"What are you the God of, Loki?"
That had been the question since he came into being.
Loki did not know what came before that. He was not born, as other Gods were, and he did not appear from the rocks or sprout from the earth as plenty more had done. One moment the universe had existed without Loki, and the next moment Loki had existed within in it.
He had been a child then but with the knowledge of eternity flowing through him. He had not been bitter, he had not yet been cunning, but he had known that all Gods need a purpose.
He had known that they needed followers.
Loki hunted for his followers. He crept into houses and walked the length of fields, whispering into the ears of mortals who never heard him. He followed their armies to battle and appeared at their burial mounds and still no-one saw him, no-one heard him.
"But what are you the God of? What do you say to them?" the Mother Goddess asked.
She held Loki in her arms when he had exhausted himself, carrying him to the home of the Gods.
"I tell them to worship me," Loki said, curling into her arms, growing stronger from her warmth.
She might have adopted him then. She was fond of Loki, of all children and Loki could have become the God of foundlings and adopted heirs if she had, but her husband, the Father God, found Loki and chased him from their realm, casting him back to earth.
"You are nothing, small god, too unimportant to be the God of anything. You will fade away," he promised Loki.
Loki lived then in the forest. He was not one of the animal Gods. They were hardly Gods at all, more the embodiment of concepts - prey, predator, life and death. Loki took care to stay out of their way for he was not as they were.
They were primitive, small minded. Loki contained the whole universe inside him.
For many years that was Loki's life - sneaking into the home of the Gods, being cared for by the mother Goddess and shooed away by her husband, then returning to his forest home.
He made a nest of twigs and moss, slept there and waited for hunters or wise men to find him and worship him. Horns, curved as a goats, grew from his head. His eyes turned green as the leaves and slit like a cats. He wove himself robes of cobwebs, delicate and glittering. He drank the fresh fallen rain and ate the songbirds and grew melodious and soft-spoken.
He lived and he waited for his followers to come, but they never did.
A golden -haired child who gazed upon Loki in awe, who reached out to touch him, who saw what no one else had ever seen.
A boy named Thor who was Loki's one and only follower.
Loki felt the flame of Thor's belief as soon as it sparked, felt the power of that belief flow into him.
He was still a small God, too small to be the God of anything at all, but he was Thor's God and that was enough.
