View source for The Loom

{{DISPLAYTITLE:The Loom}}
Under the [[The Warp|Warp]] — under the cloth itself — is the frame the cloth is strung on, and whatever hand works it. Call it '''the Loom'''. Almost nobody can, and almost nobody should.

== What can honestly be said ==
Very little, and that is the truth of the entry rather than a coyness in the telling. The [[Driftwarden Provisioner|Driftwardens]] have no word for it; their whole horror is the ''absence'' of one. The [[The Meridian|Meridian's]] instruments chart the lattice and stop at its edge, the way a plumb line stops at the water it cannot enter. Even the [[The Warp|warp-aware]], who perceive the tapestry whole, describe the Loom the way one describes a sound heard through a wall — present, patterned, and not for them to read.

What is agreed is only this: the world is being '''rewoven'''. The [[The Drift|drift]] is not decay. It is a pattern changing while it is still on the frame — old threads pulled, new ones set, Dereth doubled and altered a room at a time. Something is at the work. Whether it means to mend the cloth or merely to make a different one, no one who has come back has been able to say.

== Glimpses ==
Travellers who have wandered far past their maps bring home the same handful of images and never a story to hold them together — a '''distant weave''' seen at the horizon of a place that had no horizon; a '''blighted''' or '''unravelling''' stretch of pattern; once, a '''figure of light''' standing at a loom too large to take in. These are reported, not explained. Treat them as rumour with a true shape under it.

== A note for the reader ==
This account is written from above the world, not inside it. No one who lives in Dereth could set these words down; the sight required does not belong to that life. If the Loom is legible to you at all, it is because you have crossed more thresholds than one world's worth — and even then, only its edge.

== See also ==
* [[The World is Woven]] · [[The Warp]] · [[The Drift]] · [[The Meridian]]

[[Category:Lore]]