oneiriad

A while ago (before even thinking of the idea for this fic) I started thinking about Sleipnir, about how it's kind of strange that unlike he's monstrous halfsiblings, nobody in the myths or most of the modern reinterpretations ever seem to consider, that as at least half Jotun (a species who seem to consider things like bodyshape to be pretty much optional), with a mother that's the shapeshifter to beat all shapeshifters, Sleipnir must surely be a sentient being in his own right. He's always just treated as a horse. A marvellous horse, yes, but still, just a horse.

I knew he was going to be in the scene with Loki's closest family confronting Sam, I knew I was going to make let him make a crack about Loki being his mom, defusing the situation a little - and somehow he kind of became a bigger part, because it occurred to me that out of all of Loki's kin, he'd be the one most capable of understanding the sheer fucked-up-ness of Sam's situation, the sheer horror of being a vessel, because while all of Loki's children got bound or jailed or flat out hurt or killed, then Sleipnir was the only one who had to actually cooperate in his own captivity, allowing a rider to mount him, even letting them take his child away for their purposes...