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FirstSpun - The Spinner - Imagination.
Patron of Imagination, Possibility, Invention, Wonder, and Curiosity.
Most often depicted as a child sitting at a spindle.
Before there was anything to remember, and before there was anything to hold together, there was...If.
If is the first of the FirstSpun, the three ultimate beings from whom the Great Weave began. Where Once gave the world its memory and Ever gave it the will to last, If gave it an origin, by wondering what might be there.
"Every story ever told began with a question nobody had thought to ask yet. This is the power of If."
-- Willomena WanderWeave - Chief Cartographer, University of the Unseen
Scripture and song differ, as they always do, on how it happened. The telling most often heard around the campfires of the Performance Playa goes like this.
If sat at the very edge of nothing, holding nothing. There was nothing to spin, and no one to spin for. So If asked a question into the nothing..."what if?" And the answer was fibre. Soft, pale, barely visible in the darkness. If caught it, gently moving it through elegant fingers. This was the first thread.
Spinners in Frays End still teach this story to their apprentices, for a practical reason. Fibre without twist is only fluff. It falls apart at the first tug. It is the twist that makes a thread, and it was If who gave the first fibre its twist. Every thread spun since, of wool or wonder, has been spun the same way.
No two tellings describe If the same way, and the KnitWitches say this is entirely the point. If is most often pictured as a figure whose outline is never quite finished, as though still being imagined, trailing a spindle that turns a thread of light. Some tell of If as a laughing entity, often depicted with a wide smile, while others show their mouth and sometimes eyes as open doors. Rare depictions show If as a child, a Patchling playing with a wheel, and sometimes the wheel is a world. In almost every telling If holds If's Spindle: the spindle of the First Loom, on which the Great Weave was made, with which If spun the first thread from nothing. It was kept for ages at Frays End by the LoomWardens, until Null stole it (see Threadbare Plot).
Of the three FirstSpun, If is the most playful. The Elders of the Eternal Loom tell young Threadlings that the Imagine Isles carry If's temperament. A region of hope, exploration, imagination, and wonder.
The first Threadlings of all were the Elders, children of the creators, and they were not born. They were woven on the Eternal Loom itself, and each is a child of one of the FirstSpun in particular. If's children among the Elders, Muse, Whim, Venture, Reverie and Figment among them, carry If's restlessness: however old they grow, they can still be surprised, and they still surprise everyone else. Only Null was woven by all three FirstSpun equally.
When the first Threadlings were woven into the world, each of the FirstSpun gave them a gift. If's gift was the ability to picture a world slightly different from the one in front of them. To create for themselves using the threads of the world around them. Some say If is why they themselves exist.
"The world began with an if, and so did you."
-- Old Threadling saying from parent to child.
If's gift is the oldest and most powerful gift a Threadling has - The first shelter was a hollow until someone saw a home in it. The first mended coat was a torn one until someone patched it up. Every tool, every cure, every road, every song began as an if in someone's mind. The Observists of the University of the Unseen are fond of saying that imagination is not fantasy, but architecture, designs drafted before there is even ground to build on.
If spins. Once takes what If has been spun and sets it long and taut as warp, so that it will be remembered. Ever carries the weft across it, binding thread to thread, so that it will last. Without the other two, If's threads would drift off like smoke on the wind, temporary and lost. Imagination without Memory is creativity without canvas.
There is an old nursery rhyme, sung in the Song Sanctuaries, about the three of them at work:
If spun a thread from nothing, thin as air, Once laid it out so it would always be there, Ever wove across it, added knots, to and fro, And together the wove Threadbare, a long time ago.
-- Childrens nursery rhyme
If is not worshipped so much as noticed and acknowledged. Threadlings say If leans in whenever a child asks what if?, and that the quiet thrill of a new idea arriving is the brush of If's spindle passing close by.
If's spinning is felt most strongly in the places where the Weave is still unsettled. The Mythical Meadows, alive the way a dream is alive, are said to be where If's spindle never quite stopped turning. The tents of the Performance Playa change shape overnight in If's honour. And the Isles of Imagination, adrift and ever-changing, are called by some sailors If's Scraps: the offcuts of a world If is still deciding on.
Null does not deny If. Null does something worse: asks If's question, and refuses to spin an answer.
What if there were nothing? Null has sat with that question for so long, at the edge of the Absurdity Abyss, that it has hardened into an answer. The Obscurists teach that everything imagined is only a pretty cloth thrown over the empty, and that the honest thing is to pull the cloth away. The KnitWitches put it more simply: If asks what might be. Null asks only what isn't.
If is not encountered as a character, at least not in any form that can be pointed at. If is learned about, sung about, and felt. Contributors should treat If the way Threadbare treats the Great Weaving itself: a story whose tellings are allowed to differ.
In the main narrative, If's presence runs through every region rich in Imagination, and the StoryWeaver's allies of Imagination echo If's role. In the closing LoomLight Festival, the re-enactment of the Great Weaving casts one ally as the Spinner.
For contributors, If is the patron of every StoryQuest. Each new story brought into Threadbare, drawn from a learner's own life, culture, or wildest imagining, is If's gift at work.
- Whim - LoomWarden of Imagination, child of If
- Muse - Keeper of the StoryQuests, child of If
- Figment - Archivist of Ideas, child of If
- Venture - Elder of the Imagine Isles, child of If
- Reverie - Keeper of the Quiet Quilt, child of If
- Once - the FirstSpun of Memory, the Weaver
- Ever - the FirstSpun of Spirit, the Binder
- The Great Weaving - the founding act of all creation
- The Imagine Isles - the learning and practice ground, including the Dev Archipelago
- StoryQuests - stories from every world, dominion of If
- Null - the Dark Elder and enduring antagonist