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]

[ there is, sadly, another nug, in one of thranduil's hands much like you'd hold a hot dog- firmly, by the belly, held slightly in front to protect him from jostling via thranduil's wide shoulders. at least it's a familiar nug. he's probably seen iorveth naked, at least. the kitten has been deposited with gwen and romain, but thranduil still has leviathan, for his own safety.

he reaches out. they are in public, so the touch to the edge of iorveth's shift is so light as to be nothing, but they are both attentive men, and so it can carry the weight of more. ]

Ah, I thought to myself, [ he says, soft. ] He was right. It is a terrible pain, to lose him during this war.

[aenseidhe]

[ at the first sight of him, something in iorveth's chest tightens up, a lot of somethings, and he swallows back against the lump in his throat, watching the king's features for a long few seconds after he speaks. ]

Thranduil. [ lifting a hand, it touches his shoulder, giving a brief squeezes before fading away. ] Squaess'me. I hate that you suffered this grief.

[ to not lose just him, but the woman who completes him too. it was on his mind the entire route back to Kirkwall, with Gwenaelle tucked in at his side, most particularly when they were making their way out of the deep roads and down the mountains, and gwen could hardly walk on her own any longer. he'd have brought her the rest of the way crawling if he had to. ]

[rowancrowned]

I suffered. [ he shrugs, for lack of a better verb to describe the way he shakes the concern off his shoulders. ] I would have survived. There is work to do.

[ he looks at gwen. his jaw tightens. ]

Thank you for bringing my wife home. And for bringing yourself home.

[ he hopes, like a fool, for some chance at reconciliation. he wants nothing more than to find somewhere to secret gwen away. he'll have it, with emeric's help, but he won't be able to persuade iorveth into it. ]

[aenseidhe]

[ as much as iorveth would like to reach out for him properly, he doesn't, and as much as he'd like to go with the two of them, hidden away and soothing what wounds remain from survival and needless mourning, he won't. there's too much in that to unpack now, and rather than complicate it, best to let husband and wife rejoin in peace. ]

Your wife was hellbent to bring herself home just as well. [ said with a fond smile, iorveth looking down at his hands, skin dry and cracked and still covered in the muck and grime from the mountains and the deep roads. ] All the same, I'd never have left her.

[ not on his fucking life, regardless of thranduil being attached or his history with either. gwenaelle has ever been a treasured friend and fond confidant before anything else. ]