I'm just a tad shaken by "Aunt" Sigyne's warning and more than a bit angry.

I've only known about the whole Asgardian extended family for three days but already they are starting to become a bit on the nose like three-day old prawn heads left out in the garbage can. I mean what the hell did she mean that her mother wanted me to stay out of things. I don't understand. I'm not in anything. Sure I've met Lord Loki Hot pants but that doesn't mean I'm going to believe his bullshit about being "promised". If I was promised surely my dad would have told me by now right? Being betrothed to someone from birth isn't exactly something you keep secret – mind you neither is being from another planet (well unless you're afraid of being dissected I suppose).

Well I'll know soon enough. I've just crossed the Murrumbidgee into Hay proper. I don't know whether to pop in on dad at the surgery and see if he can take a long lunch or just head home to the farm and stow my gear. Mind you going home isn't a simple trip. The family property is 20 minutes down the road and it's another 10- minutes down our dusty road to the homestead on the Bidgee.  Sure it would soak up about an hour and a half but after all the crap I've been through in recent days and now aunt sour puss from hell, I just want to see my dad.

I drive down the wide main street and take a left at the railway line (which use to be the lifeblood of the town but is pretty much a relic now thanks to road-trains). Following the Griffith Road or the Midwestern Highway past the bowls club (where just about every major milestone of my family's life has been celebrated) I finally pull into the hospital car park. Dad's rooms are just outside the hospital grounds in an old federation style house but I always find it easier just to park at the hospital car park. It's ironic he is so close to the hospital because at the moment he doesn't have visiting rights there (a whole other story). In fact up until recently the hospital didn't have a dedicated doctor, relying on visiting practitioners from Griffith (more than an hour away).

But they do now – my brother Cameron! Dad couldn't be prouder I know, he likes to tell me that. A lot.

I wander past the hospital which has been newly refurbished and looks pretty high-tech considering where it sits in the state (ie the middle of bloody nowhere). Dad's rooms are in an old white house with green trim and a neatly kept front garden. There is parking at the rear but we are never allowed to park there because "that Caitlin is for the patients!"

Inside there is a waiting room full of people. There's only two doctors in Hay (population just under 3000) and everyone loves dad. I wander in and immediately cause a stir, everybody knows me here and has a theory on what I should do next, why I should have won the Logie and what is happening with that handsome Benjamin (Matt's character in our recent mini-series). In the end Gloria the receptionist, who is more like an aunt than the scary woman I met an hour ago, ushers me back to the break room to get a bit of order in the place.

I make Gloria and I a cup of coffee and boil the jug again for dad's tea and wait. There's plenty of books (many are mine left here over the years) including all the classics and of course Shakespeare. I have loved Shakespeare ever since I was a kid. I vaguely remember dad reading me his plays. I loved Much Ado and As You Like it but our favourite was always Henry V - violent and bloody, mildly romantic and lots of fun. I flick to the Much Ado About Nothing text and study it. My big audition in London?  Much Ado on the West End – shhh!! Don't tell anyone!!

After two and a half hours of reading, visits to the bakery and enough tea and coffee to keep me awake for a week. Dad is finished and ready to go home. I want to pounce on him and ask him everything now but he's happy to continue on with the small talk we started during his breaks in the afternoon! Yep he's a frustrating man!

So a 20 minute drive later, we arrive home to an empty house and he grabs a couple of beers and a couple of blankets and we head out to the big clay-pan out the side of our house away from the River.

We crack the beers, sit down and watch the big dome of sky above us. It's always been our "thing" we love that big sky. I take a sip of my beer and look at the man I've always known as my dad Tony Errikson. My dad, the alien from another galaxy. Kids always believe their parents are from another planet but mine really is.

"So Thor!" I say grinning. I've decided to keep this light. No recriminations, I just need the truth (although you know I want to slap him upside the head right?).

He cuffs me gently around the ears and shrugs.

"So um are you really the god of Thunder I ask," keeping the cheeky banter up.

He laughs at that "A guy makes one electrometric transducer and produces a bit of electrical storm and he's suddenly the good of Thunder!" he jokes.

"So no Hammer then dad?" I counter. And he laughed in a way that instantly reminded me of "Thor" in the Marvel movie and I had to giggle. (Why had I not seen the resemblance before – though my dad looks about 50-60 now and  well, he's my dad, so I'm not going to think he's prettier than Chris Hemsworth right?)

"Well I had to shape my transducer like something!" he joked before turning, putting his beer down and facing me. Gently he puts his hand over mine and his eyes lose their twinkle.

"I'm sorry Caity – I just didn't know how to tell you! It's not something they mention in the toddler training books or Good Parenting Magazine," he says his eyes filling with sadness.

I put my other hand over his and squeeze it, smiling softly at him.

"Well I suppose it would be hard enough to tell your daughter you're an alien without the whole princess, arranged marriage thing," I offer.

"That's just it Caity you aren't promised to the King of Asgard," he says.

"But Loki....." I look confused and he sighs.

"Loki can marry any of the Errikson princesses, you're just one of the options," my dad says searching my face for something, I'm not sure what and I'm not sure he found it.

"It just seems you are his first choice but you aren't necessarily the best option," he sighs.

"And I've been trying to tell him that for months, for years to be honest.

"You see baby our King has real power and so does the Queen. She is kind of his deputy in many ways. She is directly in control of the health issues, education and other more internal matters. She works with her own set of advisors and council to keep the realm ah planet running harmoniously. Becoming queen, like becoming king, requires careful and long-term study."

This isn't what I expected – you have to study to be queen?? I wonder if this is why dad wanted me to make more of myself and if so why didn't he tell me about all this early. Being queen isn't so attractive when it's not a life of luxury but a life of public service. Dad says queens are groomed from birth for the role which is why the grand-daughter of the previous king is usually the perfect candidate - but not in this case because let's face it up until recently I didn't even know the planet existed let alone that I was a princess.

"I suppose me being half human and having a human lifespan doesn't help my cause either,"  I say. It's just a throwaway line and I don't realise the impact it's about to have. It's funny sometimes the simplest things can spark off the biggest changes and in this case it did.

It was that line that prompted my dad to tell me about my past – my real past. I'm not half human – though I have a great great grandfather who was a Celtic Prince – and I'm older than I thought – a lot, lot older in human terms – which (and this is the kicker) I'm not (human that is). Sorry if that doesn't make sense, if it's garbled confusion - I'm garbled confusion because what followed over the next 40 minutes was the story of my dad falling for Sorchia – a young princess of the Stevenson clan, marrying her and having everything he ever wanted. 

Thor Odinson Erikkson was a prince of the realm, the Crown Prince – so second heir to the throne behind Loki (right hand man to the King and King in waiting). He had title, power, responsibility and the most beautiful and talented woman ever. His life was perfect and when I arrived it was even more so. But it all changed in a heartbeat – a bomb-blast.

A bombing in the marketplace claimed more than a hundred lives including my mother – my real mother.  No one knows if she was the target or just unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But by some stroke of luck she didn't take me – it was the first time she hadn't. My dad rushed screaming through the streets to her but she died in his arms – he didn't have any healing skills which may have prevented her death. He was lost and devastated and not thinking straight. He left me in the care of my grandparents  and wandered the universe until he finally went to university in Australia and met my mother, well not my mother, the person I've always believed to be mother. He came back to Asgard and took me away, bringing me to Australia and while I live in this world I have a "Midgardian" metabolism – so he shortened my lifespan.

I sit there quietly during this story, barely taking it in. He's rewriting me again for the second time in three days. Breaking down who I am, who I believed I was and my history, changing my family turning my brothers and mother into half brothers and step mothers. I feel for the man but I'm devastated for the daughter, which may be self-centred but for a moment it's all about me, I've lost my whole identity and had it replaced with something so foreign, so alien that it's hard to think, to breathe.

I can't be near him any more – he finishes and stares at me with tears in his eyes and asks my forgiveness but I can't talk – can't answer him.  All I can do is turn and run. He yells for me but I run, in the fading light I put distance between him and I – I need to.

I'm about half a kilometre away from my father and the only home I've ever really known when the first blast of energy slams into the ground in front of me and I'm knocked sideways – it really isn't my day.

.