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

[bouchonne]

"Kindness?" His lips thin into a taut smile as he watches after her. "What kindness is that, pray tell?" Hardly any kindness in letting her purported weakness be the pretense. A coward now, as ever, it seems.

[coquettish_trees]

"Having spared me the continued embarrassment I might cause myself, of course."

Those words will, perhaps, smell of truth. And they are true, if not about memory. Rather, about her fear that she will continue to clutch to her chest the remains of some faded flower that had come out of the book she'd pressed it in, even after it had gone to dust in her hands.

Rolant, living and dead, had always been right about one thing. Love makes her weak. And it was no longer safe to be weak here. Hadn't been. And he'd let her be and watched, just as she'd done back then. Shouldn't she be grateful, to know? Even so, she can't bear to hear him say anything else. She can't. And so, without turning to look, she moves away down the hall in her practiced glide, her back held as straight and head held as high as she can manage.