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. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A broom would be a help.

[Strange, isn't it, how some aches are more easily forgotten than others? Celehar's voice has remained a shredded ruin of a thing, but sometimes he finds himself forgetting the ache of recent scars from the Tanvero ghoul which had left marks on his shoulders, even in the midst of activities like this, where they might aggravate weak muscle or sensitive skin.

If not for those slender ears and the milkweed-pale color of his hair and eyes, he might be mistaken for a human - or a ghost.

He is carefully picking up splinters of glass, and as such has something to focus on when Need changes topics abruptly. It reminds him in a distant way of Anora's constant refrain of concern, but this time, at least, he keeps his features from reflecting the wistful pain that remembrance brings.]

You heard from the Ferryman?

Hmm.

[Need likes to be occupied. In the absence of sending her attention far and wide, talking or observing distant people etc, she's been doing a lot with her hands. Weaving included. It's not right to be without a weapon and she can at least make a sling.]

I think we all did. Did it startle you?

[There's a small table set to the side, so in the absence of another container to hold the shards for the moment, Celehar rises to his feet and sets them on the top of it, watching carefully for any more sharp pieces on the ground.

The action gives him time to mull over his response.]

It did. [The broken glass is proof enough of that, he can't really deny it.]

I did not expect the Crossing. Or that there would be more than one such toll to be paid.

[Need follows his lead. A gritty dust remains on the floor.

She doesn't try to hurry Celehar along. It chafes her that looking into his mind isn't an option, but truth be told she would still want to let it sit and see what he offered, if he offered anything.]

More than one? [She wonders if he's forgotten anything already, as she suspects she has.] What kind of thing did you expect? This isn't much like the options the Star-Eyed presents, but admittedly I've never taken any of them.

[The moment is useful for him, if not for Need - he takes the change in position to smooth out the front of his robe, and to resettle his prelate's braid, letting it lie down his back again. He can't do anything for the curls starting to escape the pins, but remains presentable, for the time being.]

Simple oblivion. The dead, when I speak to them... their souls fade quickly, and their sense of self with them. Only the most important memories linger for even the length of a day. Traumatic deaths remain vivid the longest, but even they lose detail before long.

[Watching him primp - it might just be a minor adjustment, but 'primp' is the first word that comes to mind - makes Need conscious that she's barely done that sort of thing. Not since getting hauled out of the River, when the sense of being completely saturated had been so strong that it had set off tending-to-my-clothes-and-hair behavior. At some point in the intervening time she's become dry.

It makes her a little sad. She wonders if she'd feel more about this if she still felt strongly.]

This must have been a shock, then. If that's what's happening here, it's a much more drawn out process.

[Need's instinct is to keep things to herself and only tell anyone anything if she thinks they need to know. She considers. Celehar, for all that she does consider him a child - yes, he's got that voice, but it makes her think of Tarma whose beautiful voice became crow-harsh when she was a teenager - does seem to have a good head on his shoulders.]

Think you've forgotten anything already?

[Compared to some - his Cousin, for instance, or the Emperor - Celehar could be dressed in sackcloth, and the two-second gesture could hardly be called primping - but considering the lack of decoration, including hairsticks or pins, he's seen on others here, including Othalo Need, this is one of many ways that he continues to stand out.

How strange, to continue to feel alienation after a force so unifying as Death has taken him.]

Perhaps this is simply what awaits after all souls pass beyond my senses, and it was simply being tied to the living that prevented us from knowing.

[He looks at the little altar he's set up, mostly unadorned except for more black cloth, and now the shards of glass that glint faintly in the light.]

I... yes. [Even as he says it, he seems reluctant to elaborate.] But what makes you ask?

[He's of a more formal bearing than the others, that's for sure. Need... wishes she could say for sure "I was never like that". Certainly not at the end of her life, but the rest of that life she only remembers in scraps as distant as having heard a vague recounting, once. There's space in that for having been very different, she's sure.]

The living talk about the Shadow-Lover leading the dead into the darkness, and from there into light, and whatever 'home' is. They never got into that with me. But they aren't the Ferryman, though I think the two would get on pretty well.

[Caught, now she has to say it or else back out. It's fine. She can say it. (she brought her name up on the TDM but that was before I picked it for the first toll) Need smiles faintly, without humor.]

I wasn't always "Need". It's the word Need, by the way, not a name that sounds like it. I had a real name, and I lost it - you can't stay who you were, when you do the kind of thing I did. Then a few years ago I saw it again and knew it for mine.

[She stops here, but the blanks aren't hard to fill in. Need seems... vaguely troubled about it.]

And, having died, you have lost it again?

[Celehar looks concerned indeed - his ears are moving, pinned back against his skull as he watches Need.]

I can't say what the case is for your situation, Othalo, but names in the Ethuveraz are how we lay the dead. To have lost yours...

[He looks uncomfortable admitting even that much, altogether willing to let the topic there rest, and turn his attention more fully to Need - whether that helps or hurts in spurring her on to any further admission. For a few moments, he's silent, watching the older woman.]

I - do not mean to give you false hope. But it is one of the works of a Witness, to seek the names of the dead.

Having lost my anchor, or something along those lines, is probably more accurate.

[Yep, she's worried him, and there's something there that she can't pick up on by watching back. Did he forget a name too? Not his, surely, and he clearly doesn't want to talk about it. She'll let it be for now.]

I recall being upset to give it up, and when I realized I had forgotten. But I've gone by "Need" for... [She's not going to say her estimate, there's an error margin of about four hundred years and it would seem like boasting. Or worse, Celehar certainly hadn't liked hearing about what she was. Had been.] A long time.

How do you go about that?

It may not work, given these circumstances.

[Given any number of things, particularly the fact that both of them are dead, and he often can only find what the dead themselves remember, ghouls nonwithstanding. But to lose one's name is a terrible thing, and Need's admission that she was distressed to lose it is enough motivation for him to make the offer.]

Normally the best way is for me to touch the remains. Here, I think touching your hand will do.

[He turns towards her, extending his own in silent offer.]

[He's misunderstood, she thinks. It had been upsetting the first time, when she'd been new and was closer to who she'd been. Then she'd forgotten that she hadn't known, and when she'd remembered, with Elspeth, it had just been a minor embarrassment. She can't work up a lot of distress now, either. This is why she prefers sharing memories directly to talking about things.

Celehar already has to try to work around discomfort about what she is. It would be better to let it lie. Need shrugs and verbally prods at him, just a bit.]

Haven't had anyone want to hold hands with me in a while, but sure. I hate to feel like I could be getting senile at last.

[She turns her hand palm-up, offering it casually. She doesn't really think anything will come of this but isn't against it. Her hand is pretty large, and the lingering pride in her occupations in life means it retains the coarse, callused, scarred texture that it had borne once.]

[Celehar clicks his tongue - this isn't the first time that he's dealt with a woman too old to give a damn about speaking her mind, or teasing him specifically, though admittedly few have been quite as sharp about it as Need. And as far as his pride goes, this is barely a tap, after the gossip of the Untheileneise Court, or even the wild speculation of the journalists of Amalo.

More importantly - this is the work of his calling. So he reaches out to touch her hand, fingers to palm.

His is cool, not callused like a swordsman's, but neither the pampered hands of a noble. Just hands - simple tools, but not scarred and marked by the work of any notable vocation. The touch, however, only lasts a moment. Nearly as soon as he's reached out, he withdraws his hand again, bowing his head apologetically.]

... No. I am afraid it will not work. My apologies, Othalo Need.

[Need grins, fleetingly. It's fun to poke people and she's convinced that it's good for them. She's been holding back, and still is, because she does have a sense of time and place.

She wonders just what being a prelate entails and might have examined his hand, see if there's a writing-callus, if he'd left it longer. Need had become more interested in peoples' hands after having to go without and that hasn't vanished just because she has them again now.]

Don't worry about it. It doesn't hurt me. [She rubs that palm with the thumb of her other hand.] So, what normally happens?

[Somehow the question visibly takes Celehar back, for a moment. His gaze drifts, settling on the black cloth of the makeshift altar, as gaze and voice both go distant.]

When I touch the body, I can sense the lingering presence of the soul. Often, there are memories that remain. Sometimes the dead can be coaxed into remembering the answer to a question. Other times, the memories are strong enough to come unbidden.

[unbidden, a memory of fiery explosions and the stench of burning rises. He swallows it back down.]

I do my work when petitioned, often by a family member of the dead. The petition is not necessary to the sense, but... perhaps the body is. Or maybe death has taken from me the need for such things.

[There's the tiniest seed of doubt to his voice.]

My body's long gone. Anything that was part of it has been part of so many living things since then, I don't have claim to any of it.

[That's fine. A little wistful, maybe. The Tayledras, who she sometimes thinks might be very distant descendants, cremate the bodies of their dead so that they're in the air, part of everything, inhaled by the living. Need's body wasn't burned - she thinks she had Vena leave it there, in the ruins of their home - but time has made the difference academic.]

We're all separated from some of the senses and abilities that were part of us, here, if they're not something an ungifted human or... [She raises her eyebrows expressively. Celehar would inherently qualify as 'human' to her, he's closer to a lightly modified human than to even a tervardi but Need's aware that he might not agree.] would have.

It's not the most pleasant feeling.

I had not realized maza would be affected that way. No, I must agree it would not be pleasant.

[It takes him a moment to register the unspoken question, distracted as he is by his own concerns, but the silence makes him look, and on catching her expression he realizes the context of the unfamiliar word, in among a discussion of gifts/. Silly of him, not to realize that there might be Maza present. But - Need's so much a physical presence, it was easy to assume her talents for lying elsewhere. Even after what he knows of her backstory.

He clears his throat.]

I'm elvish, from the Ethuveraz.

[She's pretty sure 'maza' is magic. Probably better to circle around and confirm it, and she expects he'll like a moment away from those things troubling him.] Good to know.

The world I'm from is called Velgarth. A long time ago, people with nothing better to do found a way to visit other worlds. Some appeared very similar to our own, to the point where at first they believed it was our past or future. Lots weren't. Sometimes there aren't any humans or, hm, elvish. Flying just by willing it is impossible in Velgarth but there are worlds where it isn't. And terminology isn't consistent at all.

[there's a Tarma and Kethry short story where Need takes them through a portal into an Elisabeth Waters canon and they help a dragon, and then it turns out it was just their spirits that went there while their bodies slept. ...so my read is that multiverse "travel" was a magic art developed concurrently with uplifting hertasi and mostly lost in the Mage Wars.]

In Velgarth we have several kinds of magic, but only one is considered 'true' magic. [She shrugs expressively. The distinction would be meaningless here. She really hopes Celehar will know the word 'magic'.] So people are in the habit of calling any ability to use this magic a 'gift'. Is maza like that?

[Celehar has turned towards Need, by now, but maybe not for the better - his expression speaks of a deep skepticism. He doesn't interrupt the explanation, but she doesn't need to read his mind, or his ears, to get a good idea of what he's thinking.

In fact, he's biting the inside of his lip to get through the explanation without blurting out something, probably insulting. He doesn't think she'd do something so drastic as strike him, but better for everyone involved if he doesn't test tempers.]

Your story would cause quite a stir in the Ethuveraz, Othalo.

[It's the context and the similarity, mostly - he does at least seem to recognize that sort of distinction.]

Having a talent for a maz is different from being called on to serve a god, with one such as a Witness. A maza is born, then trained - I cannot speak to their arts, aside from that I have seen the work of it, and the result.

[Need would have gone on for longer, but she does know how to read the room. She's annoyed, not outright angry.]

Hrm. Try looking at it like this, then: 'people from far away are different, and do strange things that make sense to them'. Don't tell me your people don't have tales about that kind of thing. [She's not openly condescending, but there's certainly a suggestion of I have to give children certain allowances there.] My point is, most of the people here, myself included, would be from very far away from your Ethuveraz and have different ideas about what's possible, and use different words.

Yeah, that sounds familiar. I was born with certain abilities that expressed themselves in my youth, I was trained to a degree, I've worked on them since. What kinds of things have you seen these maza do?

[Celehar thinks that tales of other worlds would have eyebrows raised just about anywhere, even given the strangeness of those he has encountered - knowing the extent of the elflands, the presence of strange peoples beyond it is better within the bounds of possibility. He doesn't say that. He just sighs, and moves on rather than argue about something neither of them can very well prove]

It would take someone far more stubborn than I to dismiss the differences that have been found here, having found neither elves nor goblins.

[And, thankfully, a more neutral topic.]

I have only occasionally seen them, or heard reliably of their workings. A colleague recently called on a maza to find a man, knowing only his name - One of the Emperor's nohecharei, his guards, killed a man who attacked His Serenity, to illustrate the breadth.

I've known people that stubborn and I'd like to think I'm slightly more flexible than that.

[She says it with a grim good humor, turning the topic of being too convinced to change back on herself just a bit, and is willing to move along. Need will just have to not be open with Celehar about anything too complicated. It's fine.]

Huh... yeah, sounds like some kind of magic to me. And your spirit-sensing is something different, wasn't it?

Edited 2025-01-08 11:31 (UTC)

As flexible as a sword? [Celehar says it, but there's at least some measure of humor to the words, thin though it might be. He's not been prone to even light jesting, since...

Since then. The quirk of Celehar's almost-there smile disappears again, his focus, as always, brought back to the work of death.]

I suppose gift is not a word so terribly wrong for it. The Witnesses are of Ulis - though it is not only those devoted to him who receive it. I knew a woman - a widow, who only on her husband's death learned she could hear the voices. It is those of us involved in the rites who touch the dead enough to learn to hear them, in the first. But the candle of our listening gutters quickly. [He looks to her.] And your gifts?

Exactly.

[Need's a bit disappointed that this glint of a sense of humor is gone as quickly as it had appeared. Well. You can't force this kind of thing. She's already waiting for a good time to ask Celehar about the upcoming choice, and that's probably not condusive.]

Witnesses burn out. [Need says it exactly as if she doesn't get that there's a pun there.] That's a bit familiar. Were you already sworn when you started hearing them?

We're born with or without potential for various gifts, but, ah, it's buried, you could say. Very hard to know it's there. For some it's a shallow burial, and they start showing as children, or it breaks through as they're becoming adults. Then, use and training uncovers it the rest of the way. For others it's buried deeper. If it ever emerges, it's all at once in a moment of trauma. That usually gets this person out of immediate danger, but - it's got its own problems.

[The uncharitable could say (and the journalists almost certainly have, whether amongst themselves or in print) that being a stick in the mud is just as much Celehar's calling as his work for the dead. He certainly seems determined to prove it true at every turn.]

I was taken in to the novitiate at a young age, and in my training when I realized that I had been hearing the dead, when I prepared their bodies.

[With the room cleaned, more or less, Celehar is left with little else to occupy him - so he settles his fingers, laced together, in front of him, and turns to face Need.]

Witnessing is not strengthened, in the way you describe - it is assisted by becoming used to the state of the soul, and by learning how to seek answers to one's questions.

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