Loki awakes to scratching and tickling. He is confused. He is wedged into a bush so tightly he can barely move. And when he does move the branches gouge him and the leaves tickle him on his bare feet. They are the only part of him sticking out from the tangled mess that is part human, part hedge.
He is only confused for a moment.Then fear comes rushing to embrace him like a drug addicted mother. Fear, his favoured companion, his untrustworthy lover, his pitiful mother. When everything else has abandoned him, fear returns to comfort him.
And he knows then what has happened. The gift of Our Lady ,the true mother, has left him. His memory of the specific circumstances is unclear. But it has happened so many times that he knows the drift. He has been challenging priests or monks or some other religious group. He has been telling them of the way of Our Lady where all is permitted in the name of love. He has been laughing at their buffoonery, or trying to help some poor sinner in the stocks, or wearing the scold's bridle, or being more brutally tortured. Perhaps all three.
He has lost his sense of watchfulness and has been captured. He is not tortured. He is not paraded in infamy. He is given instead to the inquisitors. They pronounce him mad, not bad. They force him to drink the salty water from the Holy Shrine. He tries not to drink, but they prick his eyes with sticks until he opens his mouth.
This goes on for days until they release him, and he runs naked, roaring like a madman, around the streets. Anyone who has heard his message, who has actually heard him, dismisses him as a madman.
He runs and runs until he finds a way out of whatever city he happens to be in. He runs naked until he finds a place he can hide.
And wakes up some time later, naked, .alone, scratched, confused. Then his bastard mother, fear, finds him. And he begins to live another day.
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