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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
[ he laughs quietly, as though any louder and he'd disturb the petals on them. ]
I'm not used to feelings being hard, you know. Or... [ he adds with a furrow: ] ... complicated.
In the end, it just felt like... there was nowhere to run from them. So! To the person I - mm - I couldn't let go of, and to the person who let go of me: I severed myself from both. Then from the people who wouldn't vote for me. I kept Jin asleep and killed - because that's what I'm best at.
no subject
It's strange, to hear of things being let go. Severed, like that. Such a thing terrifies Siffrin to his core, and he squeezes Yoru's hand slightly. Because hell if they are not holding them still. ]
Why did you want to run from them? If, um. You wanna talk about it. I'm here.
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[ it’s that simple. it’s what he understands. ]
I didn’t want to leave any piece of me that could be hurt.
[ and so he burned. ]
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... They get it, then. Better to push away first than to be pushed away instead. Distanced, cut off-- all the same in the end. ]
... Did he... have someone else, that he liked?
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One of them, yes… but that isn’t the problem. He said I was his and he was mine and that wouldn’t change. [ not romantically. ] But it did change - and suddenly I wasn’t his anymore.
[ so there was no reason to play safe after that. surely, siffrin can understand the headache of this. ]
And the other… it’s complicated. There’s someone who’s marked him forever, who goes where he goes. I can’t do that. You saw it, when I die, I leave nothing. And… he doesn’t feel the way I feel about him. So. So… that’s it.
no subject
... Mm. That's it.
[ (You feel sorry for Yoru. It's been nice, to be liked and cherished. Not so nice to be seen, but...
...
But nice in that way, too. That Raha would want to do so much for you, to work out who you are. Even the bad parts, the ones you want to sink into the mud and bury.) ]
You deserve someone who loves you as fully as you do them. I think... that'd be nice, even if... it'd probably be scary, too. Having so much sunlight.
no subject
I think maybe I… we… just love differently. It feels unconditional to me, I don’t really care what the people I love do.
[ it’s just how it is to him. ]
There isn’t a need to be enough because if I love you, you’re already enough to me and for me.
[ a small smile at siffrin. ]
no subject
It
kind of feels like it, through your talks, barbed and not. The way he tries. How he reaches regardless, though the moments he hasn't... have been better that he didn't. Still, still, he hasn't walked away.)
Their chest aches and a small smile fights its way up. ]
I can't say I understand it, but... I'm glad, if that's how love is for you. I hope someone feels that way about you too then.
[ The nuance is different; that this time, Siffrin hopes someone will view love the way Yoru views it and respond in kind. It sounds nice. Vibing in love. ]