astrid nolvidar || eight

“This is the story of how we were all born.”

Holding the fabric delicately in her hands as if it were sacred, Astrid situated herself on the tile floor next to her youngest sister, spreading it out wide in front of them. Little Lua watched attentively with a quiet reverence, but her blue eyes widened in delight, betraying her excitement. Astrid couldn’t help but be proud of her sister’s courtesy towards the 50-some-year-old tapestry that had adorned both of their baby cradles, and their mother’s before them. She smiled as she gently traced the first few woven rows with her middle finger.

At the top there were swirls of red and black, followed by a row of flat blue and grey stripes. “This was the war 100 years ago. Our great-grandfather, Grandma’s father, died fighting against the Capitol. Grandma said that he visited every single district before he died. He met our great-grandmother in District 10 and brought her back to Eight during the war. They were both storyweavers, like us.” She glanced at Lua to make sure she was following—she was, and Astrid kept going.

Her finger traced the next few rows, bright threads of concentric orange and yellow rays. “Our grandmother was born a few years before great-grandfather died in the war. She met our grandfather, Mama’s dad, when she was 17. She sold her weaving in the market and he would always return the garments he’d bought, to get her to repair them. When she found out he was plucking out threads in her designs on purpose as an excuse to see her, she was furious and turned him away for weeks. But eventually, she let him take her out on a date.”

Lua giggled. “Because he was too handsome to resist!” her sweet voice piped in, having heard the story maybe twenty times before.

“It’s true. I saw him,” Astrid confirmed, grinning back at her sister.

Rows of green, black, and purple, the dark colors highlighted by flecks of gold, told the next creation story. “Grandmother was pregnant with Mama when she was almost 40. They tried a long time to have her, and almost gave up,” Astrid said.

“They hoped and believed reeeeally hard?”

Astrid’s cheeks reddened. She hurried along. “Uh-huh. Let’s see now…” The next few rows told the story of their mother’s life. In the intricate woven design, the shift in style was evident; their mother had been their grandmother's favorite by far. Full of bright floral patterns on fields of blue and yellow, they could see their mother’s kindness and free spirit. Their family had been fortunate from this point onward. As the tapestry grew longer, the themes became lighter and the motifs less tangled, symbolizing their family’s unity and balance.

On and on went the story, like she had told it to Lua so many times before—their parents’ meeting and marriage; the birth of their eldest brother, Anyas; Astrid’s birth, then Indi’s, then Quill’s, then Lua’s. Their grandmother had woven new rows for each of their beginnings, and kept weaving each year until her death, two years after Lua had been born. The story ended—or paused, rather—right there. Astrid took comfort in knowing that the last few rows Grandma had ever woven were reserved for her sweet, gentle sister, and she knew it made Lua feel special. “There’s you,” she said. “You were born under a beautiful full moon. And that’s all Grandma wrote about you. I guess you’ll have to weave the rest of your story someday.” Astrid planted a kiss on her sister’s baby-soft forehead. “Time for bed.”

While Lua climbed into bed, Astrid folded the blanket and draped it over the back of the adjacent rocking chair. One day, she too would make a tapestry to line the cradles of her own children, to bless and protect them. As the last person alive to be taught by her grandmother, she would be the one to carry on the ancient art of their ancestors. To weave the story of every birth in her own living memory. It was an honor and a heavy burden.

Having fallen deep into thought about her family, Astrid stared at her face in the mirror as she prepared herself for another lousy attempt at sleep. Tall and narrow-shouldered, with wispy brown hair, she thought looked more like Mama every day. She could almost picture her mother’s features there in the mirror—the same small forehead, button nose, hooded eyelids, top lip pinned upwards like it had been bruised—but Mama’s had seemed so much sunnier, more carefree. Dark circles shadowed the brown eyes Astrid’s father had given her, and long nights of weaving had molded her shoulders into an arch.

I can be pretty. When I have the time, she reminded herself. She fingered the awkward gap between her incisors, which were white but starting to yellow from a worsening coffee habit. One luxury she had clung to.

As she splashed cold water on her cheeks, she shivered in anticipation of the nightmares she would have tonight, like she had almost every night—a cruel, warped recording of her parents’ abduction by Peacekeepers. The door smashed in, voices booming, her siblings running to hide, that heavy feeling of total helplessness.

It turned out that her family’s weaving was more than something to record their stories and sell in the market. For those who could read it, it was a complex language of symbolism that the Capitol and its Peacekeepers knew nothing about. Even when they were ultimately caught for smuggling goods from other districts, no one had figured out how they had done it—except for the small network of people that Astrid’s parents had taught the pictoral language.

That was one year ago.

When their parents were taken, Anyas and Astrid were suddenly given two pairs of empty shoes that needed filling somehow. Life went on, indifferent to their pain. There were five mouths to feed and even more bills to pay. Astrid sold her fiber arts in the market, which was honest enough work. But Anyas, nineteen by then, had already learned how lucrative the smuggling business had been, so he kept it going, albeit more carefully than his parents had. Or so he hoped. Astrid, on the other hand, felt like he could be caught at any moment.

Her brother's insistence on continuing the work that put their parents in the pen (if they were even still alive) was a sticky subject for the two of them, and they butted heads over it like an old married couple. She refused to weave the patches of symbols their parents had used to communicate with their contacts, not wanting to implicate her handiwork in anything that could put them at risk again. This infuriated Anyas. She knew it made him feel even more abandoned--but it was her version of tough love. She was stubborn and trusted herself to stick to it. Sometimes after a close call, they’d fight until their throats felt numb and they couldn’t stand to look at each other. Mama always said money was the only thing that caused fights in their family. Maybe if she'd fought with their father just a little more, they wouldn't be gone.

But at the end of the day, his work helped put Astrid’s morning coffee on the table. Though she hated to admit it, the Nolvidars were born with expensive taste. Even little Lua, who so loved the smell of Mama’s daisy-scented perfume that she had run to hide the bottle under her mattress when the Peacekeepers came.

Sometimes Astrid resented her parents for the carelessness that had led to their arrest—for leaving them all alone to find their way with no directions. Most of all, she hated that her relationship with her siblings had changed overnight. She hated those fights with her kind, selfless older brother. She didn’t want the pressure of her younger siblings’ expectations on her shoulders. They looked up to her with admiring eyes, little hearts full of trust. Compared to her mother, she felt forgetful, maladroit, and incapable when it came to parenting. She wasn’t sure if she had the capacity to navigate their fear, their quagmire of emotions.

It was all so much to carry--the ancient craft that would die out if she didn't teach her siblings; the needs of her whole family; the trauma still weaving its spiderwebs over their hearts.

She remembered her grandmother's superstition, passed along one evening as they practiced together:

"If your tapestry is perfect, all your love and good fortune will be trapped inside. Always be sure to leave a mistake—a broken row for the good things to get out.”

In her family’s story, now rife with frayed, tattered ends, Astrid wondered:

Where will the good come out?