-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 501
Halcyon
Name: Halcyon
Title / Role: Elder of the Eternal Loom, Keeper of the Halcyon Days, Patron of Celebrations
Order: The Elders of the Eternal Loom
Parent: Once
Core Thread: Memory
Home: Frays End, and wherever there is a celebration
Status: Active
Themes: Celebration, Joy, Nostalgia, Special Occasions, Hope
"Of course it was wonderful. It was the best day there ever was. Well, until the next one."
-- Halcyon
Halcyon is a child of Once, and the Elder of happy memory: the golden days, the long summer evenings, the feasts and festivals and birthdays that Threadlings look back on and sigh. She is the patron of celebrations, holidays and special occasions of every kind, from the grandest festival in Threadbare to a child's first lost tooth.
Halcyon remembers everything, like all of Once's children. But she remembers it through rose-tinted glasses, and she would not have it any other way. In her telling, every summer was sunnier than it really was, every feast was bigger, every song was sung in perfect tune, and nobody ever argued over who got the last slice of ButtonBerry pie. The other Elders roll their eyes. Halcyon simply smiles, and tells it again, a little brighter than before.
She is bright, bubbly and endlessly sentimental, prone to happy tears at weddings, namings, homecomings and, on one memorable occasion, the opening of a new bakery. She has never missed a celebration if she could possibly reach it, and she has never once arrived empty-handed.
The oldest tellings of Once's children speak of the halcyon: a small, bright-winged bird that nested on the open water in the depths of winter. For as long as it sat on its nest, the winds dropped and the waves lay still, and there were seven days of calm in the middle of the stormiest season. Threadlings came to call any golden, peaceful time halcyon days, and the Elder who keeps them has carried the bird's name for as long as anyone can remember.
Halcyon's gift is to make those days last. She keeps every celebration Threadbare has ever known, and keeps it lovelier than it was. Some Elders say this is a kind of forgetting. Halcyon says it is the opposite. Remembering the good days a little brighter than they were, she insists, is not a lie. It is a promise of how bright the next ones could be. A Threadling who remembers joy expects joy, and goes looking for it, and very often finds it.
This is why, wherever there is a celebration, Halcyon is sure to be there, usually in the thick of it. She lights the first lantern, starts the first dance, raises the first toast, and remembers every detail for ever afterwards, only slightly improved.
The Void takes joy first. Celebrations are the first thing a community lets go of when it stops caring for itself: a feast that is too much bother, a festival that is too expensive, a birthday that is quietly forgotten. Halcyon knows this better than anyone, because she watched it happen at LoomLit, where the LoomLight Festival dwindled year by year into ticketed squares and closed streets, until there was no festival left at all.
The Obscurists have a denial for every one of Halcyon's gifts. Null's None teaches that nothing remains, so a happy memory is only something else to lose. Null's Never teaches that nothing lasts, so why celebrate anything at all? In the places the Void has touched, Threadlings stop marking the days. Birthdays pass unnoticed, holidays become ordinary, and no one can quite remember the last time there was a party.
Halcyon's answer is to celebrate anyway, and to celebrate everything. When a Threadling touched by the Void can no longer remember a single happy day, she sits beside them and tells them one of theirs, glowing, golden, and very slightly exaggerated, until they begin to smile and remember it for themselves. And then, whatever day it happens to be, she finds a reason to celebrate it.
"Nothing lasts, they say. Well, nor does a cake, and I have never once let that stop me."
-- Halcyon
Halcyon is bowed like all Elders, but carries it lightly, and is almost always pictured mid-laugh. She wears the colours of the order trimmed with ribbons, bunting and a small bright-blue feather in her collar, in memory of the bird, and she is never without her rose-tinted spectacles. Her book is a scrapbook of good days, crammed with pressed flowers, ribbons, invitations and ticket stubs, and every entry is written in the present tense, as though it were still happening.
Halcyon is the Elder of celebration and happy memory, and a joyful, hopeful presence at Frays End. She is the natural lead for festivals, holidays and special occasions in Threadbare, and a key figure in the finale of the StoryWeaver's journey, when the LoomLight Festival is recreated at Frays End.
For contributors, Halcyon is the right voice for celebrations of every kind: festivals, feast days, holidays and special occasions drawn from cultures around the world, as well as personal milestones and family traditions. She is a natural fit for seasonal and live events, and for any story that reminds a community what it is fighting for.
- Once - her parent
- The Elders - her order
- Frays End - her home
- The LoomLight Festival - the greatest celebration she remembers, and the one she most longs to see again
- LoomLit - where she watched the joy fade first
- Null - and the denials None and Never, which she answers with a party