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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.
no subject
How can you see someone dragged into this without knowing the consequences, rejoice in it and call it love?
[At least Andrew agreed to it. How badly she wants to ask for the same thing. How badly she wants forever with Herta. How badly she wants to force it on her for her own good. If they had more than a mortal lifetime together, maybe that love she asked her to give would become real in time.
... How even she can't be that selfish, that immature.]
no subject
All because--) ]
It's love if I call it love. Raha'll be happy too, I'm sure.
[ He has to be. He has to be, because then they can have so many adventures together, and see the world change firsthand... ]
He didn't choose to die. [ (you asked him not to; you'll have to scold him for that.) ] And he can't choose this, but... I don't think he'll see it badly.
[ (you're going to hate seeing your family members die.
but if you're all splitting anyways, in the end, then isn't it fine? you won't be seeing them. you won't ever forget them, even if they forget you. then, you can remember them forever too. they won't ever die for real.) ]
Wouldn't you be happy, if it was Herta?
cw abuse
So, yes, she thinks, but the price -]
How could I!? How could I...? It felt like I was being hit myself every time she was beaten! When I couldn't stop it from happening!
How could I trade any amount of happiness for even an ounce of pain if I might have been able to stop it? [No, instead she would have done anything to stop it...] Especially something like that?!
[Have they looked at him? Have they looked closely and imagine what it felt like? Can they feel the stinging heat of those injuries on their own body? Because that was her as recently as the week before, falling to her knees in front of all those pictures in the photography studio, every possibility an open bleeding reminder that she could not stop it.]
no subject
Away from her, from her words, and
maybe the implication is what's getting to him, because it's something that burns under his skin. ]
If I could have stopped it, I would.
[ Hissed, frustrated and hurt. ]
I hate to see him hurt. I hate it so much, I'll do the same to whoever did it to him in the first place. They'll feel his pain, his suffering, and ten times over by my hand -- but can't I be happy? Just a little? That I won't have to stand aside and watch him waste away while I keep living?
[ It's just a small, simple happiness. That G'raha will always be living, will always be within grasp.
(You don't
want to think of him pushing you away, disgusted and disturbed.)
Though at least Andrew's words are reasonable, at least, Siffrin's manic episode seems at its end. ]
no subject
...Of course. After all that has transpired, I'm unable to tell you that you don't deserve your happiness or can't be happy.
[But there's such wounded detachment in her voice after her outburst. Siffrin has a gain to find thrill in, while she is still embattled in loss both tangible and spiritual.]
I hope you will remember to use your newly enhanced life to its fullest when the time comes. [That reciprocation, that punishment he wants to carry out as the only reprieve for lost protection.
... It will get worse later when Andrew peels from the group, too, when suddenly everyone's thoughts and words of repayment die like yesterday's embers.]