un: absterge

[downswing]

The dead divulged at sea's shore: bereft, they haunt night waters. Buried ashore, they would wake to death's work.

Rest rites elude them.

Some among you wield fire unending. Lend light. The rest may release candles, salt and incense at sea.

If we do nothing of righteousness here, let us achieve this. What of the other dead?

( ooc: won't someone think of Akira/Lily/Anduin's corpses???? Threadjack away, you've got this. )

Comments

[downswing]

Show me, on next encounter.

[scrapgege]

... Why?

I mean, i can if you want to see them, but you won't be able to take them off.

[downswing]

You do not know my capabilities.

[scrapgege]

Those were put on me by the Heavenly Emperor himself. Do you really believe they'd be so easy to remove that a cultivator not yet come to immortality could do it? If that were the case, I would already have removed them myself.

[downswing]

Do you suffer to show them?

[scrapgege]

You can look at them if you want to.

[downswing]

I choose to.

[scrapgege]

You don't have to be so solemn about it.

I've had those for hundreds of years and it took a lot of power to break them. I'm pretty used to their effects.

[downswing]

You distrust the odds of my success.

[scrapgege]

I know what it took to succeed the first time. A cultivator doesn't have enough power for this, no matter how good they may be.

But you seem like the type who won't believe it unless you try it yourself, so...

[It doesn't hurt him to let you try, but it might hurt your pride a little bit.]

[downswing]

Therefore, indulge me silently.

[scrapgege]

.... You know, telling other people to shut up and do what you tell them isn't very nice.

And also, I just don't want you to be too disappointed.

[downswing]

My heart is not your burden.

[scrapgege]

I care about everyone here and you can't make me stop.

[downswing]

I made no attempt.

[scrapgege]

.... Anyway, did you want to see it now?

[Because you won't be able to do anything about it, he doesn't want you to build p too much anticipation about it either.]

[downswing]

The dead, before your whims. Do we not honour our elders?

[scrapgege]

It's not my whims...

I'll be at the shore with the incense very soon.

[downswing]

And wax.

[scrapgege]

I don't have any wax?

[downswing]

For candles.

[scrapgege]

Yes, I know, but I still don't have any?

[He's poor, Hanguang-jun. The incense is what's left of what you gave him in Sa-Hareth, he's been treasuring it.]

Oh wait... there's those wickless candles I had on the boat... maybe that could help?

[downswing]

Make do.

Action

[scrapgege]

[Well then, he's going to pack his little bundle and bring what little he has that might help to the shore, and look for a flash of white robes there.

They're still going to have to find a way to make wicks for the candles, and he hopes he'll be able to find more incense later... but then they haven't stayed in any place long enough for him to make up his little makeshift altar again, so, he can spare what he has for the dead, they need it more than him here.]

[downswing]

( Blued of Lily Evans' skill, his silks scatter across the shoreline, billowed. He has learned — they have all learned — the strange and trembled line past which the lighthouse's shield from the lands'... inclinations... morphs into surrender. He does not cross over — only lets his hand raise and trickle and spread fresh sand and nearby salt on the ground, a dull abandoned blade and a thickened paste of sage absorbing the last glints of the midday sun in its crackled bowl. Paper proved an absent commodity in the tower. Bloodied or sullied cloth, now carved to strips, suffices. And now, the calligraphy of words unto wards.

Knelt, Lan Wangji did not anticipate Xie Lian's immediate presence — watches him, in the way a lion might consider prey that approaches him brazenly, startled free of predatory insinuation. Mouth agape, first, then stitched in a tenuous line, until tension claws his back and settles in the torn-flesh interstices of foregone scars.

Marks. Shackles. He glimpses neither shade nor silhouette of them on Xie Lian, but then, for all the obscenity of his frequent perversions, the young man does not favour the garments of a flower house concubine. Much of his modesty remains fettered, and Lan Wangji rewards the crippled nod to restraint with a wave of greeting, a tacit invitation for Xie Lian to collapse strategically in the sand beside him, without reaping ruin upon Lan Wangji's granular efforts to date. )

Toil on the candles. I attend the wards.