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Tally ThreadCount
Name: Tally
Threadling-given name: ThreadCount
Title / Role: Elder of the Eternal Loom, Keeper of the Record of Loss
Order: The Elders of the Eternal Loom
Parent: Once
Core Thread: Memory
Home: Frays End
Status: Active
Themes: Remembrance, Loss, Witness, Responsibility, Hope
"The Void can pull a thread. It cannot make me forget that it was there."
-- Tally ThreadCount
Tally is a child of Once, and the Elder who keeps the record of what the Void has taken. When a Threadling, a village, or a whole tradition is lost, the Elders never say that it fell or ended. They say its threads were pulled. It is Tally who writes each one down: every name, every place, every song, so that nothing the Void takes is ever wholly forgotten.
It is solemn work, and Tally carries it gently. He is soft-spoken, steady, and quietly stubborn, and he believes absolutely that every pulled thread can one day be woven back. Each time a StoryWeaver recovers something the Void has taken, Tally crosses it out of his record, and he is said to smile every time.
Threadlings named him ThreadCount because he counts every thread that is pulled from the Weave, and has never lost count. Among weavers, a cloth's thread count is a measure of its strength. Among Threadlings, Tally's count is a measure of what is still owed to the world.
Tally wears the colours of the order, and carries an abacus strung with coloured thread in place of beads. His book is a ledger, and its oldest pages are covered in crossings-out: every thread that has already been restored.
Tally is the Elder of remembrance, and a way for Threadbare to speak about loss without speaking about death. His record makes the Void's toll visible, and every restoration the StoryWeaver achieves is felt in it.
For contributors, Tally is the right voice for stories of loss, memorial and restoration, handled with the gentleness Threadbare requires.
- Once - his parent
- The Elders - his order
- The Void - whose toll he records
- Threadlings - and the saying that their threads were pulled