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

[rowancrowned]

"Hightown," he says, and he softens, somewhat, or at least loses a bit of the frantic energy. Kitty's easy enough to see over, and Gwenaelle is only just right there, under Romain's watchful gaze. "To her grandfather's estate."

And her grandfather's men-at-arms, and all the protective nonsense and privacy money and a title can buy in Kirkwall, which is what Thranduil- protective, looming Thranduil- wants for them. Needs, frankly.

"For a few days only," he elaborates. The animals remain unintroduced.

[rathercommon]

"Right," she says a little uncertainly. "And - the - ?"

Her gesture takes in the hairy and hairless creatures, respectively.

[rowancrowned]

"I cannot leave them," he says, like that explains it all. With something approaching guilt, perhaps, "-I would not ask for you to care for them in our absence."

The nug squeaks.

[rathercommon]

"I'm pretty sure that cats just take care of themselves," she says, then scratches at the back of her neck. Urgh, she hopes that her itchy scalp is just because she hasn't been able to wash it in days, and not because she's got lice or something.

"Since when did you have pets, anyway?"

[rowancrowned]

"Are you suggesting there are pests in my quarters," and ah, there's the old humor, the lilt in his tone, though it fades as he spares some thought for her question and answers honestly.

"They will be a comfort to my lady, and I thought you would not enjoy being asked to care for them." He shifts the nug a bit closer.

[rathercommon]

And Kitty shifts a little bit backwards. No great surprise; she's not much of an animal person.

"Well, no, obviously." She fiddles with a strand of her hair, and then says, "I just don't see why you two are going away so dreadfully quickly." Stupidly, she finds her face getting a little hot, and she hastens to amend, "I mean - I don't even know what I ought to be working on for you when you're gone."

[rowancrowned]

"She does not feel safe here," which also means 'I don't feel safe with her here', but veiled in his own concern for her. At this exact moment, he can see her, sitting with Romain, and that comforts him. He's able to have this conversation, after all.

"Bathing," he says. "Getting your thoughts in order. Finding new boots. If you have the desire to, sort through the papers on my desk and figure what can be discarded now that we haven't lost a good portion of our force. There were attempts to reorganize after your deaths; luckily we did not implement many."

[rathercommon]

"She doesn't feel safe here? It was out there that all of that happened." But - Fine. Kitty supposes that fear isn't exactly a rational thing; where you feel safe has very little to do with where you actually are safe. Because, well, no one is actually safe anywhere.

Anyway. "Well - Fine. I guess - I'll do that, then. Even though that's not actually all that productive, it seems to me. Did news get out that we're all dead?"

[rowancrowned]

“We need some time,” Thranduil says, and shrugs his shoulders, effortlessly and elven-elegant. “Time to call back messengers—” as some had been sent, riders who might be overtaken on the road, “—and to enjoy the living. Many came to realizations while you were gone.”

He makes a short gesture. “It is productive. It is work I cannot do right now.”

[rathercommon]

"We could use it, though." She scratches her cheek a little uncertainly. "If our enemies think we're...weak, or our forces are diminished. That could be useful to us. Couldn't it?"

[rowancrowned]

"If we had been clever enough to stop the news going out."

He wants very badly to find a nail brush for her.

"I am afraid the joy will fly faster than any courier."