Hollowing souls, blood on the breeze

Safrin It was here somewhere, she knew it. At least Frey had the decency to be rather upfront with its games. It only took a few weeks to have gossip of what Frey had done, who they had cursed and what prices need to be payed, to reach Safrin's ears. But Ludo? Oh no. That information she'd had to listen for herself. A mask to see the outside? Just what was it playing at, giving them that sort of hope? And so, with a rather amused smile on her lips, Safrin hung a lantern as exquisite as anything one might see during the Festival of Lights, though real stars and galaxies hummed into existence within her lantern. That ought to get its attention.

"What stars and galaxies must have aligned, for the lady Safrin to light a lantern for her lost ones?" Ludo sat in the boughs of a great tree, well within sight of its fellow deity, its thin legs swinging playfully, rags writhing about it. Its expressionless white mask wore something akin to amusement (somehow), and a tendril of fabric flicked out to throw an acorn at Safrin. "How is your cult? Oh, forgive me. Church. I saw Frey made an appearance there recently. Are you two close now?" LUDO Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own

Safrin Her smile faltered, but she quickly pasted it back onto her face, the loveliness of her expression hardening somewhat at the sound of its voice. Turning, the galaxy-dark she wore spun infinities of light around her as she turned to face Ludo. "And here is the lost one I seek." She said delicately, looking up at the swaddle of cloth lazily hung in the boughs. "I guess these lanterns of yours do work." Without flinching, the acorn shattered into a swirl of starlight and fell to her feet. "All these centuries and still you throw things at me." She pouted, but where once there might have been amusement, now there was only distant disapproval. The mention of the church and worse, Frey, made Safrin's eyes darken prismatically. It always knew how to get right under her skin. "They can call it what they like, at least they know my name. And if Frey wants to pander to their appetites and engorge their orgasms so be it. Besides, we could use a good cult. Its been...what? 100 years since the last?" Tutting, she shook her head. "I've heard you've been making your rounds. A mask that lets them see through the barrier? That seems above your usual levels of trickery, no?" Capriciously Safrin narrowed her eyes slightly as her smile widened.

"Do not flatter yourself, Safrin. I am not yours." Ludo bounced another acorn between two wavering strips of fabric, its mask tilting down when the nut sailed out of reach and plopped harmlessly into the hoarfrost below. It didn't reply to her jibes, merely quivering in its wisps and tendrils of black, giving nothing away behind its mask. Surging forward off the branches, it drifted like a sheet in the breeze, and the cosmos that emitted from the lady of the stars was swallowed where it hit Ludo's rags. "All these centuries and you still do not grasp the concept of a game of 'catch'." It tittered, settling before her in a writhing mass. "At least a hundred. And the last was so boring. Not a single mortal sacrifice - ugh." Safrin referred to it and Ludo twirled dramatically in the air, ducking into an extravagant bow. "Unlike you I need not make a name for myself. I already have one, and a festival too." Picking at one another was all well and good, but Safrin was not here to chit chat. Shame. "There are winds of change in the Hollowed Grounds, Safrin. You cannot pretend to be blind to it. Perhaps after all this time--" It cut itself off. A dangerous train of thought. "I did not give a mask. I gave mine." LUDO Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own

Safrin "Oh never. Besides, I have the mortals for flattery now." She sniped back. Unlike her counterpart, Safrin's disapproval was writ clearly in the lines of her face and the narrowing of her eyes. Safrin watched as, like a black hole, Ludo enveloped her light. Of course that was what they were to one another, what they always had been, and yet she turned her gaze away at the sight of her light being snuffed out so easily. "Maybe if you would ask first.." She quipped back sulkily, turning her gaze up as he settled, more or less, before her. "True." She agreed with a small and tentative smile. "The one with the wolf masks and that woman in charge? Now that was something." The smile drifted across her face and Safrin sighed pleasantly at the memory.   Giving Ludo a pointed look, which was rather difficult given the vacancy of its stare behind the mask, Safrin shook her head. "A festival that occurs once a year? Tsk tsk." She tutted, wagging a finger and cocking a hip. "Imagine what Frey would say hearing that you are only called to come once a year." The innuendo was easy and obvious, and despite how she hated even saying Frey's name, still she laughed. Flinching slightly, the amusement drained from her face as she nodded gravely. "No...things are different now. They are closer, even if they do not realize it." Before she could say more, her eyes widened and her pupils exploded like stars bursting into life. "You gave a mortal your mask?" She demanded, awe in her words and concern high on her cheek bones.

"And such flattery they give you. I particularly like the gaudy paintings of your face splashed every which way and where," Ludo replied smoothly; as they spoke a tendril of fabric snuck out to examine her lantern further, as if the god were unable to help itself. "What is wrong with a festival once a year? It frees up the rest of my time to wander where I might. Besides, I wish not to compete with you, glorious goddess. I know well I am not the one the people want to worship." That, and Ludo simply wasn't ambitious in that way. It simply was. But that didn't mean it wasn't affected by the status quo, as they all were. Tittering again at the mention of their only missing ally, Ludo gave as close to a shrug as it could, before reaching within to part its rags. "I cannot come at all, Safrin. You see, I lack the proper equipment." It was true - beneath the strips of cloth lay nothing but a void, blacker and more infinite than any eclipse. Letting the rags fall back in their place, Ludo stood motionless in the face of Safrin's outrage. "I do not care anymore," it said simply. "If we are free then we will be reunited, all of us. I do not care if they are angry, or if I am punished. I do not care, Safrin." Surging forward suddenly, Ludo's mask halted inches from her lovely face. The darkness seemed to swarm around it, and a howling wind tossed rags and leaves up and around them. "Besides," it hissed. "You cannot say much. You stole from me with a vial of starlight, you sentimental old witch." LUDO Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own

Safrin "I do as well." She sniped in response with a quirked brow. "They are mortals after all. It isn't their fault they're reduced to paint with their hands." Safrin said with a careless shrug. They were trying, which was all she cared about. "Ahh yes, because we are so short on that resource." She said with an incredulous huff. Ludo could probably stop time if it felt like it. Or at least slow it down somehow. It seemed like the sort of nasty trick he was capable of anyways. With a humming note of agreement, Safrin nodded. The trio of them might always be at odds and openly critical of the others, but perhaps that was precisely the point. That they didn't overlap was why they fit. That, and the last time Frey had deigned to try and become the face of religion things had not ended well. Sniffing delicately and averting her eyes, the goddess could only shrug and expect the trails of shooting stars dancing along her skin. In actuality, the only thing the goddess really feared was the ethereal nothingness that Ludo represented. It was the antithesis to all that she was, and she could not bring herself to openly look. To do so would be to invite madness. "Oh there is always a way Ludo. You just avoid anything that actually might make you feel something." Then, as if anticipating its objection, she looked up sharply. "Something pleasant not caused by the snuffing out of a life or the torturing of a soul." "You do not—" She whispered, shock lining her features and darkening her stare. "And what will they say? You don't care about being punished by him?" Her indignation halted as her counterpart surged forward, Safrin tried to draw her chin confidently upwards, and yet her lashes fluttered just as Ludo's rags did. Narrowing her eyes, she shrugged one shoulder an inch or so, nostrils flaring. "I stole nothing. Life has always been ours to give. Don't think I didn't see what you did. See it all around her."

"Agreed. It's why I forego them, for the most part..." Hands were just one choice out of infinite choices for Ludo, and it quite liked its rags. It snorted - an undignified and purposely childish sound - behind the mask. "Speak for yourself, Safrin. Some of us have work to do, we can't all of us go around handing out necklaces and petitioning for our followers to say our names." Not that it used its time productively. But hypocrisy was a privilege afforded to those with deity status, it thought. A sliver of fabric flicked over the mouthpiece of the mask as if Ludo were gasping dramatically at Safrin's barbed comments, but of course no part of the god changed even in the slightest. "I do not torture," it objected. "The souls torture themselves. I seek to bring peace." And nightmares, sometimes. Okay, a lot of times. Whatever. Despite what Safrin said, Ludo could and did indeed feel, and it was written in its voice as it spoke next. "If I am being punished by him then that means he is there to punish. And that is all I care about," it said simply. "Besides, I break no rules. I merely offer what I can to the wheel of fortune. What the mortals choose to do with it is up to them." It scoffed, retreating back slowly, like some spider returning to its den. "Opportunity struck. I took it. It is always the way," it muttered. LUDO Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own

Safrin "And yet somehow I make the time." She tutted dismissively. "Maybe I am just better at managing my responsibilities than you are." With an undignified sound of disgust, Safrin cocked her head to the side, pursing her lips. "You and Frey both, twisting words to make them fit whatever act you want to justify. You can lie to them, but don't bother with me. I see through it, mask and all." Actually that was a rather poor turn of phrase, since it was one of the few traits of Ludo that she, nor anyone else, could actually see through. Save for him perhaps, but that was not for Safrin to know. Head still raised slightly, Safrin narrowed her eyes almost speculatively and perhaps...confused? "What do you mean, it means he is there to punish. Of course he is there. They all are, out there." She added unhappily, waving vaguely towards the bubble. Scoffing unhappily, Safrin crossed her arms. "You offer them choices they can't possibly understand. The one with the mask, does he know what it actually does? What it lets you do?" She asked pointedly, brow raised.   Relaxing as it retreated, Safrin lowered her arms slowly as if they had not been raised around  her to provide comfort at his closeness. "Then you should not call me a thief for doing the same."

If Ludo could have arched an eyebrow it would have as she made her comment about the mask, but instead it merely hovered where it had retreated, watching her with a blank and bone white expression. "They are out there. They are not in here," it said simply. "I miss them." Suddenly poking fun and exchanging jibes did not seem to be so amusing. Ludo soared up once more to settle in the boughs of the tree, mask turned up to watch the night through the skeleton branches. "And what of your offers and information? Do they understand what you tell them any better?" it asked softly. "He has worn the mask and he has seen, but I cannot say whether he knows. What does it matter, Safrin? So what if they use what we give them or if we give it to them in the first place? If we are destined to be stuck in here so, without asking to be, without choosing to be, what does it matter?" LUDO Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own

Safrin "I do too." Safrin said somberly, the beauty melting from her expression and leaving only the hollow galactic remnants that probably truly deserved to be called an old witch. "I am tired of seeing this same patch of sky, night after night, decade after decade." The goddess murmured in a low tone. She did not join Ludo on the branch, but merely looked up. She knew them all by heart and she longed for something else. Gently Safrin shrugged. "I answer what they ask of me. If they are not ready to ask the right questions, then they are not ready to hear the answers that they seek." For a moment the deity said nothing. Instead, she simply regarded the stars. Pinpoints of light sparkled more brightly, and for a moment she thought to retrace some of the constellations from when the pair were infinitely younger. Now those stars and stories were the stuff of legends. Civilizations and romances had been built on them. But Safrin was tired and old and Ludo? Well. They were a dark thing with no need for her starlight and stories. "Asked? And would you really have told him no?" She scoffed rhetorically, and yet there was a lingering question. If they had been asked, would any of them have said no? Could they have? "And it matters because we are not meant to let them leave." Centuries ago she would have cried heresy for having such thoughts. Now a mere 300 or so years later and she was already waffling this much.

"And I am tired of the slow march of the souls here. I do not mean to torture, truly. But there is little else to do than tempt. You must feel it too... lives are so rarely sparked, and they so rarely die out... compared to out there, anyway." Ludo spoke to the stars because it was easier than speaking to Safrin, and it nestled into the boughs of the tree. It watched the stars glow brighter in places, a wisp of fabric reaching up as if to trace the constellations for her, but it changed its mind soon after. "No," it said quietly. "No, I would not have refused. In fact I would probably be happier to stay, if I had been asked." Ironic. Letting the cloth flutter back amongst the rest, Ludo turned its mask down to gaze at Safrin. "I know we aren't... so why did you give one of them a tool to help start the process? To give them an edge?" LUDO Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own

Safrin She didn't argue with Ludo. It was right of course. Things had grown lazy inside of this dome. "No. The spark of life seems to much duller here." But was that their fault? Or was it she who had somehow grown less bright? Frowning, Safrin waved an errant shooting star across the sky and sighed. Safrin hummed a note of agreement, but said nothing. The dynamic was precarious and set in stone. Never would they have asked, and never would the trio of them have refused. And yet..."We sound like the mortals do. Whining about choice even though it would all have ended up just the same." She watched the cloth rise and fall, imaging the enigmatic darkness beneath and sighed. It was clever, Safrin knew that. But she had thought that perhaps they'd meander a bit longer around her hypocrisy. "If the fight that damn experiment gone wrong, perhaps they will at least learn what it is they are fighting. That does not mean they will win but..." Clenched her teeth with exasperation, she looked into the vacant canvas of Ludo's mask, wanting to crush it beneath her fingers and pour her light into his dark places. "Watching them relentlessly fail and fight when they do not even understand. Shaking her head, she laughed a hollow and defeated sort of trill. "I heard you tell one of them their answers lay at the top. And did you see what he did? He flew there."

Ludo hummed an amused agreement back at Safrin - they did sound just like the mortals, and it found itself struggling to care these days. Safrin undermined and worked her hypocrisy into quietly rebelling against the situation. Ludo grew lethargic in its own inertia. "But if they understand what they are fighting them perhaps the next ones along might figure it out. Or the next, or the next, until no blame can be attributed to you at all." It was a good idea and Ludo almost wished it had thought of it first. The boy had flown there, and had found nothing. Ludo shrugged. "Now he knows that the answers he seeks to not lie without," it said. "Do not begrudge them their attempts, especially when they fail. Besides... they said they will try it again at Flowerbirth. I will be there. Will you?" LUDO Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own