Lyra Threadwing's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Lyra Threadwing opened the thread chest and found it bare. Three empty spools rolled against the wood. The festival was in nine days, and she had nothing to weave her entry from. She pressed her violet eyes shut and counted, the way her grandmother had taught her when the storage sacks tangled. The count did not fill the chest. She had spent the last of the grove's stock on the cocoon shelter, spinning composite thread through the blight-wind nights until her fingers cracked. Every fairy in the grove had watched her do it. None of them expected her to win the festival. That was the point. First place would answer them without a word. Her robe brushed her ankles as she stood. The hem carried a slack row she had never gone back to fix. Her master had seen it once and looked away. Lyra had been holding that silence in her chest for a year. She went to Celestia Threadwhisper's shed because she had nowhere else to go. Celestia sat on the step with her hands wrapped, the giant silk moth folded against the shed wall behind her like a second roof. Its feathered antennae twitched at the smell of Lyra's dye. "There's no thread," Lyra said. "Not for a festival piece. Not for anything." "No," Celestia said. "We used it." "I used it." Celestia looked at her. "Then you know where it went." Lyra's throat closed. She turned to leave and almost walked into Aldric Silverweave. The old scholar stood in the path with his gossamer robe dragging in the dust. He was holding a small bundle wrapped in oiled cloth. He did not offer it. "You spun composite," he said. "Daisy and moth." "Yes." "Held against the blight." "Yes." He studied her a long moment. Then he set the bundle on the step beside Celestia and stepped back. Inside were the swept remains of the cocoon effort: short daisy stems, moth-silk scraps, tangled leavings from the shed floor. Not enough for a proper bolt. Enough, maybe, for one small square. "That's all there is," Aldric said. "In the grove. I checked." Lyra stared at the pile. "I can't win with scraps." "Then don't enter," Aldric said. "Or enter with what held." He walked off before she could answer. Celestia did not fill the silence. Lyra knelt and gathered the leavings into her arms. The stems poked through her sleeve. She thought of the workbench patch, the one that had held warmth for three days, and how she had used forbidden thread that fell apart in her hands, and how the patch had held anyway. Not because of the thread. Because of how she had sat with it. She carried the scraps home. She had nine days and one small square's worth of hope, and she had decided to weave it.