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

[sarcophage]

[There's a little light coming in between the shutters and curtain, and the eyes Ilias finds are still liquid enough to be limned with it. A little has since gathered by his eye, where orbit meets bridge, and when he smiles it slips over the bone of his nose, twice-bruised and healing anew.]

I already have.

[A whisper, the quietest pops of wet tongue and teeth. The greedy wound carved by Isaac's letter, the one that became something like an eye, that's what it was after all: a promise that made itself.]

Please stay. Here, with me. Just to sleep.

[libratus]

[ A single bead curves over skin and bone, and Ilias's fingers rise to meet it, the barest swipe of a thumb diverting its path. In its place, his weight shifts a trough in the mattress, neck craning to press a sandpaper kiss to cheekbone. Thank you.

(Tomorrow, maybe he'll explain the rest tomorrow.) ]

Just to sleep, [ he agrees, forehead returning to shoulder. ] But not half on top of your ribs. Come.

[ A gesture, a gentle repositioning of bony limbs. If anyone is going to sleep with the other's weight against their chest, it ought to be him. ]