lesmodsalouette | Graveyard

Graveyard

The garden is still sprawling and green – despite having entirely lost all its riotous flowers and colors, along with any sign of wildlife or birdsong – though one thing stands out more than anything else: from Monday to Thursday, you can’t see the castle anymore. All that remains where it once stood (or perhaps, usually stands) is an incongruously large tree that towers over everything else and somehow looks larger and more imposing than the castle ever did. The tree’s branches are bare, without any hint of life nor leaf – however, on the weekends (that is to say, Friday through Sunday) a faint projection of the castle appears around it, cradling the only things that the denizens of this alternate garden can see in detail from the other side: the flurry of activity around the investigation, the circus-like dimension that holds the trial, and the mirrors and the grassy dimension that display the execution.

For those curious what the land of the living are up to, a mirage-like and upside-down reflection of the castle garden in its original arrangement can be spotted occasionally overlaying the sky. This strange illusion may sometimes show those in the garden on the other side, flitting in and out of view like stray clouds; but much like the weather, their appearance is mercurial – they cannot be reached and cannot be heard.

Water, Flower, Everywhere

The fountains remain active somehow, though their features seem to have eroded, obscuring the identities of the deities and the wings of the birds, cracking pottery down into nothing but worn shards and handles. At night, only maybe half the lights work (and here they are real candlelight, rather than magical), plunging most of the garden into crepuscular darkness. The trellis walkway looks quite overgrown (mysteriously, bamboo is taking over), entirely covering some statues and other features along its length, and it’s no longer walkable – a miniature canal runs the whole length underneath the arches, feeding into other new waterways around the garden that cut off footpaths seemingly at random. There are small footbridges here and there, but the lack of logic to the whole arrangement makes falling into one of the streams or canals a real hazard.

The waterways do all manage to converge at the pond by the pavilion – neither of which are all that soothing or classical anymore. The pond is only half-full, and entirely lacks water lilies or any dragonflies; its banks sit jagged above the dark waters, and perhaps that’s why the pavilion, too, is half collapsed down into it all. Gone are the curtains and ivies; only dead curling vines and half-collapsed columns are left, but there’s still someplace to sit if you put your mind to it.

Most of the flowerbeds sit fallow or overtaken by weeds – there’s signs here and there that someone might have tried to clear them out, but the bulk of the effort seems to have gone to the orchard by the gardener’s cottage. It might be more accurate to say cottages, given that there are a few of them dotted around that area for some reason. None of them are locked, but all of them have only minimal furnishings apart from the original; they’re also all provided with the full complement of gardener’s tools. Next to them, there are new saplings and half-grown flowering trees: some pear and apple, but also some not. There are new shoots in the kitchen orchard that have just barely taken root, the dirt recently turned.

Hedge Maze(?)

The other most eye-catching feature is what once was an ornamental hedge maze: instead of being a tame height here, it has seemingly grown wild and completely unchecked, towering above the rest of the garden almost like its own overgrown mountain. The hedge walls go up and up and up, making it entirely impossible to see the center or even how far it goes despite the fact that sections of the hedges have also died, reduced to the branches underneath, bristling with interlocked thorns.

Part of it had even spilled over into the garden itself, huge gnarled branches spreading out like burnt-blackened fingers all the way to the edge of the pond – wherever the branches touch, even the greenery is withered, and any statues look more ruined than those in the rest of the area. As of the end of Week 3, however, the branches have retracted entirely and the way into the hedge maze has opened even more. However, there is now a storm brewing over what might be the center or the general area of it. Getting close to the hedge maze or any of the hedge(?) branches is... unpleasant, though it doesn’t usually go beyond a buzz of wrongness and a slight headache.

GY 101 Main Nav

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[This week, when those newly departed from Château Ambregris arrive at who-knows-where and open their eyes to a run-down garden, it'll look a bit more pristine than usual (not that they know that, having been tossed here like so much flotsam by their peers); there's still a light coating of snow left on the ground, though it's no longer actively falling.

The sky is mostly overcast, though there are some brighter cracks where the sun is trying to break through. Moreover -- if you sniff, you might catch the scent of flowers. Here and there amid the wrecked statues and rickety trellises, buds are beginning to open even on the tail-end of whatever winter this may be.

The gardener's cottage here has companion cottages, apparently, and you too have companions -- for better or for worse.]

[Hell continues to not look like she expected it when she once again opens her eyes to an unfamiliar place. Pain is more familiar than the absence of it, and so the jolt of feeling none of it at all is like being dunked into frigid water.

Mm, well, that might be the snow.

Her eyelids flutter; she takes in the deterioration and the regrowth. Inhales.]

Damn it.

[Because she's a little tired, and it would have been nice, even if she longs for one more chance to see...

Andrew will be closing her eyes for at least a couple minutes longer, thank you.]

[ Good that she is, because it gives Siffrin time to come over with a bottle of wine and a moment to sit in the lessening snow, to school their expression into something other than the ecstatic happiness they're feeling at seeing her again

and exhale. ]

Hi, Andrew.

[Oh, Siffrin's here; it might be Hell after all (many things this could mean).

The time in between her lying here, Siffrin's approach, and their speaking offers her a similar buffer. No twinkling starts or screaming birds to give away her surprise or frustration.

But she is also a little tired of deciding which sides of herself she likes giving away every day.]

Hello, Siffrin.

[Andrew remains abundantly still.]

Not quite "the other side of the mirrors," is it? But they were close enough.

Week 3: Sunday (Post-Execution)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

:) hewwo

no subject

rattles my cup for last-minute CR

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw gore mentions