Avasknad

[Athena]

Avasknad

The world is a magnificent knot of threads and an unsurpassed weaving and the most lovely piece of art that ever was/is/will be.

[Athena]

Threads, threads, everywhere, and not a single mistake.

[Athena]

This is not the truth. There are mistakes - places where the knots get so thick that one thread hangs loose, where small warps in the weave disrupt the dance of the loom, where nearly invisible broken threads mar the perfection.

[Athena]

Mistakes. Threads are looked over accidentally or aren't attached firmly enough. And for each forgotten thread, there is a person who will spend their life alone.

[Athena]

It is an especially painful fate for the magical because their core of Mother Earth needs a thread to tie them down.

[Athena]

Johan Avasknad is not one such person. It has never been a mistake for him - his entire family line on his mother's side is cursed in such a way. It has been so for countless generations, and it is unknown who cursed them or why.

[Athena]

(The knowledge was lost deliberately, out of fear. The culprit was, in fact, Athena Archivist's family on her mother's side. They had always been able to see things, and when Johan's many times great-grandfather raped and killed Athena's many times great-aunt, they made sure that he and all his progeny would die unloved and unhappy. They broke his thread, willingly spending the life force of two of their number to rip the pattern and shape it anew. They broke his thread.

[Athena]

There is a reason everyone avoids Athena, even if they don't fully recognize it, even if they tell themselves it is just her strangeness.)

[Athena]

Johan has come to accept it, in a way. His mother - well, his mother has gone a little bit mad over the course of her life. She has had seven husbands, all of whom have died tragically young of untraceable means just for not being able to love her. On Johan's seventh birthday, his mother sat him down on the elegant big-person armchair in the study. His feet didn't touch the floor, but he still felt very grown up. Mother placed her graceful, glittering hands on his knees and said, "You will never be loved. You will never be loved, and they don't deserve you if they can't love you. Remember that."

[Athena]

His second step-father had just died. Johan remembers the way what seemed to be drops of mercury rolled down his mother's flawless cheeks as she spoke. He remembers the way her cultured voice broke. He remembers the way he didn't really understand.

[Athena]

He understands now, and he knows his mother's madness too well. His funeral robes have been worn too often, and he understands his mother's madness too well.

[Athena]

She has remarried yet again, and he knows what the next letter deposited on the breakfast table will say. He will burn it with an absent flick of his wand and keep eating his strawberry muffin. He will sip his tea and continue correcting Silvernane's/Sinfist's/Hadicha's essay for them because it is always good to have others in his debt.

[Athena]

He understands his mother's madness, but he vows not to follow in it. He can live without love, he is sure. Johan is of the Court - strong and cunning and clever. He has goals to fulfill, and he will not twirl into the twisted wrongness of his mother with a serene, secretive smile.

[Athena]

He has goals to fulfill, and he can live without love. He is to be an Artist, and he will go further than anyone would believe he could. He will.

[Athena]

Johan understands madness, but there are many things he does not understand. He does not understand what was torn from him so long ago, long before he was even conceived - he does not understand what his life could have been. He does not understand self-sacrifice and being half of a whole. He does not know the eruption of warmth inside that comes when someone professes their love. He does not know the sense of belonging that comes with a happy home, and he does not know, most of all, what it is to have someone want to live for him. With him.