thecrossing | voice + text

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!npc: the ferryman

voice + text

[You feel it before you hear it: an uncanny sensation like you aren't alone, like someone just out of sight has fixed their attention on you.

They're not hiding, though. The Ferryman is simply speaking, directly into all of your minds, as clear as if they were standing right beside you.]

It's starting.

Sorry. Was hoping you'd all have more time to rest before we got going. But when it's time, it's time.

We're going to Cross. Not now, but soon. You'll feel it when the moment gets here. And you need to be ready for what that means, when it does.

It's a dangerous journey. There's still a lot of yourself left to lose, even if it doesn't feel like it now. That's my role here. I can guide you through it. Keep you safe.

There's a cost. You'll have to give something up, a part of your life Before. A face. A feeling. A memory. That's your toll to Cross. You pay it to me, and you won't get it back.

You don't have to pay. But if you're not with me, I can't keep you safe. You'll have to make The Crossing on your own. And if you do, there's a chance you lose a whole lot more than what the toll is asking from you.

There's some time left still. You don't need to decide now. But you do need to decide. You'll find out soon what sort of toll The Crossing is asking for, this time around.

Come find me if you want to talk. I'll be where I always am.

[The connection is tenuous; message delivered, The Ferryman's voice fades from your mind. If you're quick, and you concentrate, you might be able to grab on long enough to ask a question or two more.

Otherwise, all that remains is the object that purports to connect you with the other souls, all tasked with making the same decision. Whether it's a page or a screen, there's a new message for you:]

A toll to be levied for safe passage
from the cavern to ǝɹǝɥʍǝsʅǝ

Hear a voice that causes you pain
words spoken with rage or grief or envy
fueled by hate or love or suffering

offer it to The Ferryman
and let go

[ ooc | And we're off! Remember: The Ferryman is (for now!) the only one who can communicate to everyone via voice; the rest of you are stuck with text! The only exception is if characters try to hijack the fading connection to talk with The Ferryman one-on-one; there's a header for those questions here.

Otherwise, consider this a mingle! Chat, threadhop, go nuts. ]

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[He recoils slightly — both surprise at the request, and an instinctual defensiveness about his personal space.

He doesn't understand the leap from their conversation to this, and in his experience weirdos with a doctrine are the most unpredictable kind of weirdos. But it's better than not asking? Probably?]

Will it get you off my ass finally?

[Regardless, he extends one hand out, implicit permission granted.]

[The recoil is enough to have Celehar stopping well before he reaches Yusuke's personal space, even taking a step back himself, telegraphing intent not to touch until Yusuke extends a hand in more explicit permission.

Even having had it granted, though, Celehar takes a moment to explain.]

I will still have some questions. But I hope that doing so might tell me something. My calling means that touch is how I speak... spoke, to the dead. Or sensed them, if they were... twisted by circumstance.

[In truth, he doesn't expect much to be conclusive about it. Need was similar, and he felt absolutely nothing from her. But he ought at least try. Maybe he cannot feel the simple dead, but might still feel their difference from a wraith or a ghoul.

When he reaches out to take Yusuke's hand, it's not even a clasp of a handshake - his fingers rest briefly on Yusuke's palm, not at all restricting - just slightly cold, as though he still hasn't warmed up after being fished up out of the river. It only lasts a moment before he withdraws again, with a quiet sigh, those ears of his angling downwards in momentarily rueful disappointment.]

[Yusuke watches with a wary sort of curiosity. He doesn't really expect anything to come out of it; his own awareness was snuffed out like a candle when he pulled himself out of the river. He'd be pissed if it somehow did work for Celehar, and not him.

Doesn't mean he can't relate to the frustration, anyway. He recognizes the meaning in that little dip of the ears, or he can make a reasonable guess, at least -- Jin had been expressive that way, too.

observing, as he tucks his hand back into his pocket:]

This place unplugged you too, huh?

[Unplugged doesn't quite make sense to him, having lived in a world of newly invented steam power and gas lamps - It makes him frown, puzzled, but eventually nod, guessing the meaning through the context.]

The dead, I suppose, need no gift of the god to carry out this work.

[Still, he's ill-satisfied by the answer, lowering his hand and taking a step back to return Yusuke's personal space to him.]

The way you speak of it, I might mistake you for a Witness. But no Witness I met has ever used the power to twist death - only... [He grimaces, a subtle shiver running down his spine.] The one being I encountered who had, his mind was ruined by the passage of time, so losing himself that he had forgotten his own name.

[That's enough to bring the scowl back.]

Hey, I didn't twist anything, alright? It wasn't even my idea. I was—

[It's brief, a clenched-jaw catch in his train of thought. That's a rookie mistake, to let himself think about the first time he died, because from there it's a short leap to what made him decide to stay: all the grief and pain and love he didn't realize was there. He's done that to them again, only now there's no escape hatch.

He can't think about that and hold himself together, so he doesn't. He catches it, presses it back down where it belongs, and keeps going.]

I was ready to go, the first time. They offered.

[He was, of course, not ready to go the first time, he just thought he was. The idea that this might also apply the second time hasn't yet occurred to him.]

[He realizes, in the moment, he may have caused offense, but Celehar weathers it. He's faced disapproval more intense than this, and his own memories of the revethavar's torture are fresh. He knows all too well what horrors can be committed by a person who has escaped their end - that horror killed him.

Just the memory of the pain shivers down his spine, enough that he must tighten his jaw and ease through it, chin up and watching Yusuke's reaction.

This is nothing compared to that - hardly as bad, even, as an audience with the Emperor. No worse than any grieving family yelling him down for some secret twist of their loved one's will.]

They?

The underworld.

[He's reticent to be more specific than that, protective of Botan and Koenma both. He still doesn't understand why he's been put on this detour in the first place, and isn't stupid enough to leave himself metaphorically open to something lurking around the corner.]

The point is, it was all above-board. I'm not some freak tryin' to live forever. [Which, speaking-of:] What's it to you, anyway? I'm here now, ain't I?

It sounds like nothing I have heard before.

[In-person, the words come across troubled, but less disbelieving. Celehar has come across many liars, many with things to hide - as a Witness half of his job is listening, and poking his nose into uncomfortable truths. This really isn't that different. And while Yusuke certainly comes across as defensive, he isn't brushing off the story, the way the practiced liars that Celehar has experienced might.

He straightens his posture, bowing his head in acknowledgement.]

But I am forced to confront here that... the God of the Dead may have different workings waiting us in death than in life. The safe passage of the souls who pass is [A beat] was my calling, and I would not set aside the responsibility here.

[His expression remains closed-off and wary, but it's enough to lower his hackles a bit. He's used to poking and prodding and suspicion from people who perceive themselves to be in some authority over him; even something as simple as acknowledgement goes a long way with him.

He's not about to argue it's not a weird story, anyway. If anything he'd rather just stop talking about it.]

That what all this stuff's for? [He gestures vaguely at the room around them.] Therapizing people into unstucking themselves?

[it's clear he's skeptical]

[That's enough to get a touch of bristling out of Celehar. He straightens, ears flicking up and his expression going severe. He nods to the simple space he's managed to set up, with the black table decorations and a few small stones he's collected as tokens.]

It is a shrine, Mer Yusuke. I am not [A Therapizer?] forcing it on anyone - it is a place for meditation.

[His shoulders set, metaphorical heels digging in. He's been in this position before, he's seen what really gets people stuck, ghost-to-ghost, and it's always some worry, fear, or comfort that's being clung to. This to him just sounds like more of the same.]

For what? Some gods that ain't even bothering to show their faces? You really think that's gonna help people move on?

[Hm. Celehar watches Yusuke, the obstinate set of his shoulders. He doesn't square up in the same way, but he's resolute in his solemn response, his voice all the more gravely for it.]

Do you think they ought? That in death they should speak, as they did not in life?

I don't give a shit what they do.

[This is true. He, in fact, prefers to think about gods and reincarnation and everything else that comes after Koenma's judgement as little as possible.]

All I know is, when somebody gets stuck on the material plane, it's usually for a reason. And I've never seen any god helping those people out.

[Celehar absorbs that for a few moments, expression pinched. It's strange to have this sort of argument - the theological debate of it pings at him, but he bites it back, doing his best not to look disgruntled, and only partially succeeding, when he breathes out and resettles himself. He instead focuses on one particular point.]

But you concur with the Ferryman, that we are... not yet moving on the way we ought.

[He scowls at the notion that he might concur with the Ferryman in some capacity.]

I don't know what their deal is. All I know is that I'm not where I'm supposed to be. My ghost didn't even-- [something trips him up here briefly, blink-and-you-miss-it, a tightening of his jaw and a sharp reroute of his train of thought] They told me it was a detour.

Where ought you be instead? Or, your ghost?

[He's trained well to listen, for uncertainty and for lies - not that he finds this to be one, but the momentary flash of disquiet is enough to catch his attention and make him chase that point.]

[There's residual teenage stubbornness and reticence in him still: he skims past the question of his ghost and focuses on the more logistical problem of where he ought to be right now.]

They took me straight to the underworld last time. There wasn't any pussyfooting around with this "journey" bullshit. If they hadn't sent me back, I woulda just... [he makes a vague 'move along' gesture with both hands.] Y'know.

[Another teenage trademark: he doesn't know himself what would have happened next. Not exactly, anyway.]

[Does anyone really know what happens next?

Existential questions aside, though, Celehar mulls quietly over that, leaning on his makeshift altar with a thoughtful frown.]

You would have the experience to know what... the afterlife should look like. [Oh, but that feels discomfiting to say, and he can't hide the grim concern it leaves in him, but he does continue on.] And yet this cannot be the world of the living, either. If for no other reason than the living are not here. It is only us.

It's not. I know what it's like to be stuck in the material world, too. And this ain't that.

[He's very matter-of-fact about it. There's a sort of desensitization with death and the afterlife that came with the territory of Spirit Detective, a bit. Even if he wasn't supposed to actually die a second time. Not this soon, anyway.]

Ferryman made it sound like I'd still end up where I was supposed to go eventually. That they just stuck this shit in the middle for no reason anybody'll tell me.

[It's not really the situation for smiling, but nevertheless Celehar can't quite stop the feeling of it tugging at one corner of his mouth, wry and not entirely amused, but maybe at least recognizing. The impatience of youth.]

Why is it, do you think?

[He's familiar with an expression like that. It's one the adults in his life make around him a lot. Can't imagine why.

He scowls, full-brunt teenage stubbornness.]

This is the kinda shit I'm talking about. You're doing it now! [you can't trick him into doing therapy] If I knew that I wouldn't be here.

[Thara Celehar would not know therapy if it kicked him in the teeth - he's hardly one to talk. He does master the expression, though, even if his ears are set at a lighter tilt than before, even despite the annoyance turned his way.]

My apologies, Mer Yusuke. I do not mean to speak in riddles. But there are some questions, I think, that beg an answer of experience, not explanation. In time, I think we will all find it.

[He rolls his eyes, and makes absolutely no effort whatsoever to conceal it.]

Yeah, yeah. We're all on our own personal journeys to discover the insides of our own assholes, I get it. You should ask for a job, if we do end up in the same underworld. You'd be good at it.

[is this an insult? a compliment? shockingly, it is actually kind of hard to tell. There's not much actual heat in his tone, for the harshness of the language.]

[That actually gets a wry, raspy chuckle out of Celehar, not a long-lived thing, but genuine.]

You would be the first to say so.

[It cracks a half-there smirk out of him, irritation wiping away almost as quickly as it came on.]

Yeah, well, how many of them have already got the underworld on their resume, huh? At least I know what I'm talking about, here.

[he's also kind of fired, but. he didn't know that before he ate it, so. whatever.]

Anyway, we good? You satisfied that I'm not gonna zombie out on you or nothin'?

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witnessvelama - 2025-03-20 04:29 (UTC) - Expand

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