idolpro | Shrike's Heart (#4)

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!heart games

Shrike's Heart (#4)

The woman before you is beautiful—fair of features, with lovely golden skin and luxurious long black hair, petite. You have the immediate and distinct impression that she's just let go of your hand, and she steps back, and smiles.

It's not quite a happy smile.

"I'm sorry," she says. "There's just nothing I can do, as things are. But the way is there; it just needs to be lit."

You open your mouth—maybe to say something, or to express confusion—but you have to cough, and taste something metallic, spattering black blood onto the ground in front of you. Then you realize—blood seeps from opening wounds in your arms, your chest, your stomach, your face. It rims your eyes and trails from your nose and you feel like you're dissolving—

—and you fall through the ground like it's the surface of a lake, and go down, down, down.

> Wake Up

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Unless any of us know how to, I think rites are about all we can do.

The closest we can manage, then.

[ noticing the doll and flowers (those aren't amaranths, perchance...) ]

Griffin, where did you find these?

[ they might just be!!

the man closes his hands around the doll, and weeps between coughs. he seems to want to curl in on himself, but can't, for all his injuries. ]

[ After the funeral, she takes a moment to look for the shrines Griffin mentioned. ]

[ From the outside, it looked like an ordinary house, but—there's something odd going on inside here. There's a handful of ink drawings on paper set out standing up, each with a sort of... strange little shrine with its own offerings. In the middle is one for avante en garde's Cardigan; laid out in front of it is a few sprigs of amaranth, a golden spear, and a bottle of sake.

The rest of the room is filled with artifacts—lost dolls, dried flowers, notebooks, keepsakes, roughly sorted into piles. Pinned to some of them are notes that seem like names, though most of them bear question marks. ]

....They really are shrines.

[ she goes to kneel by the one to Cardigan, to inspect it and its neighbors more closely ]

[ and she will search for the ink and quill to create her own contribution to the shrine: ]

My love,
The instinct in me says that I must write to my home, but in the life we have been given, where can I say that is?
Someday, perhaps I can show you Tsubaki Province: the river, and the fields, and the cherry trees in Ascending Wood. But until that time, you are my home.

The blossom falls
I catch it
in my worn hands
and place it behind your ear.

- Amakura

[They're definitely amaranths]

There were these little shrines to people Shrike's killed? These were from Cardigan's.

I figured they'd be more useful to the living than the dead. 'Sides, Cardigan said it was fine t'take.

—They're here too?

Yup. Went on ahead.

I said I'd follow suit, so... [makes a hand gesture like, you guys have this covered???]

See if you can't find medical supplies, then.
And... tell them I am coming.

[in the background, then, will just quietly settle into a familiar stance, a familiar rhythm, as he gracefully begins to dance, a practiced ritual. bending all his grace, all his superlative skill, to this purpose, and at the proper moment in the dance, will also start to sing.

he will dance and sing them all to their rest. the proper due to the dead.]

[ He watches Persephone perform, still carrying the body. He isn't sure if he ought to put it down yet. ]

[ She takes the boy's body from Eclipse, holding him in her arms like a child as she waits for the dance to finish.

Then she begins carrying him back outside. ]

Let us start a pyre.

[ a pause, then she looks back over her shoulder at the wounded man ] Will you survive this?

[ somewhere in the last few minutes, his eyes have closed, and his breathing has stilled. he still holds the doll in his hands, clasped tightly. ]

......Ah.

[ well, she can carry him too, then. ]

...ah. May he, and his kin, rest well.

...Mmm. Rest in peace.

[ T...time to build a pyre. ]

[ at least there's no shortage of supplies in this broken and literally on fire village.

as she goes, Amaranth stops to bring the other bodies of the dead, as she finds them. ]

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Shrike's Heart (#4)

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