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lesmodsalouette) wrote2025-03-16 03:54 am
lesmodsalouette) wrote2025-03-16 03:54 am
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.
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.
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.
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Which is why I think that it has to do with me, and in turn with you.
You're here, and you can affect this place. That will be important for our negotiations.
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And... If this domain is outside of Ish's scope, are we still negotiating with him, or is there something else at play? [Sabo did make it sound like Ish would make an honest effort, but if he really isn't a healer and he really isn't in control of this dimension, well, might want to confirm.]
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[Whether it's wrong or right probably depends on your perspective, but.]
It's both.
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You're the thing that changed.
[Or at least one of them. They'd been trying to figure it out for so long, and here the answer is, sitting in front of her and wrapped in a blanket.]
Do you know what brought you here? The very same force brokering our negotiation, causing issues with the magic?
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Yes.
[Well, she only had to die to arrive at some kind of answer. Easy-peasy.]
I'm still not sure if I know what happened. Neither does he. He didn't remember bringing me at all. But you're probably right... It's possible some kind of crack in the fabric of time happened, and I ended up here.
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Sabo said that Ish had lost some memories, too. I wonder if he tried to do something too big for him to handle alone...or if something equally powerful hit back.
[Or he just got tired... She can only really only think of things in those terms. Understanding how an ancient witch deals with power doesn't have much room to take up in her mind.]
So we find and repair the crack, Ish gets what he always wanted from Sabo's wish and doesn't have to use our energy, and all goes back in its place? If that was the case, we wouldn't need leverage for negotiating.
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But if he's playing with powers that are beyond his control... It'll be dangerous on that side, too.
[Yamanbagiri is doing his best... to explain this on human terms... but there are so many humans. In different states of humaning.]
We'll need the leverage, to make sure all of you can get bodies as well as going back. And I don't know how much the Witch Ish understands about what's happening. I know where the crack is, and if it isn't closed, we won't make it to the end of this loop.
It will likely affect them, too.
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It's not collapsing because of Sabo's wish, is it? This just happens to be a poorly timed coincidence?
[Tsk.]
Well, what caused it? Do we stand a chance of closing it off even without remembering?
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They're just here now. At least he seems to be the patient sort.]
Sabo's wish has to do with the Witch. The root of this isn't related to the Witch.
But it is related to the time loops. The longer they go on, the worse it's gotten, because of the time interference.
... I think that with what you've all built, in your time here, you should be able to face it. I'll help you.
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We've been looking for differences... but it sounds like setting things the same might actually help us more, if we want to keep the fracture from getting wider.
[All this after they started thinking about how to destroy the hedge maze to see what changed... oops...]
How do our memories play into this?