My head hurts and my legs and my arms. Hell my body hurts all over and I’m less than game to open my eyes because I can bet the room would spin and swim out of control.

I snuggle down into the blankets and sigh gently. I can’t believe how soft and comforting they feel. I don’t remember the bedclothes in my room feeling so silky and this fur is just perfect for snuggling into.

Um hang on? Fur? Since when has fur been part of the bedclothes at Crown or anywhere in hotels in Australia?

“What the?” I murmur groggily and I hear a tired half sigh half giggle next to me.

I try to fling my eyes open wildly and sit up but it comes out more as a half squint and the sitting up really does send my head spiralling.

“You might like to cover yourself, the healer will be back in a moment to check on you and we don’t want her to get the wrong idea,” says the voice from somewhere to the left and I squint down to see I’m naked (at least from the waist up) and going by the tones and timbre of the voice – I’ve just flashed the king of Asgard.

Embarrassed and a little dazed, I drag the covers up around me – they had only slipped a little so he got just a glimpse of nipple.

“Sorry I don’t think it’s good royal manners for a princess to flash her monarch on their second meeting,” I mumble for some strange reason (yeah I’m totally out of it.)”

And I’m sure I hear him monotone. “Nice customs curtsey to great kings, Cait!’ –  now I know i’m in cloud cuckoo land because I’m hearing an alien quote Shakespeare and the room is spinning wildly so I lay back down.

I’m obviously still a little out of it from whatever it was that happened last night and it is only slowly dawning on me that I’m once again “out of this world” with no idea how I got here and when. Not only that but I’m naked (I pull back the covers gently to check the thin silk knickers I was wearing under my dress are still in place, they are and feel a little happier – but not much). I finally take in the room I’m in, it is opulent and large, but not ostentatiously so in either case. It is furnished in dark wood, with polished wood floors, scattered with rugs. There is an overstuffed couch in front of an open fire place and book cases line every wall except the ones with the huge windows in front of the bed. It feels more like an old-fashioned drawing room with a canopied bed dropped in the middle, than a purposed bedroom. Next to me is a large winged chair, decorated with added Asgardian king. He is wearing dark trousers and a white shirt and long dark boots but he looks slightly more dishevelled than kingly. He has dark circles under his eyes and looks very little like the sexy woman- eating wolf of our first encounter. It’s for this reason, and the fact that I still feel distinctly disorientated, that I don’t give him both barrels. I kind of sense something happened but it is yet to fully filter to the surface of my mind.

I still manage a “What the hell am I doing here!” but it lacks the venom it would have had in other circumstances.

“You don’t remember?” he asks with a voice full of concern.

I go to shake my head but it hurts and I flinch slightly. He moves a long-fingered hand to my forehead and smoothes back my hair, gently checking my temperature– it’s cooling and soothing and I wonder if he has used some kind of magic.

“Mmm,” I say moving into his hand a little, enjoying the sensation of human um Asgardian touch.

“Are you going to take your Jotun form and cool my temperature,” I ask in a gentle jibe and I see him visibly wince. He moves his head in closer to me and almost whispers.

“You watch too much propaganda masquerading as your world’s popular culture!” he says. I’m not sure what he means so I leave it.

“Just rest Cait, try and regain your strength and memories, and then I’ll send you home.

 “I don’t want an angry Thor blundering in here and accusing me of abducting his daughter.

“Twice!” he adds with a slight laugh.

Thor – what is the significance of Thor – what do I remember? Oh crap and the night starts to come back to me. Making the connection between my dad and the god of thunder – holy heck, not only that but calling him on it.

“My dad is Thor!” I say feeling stupid. It’s a statement not a question. And Loki nods.

“My father, as you could imagine, was fairly taken aback by receiving two phone calls in two hours to discuss our whole other secret life, I don’t think you’ll be his favourite person,” I tell Loki – wondering if he understands or knows what a phone call is. He’s nodding and cryptically adds that he hasn’t been a big fan lately anyway.  Given this reaction and the fact he may, or may not have quoted Henry V before, I sense he is well-versed with Earth culture so I continue.

“He tried to fob me off – with the “not now – it’s complicated” speech but, well I’ve always been tenacious. In the end he told me that yes he may have gone by that name at some point. However he said it was not that simple and we really did need to have a proper discussion about this later.”

“Actually up until that point I’d kind of been enjoying the whole “Asgardian princess fantasy” but that’s when I still thought it could be a fantasy. It’s was a lot more real after the second call. My father was really Thor – known to some as the God of Thunder – I had so many questions.

“He was adamant that this was not a five minute on the phone thing and that there was a lot to discuss now I knew the very very basic details,” I say.

“He asks me to trust him – but can you trust someone that you have just discovered has been lying to you?”  I get a sympathetic smile from the possible god of mischief so I continue.

“I have more questions than I can ponder and I don’t think I can handle people. All I really want to do is leave Crown and just walk by the Yarra River and try and get my head around all this crap. But I’m not exactly going to blend into the crowd of Sunday night diners am I? Even when I’m not dressed in green velvet and acres of chiffon – at six foot tall with reddie-auburn hair I don’t exactly blend in. Add three inch heels and I’m a freak – always the tallest girl in school – something I was teased about a lot.

“Oh god am I normal here on Asgard?”  I ask Loki – “Are Asgardians naturally taller?”

He smiles gently and nods urging me to go on.

 “I realise I actually don’t know much about the world, the universe............ And what I thought I knew has now just been blown out of the water by what is probably the strangest night I have ever ever had,” I continue.

“I certainly never expected my first Logies night to be like this and of course at that point I remember the awards ceremony. I’d forgotten all about them. So I stand up from my little hidey-hole in the foyer just in time to see Mark, my agent and the producer of our show all coming out of the ballroom.

 “Your award is up next,” my harassed looking agent tells me as they all half man-handle me back into the room and over to my chair. We made it just in time with the presenters announcing first Asher Keddes name and then mine and flashing the camera onto us both quickly before moving on to the other three nominees.

“I kind of didn’t need to bother though.  There was no need for acceptance speech (just as well as I still hadn’t come up with my “something witty”) Asher won it as we all knew she would and I was left to smile and look gracious. I think I probably handled that well because, to be honest, I was relieved.  That would have been some acceptance speech - I’d like to thank my mother Jane – she’s a farmer near Hay in the “outback” and my dad Tony who is a Doctor at the Hay hospital and moonlights as the God of Thunder. Yeah probably not.”

Loki snorts a little at this and I tell him that at this point the details get a bit hazy – well for hazy read – I started to drink the odd glass of wine (or seven – don’t judge me I was numb).

The Logies end and we all head on to the after party two floors up but I’m not travelling well and after disappearing out to the foyer to think for a while (and sober up). I come back to the party to find Mark with his tongue in the mouth of the girl with the massive mammeries and it’s the last straw.

“I felt like my whole world had been turned upside down and back to front,” I tell Loki.

“So I run for the room, but I forgot that I had a cloud of fabric trailing me and as I run for the stairs I catch my heel in the train and.........well I don’t remember anything after that.”

Loki, who had by this time slumped back in his chair to listen to my story, moves in closer to me again and asks if I remember calling his name and I shake my head.

He laughs.

“Actually you called me some interesting things that I didn’t know existed,” he laughs.

“But I heard you and arrived just in time to see you tumble down the stairs and hit your head,” the mirth leaving his eyes quickly.

“I didn’t know if you were alive or dead and I didn’t know what else to do so I grabbed you and brought you home.  I summoned my most trusted and discreet healer and we put you in here – it’s my old bedroom. I’ve moved into the “Kings apartment” but I have kept this, this is my safe place. It’s where I come to be me – not King Loki of Asgard,” he adds. After becoming a “bit of a star” in recent years I get where he is coming from and I nod.

“Thank you!” I say and I mean it. It was an incident that could have cost me my career and my life. His eyes soften again. “We we can’t have the future queen of Asgard dying in a drunken tumble down a stairwell can we,” he laughs mischievously, destroying a nice moment..

I punch him in the arm for that one – “Hey don’t get any ideas – I still think this whole situation is a load of crap and I don’t know what the hell is going on and why you have suddenly come into my life!” I say.

He feigns serious injury then explains that he thought I’d been told – the colour of my clothing, the way I kept mentioning his name. I look at him like he’s insane. Saying his name? When did I say his name?

Reading my mind he laughs.

“Logie sounds a lot like Loki from this distance in space!”