▸ Column · Present-day Midgard — Thor among mortals, answering letters addressed to the God of Thunder
THOR replies.
The letter
A fellow who works in my hall and I have spent seven months in some unnamed thing — supper alone every Friday, a "good morning" sent near daily, four kisses, each one arriving after the second cup of wine and never once spoken of in the morning light. Last week he presented me to his brother and called me "my friend from work," and I have turned that phrase over in my head perhaps forty times since. When at last I asked him plainly what we were, he told me he "doesn't believe in labels" — a fine philosophy, except the Saturday prior he'd spent three hours patiently helping me build a shelf like the most devoted of husbands. I am one-and-thirty and I genuinely cannot tell whether I am being led along or whether I am the coward who will not say aloud what I want. Do I set him a hard deadline, or accept that some things simply live forever in the undefined?
Thor replies
Good soul, hear me before you reach for the deadline, for a deadline is a siege engine, and you do not lay siege to a heart you wish to keep. You ask whether you are strung along or whether you are the one who will not speak. I will answer plainly: by your own telling, you already know which. You have catalogued four kisses, the shelf, the brother's birthday, the words on the drive home — you are gathering evidence to spare yourself the one act you fear, which is saying out loud, without flinching, "I want this, named and in daylight." That is not weakness, friend. I am a god, and I have needed courage of that humble sort more than once. On Asgard the loudest declaration is rarely the bravest; the bravest is the quiet, undefended truth spoken to someone who might refuse it. So do not threaten him with an ultimatum and a clock. Tell him what you want — fully, once, without the armor of "if you don't, then." Then let him answer with his whole self. If he chooses the fog over you, that is grievous, but it is also an answer, and you may walk forward knowing you were honest where he would not be. I would rather be humbled and clear than proud and forever guessing. I have tried both.
— Thor
Loki weighs in
Brother, you golden thing, you've handed them a noble speech and skipped the verdict already delivered. "My friend from work." Darling, that wasn't ambiguity — that was a man telling his brother precisely what he has decided, and your correspondent drove home reciting it forty times because some part of them heard it perfectly. He doesn't disbelieve in labels. He simply prefers the one arrangement where he is owed nothing and granted everything. And you — you keep curating kisses and bookshelves the way I once curated every slight, because as long as the question stays open, the answer can never be no. I know that game. I built a palace playing it, and I rattle around it alone. Ask him, yes. But stop auditioning for a part that's already been cast.
— Loki
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