“Wind, please?” Loki said, looking up at the sky. He knew that this must be the right time for them to be delivered to the ocean to see the ship.
“How many times do I have to remind you that this is my dream?” Snow White grinned. “Only I call for the Wind of Change.”
“Princess,” Loki said, arching his back, and acting like an 18th century nobleman—he struggled with where to place his legs in that position, but he improvised. “Would you please deliver us to the ocean?”
Snow White omitted a smile. “Come here,” she signaled for him with her wiggling forefinger. Loki accepted her calling. “You don’t want to find yourself smashing against the ship’s deck when we fall, do you?” she wrapped her arm around his neck. “Wind,” she summoned.
The wind circled around them, ready to transport them to the next scene.
“I just remembered something that happened in the closet,” Loki put a finger on his chin as if thinking then raised his head a little. “In my first closet, there was a young girl with me, and, if my memory serves me right, she kissed me,” Loki lowered his head again, looking her in the eyes. “That was you, right?”
“Shut up,” she shouted against the wind. “I kissed you as a kid. It doesn’t mean anything, and it was a peck on the cheek.”
“You like me,” Loki winked.
Instead of getting a response from her, Loki got splashed with ocean water on his face.
“Hang tight,” she said, pulling his hands over her waist. They were standing on the deck of a pirate ship, struggling against the tides of the ocean.
23
A Kingdom of Sorrow
“Why are we on a pirate’s ship?” Loki managed to say, spitting salty water out of his mouth.
A black flag fluttered above his head as the ship swayed against the waves of an angry ocean. A white skull, crisscrossed with bones, was drawn on the flag.
“So clichéd,” Loki commented.
“I’m what you call a fairy tale princess,” Snow White said. “Cliché is almost my middle name.”
“Jolly Roger?” Loki read the name engraving on the inner wood of the ship.
“Don’t bother with too many details,” Snow White said, all wet and shivering, eyes closed, and spitting out water like him. Her wet hair was sticking flat to her face. “Just focus on what I want to show you.”
All around them, the pirates were loading cannons, speaking a language Loki didn’t understand. The ocean got angrier and coughed up more salty water onto Loki’s face.
“I love you, too,” Loki said back to the ocean, watching lines of clear water rolling down Snow White’s face. She was shivering.
Hanging tight onto a pole with one hand, Loki took off his jacket, and put it over her shoulders, pulling it tight around her. His legs stood fixed on the ground, rebelling against the swaying ship.
“Thank you,” she nodded, and blushed as if no one had treated her with care for some time.
“Don’t you dare lose it,” Loki said, trying to escape the drama. “It’s my father’s. He gave it to me the last time we were sailing with my uncle Jack Sparrow in the same awful weather, looking for a patch-eyed mermaid.”
Snow White looked at him with blurry but smiling eyes. “You’re horrible!” she yelled.
“And you love it!” Loki’s hands were about to lose grip on the pole they clung to.
Snow White rolled her eyes, and then sneezed in his face unintentionally.
“Can’t say I feel sneezed at,” Loki said, wiping his face with one hand. “I can’t tell the difference between you sneezing and the spewing sea.”
“I have never met anyone with a twisted sense of humor like yours,” she said.
“Isn’t that what close friends are about? Accepting each other’s awful personalities?” Loki accidentally spit water onto her face. “And sometimes, each other’s—“
“Spit, I get it,” she said, soaked to the bone. Her hands pressed on Loki’s for balance as he pulled the jacket tighter around her one more time. Her hair was sticking to her temples over her soft shoulders and down her back, slapping her lightly on the cheeks.
“The weather is so beautiful,” Loki said all of a sudden.
“Where did that come from,” she wondered.
“I always thought it was the worst pick up line, but in this weather, it surely is amusing,” Loki said. “I could also ask, ‘if you come here often’,’” Loki laughed. “How do you like me now that I am trying to make normal, lame conversation?” he said as a bomb fell right behind Snow White. There was a pirate war going on here.
“It’s not good if I die in my own dream you know,” Snow White commented, a little tense because of the explosions. “Or I will never wake up again.”