Every now and again, Ein will come out with a coherent word, piping up in the midst of incomprehensible toddler babble, and this is one of those times. "Fisss!" he says with a determined nod, and grips Khai's hand with surprising strength. He's a baby, but he's an Asgardian baby, after all.

Loki watches the exchange between Eindrid and Khaishan, smiling a wistful smile, but then he's silent for a moment as the matriarch speaks--and for several long seconds after.

"How often," he murmurs at length, "I have sat next to people--mostly women--who offered such wise and gentle advice? And how many hands have extended toward me, for the sake of these little ones, to give what they can? Trinkets and dolls and food and soft words..."

"And still they cry in the night, and I wake with them, and still I bleed from every wound ever cut into me. Is healing merely a trick of endurance, do you think? Because I have found no balm save time, and that is something I have not had enough of."