all that was me, is gone

It was with fresh eyes that the alchemist approached the shrine this time around. No longer were his eyes far-away and haunted, instead, they shone with fresh agony and pain; his posture speaking volumes about the weight he'd finally allowed himself to bear. Remi looked worse than he ever had, but was all the better for it. Placing a small pawn atop the shrine—the one Ludo had cast away during their game—the alchemist sighed out a breath. "I made a hole in the ground, but not a grave. When Ronin made a proper one...I nearly cost us our marriage for what I thought it represented." Remi said, his shoulders slouched. "I didn't understand death before. What it meant...what it needs. But..I think I am starting to." Яemi I'm holding on to all the pieces of my heart's debris

ludo Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own "Memories are precious." Given how playful, how mischievous, how childlike Ludo could be for others who visited the shrine, Remi's presence always seemed to draw out its quiet and sombre nature. Its voice rang out but it was not there - not in the usual garb, anyway. But if Remi looked very closely, he might notice something standing behind the statue, something little pressed tightly against it, and a glimpse of small, blackened fingers stroking along the stone. "But sometimes, death brings the worst memories for those who are left behind." Remi would see it, acutely, projected from Ludo and out to him - the vivid moment of Aoife's death, the pain, the helplessness, the horror. "It leaves its marks. You know that too well. Don't you?"

The alchemist flinched at that. Memories were indeed precious, all the more so given how many of them Ludo had taken from him. Ludo wasn't the sort of god one needed to look for. It was not like Safrin in her beauty, nor Frey in their strange constantly aroused state. Instead the herald of death was like a ghost; one you saw sometimes, but one better not to be actively looked for. So it was that as small childlike fingers made dark by shadow? magic? (Remi's mind obviously didn't wander to the real cause), curled about the shrine, the alchemist merely swallowed but made no effort to steal a glance all the way around. The imagery was bright and real and unmistakably exact. Dropping to his knees, heedless of how his bones thumped dully against the boards of the dock, Remi clutched at his chest as his teeth clicked together. He scrunched his eyes closed but of course that did little to deaden the effect. "I take it you don't mean my scars." Remi murmured breathlessly after a moment, adrift in the horrific current of Ludo's projection. Яemi I'm holding on to all the pieces of my heart's debris

ludo Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own It knew exactly what it was doing, leaving the memories there, vivid and horrific, for a lingering few seconds. ”No I do not,” it said, black fingers twitching along the stone of the statue. ”But imagine if it did not have to be that way.” All at once the memories would melt into different visions, more pleasant ones, but real all the same. Remi and his daughter finger painting the outside of the shop; catching Ronin having fallen asleep mid-attempt to make Aoife nap; small and clumsy steps towards Remi in the fields at his wedding. All of it as vivid as the bad, with the comfort of the emotions they had brought. ”Imagine if that moment of loss could become celebration. What if the passing of a soul did not have to always be violent, or lonely, or frightening?” It peeled out from behind the stone, gaunt eyed with a soft shock of black hair.

Remi gasped, the pain almost too much, too vivid, too close to all that he'd been trying to let him experience. But not like this. This was— —love bloomed. The pain faded away like a memory, and though Remi's eyes fluttered with withheld tearsd, he saw his daughter's unruly curls, her pudgy fingers, how her chins multiplied with the magnitude of her laughter. It knocked the wind out of him more than the pain had. "A celebration.." The alchemist repeated, as if dazed or drugged, his mind not quite keeping up. Turning stunned and wide green eyes towards the pale figure beside the statue, Remi's brows furrowed for a moment in confusion before he understood. Or thought he did, anyway. "..is that what you do then? With the souls you take?"' He managed, stifling a sob as his eyes continually threatened to close if only to try and brighten the already-vivid images of his child. Яemi I'm holding on to all the pieces of my heart's debris

ludo Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own Ludo waited Remi out patiently, watched the cogs turn and the realisation dawn upon him. All the while the memories continued, a balm upon his sharp edges, a warmth against the cold. And when they faded they left behind a continued comfort, like an invisible embrace wrapped about him. "Sometimes," it said, nodding. "If those who would die would die afraid, or if they are in pain, sometimes it is better that they do not know." It continued to stare at the alchemist with big, black eyes. "I had not considered that such a thing might be useful for those who are left behind," it said, as if Remi had surprised it by teaching it something entirely new.

It is a warmth, but for a moment, it's scalding. Like when your fingers are cold and even the mildest of warm water feels like flames, so too did the beautiful memories shining around him feel as if they might cut him like glass. They didn't though. It all melted away; the hate, the resentment, the fear, the loathing...all just...gone in the wake of Aoife's laugh and her star-lit eyes. "That she died instantly..it was the only thing that seemed.." Positive? No. Nothing was positive. Swallowing hard, Remi sighed. "..fair." Placing a hand above his heart, fingers curling around his collarbones as if meaning to grab hold of them, he nodded mutely for a moment. "When they're gone..the good feels so painful. Like warm water on frostbite." He mumbled unsteadily. "It's hard to see past the loss." Realizing something new as well, Remi pulled in a breath through his nose—a pathetic sort of sniffle—and looked into the dark and sunken eyes. "Is that why you deal in memories, like you do?" The link between death and memories had always been weak in Remi's mind. Memories being..a sort of left over, but not a panacea. Not something that could ever help. Яemi I'm holding on to all the pieces of my heart's debris

ludo Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own "There was no pain," Ludo confirmed quietly, as if that should be the final piece to the puzzle that was Aoife's death. Remi might not understand it - might never understand it, really - but at least he could look upon it whole and know that it was there for his comprehension to try. It tilted its head as it considered the alchemist's words, blinking slowly, as if watching him through some other lens, some faraway place. "The good hurts," it repeated, letting out a little sigh through its nose; for once it appeared that it and the alchemist were speaking on even footing. Indeed, it might surprise Remi to see the deity smiling; boyish and and mischievous, a similar visage to that which usually appeared upon the mask. It nodded. "Memories are precious," it repeated. "One is not truly dead, until they are forgotten."

One of Remi's arms wrapped around his shoulder, this thumb softly stroking the skin in an unconscious gesture. In his mind it was Aoife's cheek, round and likely sticky with her lunch...only now, there was no flood of pain. No tightening in his chest, just a small and sad smile. He missed her dearly, always would. But the pain which inspired such anger and hostility can be drained somehow. Remi looked into the hollowed and youthful face, trying so very hard not to stare but wanting to just the same. As the weight of the words set in, for a moment the alchemist considered, eyes narrowing with thoughtful consideration before his lips parted into an O of surprise. "The memories you took then..." He murmured, not realizing until just now how much of a punishment that had been. "The longer I live, the more I cherish what I can remember." The words were contrite as Remi's shoulders sagged. Яemi I'm holding on to all the pieces of my heart's debris

ludo Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own Ludo nodded slowly, seeming pleased that such a degree of understanding had finally cloaked itself about Remi. A lesson, it hoped, that he would not soon forget. "Small deaths, in and of themselves," it murmured. "Each memory lost is the death of a life you had lived. You ought to cherish them closely, sweetling. For you do not know how little of you remains once those you hold dear forget you. What are we, if not what we are to others?" Cryptic, perhaps, but Ludo was not finished, and it did not give Remi too much time to consider. "Come with me." The pale child turned, stepping off the pier, away from the statue, and plummeting away towards the ocean. Would Remi stay, or would he follow?

"I said I didn't want to think of her...I didn't want anything to remind me of her.." The alchemist said through lips suddenly gone quite dry and a throat on the verge of collapse. Gods he already knew he'd been selfish, but to let her die all over again, by burying her memory and letting it go like the smoke from her pyre? To say that Remi winced at the memory was an understatement, the blush on his cheeks making him look like he'd been slapped. This was how he'd been led to his near-death by Ludo before, but clever as he was, Remi was not a quick learner. Walking as a man next to this ghost-eyed child seemed...ill-fitting. There was a genuineness that Remi's scarred and sad body lacked when compared to Ludo, and so he shifted. It was not into something new, powerful, or cute. It was into feathers and the smallest of his forms that he found himself, gliding on near-soundless wings as a hawk behind Ludo. REMI I wish I could discover something that doesn't expire

ludo Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own Remi might not be a quick learner, but he would be pleased to discover that Ludo did not - at least this time - have imminent death in mind for him. Not his own death, anyway. As the hawk plummeted into a dive after the pale deity, the distance between the shrine and the water would seem somehow... more. Infinitely more, like they were falling endlessly into some unknown sea. And perhaps it was unknown, for as the world opened in an endless expanse of ocean, the hawk would find himself gliding over the water towards what could only be described as a wreckage. Something had attacked the ship - pirates or a monster, it was unclear - but it was in pieces and quickly sinking. Small figures struggled and sank, scattered like dice around the shipwreck. Ludo stood on bare, black toes upon the waves, watching all unfold before them. "Drowning is not a quick death," it remarked.

A mind once vast and inquisitive had been honed and narrowed by experience. Whether wisely or naively, the hawk simply let the strange metaphysics of the ocean waft off of his feathers as beads of water might, following steadfast in Ludo's wake without hesitation or commentary. Hovering in place was not one of the hawk's strengths, and so Remi was forced to glide in tight and awkward circles above the deity, like some pale and poor approximation of a vulture. Is it their time, then? The hawk said, though truthfully his question was something else: Am I to save them? Or kill them? REMI I wish I could discover something that doesn't expire

ludo Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own "It is their time," Ludo said softly, glancing up at Remi as if he might well know what the answer to his question was. A vulture was an accurate description of the hawk circling overhead, but for what Ludo had in mind, Remi might wish to take a different shape. "End it quickly and they do not suffer. Draw it out and they step through the veil in a wash of fear and panic, and no number of happy memories can take away from the struggle of trying to take a breath that will not come."