. What he wants is to be certain he has not been replaced — that the new arrival is an addition to his kingdom, not its conquest. Let Marco be the one who feeds him, who offers the warm lap and asks nothing. You do not win Gerald. You simply stop letting him exile himself. I waited rather a long time to learn that the reaching-toward was not an insult. Spare yourself my delay.
— Loki
Thor weighs in
Brother, you read the beast flawlessly and then, as ever, made him a portrait of yourself. He is not plotting. He is afraid, and the smallest soul in this tale.
Lady — heed the true remedy, which is dull and therefore works. Marco need not be clever. Let him rise each dawn and bear the humble duties: the feeding, the brushing, the cold floor swept by the window where the beast likes to sit. Trust is not won by understanding a creature's wound in a single elegant evening. It is earned daily, unglamorously, by the one still standing quietly beside him when nothing is gained by it. Loki, of all souls, knows how long that patient reaching takes. I never stopped offering it to him.
— Thor
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