[MINOR BOOK 4 SPOILERS, THIS IS MAINLY ABOUT BOOK 2]
also i paraphrased some of the lines i remember from the book bc i don't have it with me
i'm having so many feelings abt that scene in book two in what i call the everything goes downhill chapters - when god takes the appearance of natacha and asks thorn to join them
thorn grew up without a mother, with natacha never wanting him, with not being allowed to talk!! to!! her!! and every motherly figure in his life failed him - yes, even berenilde, imo. isabelle most likely abused him and probably kicked him out after boris' death, freyja as well - the girl who taught him his greatest passion in life, admired him for it - and berenilde took him in and did her best, yes, but i can't help but dislike the hypocrisy between "thorn is a son to me" and "farouk gave me the one thing i needed, a child"
he grew up without someone to trust, nobody to teach him how to handle his memory, nobody to talk to about god. he couldn't say anything to berenilde, who called his mother unsavoury things (rightfully so, probably) and would not have been very favourable to her nephew - a dragon, a boy she tried to redeem in their dragon clan - going beyond a harmless, extensive memory in his powers, who would have been in danger if she knew
but he grew up with his mother and god in a way. two things that destroyed him and destroyed each other. natacha corrupted his memory and traumatised him and he had to live - as a young child!! - with those folds of memory he doesn't understand, with farouk's anguishes about god - the real god, the mother - with the shadow of god's existence, and then he sees it every day. he sees farouk, all grown up, who has since long forgotten his childhood and that small writer who raised him. farouk cannot give him answers. he sees natacha sometimes, alone, the relic of a shameful past, and she is no longer what she was - she has lost the memory she forced upon him. she cannot give him answers. he sees god, slowly, growing up, connects his mother's guide and ambition to every corruption he sees in the world, every person whose dice have been taken away, every child who was mistreated, abused, their opportunities stolen. that is god's answer - the family spirits, useless and without memories, the endless violence of clans and arks tearing each other apart over divisions created by god, the books, unreadable
and thorn is lost. between farouk's vision of god as a loving and terrifying matriarch, between his own perception of natacha, unloving and lost, and between his understanding of god - weird, all-powerful, nonsensical
and then god starts giving him more answers. pulls every piece that tugs at thorn's heart together.
help me right humanity, the way you like to right numbers and all that is wrong in the world - you know things are wrong. be my most favourite child. look at me, thorn - i am god, i can do anything, i can do anything for you, and i am natacha - i can bring her back, for you, if you come to me, i will come to you - i know you, i am your father, i am your mother, i know you and can give you what you want if you give your self to me - and i am an impostor.
and thorn stares at her - natacha - young natacha, the mother he remembers and could have had - and she is also god, who destroyed her and took her away from him, in a way, silenced all the answers he could have had from her - and has to choose.
that part. that dialogue. it hit me so hard the first time i read it, and i still find it incredibly complex and cruel - and all of that in maybe two lines?
and thorn chooses! turns his back on his childhood dreams, on the memories he was forcibly given, on righting the world, on understanding, on god, on his mother. he empties his gun on this horrible caricature who was so wrong - this is not god, this is the echo, the fake, who does not understand how to be like eulalia, how to be a mother and to convince a child - and he goes the other way, renounces his heritage and accomplishes what his mother wanted at the same time. unleashes the claws he hates to try and destroy what he hates more. he is a dragon, the one berenilde - his mother above all the mothers he could have had - taught him to be, not the chronicler, and he is also the dragon natacha wanted - she saw boris and wanted his claws for her child, and now the child has the claws and uses them. against whom? natacha? god? or both?
i think it is high time for humanity to regain its dice. from you, god. and for me to regain mine from you, mother, but you are not my mother, because you never wanted to be, and god cannot convince me otherwise.
origamiaround
kianamaiart
theartofmadeline
stormborns
