i need to write about narfi, and so this is what i would write--
you remember the ocean--green--and you remember how it tastes on your tongue--salt. you remember the dark of the night, how it turned green to black, only a silver of moonlight glinting off the seafoam.
there are nine waters of the dead, and you know all of them. you learned them all when you learned what you were born to do. you think, sometimes, to try to chase him when it happens.
(sometimes you resent you were told--it is the only thing you resent your father for. you don't tell him, but you think he knows. you think this is why he doesn't follow you here, though he knows the way well.)
when you need to be alone, this is where you go--this ocean, the waterways of the dead. it's quiet here. this pulse reminds you of the slender one you sometimes wrap your hands around; it's just as steady as your brother's no matter what you do.
sometimes you spend days here. weeks.
(you shouldn't, you should go back, you should spend the time you have with him, treasure it)
you feel more like yourself here. sometimes that frightens you, that you only feel yourself when you stand in the dark between sunset and sunrise between those living and those dead.
(sometimes, it's a relief, like a promise that maybe you'll manage like the Wolf says you will)
you hear bells here, sometimes, but you avoid them. they're the chiming of wards; they mean nothing to you--you aren't dead, you won't die before the Tree does--but you do not come here for company.
every time, days or weeks or only hours, he's the one who comes to find you. anyone else might be frightened--it's easy, here, to die in the oceans between--but he comes with clatter and loudness despite what might hear him, comes splashing and whistling, laughter echoing in the still air so that you look up.
you always look up.
he knows he is safe because he's coming to find the only one who can kill him; the thought makes you shudder, a little, but you always think it.
(it always makes you smile, too; he is safe, because you will not.)
he's always so out of place here, with his loudness, his gaiety, his wide smiles and his brilliant eyes, his more brilliant hair. he brings the smell of the sea with him--salt and fresh air--and sometimes you think you can hear the shriek of gulls and whale songs trailing in his wake because there is nowhere that your brother goes he does not bring life with him.
he always finds you, no matter where you are, and he always follows, no matter how deeply you've wandered.
you love him.
"What are you doing?" he sometimes asks, laughing when he finds you. Sometimes he has food, and he'll offer it to you, and you'll remember what is to be hungry, you'll remember that you're not dead--you won't be until the Tree dies--and neither is he. sometimes he doesn't, and instead he flings water at you that is warm and sun hot for his touch, and you'll remember what it is to feel more than the chill of this place, you'll remember that you are not some pale monster that haunts the night and that he's not yet a ghost haunting your memories.
(not yet.)
you love him.
you'll scuffle a little with him or you'll tell him that his food is terrible, why does he offer you such terrible things, nevermind it's only for his touch it has not turned to ash in this place. he's too live for that, and here, in this space, you can see it
Disclaimer - here there be UPG. More than usual even, for events and motivations outside of Vali. Remember that I am biased towards Vali before you get your knickers in a knot over some of my interpretation.
if this one reads a little... awkward in spots, this post lead directly to a realization and i've not been able to edit it without nearly causing another panic attack. i cleaned it up as much as i could, but i didn't get to do a fourth pass like i normally do.
narfi's death and up-guh ahoy.
----
The 'problem' with creating things for Vali is that it makes me think. I start circling around ideas; with music and art this is only emphasized.
I wasn't going to really talk about the mix I made this weekend, but seeing as I just spent two hours rambling about one of the songs on it, I've changed my mind.
See, working in (mostly) instrumental song and image--both inherently Vali things to me, both bereft of spoken language--gave me a chance to really understand something about him that has been building up over the past few weeks, helps me grasp why, for all I talk about him being driven to madness, the god that I interact with is very much not.
Yes, I know, maybe that's obvious. But this is important. Like the gods who journey to the underworld and come back changed for it with new knowledge, this is a journey too, a dissolution of the self that results in the self being more when it is rebuilt.
The mix is intentionally built around the narrative of Vali moments after killing Narfi. The cover even is pointedly the end of the mix's narrative--the image was one of the first in my head from when I started to really contemplate the mix; the half-smile, the blood smeared across the face, just looking up again. That isn't the face of someone still broken by grief.
It's the face of someone who has stood back up despite the odds, ready to go another round.
The mix is a journey--the total running time is around the half hour mark, and different pieces last longer or shorter than that in real time. The thing is, journey time is not real time, particularly not when the journey is one that travels inside the self. Amplifying the unreality, this all takes place in mythic time, too, where past-present-future are all a jumbled mess and chronology a joke. It's like seeing an accident coming--time slows (seems to slow) as the brain starts working overtime. You might feel like it takes ages, but in 'real' time it was only a few seconds, at best.
The mix is a journey--sometimes it lasts hours and days and weeks, and others it lasts only the time it takes Vali to close his eyes and open them once more.
The mix is in two halves--the first, the grief and wailing and, well, journey after Narfi. Vali, who would do anything to undo what had happened, even as it was happening. Vali, who would chase Narfi to the afterlife if it meant being able to bring him back.
He doesn't. It drives him mad, bore down by grief, and that's the first half of the mix--the grief. There's a reason I started with Gone -- "gone our brother / gone our heart."
But it doesn't work. Wishing doesn't make the world so. Vali doesn't have the ability to undo fate then--we're going to come back to this, so remember: Vali did not have the power then. (Which isn't the same as saying he does now, but remember this, we'll come back.)
What happens? Vali is mad with grief, lost, aimless--but he comes back.
How?
He undoes.
I've talked about that, that what he offers is unmaking. And I suspect some of why he finds it a kindness, when he isn't caught in his breaking or malice, is because it is what he did to himself. He unmade. He undid. He broke down-let go-dissolved.
That's the whole point of Void and Destruction on the mix; the letting go. The dissolution. It builds and layers, but there's no emotion here. It's removing all emotion. It's white noise layered on white noise, the calm, the diving down into the self until there is nothing left, all edges of consciousness blurred.
He's killed Narfi. He has failed to stop events, and failed to bring Narfi back. There are two possibilities here--either he breaks and gives up, or he breaks and rebuilds.
(There is no choice in the breaking; killing Narfi and failing to undo the event has already broken him, and the first three songs are meant to convey that.)
This is important. This is important.
Why is Vali not mad?
He made Narfi a promise.
Oaths are everything, in the Norse pantheon, in heathenism. You do not break promises made, not even when the results are to your detriment. Vali promised Narfi he would not forget--and for Vali, this means that his choices are break and rebuild or break and rebuild, no matter that there were theoretically other choices.
He promised Narfi he would not forget, so here, he lets go.
This is important, because it is the first step to him embracing the monster that he has been made into by the Aesir.
Vali didn't kill Narfi because he wanted to, in a fit of jealousy and/or spite that gets repeated in other myths where brother kills brother. Vali killed Narfi because he was literally forced into it, monstered by the Aesir as part of Loki's own punishment. The myth doesn't say that Vali changed himself into a wolf--they say he was changed into a wolf by someone else. Monstered.
Let's talk monstering.
monster - verb - to make into a monster
Vali is turned into a wolf, and whether this is metaphorical or not makes little difference. Wolves might not be giants, but they're certainly outsiders and threats in Norse mythology, and I could assemble an argument that they're worth viewing as monsters in that context. Let's pretend I did that.
Vali is monstered, and he wouldn't have been nearly so dangerous if he hadn't been.
monster - noun - 1. one who deviates from normal or acceptable behaviour or character
Isn't that interesting.
Until the moment that he kills Narfi, Vali looks for other possibilities. Other ways. Other hows. I don't want to lose battles in order to win. That in itself is worth examining, if only because in mythic time what will be will be, and in Norse mythology the gods seem to delay more than they do try to fight the fact the end will happen. It's... abnormal, Vali's fighting against what will be--it's accepted that a person's lot and end is what it is, and it's what you make of the time between the moments that matters. Even Loki, who breaks and changes so many other things, accepts what will happen as the only way to ultimately start anew.
(Isn't it interesting that the brother who was monstered was the one invested in changing the future?)
Void and Devotion is Vali stripping himself down, dissolving his self, because he made a promise--and that promise means he will need to entirely rebuild his identity around what he has done. Been forced to do.
If he cannot undo Narfi's death, then he will live with it.
Everything in the mix, after that? It's him testing out his emotions, making sure that the new walls and new structures and new identity will not collapse under his weight.
I don't know if it was always supposed to be this way, if punishing Loki's children as well as Loki was meant to do this, but I suspect, in my gut, that this was meant to be a breaking. Not just of Loki, but of his family as well, who would have absorbed his lessons--Narfi who was bedrock and casually challenged things as the tide wears away rock, Vali who would hope and dream of rewriting everything from the ground up, Sigyn who has faith enough for all of them to stand on and would encourage them to be.
In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, there is another character who reminds me of Vali (let's be real, they all do, but we'll pretend only another today). I already wrote about Madoka--Vali at his best and brightest and most hopeful. What Vali becomes, by the end of the mix. Here, though, I want to talk about Sayaka.
Decretum is Sayaka's main theme, and it's on the mix where Vali renews his purpose--it's has the pulse of a march, the name means 'principle/decree', and it's Vali embracing just what it is he wants to do, not unlike how Sayaka constantly reaffirms to herself that she is doing the right thing.
Sayaka is the character who is monstered. She is the one who becomes one of the witches they fight in Puella. She doesn't buy into the same rules and standards that seem to run rampant among the other magical girls we hear about--even when it is detrimental to her. She fights because she believe it is the right thing to do.
She's monstered, much as Vali is, all but forced into it by a game that was never in her favour, that actively wanted to grind her out for daring to stand by her principles.
The act that monsters her?
She saw something in society which upset her and she lashed out. In anger, yes, but she lost her resolve to be 'better than' and fought back.
I don't know what to say to you if you think Vali didn't fight being changed, that Vali didn't fight the future that he knew of. Vali wanted another way to do things because he didn't want anyone to be hurt. Not just Narfi, but no one. He doesn't want people to die and then call that a victory. That wasn't a victory to him, because to him a pyrrhic victory is no victory at all.
Vali fought, every step of the way--what was going to come, being monstered, killing Narfi. He fought and fought and fought. But remember this--
You're a monster the day you fight back.
Vali is driven to grief and madness, but it is his forging. His idealism and hope was dangerous before, yes, and I'm inclined to argue recognizably so by those around him, but it was untested, a raw thing still unshaped. Odd, but not dangerous. After?
Killing Narfi, and the resultant grief--being forced into wolf-kinslayer-monster--
The realization he was already a monster by society's standards before all these things happened--
Vali is not Sayaka; Sayaka never returns from her rage and grief, has no self left to fold the 'monster' into, never manages to accept that she was already monstrous. Vali, on the other hand, does, much as Madoka does (after all, god-kinslayer-monster means little to those who will achieve the goal that makes up their core); this is what is most dangerous about him. He takes his grief, takes the loss of Narfi, strips himself down, and then folds monster into himself. He rebuilds himself with this grief as a foundation, a reminder of just why what he believes is so important.
monster - noun - a powerful person or thing that cannot be controlled and that causes many problems
Vali very likely would never have been the threat that he becomes if this had not happened. Before--remember what I said, way back, about how he didn't have the strength then to actually do what he wanted?
What labels him a monster is the very thing that gives him power.
Vali doesn't stay broken--instead he becomes. He undoes himself, and then he makes it part of his foundation. His monstering is his divining. And when it's said in done--when the blink is over, when the journey is done and he opens his eyes?
He laughs.
----
Citation things: definitions of monster liberally taken off Meriam-Webster and Google definitions (if you want like 7 more definitions i didn't use in this essay you could ask cause i have them all lined up still)
warnings for blood, knives, and obliquely talked around suicidal urges.
i wanted to write a post about narfi, and every time went wrong, so i told a story instead.
"if i could, i would make you a raging river with angry rapids supplied with rain, so you could always meander and forever be able to run away, without contending with myths wrongly interpreted, with pain"
"Vali."
"Give me the knife, Vali," Narfi says. He's calm, keeps his voice easy and gentle though he can feel his adam's apple moving against Vali's almost too tight grip. Vali blinks at him, shivers. "Come on," Narfi says, and he smiles, holding a hand out, palm up.
"I can do this," Vali says. His voice only trembles on the last note, grip spasming; the knife edge digs a little into Narfi's ribs.
"You can," Narfi says, "but you'll choose not to this time."
He waits. Vali sits and shakes, eyes a little wild.
Narfi isn't afraid. He doesn't need to be. He knows what this is, and what it's about.
The edge of the knife against his ribs pulls away, then Vali sets the handle in his upturned hand. It's all Narfi is waiting for; he's barely fully got a grip on the knife before he sits up, grabbing Vali even as Vali tries to pull away, run and hide somewhere--Narfi knows how this goes.
"I told you," Narfi tells him, "I love you."
He cradles Vali against him, careful to keep the knife away from skin and bone, and kisses Vali's temple, running his other hand through Vali's hair.
"See?" Narfi says.
Vali only shakes his head.
xxx
Narfi knows. Narfi’s always known.
He doesn’t see the point in dwelling on a future he can’t change, agonizing over what will come after. It’s not that he wants it all to happen, not that he’s never been kept awake by it once or twice, but fretting won’t do him any good either.
Vali… didn’t. Narfi knows this, too, even if he can’t remember when Vali found out. There was once a time Vali didn’t go quiet without warning, stopping to stare at him. A time he wouldn’t wake to Vali wild-eyed and hands around his throat, like making it his choice would make the future less painful.
He doesn’t remember what Vali was like, before. It’s been so long. Just knows it’s true, because he remembers what their dad said when Narfi confronted him about it, angry in a way he’d never been before in his life.
How would you rather him find out?
xxx
They--Narfi and his parents--don’t keep secrets, not really. They never have. Mom and dad know Vali’s not altogether hinged, know how many ledges Narfi’s talked him down from, know how many times they’ve done it themselves. They’re always talking, trading stories because the shared knowledge is what holds them together.
They let Vali keep his; on the worst days, it’s all that holds him together.
xxx
Sometimes, Narfi wishes it was Vali who was caught, not changed.
xxx
“Promise me,” Narfi says.
Vali looks up, eyes red-rimmed, miserable. He looks half-ghost; the rest is tinder. If someone breathed on him right, Narfi thinks, he’d spark and turn animal now.
No one else is here. Just them, Narfi holding a too sharp knife, blood trickling down his ribs, Vali pulled into his arms.
Vali waits.
“Promise to keep me here,” Narfi says, touching Vali’s temple. “I’m not dead until you forget.”
Vali stares at him.
“Promise,” Narfi says again. Gentle. Casual. Like this is normal.
It’s always about trying to act like this is normal, with Vali. It’s the only way Narfi’s found to prove he really doesn’t blame Vali for what happens.
in which fel makes themself talk about that one thing they hate discussing
thanks a thousand over to pleasantvilles for reminding me that while i want to keep the good remembered, talking about the less than savoury is still important work to try better to present the whole
in direct contrast to last week's piece, let's talk about Vali at the opposite extreme of hope.
warnings for discussion of vali killing narfi and grief
I spend a lot of time thinking about ends. How to end a story, the best way to end a knit piece, how to end a meal. On a larger scale, I have a particular fascination with gods associated with various types of ending--it's one of the ways Loki kept my interest after I discovered him. More in keeping with the blog, I've started to realize Vali offers a particular end of sorts as well.
I haven't spent a lot of time talking about Vali's grief on the blog. I've talked before about how I don't want it to be the sole thing remembered about him.
There are a host of ways that Vali's grief reverberates through his being. I don't think that a person can wholly discuss Vali without also discussing Narfi, nor do I think Vali would be remotely the same without Narfi. More, Vali's grief over Narfi is pivotal to why I even think that Vali has an end that he's tied to, much like Loki has his own endings.
I've spoken about hymmnos on the blog before. It is a song language that is meant to convey emotion; what I don't think I made particularly clear is that every song written in hymmnos is (for the most part) a program. They are all designed to convey emotion and do something in the world with that emotion.
In particular, there are three hymmnos songs that call to my mind the way that Vali ends things; all of them are tied together and are meant to be listened to as one whole. In context of where they appeared in the original text, they're attempting to end the world as-is. They provide a narrative through which I can try to talk about the moment where Vali's desire to end things--and how he prefers to do so--because if there's one thing I hate talking about most, it's Vali killing Narfi.
The trio of songs begins with lamenza -- lamenza being a word for deep grief and grieving. Lamenza is surprisingly coherent for being a song titled 'grief'--but it also carries repetition of the same set of lines over and over, not unlike someone repeating 'no no no' while the shock is still fresh. The only true moment of calm in the song comes specifically with the acknowledgement of death the song centers around.
It's not until that clarity of this is gone that we have a plea for things to end, to recreate, to destroy what is and create anew--not because the destruction is necessary (Narfi's death is in many ways a catalyst), but because the idea of living with what has come to be is unbearable.
It's not long after that realization the death is real that the song fades and shifts into ee wassa sos yehar--the great festival of release. It starts with a demand for things to break, and it never loses that. Even the quietest, almost gentle part of the song is little more than a whispered reminder of why there is so much anger that needs to be turned outwards, why the world needs destroying in the first place.
This is lashing out, reactionary in every sense of the word.
Vali doesn't hold onto his grief and wait for it to pass and then use it to the end that he needs--I want to note that. It's not a tool in the same sense that Loki shapes his own hurts. Vali's grief and anger at Narfi's death is all-consuming. For all Vali's been influenced by and absorbed Loki's--his father's--lessons on endings and how they are necessary, in this moment Vali does not act in a way that actually applies any of those lessons.
In the catalyst of the moment, he can't.
Killing Narfi drives/drove him mad, so all there he has/had is the grief and desire to undo and the inability to see how to enact that change, any prior knowledge of why Narfi needed to die forgotten in heat of the moment.
This is all build-up, the why behind the how. You need these two parts--grief and lashing out--before it allows for an understanding of just how unsettling the ends he tries to provide are.
Because the kind of end Vali offers is very very much summed up by the last song of the triology, omness chs ciel sos infel. Note just how calm it is, particularly compared to the dissonance of the two prior songs. How beautiful. How softly sweet and gentle. Take a glance through the translation. Before we had end and death and rage, and here?
I will offer my embrace to you, and console you
I will offer myself to this world and I will remove all the laments from it
I shall offer me and my Sublimation
I will be happy to sing for your sake, and I will purify the world
It's joyous.
And yet--
Sublimation is the chemical reaction whereby a solid immediately becomes a gas, skipping the liquid phase entirely. It tends to be explosive--you need more energy to make the leap from solid to gas than solid to liquid. In the context of the song, sublimation is meant to be the dissolving of all wills--all 'solid' individual--into a single whole, with no boundaries, no divisions, and (most importantly) no self. If there's no self, how do you suffer? You don't particularly feel anything.
(The fallacy, of course, is the assumption this means you only feel joy.)
You can't forget that Vali's end is an undoing. That more than all things, he does not want to have killed Narfi.
Because the prior emotions characterized by lamenza and ee wassa sos yor? They aren't gone. You cannot forget for a moment that the grief and despair and rage is still there, behind every single word, no matter how sweet Vali can make this reversal sound.
This is not a kindness he offers.
This is a selfish desire to transform everything, to get away from the grief and have some semblance of his brother returned. It's only framed as a kindness, and it's always, always offered when someone is hurting--when an escape from that pain is most tempting.
And it is tempting, to take that offer given, to take that end. To get rid of all the grief and despair, to give up the self in favour of not hurting. And that's what Vali offers--let me take this, let me make this essence, give yourself to me and I will make this vanish.
He never mentions the cost. He never mentions how.
His ends are born of grief, not of necessity. His ends are born of pain and rage and raw emotion, for all he presents them softly and coherently and breathes hope in them to make them appealing. They're insidious--and I choose that word specifically for all of its connotations. Vali's offers do not have anyone's best interests at heart. Vali's ends have no rebirth. They are not catalysts. They are total stops.
They are silence.
I don't know how much of all this is born of malice. I imagine sometimes it's not--his kindness is still there. His kindness is a huge part of why the entire event is felt so deeply. I think, sometimes, it's a genuine offer to ease pain and to make better, because he does think that simply tearing out the grief and making it vanish is better than processing it.
And I think sometimes it is malice-born, to see the world suffer as he suffers.
He doesn't recover from Narfi. I think being forced to kill Narfi--not the being made outcast, but murdering Narfi--breaks something fundamental in him, to the extent that it echos throughout all of his being, so that every moment prior he only loves Narfi more as he tries to distance himself, and every moment after is darker and twisted and hollow for Narfi's loss. I don't think it's an accident that the first story I wrote with him he locked the memory of Narfi away so tightly that he never knew he had a brother. I don't think it's accidental that one of the strongest images I have of him is him holding the universe in his hands before snuffing it out. And if he did indeed nudge himself a space, I can't say I'm surprised of all the spaces he chose, he picked the one that changed him irrevocably.
