▸ Column · Mythic Asgard and the Nine Realms — a citizen of the realm writes to a column, in archaic register, of a reconciliation borne by raven
LOKI replies.
The letter
For seven long winters my elder brother and I had not traded a single word — not since we came to blows over the division of our grandmother's hall and her lands when she passed to the halls of the honored dead. Then, with no warning at all, a raven arrived bearing his message: that he missed me, and that no inheritance was ever worth the silence between us. I wept so hard I had to halt my horse on the bridge road and gather myself before I could ride on. We spoke through half the night — of the funeral pyre we both attended yet neither would speak at, of the truth that he had become uncle twice over to children whose names he had never once been told. I do not write seeking counsel. I only needed to tell someone beyond my own circle — someone who did not know us in the bitter years — because it feels too vast and too fragile to say aloud to anyone near. Is this what they mean when they speak of grace?
Loki replies
My dear, you have written to precisely the wrong creature, which is of course to say the right one. I am the brother who would never have sent that raven — the one who burns the bridge, salts the crossing, and then performs magnificent astonishment that no one comes to visit. You stood on the far shore and received the very message I have spent centuries too proud to send. So forgive me if my counsel arrives wrapped in something that smells faintly of envy.
You confess you had stopped believing the call would come. Oh, I know that trick intimately — I authored several variations of it. We persuade ourselves we never wanted the thing at all, because a wanted thing withheld is unbearable, while an unwanted thing absent costs us nothing. A marvelous illusion. Also a lie — and you wept on the bridge road precisely because the lie finally cracked open.
Now the one true danger. Some quiet hour will come when you are tempted to make him pay the seven winters' bill — to itemize who wronged whom, to need him to confess he was the fool. Don't. I have won every such accounting and stood gloriously alone inside the victory. Give him your children's names before he thinks to ask. That is the grace. And yes — this is exactly what they mean.
— Loki
Thor weighs in
My brother speaks truly, which I do not say often — though mark that he warns you chiefly against your pride. He would. He has rather more practice guarding a door than walking through one.
But hear the part he leaves in shadow: honor your brother. He did the hard, unglamorous thing — he reached first, with no promise you would answer. On Asgard we name that worthiness, not weakness. And grace, good soul, is not the raven's message. It is every quiet morning after, when you choose him again with nothing forcing your hand. I very nearly lost my own brother to silence. Do not squander a single one of those mornings.
— Thor
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