Theo,

Loki is a wretched name. Cruel and scared and unhappy. I bear it for the sake of atonement with you, and for a grasp at immortality in this life, but the yoke they make me carry! Should I become a yak to bear it properly? Or perhaps a mare. They love to remind me about the mare.

It has been a fraction of eternity since Ragnarök, but some things stay the same: Asgard resents me being here, being alive. It is a great disgrace, you see, that Loki, killer of Balder, shaver of Sif, eagle burner, the great accuser, has returned in a new skin while Odin and Thor and Freyr remain dead. Who’s to say they didn’t find new skin? Have there not been kings and warriors? Have there not been murderers and bullies and cheats? Has no man forced himself onto a sick woman since Ragnarök? Loki at least returned. Loki, who gave Odin his steed and Thor his hammer and Freyr his ship, who gave with one hand as he took with another, has returned to these lands that the rest abandoned.

This name loved those three. Did you know that? The gods who threatened him with murder at any inconvenience, the gods he was fated to destroy. Odin was like kin to him, and his kin killed Odin when the time came. Did his fate drive him to his cruelty? Balder, returned from the underworld, gentle and fair and beautiful Balder, rules Gimlé and he alone believes that I am not just here to play reruns. No, no, that makes no sense yet. The only person who believes I will not repeat the same verses that were written for Loki.

If I look at him for too long, the name tells me to kill him again and sleep with his wife, no particular order. Being so close to its origin is giving it ideas for mischief when I am trying WITH ALL THE FACULTIES I HAVE AVAILABLE I ASSURE YOU to be polite. The motivations are opaque, the machinations self-thwarting. I am him, of course. Or was him. But I am not being him anymore so I can only view his life from a distance, with binoculars. I told you we should have bought the new compact advanced models from Europe for the expedition, but it simply wasn’t in the budget, so I’m forced to speculate about the man I used to be. I feel quite ill about the whole thing.

The god of the sea has survived, though Ragnarök has lessened him so much that he won’t leave his damned cove. His wife negotiates in his stead. I lured her father to his death once; her wound lingers from when she and the other Asgardians sentenced me to suffer snake venom until the end of the world. She looks at me with equal poison and has stalled and stalled on an agreement for the specimens and I am fighting the name’s urge to dress up as her and seduce her husband into giving us our answers. Not that - I am - it is - enamored - with the sea. I simply know it would work.

You’ve thought me false. I cannot parry the blow, though I cannot bear it either. But this yoke, I will bear, and my coat will be shaggy and my teeth sharp and my belly big and my paws so very large, for you, and you will not curse my name to the skies and seas if I die.