Good evening. Welcome to the Just Sleep podcast. I'm Tasia, your host.

Every week, I will read you an old story to help you relax, put the stressful day behind you, and drift off to sleep.

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Tonight, I will be reading two stories featuring Loki,

Loki's children and the dwarf's gifts.

So lie down, close your eyes, and let me read you a story.

Loki's Children

Read Loki, the wickedest of all the Assyr, had done something of which he was much ashamed. He had married a giantess,

the ugliest, fiercest, most dreadful giantess that ever lived, and of course he wanted no one

to find out what he had done, for he knew that Father Odin would be indignant with him, for having

wedded one of the enemies of the Assyre, and that none of his brothers would be grateful to him

for giving them a sister-in-law so hideous. But at last, all father found out the secret that Loki had been hiding for years.

Worst of all, he found out that Loki and the giantess had three ugly children

hidden away in the dark places of the earth.

Three children of whom Loki was even more ashamed than of their mother, though he loved them too. For two of them

were the most terrible monsters which time had ever seen. Hela, his daughter, was the least

ugly of the three, though one could scarcely call her attractive. She was half darkness and half light, which must have looked very strange,

and she was not easily mistaken by anyone who chanced to see her, you can well understand.

She was fierce and grim to see, and the very sight of her caused terror and death to him

...