To Err and to Forgive (Open)

koel tryin' to take what's lost and broke and make it right Not for the first time in his life, Koel needed some guidance. He’d normally be too proud and to seek help. Indeed, that was still somewhat the case. Even in this new world, some things never changed, and he would always got it alone if he had his druthers. However, this time around, there was an option that he was fully convinced would fail, but felt compelled to try anyway. Namely, prayer: there’d been scattered grumblings of strange occurrences around the weird shrine—shrines now, he guessed, since apparently there was more than one of them—that no one was really sure what to make of. While Koel certainly didn’t know anything about it, and he didn’t have much truck with divine beings, not after one took his lady away from him (kind of, it was complicated), he was more than willing to face whatever was lurking there. Better him than someone less able to handle the danger or the burden. If this shrine was anything like the other one they’d encountered, they needed to know sooner rather than later. Besides, if it worked, maybe he could get some much needed answers and clarity. So, it was with great reluctance, but no hesitation, that he found himself moving deeper through the glade until he came upon the shrine. It was beautiful here, but he found he couldn’t appreciate it given that he might actively be in danger. Instead, he just watched the for a moment, wondering what was so special about this place. Just looking at it, it wasn’t anything special, just a random collection of objects. Still, it was a place of power, that much he’d heard. They didn’t understand it—and they certainly couldn’t harness it—but it was there if one knew how to look. Unfortunately, Koel didn’t. Still, he was willing to try; though he felt increasingly foolish, he approached the shrine. Before he knelt, he called out using that peculiar power of his and asked for assistance; he was probably being paranoid, but as a hawk settled on a nearby branch and let out a triumphant screech (it was much faster here in nature than it had been battling that monster) he felt his heart ease. Giving it instructions to watch his back, even though he wasn’t really sure how this process worked, he then knelt and bowed his head. Though it would surprise many who knew him, Koel could do humble quite well. In fact, he had a lot of humility: it’s just that it was tempered by the knowledge that a lot of people were stupid. Just because he had little patience for fools didn’t mean he couldn’t show the proper respect. Although he didn’t know how to pray, he knew how to kowtow to a king, so he would improvise. ”To the powers that dwell here, I thank you for your myriad gifts and request permission to enter this holy place. I also ask that you bless me with knowledge and insight into this world. Though I have no right to it, as I am not yet your humble servant, I would be blessed to be in your presence.” Flattery on both ends around his actual request, and keeping it vague, all fit within the realm of engaging with what he was basically thinking of as potentially hostile probably souped up super royalty. He already felt like an idiot, but this was apparently how it was done. He obviously didn't believe, but he could follow the routines and rituals and see what happened.

A warm breeze stirs around Koel. A few leaves rise in the invisible current of whatever power resides here. A faint hum vibrates near Koel’s ear, and as both an eagle and a scout he will know it well; it is the sound of the woods. The sound of all that is living and thriving, the sound of rebirth and necessary death, the sound of nature. The soothing song of the woods will remain so long as Koel stays near the shrine. Immediately his body feels replenished and strong, his mind at ease. Flowers bloom suddenly at the base of the shrine. Should Koel decided to take them and make a tea out of them or otherwise ingest them, he will find they will produce the same effect once again. Almost tenderly the breeze caresses the Attuned, before gradually falling away and letting the stillness take over once again.

J O R Y

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Jorseval had been sleeping.

Metaphorically, not literally—he hadn’t actually been sleeping much at all lately—but as a self-proclaimed servant of the Gods, he had been neglecting his duties of diligence when it came to strange happenings in Caido. The influx of outlanders he’s more or less ignored up until this point, and if nothing else had happened he could have cited the excuse of “I’ll do it tomorrow” in perpetuity. The thing was it wasn’t an incredibly busy life being a priest for God’s who didn’t seem to be around much. And now there was a shrine—a shriiine—in the glade. The. Glade. Let’s be honest, Jory was a little pissed that he hadn’t found it first given how much time he spent lazing about there. Still, if this wasn’t a motivator to be a little more proactive then what was?

He came as the crow, and was surprised but pleased to see that there was already someone there. The God’s deserved their due devotion, hibernation or no. The man was kneeling, praying it seemed, though Jory missed the words spoken. The shrine stirs, a subtle thrum of power that Jory can only see from the air: a stirring of leaves, the blooming of flowers. His caw of surprise and elation is muffled by the small stone in his beak and he dives for the ground to land near the kneeling man. In all his years this was the first true sign of power that he’d witnessed. He had built his life on faith and now had the reward of witness.

The crow hops forward and carefully nestles the glow stone among the newly sprouted flowers before fluttering around to face the man. As he moves back towards hime the crow becomes man and Jory crouches  to try and meet the supplicant eye to eye. His face is a little wild, eyes wide as he tries to collect as much of the moment in his memory as he can. “What happened?!” The question is quick, positively shaking with excitement. “What did you feel? Did they speak to you?!”

The sky was dark and raining, at least that was how he remembered it. Before now, his cold hand were grabbing at shrubbery and wood as he was running through a forest. He could barely see anything through his cracked glasses. All that illuminated his path was brief flashes of lightning, which only came across to him as presenting him with blurs of silvery light.
He was being chased by those who called him a heretic and believed he aided pagans, which were things he absolutely did and still did not regret.

He may not be able to see it, but he could feel it and hear it. Something deep, wide, and open, an abyss like the mouth of a monster. He kept his eyes closed and used his ears. He could hear the snapping of branches beneath boots, the push and pull of chasing breaths, and the beating of his own heart. He bore neither smile nor frown. His face was plain and stern, his death or capture was more of an inconvenience than it was a terrifying force.

He felt compelled to make a decision. He stepped back, he fell.

He waited for a pitch darkness to become a sense of nothing. Instead, it was like the feeling between when one's eyes open and when they wake up from a nightmare.

His eyes were closed, but he did not need to see it in order notice it. What started as a fall had become a throw. His back was thrown to the wall causing a bang to fill the air, his head tilted back from the impact and his arms were to his sides. Water that had arrived with him had splashed his whole body and darkened the wall behind him with dampness, immediately followed by a polearm landing beside his head blade first, shattering upon impact, his grey eyes could be seen in the reflections between cracks.

When he dropped to the floor, he practically fell into a position with his knees bent and his hands gripping at his rapid pacing heart while trying to catch his breath. What was on the floor was a man in a drenched and grass-stained tunic and braies, shaking as if terror was resonating through him.

koel tryin' to take what's lost and broke and make it right Well, this was silly: Koel knelt there for what felt like an eternity and absolutely nothing happened. No manifestations, no booming voice, no real major occurences, just the silence of the woods. Which, now that he came to think of it, wasn’t really silent, but instead filled with all the sounds of life; there was the rustling of the leaves in a warm wind that swirled around him, the buzzing of insects, even this late in the year, the birdsong and the calls of other animals, small and large, all competing in a soothing background symphony. He closed his eyes and just basked in the feeling of being alone in nature—something he needed to do far more often than he did, which was never—feeling his woes fall away and his energy refreshed. He opened them at the sound of a caw and the flapping of wings; a crow was waiting there—and were those flowers new? they were definitely new—but as Koel watched, it shifted into a person. Ah. A shapechanger. Immediately, the already relaxed eagle relaxed further. He was among his own kind in a place of peace and beauty, and somehow he found it hard to worry about much of anything. But this younger man seemed very excited about something. Unfortunately, Koel was having trouble matching the crow’s enthusiasm. Of course the rapid fire questions did rouse him from his slight stupor. Or maybe it was a trance: it certainly didn’t feel like his normally overactive mind was working the way it normally did, but he found that he didn’t mind in the slightest. He worried too much anyway. Everyone said it, so they’d be happy to see him finally calm. While it might’ve been distressing to consider the last time he’d felt this way (he honestly couldn’t remember) he was just happy to feel happy for once. But he was forgetting something. Right, he had to answer the crow’s questions, but definitely in a slower tone. ”Nothing really happened. I mean, you showed up and so did these flowers I think, but that’s it.” The blooms were pretty, he decided; a hand was reaching out to pluck a few before he even knew what he was doing or thought about it. Only after he had picked the bouquet and placed them in a belt pouch did he realize the deities might not want him to do that. ”Thank you,” he said politely to the open air, though he felt foolish doing so. Maybe he could have someone analyze them, an herbalist: while they looked normal, if they were touched by the gods, or even just magical, maybe they could tell them something about this world. Then something occurred to him and he turned to the arrival with a curious look on his face. ”I don’t think you’re a god, but you showed up when I prayed, so I guess I should ask. Are you? A god I mean?” Koel was pretty sure he was right about this; gods would have a more imposing or impressive presence, he decided, though honestly he didn’t know what he was talking about. Still, there was something about this man (Jorseval wasn't nearly imposing enough) that didn't scream god. ”Either way, I’m Koel Ambray.” If this was a deity, they—or he—probably didn’t need the introduction, but the eagle felt better for giving it. Then, of course, the other man just appeared. Koel whirled around, his tranquility shattered by the sound of a body hitting the ground. Immediately the eagle was up and moving: he knelt beside the kneeling young man, Koel’s eyes scanning their surroundings for any sign of the danger that was causing the terror that was almost palpable in the man before him. Again, the scout didn’t think this was a divine being, but there was some sort of divine intervention at play. ”Hey. Are you alright? And if you don’t mind me asking, who are you and where did you come from?” Koel kept his voice pitched low and soothing, trying to channel the peace of this place into his words; if he’d known Hope, he might’ve reached out a steadying hand, but this was a stranger. Glancing at Jorseval—another stranger, but at least a less distressing one—Koel wondered whether the crow knew anything about this.

J O R Y

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The exhilaration was heady, a little bit like getting off without all the effort and mess. At this rate, if he was ever blessed enough to stand in the presence he might just keel over dead; good thing they seemed like they were easing back into interacting with the world with tiny floral miracles.

The praying man opened his eyes and Jory, searched his face for reflections of his own reaction but was a little disappointed in the seeming lack of energy in the other man. This was no time to be lackadaisical! “Nothing happened?!” His tone was incredulous, lifting to an astonishingly high pitch. Jory sprung of from his crouched position with a desperate little flail towards the shrine. “Always! They insist on playing with their eyes closed! The Gods wouldn’t give us eyes if they didn’t what us to see shit! What about the rustley leaves?” He makes a little whirlwind motion with his hands to illustrate. “No? And the flowers? The flowers with the sprouting?” A little sprouting motion with one hand. Did this man think flowers really grew that fast?

Jorseval didn’t wait for a response from that, not really expecting Koel to change his story and with an exaggerated sigh of defeat reached over to try and pat the man’s cheek. “Oh you beautiful idiot. No, I’m not a god, just their servant. Call me Jory, if you will. I don’t know what you’re expecting but look!” He whirls again, still rife with kinetic energy and makes a ‘ta-da’ motion towards the flowers. “That’s Rae giving you a sign After hundreds of years of silence that’s not nothing!” He was positively beaming as he watched Koel reach to pick some of the flowers, maybe he was starting to understand what a blessing this was after all. The priest was not one to leave the interpretation of godly things up for debate. This was a tiny, tiny miracle but still fucking miraculous and may Mort take him now it he wasn’t going to make sure this man understood that!

He was about to drive his point home when the Gods threw another player in the mix. Jory looked to see a second man fall to the ground, looking like he had brought some of wherever he’d been before with him: water splashed around him and a weapon fell aside, broken. More than a little stunned (he surely hadn’t been expecting quite so much activity in his coming here) he let Koel go alone to the newcomer’s side.

There was a terror that covered the man and it sparked an unease for a moment in Jory. Not until Koel glanced back at him did the Priest move into action. He was less frantic now, more set in his movements as he crouched again to join. “Leave off questions just now.“ He murmured to Koel and displaying the opposite of his new acquaintance’s  restraint, immediately reached in to try and grip Hope ’s hands over where they clutched at his heart. If the God’s wanted him here, then Jory was ready to help. “Steady there, Outlander.” His voice wasn’t particularly soft or soothing, but he made it firm. A weapon meant a soldier, right? And don’t soldier’s respond to orders? “Peace. Mort’s not come for you yet.”

The chaos was bewildering. He could hear but not discern the sound of the words uttered to him, the sound of his own breath and heart drowned everything else out, like the pulling and pushing of an ocean during a storm. His being was a shattered mirror, connected but fractured in the shape of a spiders web. Every word scraped against him, like pieces of chalk against a chalkboard. Maybe he did die, because he felt as if he was being punished using the words of other people. When he was approached by a man dressed as a ranger, his muscles turned to stone. Any movement threatening to make the sound of rashing sliding against each other. He had always been more scared of people than loud noises. If Hope had known the man before he was a priest he would have been tempted to push the hands that just reached for his own. He already was restraining himself from flinching. He could feel caloused hands over his own as his eyes became a well, the black pit of water was far away from the lights touch. The area enclosing his eyes felt warm as a small flame while the rest of his body felt chilled by water and breeze. Hope expected none of this and had no idea how to react. His actions were as slow as his instincts. He took deep breaths, like the waves of the shore. He stared down at the ground as if it was the most stable thing in his existence that he could trust to not change. His heart gradually kept slowing, but for now he wanted to move. The man before him was seen as an intimate stranger, such a notion did not carry well with him. He did not resonate with kindness nor gratitude, he was too cold to resonate with such things. His face was plain, or maybe it was just tired. Instead of finding comfort with the hands on his, his own trembling fingers grabbed those in front of his. Nails uncontrollably pressed into flesh as arms reached toward the ceiling. Eyes became half closed around the expanding iris before he looked up toward his recent …...companions. His eyes widened with what could only be bewilderment, he could see the face of those before him instead of blurs. He almost stared at the face of the man who came before him. A rasped voice broke out before his noodle-like arms. “Please…..Pull up. ......Where .............or Who?” His words were terse. He wasn't sure if he was talking to those around him or himself. He had trouble thinking let alone speaking. Eyes now peered at the man away from him. Narrowing on his features as if he had never seen anything like them before. "Hope" He spoke out to Koel. He could tell that when he calmed down, he was going to be much more tired. H O P E There's a place I go to Where no one knows me It's not lonely It's a necessary thing