Bitter Cold

At this festive time of year, when one's thoughts naturally turn to the comforts of home and hearth, the holiday cheer of friends, feasting and song, my thoughts tend to turn to a colder, darker place. A place where the fires burn cold, and the frost bites hard.
Why, one might ask, would someone like Loki take upon himself the hardships, the physical discomforts, the pain and the torments of someone else? What inducement could there possibly be to do this?

It is in the nature of Loki to do this, because Loki contains within himself at first awareness the seed of a desire full grown. And this desire is love, and the nature of this love is that which is seen at the dawn, when the individual beauties of all of the night stars are dimmed by the arrival of the one great and wonderful sun, which envelops the world with light. And then no other light will be seen.
When Freyja sets Her hound to the scent, the hound will run true, and abide then where She bids him go, for it is in his nature, and what he most desires to do.
If, when he arrives, he is turned away at the door, there he will sit, outside in the cold, and no punishment will be more keenly felt by him than to be denied a place at his master's hearth.

For the venom served cold is the gift that bites the hardest, and there is but a small bowl to hold these drops.