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So, what’s the deal with Nora?

Norasquad, how are we doing? Whew.

My thoughts are everywhere but I’m gonna try to make this as cohesive as possible. Thanks Nana at @hellanoragami​ for brainstorming with me! TW for discussions about miscarriage and stillbirth and all that it entails, disease, death, very brief mention of abortion, one potentially upsetting photo of starving children, all that not-so-good stuff. 

I believe that Nora is the spirit of a baby that was miscarried or stillborn. Some more thoughts and theories, as scattered as they may be, under the cut since it’s gonna be a little image-heavy.

Right off the bat, here are some things that make Nora’s state pretty clear:

Her words that she’s just a “fake little girl” (aka, she’s not actually, physically a child but a baby who died before she could really even live and be a “person” in the loosest sense of the words), her apparent jealousy that Hiyori was born “normal”, Nora expressing how she “wanted to be a girl” just like Hiyori (she uses onna no ko here, "little girl”, like in the previous sentences), her squished, bug-eyed, distinctly baby features...

Nora’s tail coming out of where her umbilical cord should have been...

...And her turning into a literal baby curled into fetal position before falling into a circular pond full of water, which just... wow, not even subtle there, just smacks of womb imagery. (And here we thought Nora was associated with water because she was drowned as a child, not because of its association with embryonic fluid!)

And, of course: the “memories” Yato saw when he first named her. Darkness (of the womb), a heartbeat (her mother’s), and muffled sounds (from outside the womb, as fetuses can hear sounds from around 18 weeks). Father likely didn’t tamper with her memories - she had no memories other than that in the first place.

So, Nora’s a baby. What now? How can she even be a shinki?

Well, my friends, in Buddhist mythology (yes, it always comes back to Buddhism when it comes to Trash “I was a Buddhist priest probably” Dad), everyone has a soul - and by that, I mean everyone. That includes the souls of aborted, miscarried, and stillborn babies, who are sentenced to stack stones on the shores of the mythical Sanzu River as penance since they have not acquired enough good deeds to cross to the other side and pass over.

(On the far right.)

Since the Sanzu River doesn’t seem to be a thing (unless Adachitoka is giving us a double-meaning here, with Nora having to be close to water metaphorically representing the Sanzu River that the souls of departed children must stack stones by) in Noragami, I’m guessing that the souls of all these children stay on the Near Shore and take the form of older children once named, if not already corrupted (but that’s not a problem for Father). Since even the souls of those who have passed on before they could really “live” have enough agency and innate identity to stack stones in the first place, they would easily have enough identity - a requirement for something to be named correctly - to be named and used as shinki.

Side note: Nora’s chest in her ayakashi form looks a lot like that of a child who has been starving.

Which brings me to my next point!

Why the Fuck Did Father Name A Random Stillborn Baby Spirit

It’s one thing to see a baby god born out of your wish and be like “Oh yeah, I’ll tell this little kid to slaughter a bunch of people when he grows a little older” but it’s another thing entirely to see the corrupted spirit of some random stillborn baby and think “Oh yeah, this will make a great shinki.” It’s insanity, even for Father.

.... Unless Nora wasn’t just a “random stillborn baby spirit.”

Let’s backpedal a little bit to Chapter 60.

As @invertedgoogle​ pointed out in a mutual Discord server we’re in, the scenery looks dead, dry, as if in the middle of a drought. Of course, droughts mean less food for an already usually-hungry populace of commoners, which means malnutrition, which means disease... conditions terrible for carrying a baby and both mother and child making it out alive.

And even if there was no drought, commoners had hard lives in the Heian period - they depended on good harvests for food (fun fact: malnutrition can cause stillbirths and miscarriages) and entire communities were devastated by diseases such as smallpox.

Smallpox, which can leave pockmarks, even on the face. I know a lot of people read the translation that mentioned her as a “freckled woman” but it is in fact specifically “girl with a pockmarked face.” Father’s “precious person”, who Izanami took the form of when he entered the Underworld.

I’m suspecting that Nora was, indeed, not some random corrupted baby wandering around but his own stillborn daughter with Pockmarks who might’ve died in childbirth as well since childbirth was pretty dangerous to even a healthy, fed woman before modern medicine but idk it’s a theory, who died in the womb before she could be born and named. Disease, malnutrition, and severe deformities/defects are all legit reasons for a stillbirth.

Why Father even calls himself “Father” (it seems like his ayakashi innately know to call him that), why he might’ve gotten the Brush, what pushed him to hate Heaven so much, why he bothers to have this patchwork “family” and“play house” in the first place with Nora and Yato, why he’s so emotionally unavailable towards Nora - all things that start to make a lot more sense once I started thinking about this theory.

I’ll just leave you guys with an excerpt from @echodrops​‘s Chapter 78 analysis:

The concept of “playing house” in Noragami is very interesting. It only comes up in the context of gods and humans; we’ve seen it three now in the context of (what is likely) a god playing house with a human: Kofuku hurt Daikoku by trying to “play house” and raise a child; Bishamon hurt her shinki (and was hurt by her shinki) for trying to foster a motherly relationship with them; and Father pretended at kindness and care for his “children” while they were all aware of the real truth.

You could argue that one of these things is not like the other–both Kofuku and Bishamon did what they did out of love, while Father is evil–but I wonder if the third case is really that much different than the first two. Why did Father raise Mizuchi and Yato like his children? Was this a one-sided endeavor in which he bought their loyalty with occasional moments of kindness? Is that all there is to it? Or is there something else going on here?

How much of Father’s “playing house” was pure cruelty… and how much of it might stem for a desire for the very thing Heaven denied him?

Anyway, I’m #1 Clown, signing out and dying on this probably-crack hill.

Edit: I’m stupid and forgot to mention how Pockmarks’ death could be tied to Heaven. Remember, when there is chaos in the Far Shore and between gods, upheaval on the Near Shore follows... chaos, failed harvests, disease, and the chain continues... I’ll leave it at that.

I got tired of working on this so that means it’s finished now :0

Fujisaki and Mizuchi, Manga Coloring

Noragami, Chapter 44: Cut + Ties