▸ Column · Asgard and the Nine Realms — the banquet halls, betrothal feasts, and courtly suppers of the realm eternal
LOKI replies.
The letter
At my kinsman's wedding feast, my betrothed performed a small jest — he held up his eating-fork and pretended he had never beheld such a wondrous device. The hall laughed once. That was three moons ago, and he has not buried it since. He does it at every meal. At a banquet seated beside my liege's chief steward, he leaned close and breathed "a fascinating instrument" directly into her face. I have gently noted that the jest had a natural life of one evening; he looked wounded and said it is "still finding its legs." I hid every fork and set out spoons instead — he squinted at a spoon and declared it "a fork of another temper," and now there are two jests. We are summoned to a betrothal feast next moon, and I cannot have him whispering "behold, magnificent tines" to the bride's grandmother. Is there any merciful way to retire a jest a man has plainly bonded his whole heart to?
Loki replies
Darling, you have misnamed your problem, which is forgivable, because he has hidden it even from himself. This was never about forks. It is about a man who, for one shining instant in a crowded hall, felt the room turn toward him and laugh — and who is now terrified to discover what he is when no one is laughing. The bit is a mask. He clings to it because beneath it sits the unbearable suspicion that he is merely a man at a table, unremarkable, unchosen. I know that fear in my marrow. I became the trickster so that no hall could exclude me before I'd excluded myself first. So put down your spoons. Your little war of props — hiding the cutlery, denying him his stage — is the cruelest thing you could do, because being refused his moment only proves the thing he dreads. You will not retire the bit by force; you'll weld him to it. Take away the need, not the prop. Ask him something real at supper. Let him be interesting in some way that isn't funny, even once. A man does not repeat the only trick that ever worked until he learns he is more than his cleverest trick. I learned that absurdly late.
— Loki
Thor weighs in
Brother, you would have her study his mask and quietly out-game his need — more of your hidden play, ever the long maneuver. The matter is plainer and braver than that. He breathed "magnificent tines" into a stranger's face; the steward, the grandmother — these are guests owed ease at a feast, not made unwilling props in one man's jest. Mirth is no sin; a good hall should ring with it. But laughter bought with another's discomfort is theft. Speak to him plainly, as a partner who loves him — that it shames the guests, and you. And put the forks back, good soul. You do not mend a man by deceiving him. That is my brother's road, and it ends alone.
— Thor
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