voidtreckerexpress | Death Just Needs A Little Conversation [Open]

Entry tags:

Death Just Needs A Little Conversation [Open]

Who: Ryo and Open (angled towards those with death powers/connections)
Where: ICP/Garden Car
When: Nebula 3
What: Ryo is coming to terms with the fact that he's kept his death-related Diagad powers, so now he's asking for help with them. (They're not what he's afraid they are, but he doesn't know that yet.)
Warnings: Probably a lot of death talk, but we'll go from there.
Notes: It starts as an ICP post, but he won't be replying on the network, only in person. Anyone is welcome to join in; he's just angling for people with Insight Into Death. (I'll also match prose or brackets.)

[Ryo looks...uncertain at best, but much closer to 'worried but trying not to show it' as the ICP flickers on.]

If anyone is connected to death, or has death-related powers, I could use your help.

[-wait that sounds bad-]

It's nothing crazy - I just have...questions.

[He can't quite bring himself to say what he's actually worried about, so instead it's just:]

I'll be in the garden car, if you wouldn't mind coming to see me.

[And the ICP flickers off. He's not planning on having this conversation in front of the train and everyone, so in-person it is. True to his word, he's sitting on one of the benches in the garden car with Lagos in his lap, holding the plush bird and trying not to let his fears run away with him. He may not be entirely succeeding. It may be obvious.]

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I brought it for you, so yeah, as long as you want to share, I'm happy to share. Mind if I light the incense first?

( He gestures toward the memorial stone, tall enough to be visible from most places within the carriage. )

Oh- of course.

[He waits while Jingyi lights the incense, pondering a moment before picking up the teapot. He pours a bit of it into one of the cups, judges it sufficiently steeped, and pours two cups. He can do his part, at least.]

( he nods, heading down the way to the memorial stone, crouching to extract the embers of the prior incense cone. pouring them into a little dish he pulls out of his hoodie pocket, then taking another incense out of the box resting by the side of the memorial, on top of another box containing more of the incense. lighting it doesn't take long, once he has it in the incense holder, forming a seal and letting his fingertip be the focal point for the fire, lighting it that way.

that done, with the incense rising, he settles the top back over, returning the mountainside etched in metal to full form. he stands, dusts his hands off against each other and straightens the fall of his hoodie, and carries the small dish of ashes back with him to join Ryo where he's sitting. the ashes are set off to his side, and he nods his head to Ryo, noticing the pours of tea, picking the one closer to him up and lifting it to Ryo as a silent sort of salute. )

Thank you for pouring.

( that noted, he does take a sip after. )

[It's a familiar gesture, and he toasts Jingyi back with his own cup of tea.]

Thank you for bringing it.

[On his lap, Lagos warbles his thanks as well. Jingyi's a good person.]

Mm, welcome.

( Even the small warbling creature merits a sort of contemplative look; Jingyi hadn't expected it to do anything, though it looks like, feels like one of Thanatos's creations? Whatever that word was, it doesn't come readily to mind in the moment.

Tail offering a contemplative, lazy twitch from where it rests behind him on the rocky ground, Jingyi simply settles into silence, taking sips of tea and regarding the garden. It's not particularly garden-like in the expansive sense he knows, but there are places in Gusu Lan which are rock gardens kept combed and curated around individual stones, here and there. The lotuses off in the central pond are nice, and familiar in some ways; Wei-shizhang had planted some with Hanguang-jun back home in their residence, and they'd done well, regardless of how cold the winters grow. )

[He drinks his tea in silence and looks out over the car, keeping one hand on Lagos. Lagos can't do much other than be there and chatter, but having him close is still a comfort.]

[He lets the silence settle for a bit, trying to settle the thoughts chasing themselves around his head, before he finally speaks up.]

I'm trying not to be scared, but I think I still am.

[That's the core of it, he thinks.]

( Jingyi blinks, slow and thoughtful, nodding his head after a moment. )

Usually smarter to be scared. Not to let it stop you, but to know you're afraid, and why. Moving through it, or asking for help to, I figure that's part of it.

( Without knowing specifics, it's his way to talk about the general concepts of fears; and to think back, in what being scared is, and how to move forward through it until you're out the other side. (... Possession aside, for himself.) )

What I mean is, isn't that okay? To be scared, but not let being scared take charge.

[He turns Jingyi's words over in his head. He understands fear as a self-preservation response; it's driven most of his life so far. But as for the next step...]

Usually, yes, but...I know why I'm scared, and that's what's keeping me from moving past it. I'm a little stuck.

[He takes a sip of his tea. He'll go into the details if Jingyi wants - and knowing Jingyi, he'll probably ask - but it's a lot to dump on someone all at once.]

( Taking his own sip of tea, tail giving a lazy, mostly quiet curl of his tailtuft tip to one direction than the other, he waits for a moment, swallowing as he wonders if Ryo will keep speaking on his own. Some people do; he's still learning people well enough here to guess which ways they might fall.

Nothing does, so he takes it as he usually does: by asking instead. )

What's the why?

[Well, he can't say he's surprised. He takes a breath and sighs it out, opting to go for the short version of the explanation.]

It's because of how things work in my world. Long story very short, acting against my nature in a big way can corrupt my magic. I'm a healer; I don't like the idea of testing a power that can kill people on anyone...even if they volunteer.

[It's been a weird day.]

( he considers this, blinking as he does so. )

Does this other magic fight with your innate magic? Or is it working companionably?

[Jingyi. Jingyi he just said he doesn't want to test it.]

I don't know. I haven't tried to use it.

( no, he shakes his head: )

And you're assuming it hasn't been in effect passively either, right? Because I didn't notice actively I was using something like what I had at first, weak as it's been.

( He quirks up an eyebrow. )

Though if it helps take your mind off things for a moment, you can help me test a really annoying one.

[He nearly rejects the question out of hand - it had been an active power on Diagad; why would it be passive here? - but he stops and turns it over in his mind instead.]

...it's affected my Sense. I think. As far as I can tell, if someone has a connection to death, my Sense picks up on it. It didn't do that before.

[But-]

What are you testing?

Huh. So you're aware of living... presences, and also those linked to death now? How connected is a connection?

( asking as someone who works in exorcisms, in purifications, in funerary rites: his work has always been linked to life and death on more basic levels, but also in spite of whatever fears he'd had when younger, and what fears linger now...

... yeah, still linked to the dead and what lingers after so often. )

Oh, this whole... getting something stuck in someone's head if I sing it.

( does that not sound great (no) )

Pretty connected. So far it's been Death, Thanatos, Danny, and Murphy, though I'm sure there are others I haven't picked up on yet.

[People for whom death was a part of their being, or at least a part of their life. He's...not honestly sure what sensing a dying person would feel like in this new death aspect, and he's not eager to find out.]

[He has to stop and ponder Jingyi's proposal for a second or two.]

And that's a power?

... Are they all representations of death, deities of death, actually dead, or at least halfway?

( at least it turns it into a "sense of life and death-not-life" in it's own way, which is! Curious! Because how he senses death is different (and not like how Ryo senses people at all, in either manner).

As far as a power, he snorts. )

To get something stuck in someone's head? Guess so, sounds like a great way to annoy people, or learn to nag and know they won't forget.

...so far?

[That pretty well covers the list he'd given Jingyi, short as it had been.]

So you want to test something to see if it gets stuck in someone's head?

Exactly!

( he smiles, less of a grin and more of a toned down sort of amusement. because he knows Ryo's out here working through things, and jingyi's got the ability to... get things stuck in people's heads. )

What do you say?

...sure.

[Give him a distraction, Jingyi - he'll figure out a way to get it out of his head later if it starts bothering him.]

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Death Just Needs A Little Conversation [Open]

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