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Loki and Thor have been playing Valkyrior for nearly a whole hundred years, which is a very large amount of their lives so far — almost half of Loki's, in fact. It happens to be one of their most favorite games. The true Valkyrior are all gone now, but Thor says he and Loki shall form the group anew. Loki has no reason to doubt his word.
They always dress up. They know not what the real Valkyrior once wore, but they cobble together their best guess. They braid each other's hair too, even though neither of them is very good at it yet and they are always messy and fall out quickly. When Thor has the patience to sit, they will even paint their faces with makeup in the styles their eldest tutor has described to them in her stories of the legendary band of warriors.
Loki and Thor gallop around in their fancy dress in the courtyard beside Pabbi's golden hall where he sees to things from his throne and occasionally comes to stand in the archway to make sure they have not managed to get into trouble when he was looking away. They take great leaps off of the high stone garden wall and over the deep pond, but they never fall because their imaginary steeds can fly. They play fight with wooden swords and do battle with pretend foes — always victorious, of course, for together there is no man or beast that is or ever was or will be that can have them.
They are together less, now, than they were. Thor goes to school now, and he has friends. Three days a week now Loki would swear he only sees his brother at mealtimes, and obviously the evening meal on Sól's Day, the people's day, doesn't count since it is always a stately affair with many fine guests so Loki and Thor must be very well behaved and not play at all. Thor has his own day now, too, the first day that his schooling is over for the week. A whole day all his own, but Thor hardly ever chooses to spend it with Loki. He has started having long talks with Pabbi that Loki is not allowed to hear and going places — other than school — that Loki is not allowed to go.
On the days when he is left alone, Loki has begun studying magic. Most seidr wielders don't start to study until they are at least three centuries old, and Loki isn't even quite two yet. Amma says he has a natural gift, and even Pabbi agrees. Loki likes magic very much — what it does and how good he is at it, certainly, but far more than that he likes how it feels. There is a kind of rightness Loki feels, inside somewhere that he cannot reach or name, and a– a sort of bigness, but not in size… There is nothing else of its like in the whole world. Maybe even in all Nine. Besides, maybe if he proves to Pabbi how good he is at learning he will be allowed to go to school too, with Thor.
Loki loves to make things change. He has gotten very good at it, even though these sorts of spells — etherealization and transfiguration and healing and all — are some of the hardest castings ever, difficult even for grown-ups. And Loki loves best to change himself. It is not so hard, he thinks, but then– Loki is special. He knows it, because Amma says so all the time, and because he still cannot even etherealize something else let alone himself – but what Loki can do is shapeshift.
Loki can change his skin to match almost any color. At first he had to be looking at something of his desired shade (he had once spent every day of a week sneaking out to the Gateroom only to be collected hours later looking a far closer relation to Lord Heimdall than to Thor), but now he can do it right with just a thought. Loki can change the color of his hair too, though that seems a little less of ease, and his eyes, and his nails. He can give himself stripes, though he still must copy those or else they only come one particular way (which must itself be a copied pattern of some terrible beast Loki does not remember seeing, because when he showed his new trick at the meal table Amma gasped and dropped her cup and Pabbi was angry at Loki for his rudeness frightening her so).
Maybe Loki is hasty in calling himself a shapeshifter already — the fact of it is he has not actually changed his shape just yet. He knows he will, though — he knows it, knows it deep inside where the magic is, the big magic, the magic that really feels good and right. Amma cautions him not to push himself, to be patient, to let his talent grow little at a time, steady and slow and strong like a tree, like Yggdrasil itself where all magic comes from. But Loki, just like his brother, listens to anything but praise and hears a challenge.
(And there is more, again. There is, sometimes, an opposite feeling — a bad feeling, confined and small and very far away — when Loki doesn't do the magic, or it doesn't work. There is, sometimes, a feeling inside Loki that he is wrong, not in fact or figure or execution of skill, just– just wrong. He will learn how to change himself; he has to.)
Loki has been practicing this particular change for a long time, though he knows it probably feels longer than it is to him because he is so little still. It's frustrating it's still so hard when the shapes are not really that different, even if everyone always insists so. Maybe if Loki was older there would be more to do, but at this age there is hardly any difference between boys and girls. Not really.
When Loki feels in the magic that he is supposed to be a girl, he will change himself into a girl in his mind first. That makes it easier for any other change to follow, Loki has found. If he thinks of himself as Someone Who Is Green, then it is only a matter of course that he should look like one, see? After changing in mind, Loki focuses really hard on that inside place, where she can feel the right shape just waiting for her to bring it forth. She has not managed it yet, but Loki can always feel the casting almost work. Sometimes she is elated to make progress, but sometimes — more and more often the longer she tries — she will fill up with a sadness so dense and heavy that she cannot lift it and she is trapped in her bed until the burden of it lightens (and the wrong feeling will linger, even after Loki is meant to be a boy again).
Which is all to say: Loki's first shape shift being into the form of a girl didn't have anything to do with Thor. She has been trying for a long time, as she said. This is an important detail that should be included in the Norns' weaving, so it may be known.
Thor is the one of the two of them to learn the Valkyrior were all women. He comes bursting into their shared bedroom, home earlier than is the norm for him on Tyr's Day now, though not early enough for Loki not to have felt his absence quite keenly after her own lessons ended. In his rush and usual carelessness, Thor bangs his sheathed sword — a real one; another thing Loki is not allowed — in the doorway at both ends. He has interrupted Loki's magic practice. She was so close this time, she could have done it. But with the break in her concentration, the right shape slips through Loki's grasping fingers. The smallness starts to curl around her right away — pressure on the outside of her skin, tightness on the in.
"I bear a terrible discovery, brother!" Thor announces, and now Loki's feelings are hurt too. Thor has failed to notice her again — he never has — and it rakes icily across her heart now as it always does. In her more grown-up moments, Loki has to admit to herself that she hasn't any clue how Thor could see something that bears no appearance to view. It just feels like he should anyway. He should know — he shouldn't need some sign to look at to tell him who Loki is. He should know.
"What is it?" Loki asks, feigning interest in whatever Thor learned at school without her. She is also very young to be so skilled in faking, she knows. She thinks she must surely be naturally gifted at that too. When she grows up maybe she will be an actress (that is, when she isn't out winning glorious battles with Thor; school cannot last forever).
"I was telling Sif — you know, Lady Sif?" Loki does not know Sif, though she supposes they have met. She is Master Tyr's daughter and she used to join them sometimes for their lessons with him. Now Thor has a real sword and can't train with Loki and her wooden one anymore. Sif has a real sword too; now, Thor trains with her. She is around more and Loki knows her less. Thor talks of her very often, though, and Loki has decided from his tales that she is actually not missing out on anything.
"–Many weeks ago, at school," Thor continues, talking of her still, "I told Sif of the great Valkyrie band and of their many daring feats, and I told her of our plan to become the first of the new Valkyrior, and so she said she wanted to be a Valkyrie too, with us, and so I said of course and that together we would triumph against any foe." Thor pauses there for breath, and Loki scowls at him.
"None of that sounds terrible," she says, faking again. Loki and Thor could have easily triumphed against any foe without Sif there. They always had done before, even when they both only had wooden swords.
"It isn't!" Thor snaps. He stomps over to where Loki is sitting in lotus pose (at least, almost lotus pose; she'll get her body to do that soon too) at the head of their bed. "I haven't gotten to the terrible part yet, but trust me, it is the worst!" Loki rolls her eyes. Her brother is so dramatic. Maybe he will be the actor when they grow up.
Thor throws himself sideways across the bed, lined up with the fold of Loki's legs, facedown. Muffled through down, he says, "Sif went home and told her father, Tyr — you know General Tyr?" Loki glares at Thor, at his stupid school uniform and his dumb sword, and the big stupid dumb back of his head, her eyes blurring hot. Of course Loki knows Master Tyr (who is not a General anymore, though many still call him by the title he held when once he was the head of Pabbi's grand army of Einherjar despite how he seems not to like it very much; it is only a show of respect, Loki knows, but she rather thinks it would be a better show to respect his choice to retire and tender all his greatness to fatherhood) — not but months without, and Thor has forgotten everything he used to do with Loki.
Thor's voice takes on a piteous whine. "Well today at school, Sif told me that General Tyr told her that the Valkyrior were only women!" There is a moment of confusion for Loki wherein she forgets Thor cannot tell when she is his sister, that he only just called her 'brother', that he can't also be her sister sometimes. When Loki fails to join in his despair, Thor rises up and sits cross-legged in front of Loki (which is not the same thing as lotus pose, lotus pose is better; Loki knows that because she read it in a book of casting). Thor puts a very serious look on his face, and a hand on Loki's shoulder.
"Brother," he says gently, and Loki remembers — remembers in this, Thor never even knew her well enough to forget her. "Neither you or I can be a Valkyrie after all."
Surely it becomes clear now, why it is so important it be noted in the tapestries that Loki did not learn how to cast her form into the shape of a girl in any way because of Thor. She has been practicing, striving for this for months, specifically in Thor's absence. It is only an opening Thor provides her with, not the idea.
Loki closes her eyes and focuses in on herself, pushing into the pressure, tearing into the tightness, forcing herself to pass by the twin aches of Thor's ignorance and disregard without pause. She was so close before Thor interrupted today, and with the added motivation, Loki might just be able to pull it off right on cue.
On a whim, instead of internally harnessing her magic, gathering it up into her will, Loki– does something else. She, maybe, sinks into it like a cool bathing tarn, or lets it cover her like healing muds or Amma's perfume after they have shared a nap. Something like that. It is not how she was taught to cast, not at all — truly, Loki does not really feel that she has cast. But it works.
Loki shrinks perhaps an inch. Her shoulders narrow slightly and her hips widen as much — not enough that Thor will notice, or anyone probably, but Loki notices. Loki feels it happening. Something of the same tiny magnitude happens to her skull, and inside her throat. The most distinct changes in her shape are that Loki's penis presses up into her and becomes a vagina instead, and all sorts of things change in her insides (which Loki is quite surprised to feel happen, given she doesn't know anything about any of those parts aside that they must exist in some fashion; oh, but she must really be very special).
Loki opens her eyes and meets Thor's, watches his widen as he realizes what she's done. Loki knows the smile that curls her mouth is of the sort that would earn her a smack from a tutor — but there is no tutor here to see it.
"You can't," she says, feeling very big indeed. "I still can."
Thor finds ways upon ways to poke and prod and pester her with questions to assure himself that Loki's body really is as it appears. His mouth twists, and Loki braces herself to be accused of pretending, but it doesn't come. In the end, Thor says nothing more. He turns sharply away from her and exits their room as noisily as he entered. It's only after he slams their door behind him that he threatens he's going to tell.
Loki is not worried about that, though. Satisfied in her success, she changes back into a boy — body, mind, and all. He will keep this trick to himself for a little while. He probably can't get in trouble for something nobody but Thor knows he can do, that nobody but Thor would believe he can do if they did not see it for themselves.
Loki has no care for the tears soon to wet Thor's cheeks as he leaves, either. Thor will cry little. He only need endure hurt feelings for the rest of this day, after all. Tomorrow Thor will go back to school, with Lady Sif, and what Loki can do won't matter to him.