Unweaving

To understand the Unweaving, one must first understand the Weave. Mortals dwell on the Earth (or, as the Sibid call it, the Earth) and fae dwell in the Land. In the course of their eternal Dance, they often touch. Parts of the Land become interwoven with parts of the Earth, creating a liminal space through which one may pass from one world to another. The ludic tempo of the Dance ensures that the fae are never lacking for Weave regions through which to pass in and out of the mortal realm.

The Unweaving is a feared collapse of this play between Land and Earth. Whispers of the end of the Dance began circulating among Circle-adjacent scholars after the Jack of Binding entered a Weave region and bound Land and Earth together. After eight days of strain, the Land tore. Some parts of the Weave region merged wholly with the Earth, others disintegrated into unintelligibility, and the rest of the Land broke away to continue the Dance. It is feared that this wound may fester, unraveling the Land until all of it has either collapsed into the categories of mortal existence or spun off from the Dance into oblivion. The Weave would end, and with it the Dance.

Speculation blames the Jack of Accounting, whose thorough inventory of the Weave region prevented the Land from weaving out. We fae are, after all, liminal things in our own way, creatures of the known unknown, like ice that melts under the direct light of observation. To be cataloged, to be fit into a theory, dissected—is this not to cease to be fae? This, then, is the paradox of the Unweaving: that precisely in becoming known, we will be forgotten.

The threat of the Unweaving has led to some fae attempting increasingly ludicrous stunts to bamboozle the mortal world, including, but not limited to, covering the Earth in magic garbage. Though interference of this level is normally forbidden, in light of circumstances, the criminal penalties have been suspended.