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Wednesday, January 19, 2005 10:07
The end of one cycleTwins are not a state of mind. A long time ago, in a place far, far away, a Trickster spirit called Raven decided to try something new. Being arrogant and greedy, he did not see why he should follow the normal rules as to how such things worked, and decided he would do things his way. He was demiurge, after all, Creator of People in many different worlds. There was no reason for him to do things the way the others did just because that was the way they did things. So he took a mass of potential that he had been keeping his eye on for some time, and which had once been something with a form of its own, and made two piles. In one pile he put all the bits that he wanted to have in this new thing, and in the other he put the bits that he didn't want. When he had finished, he put all the bits he didn't want into a bag. The bits he did want he squeezed into the mould he had made to give his new thing an initial shape. He had to squeeze very hard because he had kept more things than he had discarded. Oðin said it wouldn't work, that he was being too lackadaisical with his craftsmanship. The Dwarves would have made a better job, he said, but even they would not be able to make this thing work because, as well as keeping lots of extra bits, which were not necessary, a number of things that ordinarily would go into a thing like this had fallen out or been discarded to make it fit into the mould. Raven said 'pah!' and 'poppycock!' and did it anyway. The new thing did indeed work, and ended up in the shape of a little girl. Raven kept the bag of bits that he had not used in her creation, because ravens hoard things in caches and do not like to throw things away, and he polished her and made some modifications to her design and taught her things that little girls like that need to know. When he had finished that, he let Wyrm take her away for some special schooling, because the All Father was not someone to refuse and had let him have the material he had used to make the little girl in the first place. When Raven had found somewhere suitable to put the little girl so that she could grow up, he let her out into the world. One day Oðin came to visit. He had heard from his brother Loki that the little girl had been let out into the world, and Loki had heard it from Coyote, who had often visited her while she was being polished and prepared. He had stopped to look at the little, wriggling thing and then he had gone to see Raven to tell him that she would not last because there was still too much stuff inside her. He knew about these things because he was a Creator too. Raven again said 'pah!' and 'poppycock!' but knew that his old friend was right, and so one day he flew down to where the little girl was playing in the garden and took out her right eye. He gave it to Oðin as a present, which was very good of him because ravens like to eat eyeballs and it was a present that had a value Oðin could truly appreciate. Now Raven had made this little girl for a reason, but did not want to waste his time on her until she was old enough for him to start training properly, so he let other members of the Family, Seal and Dolphin, do the work of teaching her the things that her human parents could not until, one day, he decided she was ready and introduced himself. The little girl was not very little any more, and had no memories of where she had come from before she was let out into the world. She was very surprised when Raven turned up, and tried to cling to her mentors, Seal and Dolphin. They pushed her away, gently, and because Raven had made her and she belonged to him, she quickly accepted him. Then he began to teach her the things he could not teach her before she was out in the world, and remind her of the things he had taught her before. Soon it became time for her to get ready to do the first of the things he had planned for her. She would be good at that thing because he had made sure to include bits that would be good for it and leave out things that would distract her. But because he had made her that way, he knew he would have to get someone else to help her. All the little girls and boys the Families made to do this thing needed someone else to help them, because the part of them that was designed to do this thing was very powerful but not really very clever. It did exactly what it was told, but could also sometimes get confused and be self-destructive, so there had to be someone to help them so that they worked properly. But who could Raven get? He was crafty, and although he had not specifically told any of the other Families of his plans, he did not want this to be the only thing his little girl did for him. If he found someone good, who would look after her properly and keep her working, then he knew his special design would keep going in that job for a very long time, which was not what he wanted at all. He wanted this job to be part of her training, and to be able to show off to the other Families about how good he was at making things. The first person he tried was not interested. He went away and stopped talking to the girl. She was very sad, but had not bonded with him properly so was not sad for long. The second person he tried was interested, and so Raven, being sly, took the bag of bits and pieces he had left over from making the little girl, and made a special coat from it. When this person was not looking, Raven slipped the coat onto him and tied it very tightly so that it would not fall off. When the girl next saw the man, with his invisible coat, some part of her recognised something about him as being the same as her and loved him instantly for she thought he was some sort of brother to her. She could not help herself. It was the way she was made. Time passed, and she was good at the job, but the man was not really her brother and, just as some part of her was fooled by the invisible coat, another part of her was not and eventually he too went away and stopped speaking to her. This made her very sad indeed, and very ill, because the job she did was very hard and often caused her injuries that the man had once fixed. But Raven had a trick for that. He took the coat from the man, so she no longer felt that he was her brother, and gave it to someone else, because he knew she was not ready to look after herself just yet. Again, the girl was fooled, and so was this new man, because Raven tied the coat very tightly indeed and pulled the hood right down over his face, so that he could only see the world and the girl by looking through the material of the coat. Plus, it was a magic coat, and had woven into it special memories of the time before the little girl was let out into the world. But some part of her knew, as did some part of the man, and her friends and cousins and brothers and sisters, that all was not right. They fought and argued and were not very nice to each other, and became more and more unhappy. One day Raven said that the man did not have to look after her any more, that she would do it herself, and this scared the girl a great deal. He took the coat away from the man and so she no longer thought he was her brother. But the man had been blinkered by the material for so long, and Raven had tied it so tightly, that he still had wrinkles and marks where it had been on him, and still thought that the girl was his sister. This meant that she felt angry and troubled whenever the man called her 'sister' or called Raven 'dad'. However, being a good girl, she believed it was Raven's job to explain what had happened to the man, particularly as she was not entirely sure herself. So she bit her tongue and mostly kept quiet, although she could not understand, when it seemed so obvious to her, why the man continued to think he was her brother when by his word and deed and actions he could not be. Time went on and the girl gradually did learn to cope with being on her own, although she never really entirely lost the pangs of longing that would afflict her on the days when Raven worked her very hard. And then, one day, it came time for her to be prepared for the next task Raven wanted her to perform. So the process of change started again, even more violently this time, and even more intensely because these changes were more extreme than the previous ones. As part of these changes she had to learn to trust what Raven told her, to trust what she knew about her Family, to trust herself when it came to these matters, even when it came to disagreeing with others. She also had to learn to set aside the normal human sympathies and caring for others, something that had been dropped when she had been squeezed into the mould but which she had picked up again as part of her human childhood. Raven had a test for her. After many weeks and months of training, and weeks of trials with a large Russian whose job it was to take off all the patina her polish had developed over the years, Raven told her why he had not explained to the man that he was not really her brother. She had to do it. Raven told her how he had made them both think they were brother and sister, because she wanted to know and he wanted to reward her for doing so well until then. The girl was not very happy about this. It seemed a terrible thing to do to a person. But she belonged to Raven and she could not argue with him. What was done was done. And she told the man that he was not her brother, that he was not Raven Family at all, but belonged to Badger. The man was very angry and said that Raven was a shit. She agreed, and decided that she would do her very, very best not to let it happen ever, ever again. Twins are not a state of mind. No. They are not a state of mind. But, in this instance, they were not far off. (7) comments | links to this post
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