hey do you ever think about tomix's family? do you ever think about how much they loved him?
i think a lot about barvra. i mentioned that i think tomix left home and then didn't talk to his family for a long time, and i think barvra, with one son lying soulless in bed and another off being made headmaster and a husband nowhere to be found, welcomed him back with open arms. i think about how she left his room untouched for a year - for many years before that, too, i bet - in the hopes he would come back soon.
i know he left when katia was a baby and wouldn't have been around much but!! i think when tomix came back to visit he taught her how to play dumb little pranks. i think to a kid growing up in a canonically pretty boring place he would seem ~cool~ and ~mysterious~ especially compared to danyel and i think he wove her little gifts to bring when he goes home. i think his first time back he would have been anxious about whether or not she'd like him but i think katia would have hung onto his coat and begged him to teach her whatever weaving tricks he knew. (i think barvra or danyel or whoever never got the chance to shut that down, because tomix looked at his little sister and could not bear the thought of her being disgraced as he was.)
i think danyel loved him but didn't know how to say it. (i think tomix had the same problem.) i think, just after the accident, danyel offered to help in exactly the wrong way, and i think it pushed tomix further away than anything aspar could have convinced him to do. i think danyel sent his little brother to do odd jobs around edelia just to keep him around a little longer.
i wonder if, after, barvra ever caught herself wondering what he was up to, what spirit he was hunting, what new friends he was inevitably charming. i wonder if katia ever used what he taught her and thought of him with love or hate or apathy. i wonder when danyel realized that those last words to his little brother really were the last, and i wonder if he hated himself for it.
i wonder if any of them really thought he would fail, though. i think, despite everything, they watched him pull himself out of every scrape for thirteen years, and he started being less a person and more a story to tell - oh, yes, he's been expelled and now he's a disgraced weaver, but he's defeated every corrupt spirit he's come across and come out none the worse for wear, and he's done it alone. he's saved the world, don't you know? what's one more spirit? what's one more journey? what do you mean, he isn't coming back?
