OPEN: Kirkwail

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: Ghosts
WHEN: Wintermarch 20
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC post. More content warnings than you can shake a stick at, probably, including allusions to slavery and violence in the body of the log post. Please use appropriate warnings in the subject lines for your own threads.

The storm sweeps in like an assassin: unexpected, in the dark, and throwing sharp pricks of sleet at exposed eyes and noses with expert aim and enough force to almost draw blood if the angle is right. Half an hour after the clouds crest the cliffs is all it takes for the city to retract indoors and huddle around fireplaces, settling in for a long night that will, unforeseen, turn into a long two days.

The Gallows, too, is pelted with ice; the walls of the cliffs and the fortress protect much of it from the worst of the wind, but when it can find a path over or through the walls, it slams through windows or doors to scatter papers and snuff out fires.

In the dark, in the rain, hurrying between towers or already accustomed to jumping firelight casting strange shadows and the wind howling like a wounded animal, people might be forgiven if they don't notice at first. But there's a hanging in the courtyard, a dozen translucent wisps of bodies dangling from the idea of nooses, and there's a girl's voice in the basement of the templar tower screaming for her mother, and there's a ghostly man in the library holding the blade of a knife to his palm and whispering this is it, this is it—or maybe there isn't, actually, when you lift your head to pay closer attention.

But as the night wears on they multiply, and they brighten, and even if you haven't noticed them, they begin to notice you.

Comments

[shri]

Lakshmi's reaction is completely different - when she snaps from her daze, the blood marking on her brow curling around her nose. Stumbling mindless a moment. She doesn't look to the Spirit, but something terrified comes over her, and she reaches not to fight it.

But to shove Magni's hand away from reaching for the woman.

"Don't touch her! Please, please, don't touch her."

[villieldr]

The look she gives Lakshmi is a mix of concern and incredulity, but the first instinct is to obey. There are so many things she does not know of Lakshmi's world, and she cannot claim knowledge of this figure. Maybe it should not be meddled with for Lakshmi's own sake, or maybe it held significance of its own.

She stares at Lakshmi intently, and stay her hand.

"Why?" Firm, insistent.

[shri]

Lakshmi holds her firm, a grip like a vice. But she does not look to Magni, she looks to the space left behind, by that shape, too familiar, and too foreign.

"She is my city." Is the long breath of words, so barely, barely uttered as she tenses, "She is my Jhansi."

Perhaps it is not that she is stopping Magni from moving, perhaps it is that she must hold onto something, at all, and hasn't that always been some kind of truth to her entanglements?

[villieldr]

With that, Magni eases. Still guarded, careful, still aware of all that spirits can do, but watching Jhansi with more care, now. Lowers her hand, taking Lakshmi's grip on her arm with the motion, gently laying her other hand over Lakshmi's.

"Go in peace, Jhansi. We can't heal you like this, but we can fight for you, and to protect others from suffering as you have. My lady carries you with her, always."

[shri]

It does not deter that terribly twisted spirit, that stands there, staring them down with her empty fire-lit eyes. Her burning ember skin. Cracked and twisted with heat.

Lakshmi swallows, unable to take her eyes off her even as - even as she knows she must be gripping Magni too hard, her muscles straining inside of her skin like she can't be kept. So desperately tense, so ready to move, do something, anything.

But like watching her city burn, all over again, she is helpless.

The spirit does not leave.

Rather, when it becomes apparent it will not go, Lakshmi steps back, detangling herself to turn her back on it. That it becomes apparent.

When she steps, it steps with her.

[villieldr]

So it must be, then. Unhappy though she is that the spirit lingers, Magni respects Lakshmi's request that she not lash out at it. What could she achieve with that? Could she harm it into retreating, or would that only worsen things?

As it follows Lakshmi, Magni looks to her lady. She does not feel fully certain what is the right course, suspects that any severe action could so easily be the wrong course rather than the right.

"Manikarnika," she says, quietly. "What can I do to aid you?"

Sit with her, to share the spirit's company? Leave her alone, if she needs the time? She rails against the latter, but if it were what her lady wished then she would comply, albeit unhappily.

[shri]

Unhappy it is, that blood-drenched spirit that Lakshmi keeps flickering her gaze too. Half-torn in wanting and torment, as she looks on it then back to Magni when she speaks. Her mouth opening, closing. Swallowing down harshly, because what can there be done?

Nothing. Nothing she could think of.

So Lakshmi takes a long breath. Trying to settle the prickling hunch of her shoulders loose back. Rolling it smooth behind her. Fingers gripping the edge of her blue-green saree briefly at her chest in an unsure little prickle of her fingers that was so characteristically her.

"Let us... just eat."

Because what else was there to do? So she nods to the table, and with that still tremoring hand, she reaches for the chair, to drag it out to sit. Smoothing her skirts below her, tucking herself neat. Without error, the spirit follows, it comes, face empty and grief-filled all at once, it comes to stand between them at one side of the table. An oppressive shape that looms over the meal without hint over moving.

[villieldr]

Acquiescing, Magni moves to Lakshmi's side and takes a seat, taking care not to disturb the spirit. She reaches with one of her legs, gently hooks her foot closest to Lakshmi behind Lakshmi's own. Quiet contact, support, because reaching for her hand while they're trying to eat would just be unhelpful.

Perhaps it is just as well that Magni is so much inclined to be quiet; with the spirit there she hardly knows what she might say, whether to offer comfort, to soothe, or that it would not feel oddly disrespectful to say in front of the city that Lakshmi mourns daily.

Eventually, she looks to Lakshmi. "How are the dead honoured in Jhansi?"

[shri]

Lakshmi keeps her eyes down as she eats, a stillness she has to settle deeply to, to keep herself from some terrible something, that she has kept herself to, for years and years and years. So long she wonders what would happen if she did let it crack? Does she even know who she is, if not for this?

But below the table, her foot slides, hooking back, keeping her close. "We burn their bodies. There are prayers sung for them. Then every year, on the anniversary, we honour an image of them and remember them." She reaches for her cup of water.

It's evenly said, her voice sounding distant from her ears. Perhaps, she doesn't look up, around, at the spirits. Because as she speaks, remembers, the room shimmers, changes behind her. The room, once small, unrefined but sturdy and neat as any room in the Gallows, shifts, becoming stone. Becomes details, refined. A room that begets a palace. Shimmering in intricate oil lamps, rising up with great pillars. Like a mirage in a desert, it takes form. Fills, not with just the lonely spirit, standing ever watchful, ever bleeding, but - of maids, dressed in the similar way Lakshmi did, if with less sumptuous fabrics, of guards women and men. Proud in their uniforms, proud in their stance.

Worse, but worse, is that they all look happy as they move back and forth in the room-that-is-not. Silently conversing with each other, a woman so clearly flirting with a guard, a pot balanced on her hip, and a sword on the other side, the guard with a spear in his hand. It gives a feeling - not just of grandness, but of home. And Lakshmi, even so far from it, is completely one with it.

[villieldr]

There are no words for it. The beauty of the image before her, a treasured piece of her lady's life that she can never see solid, of flesh and stone before her. It is a gift from the Land of Dreams, but a painful thing as well. To see a home you cannot go to so close, something living and vibrant where it has been destroyed. Precious and agonising.

She looks in silence for a time, drinking it all in. Seeing it, memorising it. Trying to grasp what all this is, and how it fits into Manikarnika and Lakshmi and the Queen of Jhansi. How all this is bound together with the forbidden and the slaughtered.

"There are... great artists people speak of. They cannot paint all your people," certainly Magni couldn't afford to commission such a project, and any contact she might be able to get in the world of art would rely upon Varmas' network of contacts, but— "but if they could... if you could describe this lady who represents Jhansi to them. Maybe—"

She trails off, uncertain, looking towards Manikarnika.

[shri]

When Lakshmi looks up - she looks, not regal, nor old, nor powerful, or even that flat stare of determination she often fixed when nothing else was easier. This was... quiet. Her. Nothing else. Tired, perhaps, but - simpler than that. Her that was just a woman and nothing else.

It means so much that Magni... would. That Magni would bother to do such things, and the affection she feels moves over tenfold. But she sighs, "I... would not where to begin. It is hard. They destroyed everything, and what was left I had to walk away... I lost the paintings of my husband, my son and I. I lost..."

Everything is too simple a word, but it is the one that hangs. Her eyes fall again, moving to take another bit of food in little movements.

[villieldr]

"Too much," Magni says, softly. The woman that she holds so dear has lost far too much, no matter how strong and fierce she might be, and she brushes her fingers against Lakshmi's own. A woman of fire, a prowling tiger, but one who has endured too much.

"We don't have to have it perfect immediately," she continues, navigating the words slowly as the spirit hangs over them, a pillar of mourning. "We'll find the right way to honour them. All of them."

There is a certainty in how she says, a determination it that renders it an oath.

[shri]

She curls her fingers through her. It's been such a long time, since she releaved so much of that burden, that pain, to another. Like lancing a swollen wound. Ugly, messy, the pain that ached so deeply. It might take years to heal, and it might never, not truly.

But knowing that someone would do their best to care for it, care for her.

"Thank-you." And the smile is small, perhaps, and still hurt, but genuine.