Memories
Weaving the World
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She lay on the stone floor of the make-shift chapel and screamed as she curled herself into a ball, as the man rocked her back and forth, trying to help her get over the anger, the all-consuming hate of the friend who had left her. Second stage Mrrlsta. Hatred of the person who had left and torn you to shreds. She screamed again, hot tears burning her face as she shouted again and again, called his name, tried to bring him home to her, but Kurt Wagner was not listening, or if he was, he could not answer.
And Xixy rocked his god to sleep, as she cried on the floor of the chapel.
"And of course, Logan was all sealed up about it and wasn't there for when she needed him most."
Curt stared at his father.
"What, kid?"
"Two words. X. Force."
"We're shut down. Gone. Slim saw to that."
"No you're not. I know you've restarted it."
"Kid, we haven't."
"I want on."
"Kid, even if we had restarted X-Force, I wouldn't let you on. I…I…"
"X-Force goes up against real evil dudes. I'm not a mutant. I get past their sensors."
"Curt, you're not ever going to be doing something like X-Force ever again, even if we did have something like it."
"I know you have and if you don't let me on it, I'm telling Maman."
Silence for a second. Then Logan sighed and pulled his hands down his face.
"Fine. But if I ever think I'm going to lose you, you go straight back home. You almost died in that hell. I'm not putting you at risk again."
Curt blinked.
"Are you… Are you being caring?"
"I don't know whether to be amused or sad about the surprise in his voice."
She stepped into the torn up roots of the tree. Strictly speaking, she; as in Tora; shouldn't be here. But Dragon had a VIP backstage pass. The hooded figure looked up.
"Dragon…"
"Are you Skuld, Urd or Verdandi? You all look the same in those cloaks."
"I am Urd."
The weaver. The middle sister.
"I have a…request to make."
"You wish to see the tapestry?"
She nodded.
"My sisters will show you."
They were being exceptionally polite, a part of their…complicated relationship. The Norns chose the fates of mortals, and as such, came under Dragon's jurisdiction. But Tora, as a mortal, had her life woven into the tapestry of the world. They had come to a neat agreement. Tora would not try and tell them what to do, the Fates would not mess around with things that would upset her. And they let her thread just do what it wanted to do, which apparently was rather easy as it just sort of meandered comfortably, until last week, when every rule had been thrown out of the window.
Urd gestured to the tapestry.
"There is your thread."
It was short, in comparison to the full length of the weaving. It started out as a sort of warm carmine, then turned into shimmering, glimmering silver. Twice, it was knotted to a longer dark vermillion red thread; that often curled around it, but it was only knotted twice; spitting out new threads. The first knot only produced one ice-blue thread. The second knot produced two; a deep imperial purple and a bright orange thread that seemed to have a slight silver gleam to it. And coiled inside it from shortly before the red turned silver, so tightly the two threads almost appeared one, was a deep indigo thread. The indigo thread was pulled out slightly, being torn from the silver, which had caused damage to the silver thread, starting to unravel it.
"We are sorry. But the thread had already been cut. Of course, with things as they are, it is highly likely that the scissors will have turned out to be blunt and we didn't actually cut it."
But Tora was not paying attention to the Fate, instead tracing the dark vermillion thread back. Shortly after it had curled the first time around the carmine thread, it seemed to be running close to a pale cherry-blossom pink, then went back further, more than once twisting around another thread, a few times knotting and producing another thread. In the grand scheme of things, it was only one thread, but its length alone made it impressive. But even then, it wasn't exactly huge in comparison to the blood-red thread that often ran alongside it and stretched back even further. Tora looked up.
"I want to see the thread of Etana Bat Aleka."
"Etana… Bat… Aleka…? Skald?"
Another cloaked woman stepped up.
"Was she the daughter of the Cheyarafim prince and Azazel's daughter?"
"Yes."
"This way."
Skald led the way back along the huge tapestry.
"Yes, she has caused much trouble over the years. Verdandi should have come down heavier on her."
And then Skald smiled.
"Here."
She was pointed at a thread that started from a knot between a dove-grey and an inky black thread; a glossy, silvery black, but Tora wasn't interested in the colour. Instead she was staring at the end of the thread. It was shorter than Logan's thread, it was shorter even than hers. Basing it on her calculations from previous visits, she estimated the length of the thread was about thirteen years.
"This is wrong."
"No it is not. Verdandi cut it when the child was born. It's not our fault she refused to die, ended up poking holes in the tapestry as we tried to fix what she ended up damaging."
Tora blinked. Every now and then, a little flash of silver seemed to appear next to Etana's thread, so small she could hardly see it. But she turned.
"She was alive. She was alive for around three-thousand years."
"No. She wasn't alive. She died the day the thread was cut. But… well, a certain someone, who answers to no authority but the Tribunal and the One-Above-All, decided to offer her a job. It allowed her to maintain a semblance of life whilst in actuality, she was one of the beings we do not weave."
"And what beings don't you weave?"
"Cosmic entities, anthropomorphic personifications and… angels."
"What sort of angels?"
"Real angels. Not the sort that followed the pantheons. But the angels of the One-Above-All. They served him and were not bound by the Fates of the Aesir."