[SWE] Festival of Lights - 312 PC

Festival of Lights Not so long ago, the Barrows played host to a few long tables, a would-be prince, a food fight, and a man getting his pants pulled down. And if nothing more, the experience would serve as a good memory in the minds of those who had attended. Because that is what the Barrows is all about tonight - memories, of those who had fallen in this world or another, recently or long ago. Lights mark out a pathway through the grasses to the festival, and more dot the darkness all around. Some are decorated lanterns from those who are already in attendance, having found a good place to set down their offerings. Others are vampire gourds (not live ones, obviously), candles and tealights places within their hollow shells to give ghoulish entrance to the party. There's gentle music, the bubble of conversation, and meetings between people who may not have seen each other all year. But whilst there's most certainly an atmosphere of joviality and cheer and remembrance, the night sky overhead seems very dark indeed. As if something up there is holding its breath, daring for the sort of interruption that had befallen last year's festivities. Welcome to the 312 PC Festival of Lights! This SWE is open to Naturals and Outlanders alike, and for the first time, is being held in King's End! Please come and hang your lanterns to remember those your characters have lost. This thread will remain open until the end of the month, at which time perhaps Ludo will appear to choose its favourite lantern, and to bestow a gift. This is the main lantern-hanging thread. Feel free to have off-shoot threads for your other activities if you like!

RONIN

the darkstar

In the end, Ronin hasn't bothered to make any new lanterns. But he does bring the two that have started to become a staple at the festival of lights - the one painted with feathers and a ship for Vanya, and the one made out of Aoife's old finger paintings for (obviously) the starry eyed child they'd lost. The lanterns are held carefully in one hand as he strolls into the festival, his other arm casually slung around Remi.

"I'll hang these up and fetch us a drink?" he suggests to his husband with a soft smile, knowing better than to ask if Remi wants to join him in his task. Whether or not the Lullaby feels like it is entirely his choice, and there's no pressure from Ronin either way. "I didn't expect the Barrows to look so peaceful at night. Even if those gourds are a creepy touch." Ludo would be proud, he reckons.

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

walked out this morning and i wrote down this song.
i just can't remember who to send it to

Remi hasn't made or brought a lantern this year. He hasn't come empty-handed though, not being quite so bold as to show up to Ludo's festival with nothing for the herald. Instead of a glowing lantern, he brings a large expandable fan with lines drawn on that someone might play X's and O's (or naughts and crosses if you're a pretentious ex-baron). This way Ludo could use it to make the lanterns sway in the breeze or fan their flames if it so chose.

"I can do that." Remi agrees with a smile. Unlinking his arm from his husband's, Remi goes to fill two glasses full of what's on offer. As it happens, it's a sticky-sweet concoction that looks rather like a child's version of sangria, which was to say everything within arms reach shoved into a bowl and drowned in juice.

watch her dance, she beckons you

fair warning: leave her to herself

Melita always had to remember that this wasn’t supposed to be a solemn occasion. A way to forge onward, to recall the lives of those lost, but not be burdened with the depths of such despair.

Still, she held her sister’s lantern firmly, knowing she couldn’t come here. Placing it along the hooks as she’d done so many times in years past, humming one of their favored songs under her breath. Her mother’s followed suit too, in accordance with a light smile and a heart striving not to be too heavy, newly wrapped in some herbs she’d fetched from the Oerwoud, and Clementine’s given touches of fragrant fruit.

Then her eyes lifted, nods and waves given to those she knew or anyone else nearby. A part of her wondered, just vaguely, if this was to be something like the last – if spirits would do more than just descend for a moment. If they’d return again, summoned by the Voice.

If the last thought bothered her, she didn’t show it – just intertwined more plaited flowers on her family’s lights and lanterns again.

beautiful to see, but poison to touch

calm and chaos, evolved and still evolving

MELITA

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame The previous Festival of Lights didn’t escape his thoughts. Clustered, coiled, and centered there, in the segments of things unforeseen, in the bellows of unpredictability. But still, he wandered into its midst, in between the glows of candles and flames, with no new lanterns in his grasp. Just the ones for individuals who wouldn’t be able to return – some because their souls had long since been lost before this mortal plain, and some because their souls hadn’t flickered to Mort. The Sword kept to himself, but didn’t hang his head low, as Rexanna’s artifact was placed on its newly-designated hook. All the adornments and ornamental orchestrations remained, though he’d added others – reforming proportions to accommodate newer chapters in the stories (Kiada placed there too – reborn in the same glow as her mother, even if she likely hated the notion). His parents’ stayed the same – flames and water, interspersed upon metal, etched within the darker plating. Only once they’d been settled did he contemplate anything else – gaze following others for a few moments, but continuing to stand guard along his chosen proportions. master of nothing place; of recoil and grace

and we'll forget this solemn day, we'll always be young again

“So I know, I know, that it’s a bit of a trek which is the only reason I didn’t bring…” Varus pauses to count all the fingers on his metal hand before he flashes a fanged grin over toward Isla. “Like twelve lanterns? Probably more but, this’ll have to do.” He’s got one small lantern hanging from his elbow by the handle, lingering on the Outskirts to see who all else have arrived. He doesn’t feel like diving into the center of the event, and so he picks a branch off to the side to hang the lantern on – a lantern designed florally and with lace, one to mimic the softness of his mother, before he’s turning back toward Isla, not letting the somberness of the Festival get to him.

He reaches for her to thread his fingers into hers, pulling her close beside him. “Think they’ve got a game of horseshoes if you want to try and have a repeat of the sand darts competition.” He wiggles his brows playfully toward her.

VARUS

WESSEX

the wraith

At this point, there are too many loved and gone, so it’s one big lantern for the Ascended and one small lantern for Magrethe and her mother. Others hold space in her heart, but only some have earned her time and energy.

The lantern for Clem, Aedion, Lucas, Rex, Kristopher, 108, Evelyn, Mara and those presumed dead - Amun, most notably - is big and bright. Something she’ll likely take back after the Festival, this is no small totem to those gone before her, but more of a fuck you to Ludo and a homage to the bright ones. She places it atop a barrow and then sits next to it for a bit, ankles crossed and knees pulled up to her chest, hands clasped around her shins.  

A guard? Basking in its light? Her biological family’s sits in front of her feat, dainty and diminutive in comparison. But the Wraith can’t yet abandon it to the darkness of the night and keeps it close for now as she watches the other festival-goers.

she's pullin' the trigger

cause it's me and the moon, she says

and i have no trouble with that

SUNJATA

Festival of Lights, a time that had been quite bittersweet last year with the arrival of dead friends (joyous occasions), met with the arrival of dead lovers too (awkward as fuck). So it’s no surprise that they’ve left Kamaria home for now, keeping her away from whatever potential challenges this event might poise, just as the party last time in Meadowreach had. There’s one lantern that Sunjata brings, one he’d brought the first season for the Festival of Lights when he’d arrived with Phoebe, only this time the lantern is different.

It’s been remade because the other had been destroyed, demolished, half clinging to the frame it had been built around. He hopes Ludo doesn’t mind.

Regardless, he offers a small wave to Remi and Ronin should they look over, but mostly hangs in the back, lantern in one hand and the other intertwined with Nate’s because he’d be damned if he’s letting his husband go for one second without constant touch. “I’m thinking right here might be the best spot for her lantern.” He suggests, tugging Nate with him easily to slip over to the other side, to a branch that sticks out from the edge of the clearing, that he hangs Lusea’s lantern on, his steel gaze soft and tinged with a hint of sorrow as he lingers a second before bringing Nate’s hand to his lips to press a kiss to it, letting his gaze drift over toward the Ascended.

laugh while we set the house on fire
i ran back in to save your smile

NATE

With everything else going on, Nate's almost forgotten about the Festival of Lights. It's Sunjata who reminds him, a lantern made the week before. As heavy as the year has been with tragedy, it has been light on deaths, and only one lantern hangs from the single crackling arm he has summoned, both of his actual hands far too busy being wrapped around Sunjata's.

The lantern is a delicate thing, a thin paper shell hanging down from an obsidian roof. Ink is painted in the shape of apologies, creating a splotchy pattern on the shell of the lantern. Edwyn had not been close to him, not really, but he knew enough to mourn him, to feel somewhat responsible for his death.

His gaze moves over the other ascended present, some small part of him easing to know he's not alone here. "I think here is perfect." He murmurs, following after Sunjata to the edge of the clearing. Nate wraps his arms around the attuned after his lantern has been hung, letting his hand be lifted just as easily as he'd followed. A thin smile crosses his face, his head cocking as his eyes meet steel. It looks good Sunny. He offers quietly, Nate nosing in close to his husband to press a kiss against his cheek.

What's the drive in being alive if you don't know where you are?
What's the fun in getting drunk if you can’t take it too far?

All expectations make her heart feel numb

Mabel hadn’t made any lanterns last year. She’d been dead.

But she’d come back on the throngs and throes of the eerie, similar festival – though hers had been flanked in ivory and mountains, in the confusion and flickering, volleying lights.

So she’d carved and whittled in the space of her empty farmhouse, remembered what it was like to do the same beside all her siblings, as they laughed, giggled, and played, as they painted and anointed, as they pretended this wasn’t all some god damned farce. By tradition, she committed to it again, making one for each of her family’s little lost souls, small and quaint, dignified by toys they cherished. Evelyn got a larger one, however, and Mabel wished she could’ve made it fly on its own, without gravity, without force, without a pull or a push. Alas, it was adorned and handled with care instead. Her parents received none. She had no need to see them again.

Only thereafter did she traipse into the meadows and barrows, barefoot and enigmatic, twisting and turning in her feral expanse, and then hung them all, one by one by one.

MABEL

Seren

Uncharacteristically quiet, Seren hovered on the outskirts of the gathering. The lantern for her sister held in cold hands cast a flickering glow across her face and turned the expression unreadable, something enigmatic and subdued.

Blue eyes turned dark in the night kept moving about the crowd. Taking in the people, committing faces to memory. Strange, to think that some might not be there next time. How many would have lanterns lit for themselves by other hands in years to come? Would she even be present to see it? A macabre thought, but the evening lent itself to introspection.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved
In secret, between the shadow and the soul

Maeve

Originally the Queen hadn't planned on making a lantern. There wasn't anyone to make one for. Not her mother or her father seeing as she didn't know if either of them were dead and not wanting to find out this way. No, Maeve was going to attend with a gift for Ludo because it would be rude to come with nothing. That was until she had to pull a body from the water of a raven haired boy who had played her beautiful music for nothing in return. With great care Maeve finds a spot that's a touch more secluded, hanging the carefully constructed lantern for Korbin in the bough of a tree, the flame flickering the same way his shooting stars did.

The panels are decorated with the silhouettes of ravens, stars hanging above them as the perch and fly against the almost icy background panels she picked to represent his home, but on a single panel is the outline of a boy with wings coming from his back and a lute in hand. She's not sure she really even wants to see him, but a part of her wishes to tell him that he wasn't alone. That she kept him safe afterwards. That she found him and hid him away until Noah could collect him, but even the Nightshade knows that might be too much.

Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips
We should just kiss like real people do

Isla

"It's alright. We can have a miniature festival for the other twelve lanterns," Isla reasons to Varus with a small smile. It feels strange and perhaps a little wrong for Ascended to be attending such a festival, but like it or not Isla had known what it was to be in Mort's embrace, and she had stepped back into the world on this very night last year. She has many she might remember, but like a couple of others in the crowd, the lantern she holds is for a starry-eyed child she knew only as a unicorn, but who she loved fiercely all the same.

A delicate white thing spangled with gold and silver stars, she reaches up to hang it alongside Varus's lantern and gives a nod of satisfaction, before her fingers twine through his own. "Mm? Maybe a little later. I'd quite like to just take a walk and look at all the lanterns. You want to come?" It's an illusion of choice, of course - Isla is already tucking herself under his arm so they might walk together.

sooner or later, we all have to wake
and try forgetting everything

NOAH

I can't wait for this no more,
My eyes have come undone

The Sentinel does not let his eyes wander around to anyone, save for one person. Deimos is given a brief point of contact, and a rush over the attuned bond. After that, he silences himself, his emotions, and cuts all tethers to those attuned around him. He traveled with the queen from Torchline. His heart ached, the pain reaching deep down and surrounding him. Last year, Ludo granted him time with Weaver, and she had reassured him that Korbin was still alive. Then, the hunter found him. He brought him home and brought him back to health and nurtured him...but it was not enough. Noah could not protect him from the world and he failed. He had failed the Hales. Each of them died and there was nothing Noah could do about it -- nothing he could have done about it.

Erebor knew how to fight. Weaver knew to avoid dragons. Korbin knew how to swim.

Noah swallowed the lump in his throat as he placed the lantern near the one Maeve had made for the boy. It was as intricate and beautiful as Noah could manage. Compared to the lantern at its side it was a crude creation, but it was full of the love that Noah felt for the youngest Hale and all the things they had been through together. Forgive me... He thought, lowering his head and closing his eyes -- nothing but grief consuming him, silent in on himself, unable to be heard by the others.

If my star will ever rise,
Let it be the only one