open: lol never mind.

[cozen]

WHO: Open!
WHAT: A memorial that doesn’t go as planned.
WHEN: Justinian 1
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Nah.

The ceremony takes place in one of the side courtyards that’s been converted into a garden, where the oppressive architecture is offset with flowers and trees. There’s a small pyre, for those whose traditions call for pyres, but no bodies to burn. Instead there are tokens, flowers, favorite foods, treasured possessions—not yet lit.

(For the others, the Dalish and Nevarrans and anyone else with a different wish, their friends and family will have made different arrangements alongside the pyre, probably, if they aren’t universally reviled.)

Anyone who wants to speak, whether it’s a prepared speech or a single spontaneous sentence, can do so. The tone is respectful but only so solemn. It’s been more than a week. For many, the worst of the shock has passed, and the sun has continued to rise and set, and there’s room between bouts of misery for fond memories and occasionally laughter. The memorial is a door that’s closing—slowly, kindly—and tomorrow, on the other side of it, the war will continue.

Today, on this side, the only people judging anyone else for crying are the assholes.

***

Across the harbor, more than a dozen filthy and tired people come to a stop on the docks, and the loitering ferryman pauses to take stock of them, then starts laughing. There isn’t even any local mythology about ferrymen and the dead. It’s just that funny to him on its own, that he’s been rowing miserable people around all week, and here’s the source of all that misery, dirty and tired but significantly less dead than believed.

When he stops laughing, he offers to dunk everyone in the harbor before rowing them over. For the smell, you know. No one is going to be happy to see them if their eyes are watering too much to actually see them. Then he laughs some more at his hilarious joke.

But he does eventually load up his boat—and maybe there isn’t room for everyone all at once, maybe some dramatic reunions will be delayed, maybe some people will be even more fashionably late to their funeral than the others—and carries everyone across the bay, still chuckling intermittently.

***

In the courtyard, the speeches and anecdotes (and singing, perhaps) wind down to long silences peppered with murmurs or sniffling. Someone is preparing to light the pyre. And then the gate creaks open.

Comments

[hornswoggle]

"Us, I suppose."

Celebrating, eulogizing. What's the difference?

"There's still time to make your escape before you're called upon to participate more actively."

It's a joke, except it's not really a joke. John's been spotted so here he will have to stay until the moment is right. But Wysteria, miserable, drenched, half-barefoot, has not been seen and can thus make herself scarce. That's an enviable position, though John doesn't expect her to see it that way.

[heirring]

"Oh, for the love of--" Wysteria blows out her cheeks and wipes her damp face with an equally wet sleeve. Ugh. She smells like a fish wife. Or maybe just a fish. "I would have preferred a rescue over a welcome party."

An hour ago, the prospect or walking in on her own memorial service might have thrilled and delighted. But here? Now? She fixes him with a long suffering look. "Do you suppose it's possible that we might be cursed, Mister Silver?"

[hornswoggle]

John does laugh at that. John Silver has no business believing in curses, except that he does. He knows how to fashion them between blood and malevolence and a bit of hair. Maybe someone did ill-wish them all, though John thinks it wouldn't be anything personal if that were the case. There has to be more than one person in the world trying to ill-wish the Inquisition's ventures.

But he doesn't think this is a curse.

"You? No, I don't think anyone's cursed you," John reassures. But John, on the other hand, well...

It's impossible to know. Who could truly say what he has dragging behind him?

"If anything, I think we're exceedingly lucky to have walked all the way back to safety without any more incident than a few arguments over poorly-preserved heads."

Which is glossing over the entire miserable slog of a journey they'd endured, but since when has John ever been committed to presenting the truth in it's entirety?

[heirring]

"I hope that goes well. The business with the heads, I mean. They came a very long way."

Which isn't the point really (--later she can shed a fear heartfelt tears at the injustice of Lady Lakshmi Bai being missing at exactly the most inopportune moment to entirely waste her lady's particular brand of romanticism--), but after all the debate it somehow seems worth saying.

A moment's survey of the courtyard follows, taken in over the course of a breath and little more. She unpastes a lock of hair from where it's clinging about her neck and drips miserably on the dusty stonework.

"I suppose it's a good thing we're all so sensible, then. A superstitious bunch might take this as some kind of bad omen. I'm speaming of course to the recent division from the Inquisition." Without pause to signal the shift of her attention: "Will you be slipping too?"