Weaving, Part 2
Part 1
Part 2
There are different places, he knows this. Knows it like he knows his mother(s) love him. It is in his bones and thrums in his soul and each breath. They are solid and complete on their own and yet all seem as one. He charts them, tries to keep them clear, but it is difficult even as he matures. Experience makes them only marginally easier to navigate.
He has not always noticed the shifts because they have always been with him. The fact it took him so long to see is laughable. He is gifted, brilliant, eccentric, troubled. He is a liar who has only ever spoken the truth.
His entire life has been a battle with madness. He thinks he’s done rather well.
The evidence is in the people. In Sif’s hair before he cut it, in the shifting quality of Fandral’s voice as he makes passes at every one they encounter. It is more noticeable around the nose and eyes of those he is with, it is why he does not like when others turn their backs on him because in order to protect himself he has to see. It is why Hogun turns his back on him as often as possible.
Hogun knows things, even if he doesn’t know them.
---
When he stands by Thor before the coronation he laughs, prods, tricks with magic and the servant leaves with a nervous smile, grabbing the platter and cup and backing out as quickly as he can without being rude. The look of horror on his face makes Loki giggle.
He ignores the insult simmering inside him and plays his response off as a mild correction, knowing it will incite his brother to mock. The joke Thor makes of his contribution to the battle hurts, but it redirects the anger as it was meant to.
“You are incapable of sincerity.” Thor tells him.
Loki sighs and turns to him, invests himself in the words. Means them with all parts of him, trying to reach the Thor who lives in the palace of wood walls.
“I have looked forward to this day as long as you have. Brother. My friend. Sometimes I’m envious, but never doubt that I love you.”
He feels a hand on the back of the neck, sees Thor smile thank you, and then watches as his brother’s smile shifts to mockery. He changes tactics.
“Now give us a kiss.”
---
Roars of the crowds fill the air as Thor enters, arm held high in triumph (entitlement), he smiles at his companions, at his mother, but he does not look at Loki.
Silence comes at the ringing of Gungnir on the metal floor. Odin speaks.
“Thor Odinson. My heir, my first born.” Loki runs his tongue over the inside of his teeth, jaws tight. He watches Thor swear to lies that he does not know are lies, though the ignorance does not make them any more true. Tries to see Thor’s eyes when he swears to cast aside his own ambitions (he wants him to mean it, truly, but he knows his brother will not hold this oath).
It is with a staggering sense of relief when the Allfather stops mid-ceremony and leads Thor down to the vaults. Loki follows. They do not see him.
Thor rages and growls, picks up the shield of one of the deceased and throws it. It nicks a pillar and clatters loudly to the ground. He storms out of the vault when his reign is denied and Loki walks (still invisible) with him. Up the stairs and through the halls, into the receiving room where a feast had been set to celebrate the (failed) occasion.
When Thor upends one of the tables laden with food while servants are trying to clear it, Loki sends a shadow to speak with him (unsure of his own safety, Loki stands quietly by the wall, fingers trailing over the edges of the glass that had rolled in his direction).
“It is unwise to be in my company right now, brother.”
The illusion walks out from behind a pillar and Loki gives a little laugh at himself. “Who said I was wise.”
He waits until Sif and the Warriors Three walk in before moving to join his shadow, letting it fade around him as he speaks.
“If it’s any consolation,” he thinks back to the vault, when a Thor had spoken of waiting for their next move, considering options, “I think you’re right. About the frost giants, about Laufey, about everything.” The words slowly catch up with him and he tenses, suddenly hearing the Thor who wants to battle, trying to hold him back. “But there’s nothing you could do without defying father.” Thor’s eyes harden. “No. No no no no no no no, I know that look-“
“It’s the only way to ensure the safety of our borders.”
“It’s madness.”
“Madness? What sort of madness?” Volstagg calls out (by what was left of the food, naturally).
“We’re going to Jotunheim.”
Thor coaches the warriors into wanting to go and Loki rests his face in his hands, torn between annoyance and pride at Thor playing to each of their vices. Before he knows it they are standing outside the gates with their horses. He grabs a guard, whispers a message for father, and follows. When they cross the bridge, flickers of light bursting to the strikes of their horses hooves upon it, he pleads with Heimdall.
“Stop us.”
“You are not dressed warmly enough.”
The Bifrost blinds him, grabs at him violently, and then they are in the snow.
He wraps his arms around himself for a moment to ward off a shiver that he doesn’t really feel, straightens his coat, and steps up to his brother’s side.
Hogun… hesitates isn’t quite the right word, but they pass each other their eyes meet and for a moment think as one. “We shouldn’t be here.”
They are surrounded, and taunted, and Loki tries to pull Thor together. He is as successful as he ever is, which is to say that he ultimately fails.
Loki sees towering spires in the distance that were not there before and it distracts him for long enough (which is hardly any time at all) for everything to be ruined.
After the hammer is thrown they are overwhelmed in a flurry of weapons and yells and ice that flies.
Thor is an idiot.
That is one thing that will never change and Loki is unsure why he ever used to take comfort in it.
When the giant grabs his wrist they both grin. Because Loki knows, of course he does because this was his life, and when the blue creeps into him he is equal parts horrified and relieved that he finally understands what’s been haunting him.
One time he does not kill the giant.
And one time, one time, one beautifully glorious time, his skin burns.
Father shows up too late to do anything of real consequence.
Until he banishes Thor.
While Odin and Thor roar at each other, Loki runs his hand over the edge of his shattered gauntlet. A chip breaks off.
“You are unworthy of your title. You are unworthy of the loved ones you have betrayed.” Loki flinches as thought the Allfather is speaking to him.
Words are scratching the back of his throat (Iturnedblueitwasbluewhywhathappeneddaddyplease) and he watches Thor who is not the one that smiles turn to him and then he is so close and Mjölnir red mist in the air tastes like copper father roars-
Thor is across the room and Loki is not sure what happened, but he thinks he died.
---
Before Sliepnir is led outside of the gatehouse, he turns to Loki and noses the space between his shoulder and neck. The harness is a dead kind of cold against his skin, but Loki reaches up and clings to his not-son for as long as they will let him.
After father is gone, Loki turns to Heimdall. He thinks he throws a piece of his gauntlet at him, charred black from cold and for a moment can still see the blue there (but Heimdall doesn’t react, so he isn’t sure if it really happened)
“Why didn’t you stop us?”
“It is for the best,” The gatekeeper tells him. “You will see.”
He thinks of the blue, the chill of it still shimmering in his veins. It makes more sense now, of course. The blue had always been with him in glimpses, but he pretended not to see it. He goes to the vault. Father follows him and calls out his name as he is praying for the casket to burn him.
He cries he begs he screams he tries to listen. Every time his father falls.
There are guards running and empty gulps for air and spittles of blood at the mouth and he’s not sure when he leaves the vault, but he is sitting at his father’s bed side across from his mother desperately wishing for father to open his eyes or for her to come around and hold him and he wants to touch her but can’t because there’s blood on him that she can’t see when she’s looking and hate in her eyes when she’s not.
He sits in silence until he is handed Gungnir, and then his carefully constructed world starts to fall apart.
When the warriors come to speak to the Allfather, they find him instead (Loki greets them with “my friends” he wants to mean it).
It is the red that stains his hands, not the warriors’ petty taunts, that finally drive him to Midgard.
He can’t tell if the red is worse than the memories of the blue.
Father is dead (he thinks, he knows, that is true in at least one place and every time he looks at his hands and the blood he thinks that is where he still is even if the shifting of the land proves it’s a lie. Loki is good with lies and above all lying to himself, else he would not have survived).
He has to tell Thor.
---
When he returns, the dried red he can still see on his skins itches, but it is not that color he is afraid of.
The blue is leeching into him. He can see the hue of it in his skin all the time now. A slow seeping, the way a drop of wine infects a glass of water it has been poured into. It creeps, claws its way in, ripping into him. Skin peeling away and melting into charcoal, blistered black ashes leaking a sickly yellow pus, and he prays to- his mother? Father?- he prays, that no one else around him can see it too. The scratches it leaves itch in a way that only nails on skin can sooth and when he is alone, he rips up the fabric of his coat sleeve and scrapes down until the skin is raw and red and when he looks at it he can only see the blue creeping in through his veins.
Panic.
Out OUT he needs it out he NEEDS it out why is he still BLUE
He grabs the knife from his desk and slashes his wrist. It always bleeds red, except for the time it doesn’t.
---
I will hunt the monsters down and slay them.
I am ready.
Ready.
I will slay them.
He wakes up. The fog of sleep eases quickly, and he smiles.
Yes.
---
The Warriors Three always go to Thor. There is one time Fandral looks at him in hurt confusion and almost asks, another when Volstagg tells him with fondness that his king looks overburdened and areyoualrightisthereanythingIcando, and both of these times Loki thinks maybe and please, but they still leave.
There are times that Sif does not go down with them, but instead stands by his side and reaches to help him when he is weak and kneeling under the pressure of the crown he does/has/will never want, unless he is lying prone on the steps of the dais with her fingers digging into his neck
Her smile is lovely.
Their betrayal burns, even though it is expected. He knows everything he does will be a wrong choice. If he was to be taken seriously as a king, their betrayal demanded a response. Any response would cause them to label him a traitor. He wants his mother (still his mother?)
His mother’s weaving room is full of surfaces that are ivory and polished wood. It had occurred to him once that it is the only place he can think of that never shifted, that every time he enters she is sitting on her bench, weaving gracefully. He walks in expecting her to be there and, when she is not, does not understand why he is confused because she has been sitting with his (not) father for days. His head aches, a splitting throb that makes him sit in the corner of the empty room and rest his forehead on his knees. He runs his hand through his hair and pretends it’s hers.
He does not go to his father’s bedside. He goes to the vault.
“Ensure my brother does not return. Destroy everything.”
He wants them to burn too.
When Thor begs his forgiveness, his mercy, Loki has the destroyer hit him because it is the only way to bring Thor back and Loki needs him to stop this. He is out of control. When he loses connection with the destroyer he thinks “Oh. Good.” Then he opens the gate to Laufey.
And kills himher.
Once he steps onto the bridge it does not change, even if there is shifting as he approaches.
Heimdall tries to speak to him of reassurance, logic, realities and so Loki kills him, clings to him, freezes him solid because it is so much easier when he lets the madness take him.
When I am king, I’ll hunt the monsters down and slay them all.
Helpless laughter. He steps out onto the roar of the bridge.
There is burning and white agony, then nothing until he opens his eyes. He is still standing on the edge and cries because it didn’t work.
Then Thor comes.
Loki shrouds the key in ice.
“I am a worthy son.” He shouts. “When he wakes, I will have saved his life. I will have destroyed that race of monsters and I will be true heir to the throne.”
“You can’t kill an entire race.”
“Why not? What is this new found love of frost giants.”
Too far. Attack me. Do it. DO IT. He speaks of the woman. Idle, violent threats. They trigger his brother to action. He makes dozens of himself, taunting, until he is blasted away, pinned down on the bridge with a force crushing his chest. Watches helpless as the bridge is destroyed underneath them and instead they are sitting together under the trees in the garden like they did when they were young. Thor snores the times he is there.
If Loki watches carefully the fields will shift from gold to green to flames to flowers without ever changing.
Huginn and Muninn look down on him from their perch in the branches.
If he could reach them he would. He would reach them and grab them and squeeze them until the little pops sounded and then twist them apart into so many pieces that he could always have one nearby no matter where he went and lick the blood off his fingers and maybe give some of Huginn to Thor if he was the one who still smiled at him.
Thought caws at him and takes flight, leaving only Memory sitting in silence above his head.
“I hate you.”
---
His earliest memories (besides the bigdarkalone that lasted until hollowness devoured him and then nothing) were of his mother’s fingers when she lifted lines of silken thread as he sat on her lap.
Empty bright air filled the room; It shimmered and he watches the sparks flit around like dust before she called his name gently and kissed his hair. The hands in front of him were warmsofthome big enough to envelop his when he reached out. They took his fingers and lay them gently on the delicate weaving, running down the length of it he could reach while still clutching at her dress.
The threads are smooth under his fingers, tucked together neatly and so close it’s like they are a single piece. He remembers asking who she is weaving and if it is him. Mother pets his hair and lies. As she starts to sing he closes his eyes and wonders why his life looks like the basket of tangled scraps she keeps under her stool.
---
For a second he can see the fire and the hate and it’s not Gungnir he’s clinging to but the shattered edge of the bridge with the heel of Thor’s boot grinding into his bones, heels slick with blood.
He lets go and the last thing he knows before the void is a distracted wondering of why he hears his brotherfriendnephew screaming his name as he falls.
-
Part 2
There are different places, he knows this. Knows it like he knows his mother(s) love him. It is in his bones and thrums in his soul and each breath. They are solid and complete on their own and yet all seem as one. He charts them, tries to keep them clear, but it is difficult even as he matures. Experience makes them only marginally easier to navigate.
He has not always noticed the shifts because they have always been with him. The fact it took him so long to see is laughable. He is gifted, brilliant, eccentric, troubled. He is a liar who has only ever spoken the truth.
His entire life has been a battle with madness. He thinks he’s done rather well.
The evidence is in the people. In Sif’s hair before he cut it, in the shifting quality of Fandral’s voice as he makes passes at every one they encounter. It is more noticeable around the nose and eyes of those he is with, it is why he does not like when others turn their backs on him because in order to protect himself he has to see. It is why Hogun turns his back on him as often as possible.
Hogun knows things, even if he doesn’t know them.
---
When he stands by Thor before the coronation he laughs, prods, tricks with magic and the servant leaves with a nervous smile, grabbing the platter and cup and backing out as quickly as he can without being rude. The look of horror on his face makes Loki giggle.
He ignores the insult simmering inside him and plays his response off as a mild correction, knowing it will incite his brother to mock. The joke Thor makes of his contribution to the battle hurts, but it redirects the anger as it was meant to.
“You are incapable of sincerity.” Thor tells him.
Loki sighs and turns to him, invests himself in the words. Means them with all parts of him, trying to reach the Thor who lives in the palace of wood walls.
“I have looked forward to this day as long as you have. Brother. My friend. Sometimes I’m envious, but never doubt that I love you.”
He feels a hand on the back of the neck, sees Thor smile thank you, and then watches as his brother’s smile shifts to mockery. He changes tactics.
“Now give us a kiss.”
---
Roars of the crowds fill the air as Thor enters, arm held high in triumph (entitlement), he smiles at his companions, at his mother, but he does not look at Loki.
Silence comes at the ringing of Gungnir on the metal floor. Odin speaks.
“Thor Odinson. My heir, my first born.” Loki runs his tongue over the inside of his teeth, jaws tight. He watches Thor swear to lies that he does not know are lies, though the ignorance does not make them any more true. Tries to see Thor’s eyes when he swears to cast aside his own ambitions (he wants him to mean it, truly, but he knows his brother will not hold this oath).
It is with a staggering sense of relief when the Allfather stops mid-ceremony and leads Thor down to the vaults. Loki follows. They do not see him.
Thor rages and growls, picks up the shield of one of the deceased and throws it. It nicks a pillar and clatters loudly to the ground. He storms out of the vault when his reign is denied and Loki walks (still invisible) with him. Up the stairs and through the halls, into the receiving room where a feast had been set to celebrate the (failed) occasion.
When Thor upends one of the tables laden with food while servants are trying to clear it, Loki sends a shadow to speak with him (unsure of his own safety, Loki stands quietly by the wall, fingers trailing over the edges of the glass that had rolled in his direction).
“It is unwise to be in my company right now, brother.”
The illusion walks out from behind a pillar and Loki gives a little laugh at himself. “Who said I was wise.”
He waits until Sif and the Warriors Three walk in before moving to join his shadow, letting it fade around him as he speaks.
“If it’s any consolation,” he thinks back to the vault, when a Thor had spoken of waiting for their next move, considering options, “I think you’re right. About the frost giants, about Laufey, about everything.” The words slowly catch up with him and he tenses, suddenly hearing the Thor who wants to battle, trying to hold him back. “But there’s nothing you could do without defying father.” Thor’s eyes harden. “No. No no no no no no no, I know that look-“
“It’s the only way to ensure the safety of our borders.”
“It’s madness.”
“Madness? What sort of madness?” Volstagg calls out (by what was left of the food, naturally).
“We’re going to Jotunheim.”
Thor coaches the warriors into wanting to go and Loki rests his face in his hands, torn between annoyance and pride at Thor playing to each of their vices. Before he knows it they are standing outside the gates with their horses. He grabs a guard, whispers a message for father, and follows. When they cross the bridge, flickers of light bursting to the strikes of their horses hooves upon it, he pleads with Heimdall.
“Stop us.”
“You are not dressed warmly enough.”
The Bifrost blinds him, grabs at him violently, and then they are in the snow.
He wraps his arms around himself for a moment to ward off a shiver that he doesn’t really feel, straightens his coat, and steps up to his brother’s side.
Hogun… hesitates isn’t quite the right word, but they pass each other their eyes meet and for a moment think as one. “We shouldn’t be here.”
They are surrounded, and taunted, and Loki tries to pull Thor together. He is as successful as he ever is, which is to say that he ultimately fails.
Loki sees towering spires in the distance that were not there before and it distracts him for long enough (which is hardly any time at all) for everything to be ruined.
After the hammer is thrown they are overwhelmed in a flurry of weapons and yells and ice that flies.
Thor is an idiot.
That is one thing that will never change and Loki is unsure why he ever used to take comfort in it.
When the giant grabs his wrist they both grin. Because Loki knows, of course he does because this was his life, and when the blue creeps into him he is equal parts horrified and relieved that he finally understands what’s been haunting him.
One time he does not kill the giant.
And one time, one time, one beautifully glorious time, his skin burns.
Father shows up too late to do anything of real consequence.
Until he banishes Thor.
While Odin and Thor roar at each other, Loki runs his hand over the edge of his shattered gauntlet. A chip breaks off.
“You are unworthy of your title. You are unworthy of the loved ones you have betrayed.” Loki flinches as thought the Allfather is speaking to him.
Words are scratching the back of his throat (Iturnedblueitwasbluewhywhathappeneddaddyplease) and he watches Thor who is not the one that smiles turn to him and then he is so close and Mjölnir red mist in the air tastes like copper father roars-
Thor is across the room and Loki is not sure what happened, but he thinks he died.
---
Before Sliepnir is led outside of the gatehouse, he turns to Loki and noses the space between his shoulder and neck. The harness is a dead kind of cold against his skin, but Loki reaches up and clings to his not-son for as long as they will let him.
After father is gone, Loki turns to Heimdall. He thinks he throws a piece of his gauntlet at him, charred black from cold and for a moment can still see the blue there (but Heimdall doesn’t react, so he isn’t sure if it really happened)
“Why didn’t you stop us?”
“It is for the best,” The gatekeeper tells him. “You will see.”
He thinks of the blue, the chill of it still shimmering in his veins. It makes more sense now, of course. The blue had always been with him in glimpses, but he pretended not to see it. He goes to the vault. Father follows him and calls out his name as he is praying for the casket to burn him.
He cries he begs he screams he tries to listen. Every time his father falls.
There are guards running and empty gulps for air and spittles of blood at the mouth and he’s not sure when he leaves the vault, but he is sitting at his father’s bed side across from his mother desperately wishing for father to open his eyes or for her to come around and hold him and he wants to touch her but can’t because there’s blood on him that she can’t see when she’s looking and hate in her eyes when she’s not.
He sits in silence until he is handed Gungnir, and then his carefully constructed world starts to fall apart.
When the warriors come to speak to the Allfather, they find him instead (Loki greets them with “my friends” he wants to mean it).
It is the red that stains his hands, not the warriors’ petty taunts, that finally drive him to Midgard.
He can’t tell if the red is worse than the memories of the blue.
Father is dead (he thinks, he knows, that is true in at least one place and every time he looks at his hands and the blood he thinks that is where he still is even if the shifting of the land proves it’s a lie. Loki is good with lies and above all lying to himself, else he would not have survived).
He has to tell Thor.
---
When he returns, the dried red he can still see on his skins itches, but it is not that color he is afraid of.
The blue is leeching into him. He can see the hue of it in his skin all the time now. A slow seeping, the way a drop of wine infects a glass of water it has been poured into. It creeps, claws its way in, ripping into him. Skin peeling away and melting into charcoal, blistered black ashes leaking a sickly yellow pus, and he prays to- his mother? Father?- he prays, that no one else around him can see it too. The scratches it leaves itch in a way that only nails on skin can sooth and when he is alone, he rips up the fabric of his coat sleeve and scrapes down until the skin is raw and red and when he looks at it he can only see the blue creeping in through his veins.
Panic.
Out OUT he needs it out he NEEDS it out why is he still BLUE
He grabs the knife from his desk and slashes his wrist. It always bleeds red, except for the time it doesn’t.
---
I will hunt the monsters down and slay them.
I am ready.
Ready.
I will slay them.
He wakes up. The fog of sleep eases quickly, and he smiles.
Yes.
---
The Warriors Three always go to Thor. There is one time Fandral looks at him in hurt confusion and almost asks, another when Volstagg tells him with fondness that his king looks overburdened and areyoualrightisthereanythingIcando, and both of these times Loki thinks maybe and please, but they still leave.
There are times that Sif does not go down with them, but instead stands by his side and reaches to help him when he is weak and kneeling under the pressure of the crown he does/has/will never want, unless he is lying prone on the steps of the dais with her fingers digging into his neck
Her smile is lovely.
Their betrayal burns, even though it is expected. He knows everything he does will be a wrong choice. If he was to be taken seriously as a king, their betrayal demanded a response. Any response would cause them to label him a traitor. He wants his mother (still his mother?)
His mother’s weaving room is full of surfaces that are ivory and polished wood. It had occurred to him once that it is the only place he can think of that never shifted, that every time he enters she is sitting on her bench, weaving gracefully. He walks in expecting her to be there and, when she is not, does not understand why he is confused because she has been sitting with his (not) father for days. His head aches, a splitting throb that makes him sit in the corner of the empty room and rest his forehead on his knees. He runs his hand through his hair and pretends it’s hers.
He does not go to his father’s bedside. He goes to the vault.
“Ensure my brother does not return. Destroy everything.”
He wants them to burn too.
When Thor begs his forgiveness, his mercy, Loki has the destroyer hit him because it is the only way to bring Thor back and Loki needs him to stop this. He is out of control. When he loses connection with the destroyer he thinks “Oh. Good.” Then he opens the gate to Laufey.
And kills himher.
Once he steps onto the bridge it does not change, even if there is shifting as he approaches.
Heimdall tries to speak to him of reassurance, logic, realities and so Loki kills him, clings to him, freezes him solid because it is so much easier when he lets the madness take him.
When I am king, I’ll hunt the monsters down and slay them all.
Helpless laughter. He steps out onto the roar of the bridge.
There is burning and white agony, then nothing until he opens his eyes. He is still standing on the edge and cries because it didn’t work.
Then Thor comes.
Loki shrouds the key in ice.
“I am a worthy son.” He shouts. “When he wakes, I will have saved his life. I will have destroyed that race of monsters and I will be true heir to the throne.”
“You can’t kill an entire race.”
“Why not? What is this new found love of frost giants.”
Too far. Attack me. Do it. DO IT. He speaks of the woman. Idle, violent threats. They trigger his brother to action. He makes dozens of himself, taunting, until he is blasted away, pinned down on the bridge with a force crushing his chest. Watches helpless as the bridge is destroyed underneath them and instead they are sitting together under the trees in the garden like they did when they were young. Thor snores the times he is there.
If Loki watches carefully the fields will shift from gold to green to flames to flowers without ever changing.
Huginn and Muninn look down on him from their perch in the branches.
If he could reach them he would. He would reach them and grab them and squeeze them until the little pops sounded and then twist them apart into so many pieces that he could always have one nearby no matter where he went and lick the blood off his fingers and maybe give some of Huginn to Thor if he was the one who still smiled at him.
Thought caws at him and takes flight, leaving only Memory sitting in silence above his head.
“I hate you.”
---
His earliest memories (besides the bigdarkalone that lasted until hollowness devoured him and then nothing) were of his mother’s fingers when she lifted lines of silken thread as he sat on her lap.
Empty bright air filled the room; It shimmered and he watches the sparks flit around like dust before she called his name gently and kissed his hair. The hands in front of him were warmsofthome big enough to envelop his when he reached out. They took his fingers and lay them gently on the delicate weaving, running down the length of it he could reach while still clutching at her dress.
The threads are smooth under his fingers, tucked together neatly and so close it’s like they are a single piece. He remembers asking who she is weaving and if it is him. Mother pets his hair and lies. As she starts to sing he closes his eyes and wonders why his life looks like the basket of tangled scraps she keeps under her stool.
---
For a second he can see the fire and the hate and it’s not Gungnir he’s clinging to but the shattered edge of the bridge with the heel of Thor’s boot grinding into his bones, heels slick with blood.
He lets go and the last thing he knows before the void is a distracted wondering of why he hears his brotherfriendnephew screaming his name as he falls.
-