tushanshu_logs | [EVENT|4TH WALL] THE NEWCOMERS’ ARRIVAL

[EVENT|4TH WALL] THE NEWCOMERS’ ARRIVAL | APRIL 15-22

Characters: ALL and plus ones.
Date: April 15-22 2015 (2016 in-game)
Location: Farmlands outside the city walls, but this log can also be used for locations within the city.
Situation: Spring planting - fourth wall event, week one!
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

The days for the festival dawn sunny if a bit chilly, but the air is clear and the soggy ground has dried enough that there isn’t too much mud in the lanes between fields and homesteads. The broad dirt path to the Woodsmen’s land leads past the tram-line construction, lined with waving ribbons on sticks along the sides. The Woodsmen’s territory circles the city, separated from the city’s walls by five hundred yards of neutral land.

The festival’s central area is Liangken’s Clearing, and this is where the festival will begin and end each day. Liangken is an ancient tree, among the oldest on the turtle’s back. Though it doesn’t flower or bear much in the way of leaves anymore, the kedan have cultivated it carefully and now it’s an excellent representation for the revitalisation of old wisdom.

The lanes between the fields and homesteads will house the stalls, contests and walking areas. The Woodsmen will be keeping an eye on these to prevent anyone from walking off the marked paths. The homesteads provide ‘hotspots’ in among the lanes and fields, with Woodsmen families lending their yards to the comfort and entertainment of their guests.

In general, the Woodsmen are a taciturn, soft-spoken lot who nevertheless take great pride in their work. Their lands are all but sacred -- they accept no attitude, no trespassing, no attempts to thwart their authority. This causes some noticeable tension with the Snakes, who are accustomed to being the sole enforcers within the city; but though there may be some ill tempers and raised voices, at no point will anyone come to blows. It’s hard to argue with someone built like a brick wall and carrying sharp farm implements.

The Woodsmen are a touch anxious about having strangers on their land and this shows in them being overly officious or bossy, but at the same time their pride shows clearly and they are eager to show off the state of their lands, their greenhouses, and their farming processes -- practically without being asked. The residents of Keeliai tend to think of the Woodsmen as ‘cowards’, and the Woodsmen are taking this opportunity to prove themselves otherwise with feats of strength and tall tales.

Due to the farmers’ hours of “early to bed and early to rise”, the festival ends in the early evening at sundown, but begins again before dawn -- usually by greeting the sun with a song.

LINKS
Heojin, Ran and Lin | Liangken’s Clearing | Stalls and Lanes | OOC Information post | 4th Wall Character Check In

OOC
While Heojin and his bodyguards are open to everyone (including fourth-wall characters!), they are not available for small talk and general directionless CR. For the integrity of the mod’s inbox, please only request a thread with him if you already have an idea of what you’d like your character to ask/do. Other NPCs can be requested by sending a PM to the appropriate journals directly, with the same guidelines.

The top-level comments are for the festival, but fourth-wall characters should feel free to use the rest of the post for anything within the city of Keeliai itself! Just remember to label the top-level comment for location and date.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Bakura had been far more interested in the sudden influx of new people -- and in some cases, old people -- who'd arrived en masse to the city than he was in the festival. But the apparent goodwill it infused to the kedan wasn't entirely worth disregarding, and he had finished listening to another rendition of the Xaxosi tale, leaning against the side of a stall. Deciding he was hungry enough, he began checking the food stalls for something edible and hopefully, not completely unidentifiable.

Raine had already come to the food line of thought herself, and by the time she did spot the familiar head of white hair in the crowd she had a couple of fruits in hand. A brief check to make sure this was Bakura and not Ryou, mysteriously returned with the rest of the rush of Foreigners, and Raine slipped into the space beside him, offering one of the fruits to him in turn. "Finding enough to entertain yourself?"

Bakura accepted the fruit after a bare hesitation, but the lazy smirk was quick to return. "Enough to hold my interest," he answered. "Not from lack of trying, on Tu Vishan's part. What do you think prompted all--"

He gestured at the festival, but he meant the influx. "That."

She was hardly going to poison him at this point, but she didn't comment on the hesitation; it was in his nature to be suspicious, as it was in hers to be curious. "It's difficult to say," Raine said, catching the meaning he'd intended. Easy enough to see the cause for the festival, after all. "They don't seem to be arriving quite the same way. The usual culprit for things like that is the Dreaming-- if I had to theorize right now, I'd suggest a Dreaming anomaly triggered by so many people gathered to celebrate new life and new growth, but..." She spread her hands apart, palm-up. "It would be a guess only. There are too many variables."

"Then I guess we should be glad this wasn't a celebration of the dearly departed," the thief returned humorously. "Or who knows the batch we might have gotten instead."

The words and tone are right; light, jesting, lacking apathy. If someone didn't know better, it would certainly seem as though Bakura had regained his habitual attitude, that he'd gotten better, or at least better at disguising it. But there are still little telltales, as he mechanically begins to peel the rind from the fruit, and the way he barely bats an eye at the throngs of people who'd make very lucrative pickpocket targets.

Edited 2015-04-19 08:17 (UTC)

That made Raine laugh, though it was a little bit more startled than amused. The thoughts Bakura summoned with that suggestion were not the most encouraging, but he had a point, and suddenly she was much more glad for the situation as it was.

Amusement faded quickly, though, as she watched him. There was still something off about him, though he was hiding it better than he had been. Something had been nagging at her since she'd gone to him on Valdis' behalf, as well, and while Raine wasn't at all sure about what she was and had been seeing in him, she was still some measure of concerned. "There was something you said, earlier this month," Raine started. Paused, sighed shortly, and forged on ahead before she could think better of it. "Bakura, would you still prefer to have died?"

If Bakura's surprised by the bluntness, the only evidence of such is that he flicks his gaze up to the healer for a moment, before returning to the fruit. "That's not a question with a simple yes or no answer," he replied. "And hardly one suited to trouble yourself with on a day like today, don't you think?"

"I didn't expect it to be." Raine worked at the rind of her own fruit, mostly for something to do with her hands, and when she spoke it was calm, even. "If you'd prefer a suitably somber venue for that complicated answer, that can be arranged, but I'd prefer the light of day."

It didn't seem like she planned to be deterred. The days lately had been somewhat better than the beginning of the month; they'd reach a new equilibrium eventually, bit by bit.

There were times when Bakura appreciated Raine's forthrightness and ability to delve straight to the heart of the matter.

This was not one of them.

Bakura sighed, flicking away the rind and nodding at a section of low stone wall nearby, one of the ones used to mark out the planting fields. It was out of the way of the majority of the crowd, and he sat on the edge, shoes dragging just against the dirt.

"It's not that easy," he said again. "I didn't want to die, but I did, and... in light of that, it would have been good to have been done, with everything."

Raine trailed Bakura out of the crowd, settled on the wall next to him rather than stand and face him. Close enough it wouldn't take much leaning to bump shoulders, but giving him some space at least.

He was, suddenly and forcefully, putting her in mind of Mithos again, of the tiredness his spirit had carried at the end. That was still concerning, and Raine wished it would stop, though she was aware it wasn't likely to. "Everything," she echoed, inviting some clarification. "Not an honest wish for death, then, but simply the lack of an objection?" She considered that, fingers tapping idly on the stone next to her. "You say that in the past tense. What of now?"

Her choice of posture was appreciated, and Bakura bit into one of the peeled off fruit sections as he listened to her. The taste was tangy sweet, a bit like grapefruit, and he finished the section before he replied again. Raine's ascertainment was probably as close as anyone could get to putting into words the curious dichotomy he was going through. An iron will to live, to keep surviving clashing against an utter lack of things he had any interest in living for.

"I don't know," he answered with a shake of his head, and he truly didn't. "I suppose it won't come as a great shock to you if I say that I haven't enjoyed my time back in Keeliai since... returning."

"Not particularly, no." Raine remembered well the first conversation they'd had after he'd woken; the times she'd seen him since, she wasn't sure she'd necessarily apply the word better. "Back then, you said it wasn't such a bad place. Is it the changes that took place over the intervening year, or..."

She gave him a sidelong look, thinking. "No," she said finally, answering her own question. "It's not the place, is it. You still don't know what to do without that driving justice, do you?"

She was aware, of course, how could she not be, that this was likely treading dangerous ground, but for the moment Raine felt it was worth risking being snapped at.

Even though Raine answered her own question, Bakura felt compelled to restate his original opinion about Keeliai. "It's not the place," he echoed.

"You know, I... can't really remember a time when they weren't there. I mean, I have memories from before the massacre, but I don't remember how it felt. But I'm almost certain," he said, mouth twisting a little into a depreciating smile. "That it didn't feel like this."

"How could it?" Raine returned, like this was common sense. "A lot has changed since you were that child. You've had them with you for near three thousand years, haven't you?" Regardless of whether or not Solomon was correct regarding dormancy -- she was inclined to trust his sense for souls and Bakura's stubbornness, but that was neither here nor there -- it didn't diminish the loss Bakura had been feeling. "I'd be more surprised if you weren't grieving in some way."

The thief frowned, bristling slightly at Raine's no-nonsense reply, peeling off another segment of fruit and biting into it so that he didn't speak the sharp response that had immediately risen to the surface. She made it sound easy, like he'd just been too blind to see what was in front of him.

"Thank you for the prognosis," he muttered.

She busied herself with her own fruit in search of something to do with her hands, because the alternative was to reach out and right now she didn't anticipate Bakura would appreciate that.

"You'll forgive me, perhaps, for being concerned when a friend tells me he doesn't know whether or not he wants to keep living," Raine said, still with that same careful calm. She didn't seem too perturbed by his evident annoyance. "I want to understand where you are, Bakura; I'd like to help, if I can. If you'd let me. Do you hate Solomon, for not letting you die?"

"And perhaps I'm getting tired of servicing everyone else's desire that I live," Bakura said icily. He flicked away a piece of rind that he'd missed, but the casual ease of the motions have fled, and the gestures are quick and sharp.

"Perhaps I am tired of something outside my own control dictating how I exist. Because I didn't have nearly enough of that, with Zorc and the Ring. No, your satep-et decided he knew better, that it was -- in his words -- tough, that I didn't get what I wanted, because it was his choice to make."

"And yet you're still here," Raine pointed out, somewhat more forceful than she had been to this point. "No matter how you rail against it, something has evidently stopped you ending your own life regardless." Her hands tightened on the fruit, to the point that juice welled where her fingers had punctured it; startled a little by that, Raine forced herself to let some of that tension go.

She wasn't going to belabor the point that there were people who cared for him. That had been laid out enough times, and in any case, that mattered less right now. "He may have been wrong, to do so," Raine said at length, a little quieter. That was for the two to sort out between themselves, and she'd mediate only as a last resort. "I don't know." Was it right, or simply selfish? When Mithos had asked that they finish him, she had not objected, and though the circumstances were very different the parallels kept cropping up, and they concerned Raine each time they did. "The fact remains that he did. Going forward, then, how do you plan to exist?"

Bakura hissed out a frustrated breath, because she was pointing out what he already knew. She was right, of course. He could have tried to finish the job, and he hadn't. At the end of the day, being alive wasn't really the problem he faced, and he recognized that. The problem was that he didn't know how to address what was the problem, or even... define it.

"Do you think I haven't tried to answer that? That I just haven't made up my mind? Or that I enjoy feeling this way, like an echo of what I should? Don't you think I would do something that made me happier if I could find something that did? Or do you just assume I'm not looking hard enough?"

Edited 2015-04-24 05:34 (UTC)

Raine didn't flinch at the force of his questions, but she went carefully blank, smoothing over the little wells she'd made in her fruit as if that would help. Well, she had been pushing on purpose, after all. "I doubt very much that it's something you enjoy. Nor do I believe you'd linger in this state willingly, no." She shook her head briefly, as if that would clear it. "However, it's been-- what, four months? And while you've certainly healed physically, in this respect you seem... not much changed."

She grimaced then, breaking that facade, and there was something of self-deprecation in it. "My apologies," she added. "I-- there's an element of selfishness to this as well, I suppose. It may be that you are best left to your own devices, to find your own solution. However, I can't pretend it doesn't pain me somewhat, seeing you-- lost. And if so long alone has failed to bring you any solution..."

Raine turned one hand over, palm-up. Sighed a little, at the fruit juice beaded on her fingertips as much as the entirety of the situation. "You're not alone," she said simply. "That's all."

Four months is not that long, in respect to the three thousand that came before it, he wanted to grouse, but he didn't. And he didn't bite back at the term lost, although he probably should have, even if it were largely accurate.

What he did was reach into his pocket and pull out a cloth, and pressed it into Raine's upturned hand. "Here," he said instead, and most of the animosity was absent in his voice this time. "You've made a bit of a mess."

She'd been expecting some kind of pushback, and the simplicity -- and utter irrelevance -- of his reply disarmed her. Raine could only blink at him for a moment or two, the cloth loose in her hand. Then she closed her fingers over it and bent her head, focusing on cleaning her hands. "So I have," she agreed. She separated out the most damaged piece, consumed it before even more juice could get everywhere. "I didn't realize. ...Thank you."

"It's easy to do. Sometimes you forget what you're holding onto," Bakura replied, settling back to pick up his own half-finished fruit.

"As for the rest, well... given enough time and practice, I'm sure I can fool even you, seba-rekhet. But if you're hoping I'll ask for suggestions, this is as close as you're going to get."

She'd thought Bakura would stop surprising her eventually, but thus far there had been no such luck. Raine didn't reply immediately, but laid the cloth across her knee and separated segment after segment from the fruit, eating them one by one.

This was likely not a liberty he would allow many -- if any -- others, she was aware. She still wasn't sure what she'd done to merit it. "It has been my observation that people can often do for those they care about what they cannot for themselves," she said eventually. "I've seen it in my students; I've seen it in my enemies. If not for my brother, I don't know if I would be here now." She suspected that same behavior was at least partially responsible for Bakura's persistence over three thousand years, as well. "If you cannot yet find something that motivates you to living for yourself, not simply surviving, it may be that starting with the people you care for here will help some."

If nothing else, he would wind up spending time with and around friends, and there should surely be some benefit from that. Raine was not at all going to raise the topic of Solomon. She lifted her shoulders fractionally, added wryly, "I would request that you not outright try to hide this from me, but I prefer to ask favors I think have a chance of being granted." And she already owed him, anyway. At the very least he always seemed to be truthful with her, if not necessarily honest, and she'd start with that.

Living for other people... that was something that Bakura knew very well. Had in equal parts embraced and loathed it, over the centuries. But what Raine was proposing was at least a voluntary way of taking it up, and since living strictly for himself the last few months had been a little (a lot) abysmal, he might as well give it a shot.

What could it hurt, ultimately? He could always stop, if it got troublesome.

"What, you're going to ask for a monthly report card?" he asked, but he was mostly joking.

Bakura | closed to Raine

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cw: suicide-ish themes

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