[Closed] Rituals and Sacrifices

[Lilanee Kuleda]

14th Vortas, 2719
BRUNNHOLD TO VIENDA | LATE EVENING, OVER THE CITY

Stop.

The word was barely audible above her panicked rambling, Lilanee clamoring to shove the words back inside and push them down so they didn’t really exist at all, wishing for all the world that such a magic existed. The Hoxian leaned against her hand, and the Hessean felt the hitch in her throat. Oh Gods, that was so Anaxi. Sobbing over things like feelings and emotions. The better half of her mind knew it was all just reactions of different hormones in her brain, igniting areas that controlled sadness or joy or love.

“Don’t say sorry, because honestly it’s not deserved. I know that I speak before I think, or I think what I speak, and it’s like ‘Oh hey Lil, here you go, putting your foot in your mouth again!’ And you know, I try I do, but then I get so comfortable that I just…blah!” The red head said angrily at herself, free wrist pressed against her eyes to stem the stupid tears that welled there, other hand still pressed against a warm tawny cheek. She felt them shift to hold her hand, pressing lips against her palm whilst she fought against the tremble in her chin.

Stop and listen.

Sniffing against the congestion that crying brought on, Lilanee shook her head, taking a deep calming breath before letting her arm move away from her face. It was impossible to stop the pout in her lower lip whilst also trying to quell the tears and the words, closing her eyes when xi brushed the wetness from her cheeks. Ezre spoke about the raen, about Tom, about their home and Lilanee felt it in her chest. Their hurt, and their loneliness. They’d been made to leave, to experience a world so bright and colorful and loud compared to their own. Without something familiar, a stranger in a strange place.

That was hard.

“No, I do.” The red haired youth said, her words almost nasal and muffled by her frustrated tears.

“I upset you, and regardless of how accidental it was, it still happened. I shouldn’t be scared, but, I just can’t help but imagine how the person who is gone must feel, and it frightens me. It scares me that someone can just be…pushed aside for another. I know, I know the raen don’t want that either. They are terrified and dying and want to live, as much as anyone. I don’t think of Tom as a monster,” She opened her eyes to look at them again.

“Or your umah. I do see the burden of their life, I just can’t help those thoughts. And then, why? Why don’t all ghosts end up like this? Or do they? Are we all really just raen that found hosts, and we don’t realize it? Or it doesn’t work like that? What about the ghosts in the garden. Do you think they’ve been raen before? What happens when I die? Will I find myself lost and looking for a body, stuck between here and the afterlife? I have so many things in my head, I can’t help it.” The teenager frowned, thumb sweeping over a tattooed lip with a tenderness wrought from empathy and care.

“I’m sorry you had to leave your home. We should definitely go there, in the school break. I have a special fresh notebook just for such an occasion, dedicated to Kzecka.” Lilanee said with a small smile, weaving her way back into welcoming arms and in turn holding the Hexxos closer this time. Protective, almost, in her cradling of their body against hers, red curls framing both of them like some sort of fiery curtain.

“It makes you special, vre’ia.” The young woman tested the word, carefully mimicking sounds even if they didn’t spell right in her head the way they sounded. Tilting her head, she leaned her lips against the smooth dark tresses of their own hair, pausing for a rare moment of silent contemplation at the Hexxos’ words.

“Your umah loves you, like any parent would. Like mine does, even if she vexes me to no end. Her soul still lives, there is no reason for there not to be love there. You are a gift, I imagine, for her. Don’t let the world outside of Hox, don’t let me take that away from you.” Murmuring against raven hair, the auburn creature pressed her lips together at the deserved and blunt comment, letting her fingertips trail absentmindedly over their arm and back up to their shoulder in a comforting movement.

“It makes me galdori. Like you. It’s…it’s okay to have feelings about these things Ez…I’m allowed to have feelings.” She chose her words carefully now, not quite chiding the other student, but letting her Hessean directness show.

“But it’s also okay to talk about them, to explore them and challenge the views. I’m still learning a world I didn’t even know existed, that I am still trying to understand, that you’ve lived your whole life in. Be patient with me, with us…close minded folk.” Lifting her head, Lilanee glanced up to look out of the window behind them.

“Some of us are trying to change.” She said softly, watching the small glowing lights of tiny townships or wick campfires pass slowly in the darkness down below. Her words were still, breathing quietly in the private room, skirt still drawn up so she could wrap closer to the Hoxian and chest rising and falling in rhythmic motions. It was soothing, being held and holding them, the patterns of their inhales and exhales almost syncing together. Her hand continued its absent stroking, a soothing habit she'd not even realized she'd picked up from her father.

"Did you know, that even though it looks like we're moving slowly, airships move at a rate of speed far greater than any land vehicle or animal? It's an illusion of being up so high, that the ground seems to pass like we're barely walking." Her dusky peach lips turned upwards slightly, unable to resist providing a useless fact where none was asked for.

[Ezre Vks]

In the Clouds

Late Evening on the 14th of Vortas, 2719

The Hoxian frowned at Lilanee's quick dismissal of his own apology—how little she understood the cultural effort it took to say he was sorry in the first place. Pressing past his words in her own self-deprecating way, Ezre was forced to beg for her to stop. To listen.

It seemed difficult for her to come into focus, her mind already sifting through tangled threads of thoughts, already caught up in the different tangents that were far more emotional than the budding young historian really wanted to admit out loud, no matter how obvious it was to the dark-haired Guide that she wore so much of her heart on the outside.

His expression softened as she fumbled her way into and out of revealing her fears, honest in her intellectual explorations of ideas that were, indeed, new to her. He carefully waded right into the depths her questions as if trying to weigh whether any of them needed an answer in this moment or whether they were just loose ends to be woven back into her understanding later. Her thumb brushed over the ink that divided his lower lip, the dark line dividing the halves of his physical self disappearing downward between them, and he sighed, settling back against the wall of their small private cabin with a roll of his aching shoulders,

"It is basic biology—the instinct to survive. Taking of one life by another is a treacherous moral chasm once one moves beyond base needs."

Ezre was not coy in his use of her own language, aware of Lilanee's focus on anthropology and her academic leaning toward the more tangible truths of science. He was hardly opposed to such things himself, well-studied in anatomy and physiology from a mortician's perspective, perhaps not as knowledgeable as anyone in the medical profession that sought to keep others alive, but certainly closer than any Living conversationalist would dare admit. His words were quiet in their proximity, and he paused more than once as if it was a struggle to properly express his responses to her somewhat rhetorical musings,

"My umah and others in the Hexxos believe it is a sign that something is wrong, vre'ia. Fundamentally wrong with Vita—so much so that it is disturbing the natural cycle of life and death. Ghosts are also a sign, zjai, but they are different entities." He shook his head at the Hessean's worry for herself, shifting to offer himself in a needful embrace as he attempted to explain centuries of recorded knowledge in a few sentences, the sacred libraries of Kzecka and his life among the Carriers of the Dead as his narrow source of information, "Ghosts are supposedly rare and raen are rarer still. They should not happen at all. No one should be afraid of becoming that which should not be, and yet—it is a valid fear. I have been raised without that fear, but that does not make it less valuable."

Ezre felt the need to emphasize that, to extend an empathy he didn't yet fully understand but had been confronted with the need to give on more than one occasion. Existence as a restless spirit was perhaps the closest to the Evers of hell that could be imagined, but existence as a raen was most likely worse. Ghosts were, as far as he was aware, sapient but not sentient, trapped fragments of a soul doomed to repeat memories, and while they retained some parts of who they once were, occasionally quite powerful, they weren't whole beings. At least when compared to raen, who may as well be just hungrier ghosts, save for their ability to retain who they had once been, save for how possession by a raen was always fatal where possession by a ghost was not.

He didn't—couldn't—claim to have all of the answers, not yet, but he knew there were very clear reasons why he'd been chosen to leave the seclusion of Hox. It was perhaps a much more important duty than his decision to step into his role as a Guide, superseding the daily rites he'd grown into and becoming a greater calling he wasn't sure he had the body to fill.

"What is supposed to happen when someone dies is mere conjecture, of course, as it is, scientifically-speaking, impossible to prove. I only know what I have been taught. I only know what has been passed onto me, but Hexxos manuscripts concur with both Shothan and Naulanese artifacts as well as Mugrobi scrolls found near the phasmonia of Serkaih that there is a Cycle. A soul—human, wick, passive, or galdor; it does not matter which, contrary to everything we are taught as galdorkind—moves from physical birth through life, then at the end goes somewhere else spiritual instead—the Antelife, the Afterlife—to wait entering the world again in another birth. It is part of zkratas—the oneness of all things as we call it in Deftung, as we seek to live within in Hoxian culture. Again, is this true? Why do we not remember? Sometimes, perhaps we do." He shrugged, distracted by the Hessean curling back against him at his invitation, closing his eyes at the warm wrap of her arms and the soft tickle of her hair, "Whatever the truth is, ghosts and raen are somehow denied their place in the Cycle, slipping through some unseen cracks like water through fingers."

There were places he didn't let his own imagination travel. There were theories he'd not yet allowed himself to pursue. There were paths he didn't feel ready to set foot onto. There were questions he felt as though he was expected to answer, and when he dwelt on these things, the worry crept in like shadows on the wall. The other student sighed, leaning to whisper his doubts and chuckling against the freckled skin of Lilanee's neck at her answer.

Special.

A slow exhale and he settled back again, searching her freckled face, attempting again to carefully sort through the layers of meaning in her words and choose the best response,

"You are not any more or less closed-minded than myself. We simply have seen the world with different eyes, through different lenses, and I think that is a good thing. I am not asking you to change, at least, any more than I know I must also do the same. We have the advantage of recognizing this truth, of seeing clearly that the world is not as we have been told it should be, and so the road before us is as open as our minds—our hearts—allow." Ezre spoke just as softly, watching Lilanee's attention drift to the thick glass window before closing his eyes again, content to fall quiet for several moments. He, too, felt the rhythm of their steady breaths find harmony and enjoyed the sensation of her heartbeat in the easy closeness of their bodies, relishing in the silence the kind of peaceful comfort that came from the zkratas he'd spoken of, no matter how small the measure by which such peace was weighed right here, right now.

"It is because the ground itself gets in the way—" He murmured, taunting her with the hint of a smile, not opening his eyes to look at her, "—that we move so slowly on the ground. Here in the clouds, there is a freedom of movement. Except, perhaps, during a storm. It felt the same in cognitive conversation—where speaking can be so slow because we get in our own way, thoughts move so fast and yet it was not necessarily easier. An illusion of magical ease. Sometimes there are obstacles in our path and we stumble, and maybe it is the same of the Cycle, of Vita itself? We just have yet to see it clearly."

[Lilanee Kuleda]

14th Vortas, 2719
BRUNNHOLD TO VIENDA | LATE EVENING, OVER THE CITY

The student frowned again, the space between her brows creased with both thought and worry.
​​
​​ “You mean that Vita is broken? It’s hurt? That is concerning. But the trees still grow and the seasons still change…perhaps it goes deeper than that? Maybe even my mother would have an invested interest should you put it that way. Well, that, or she’ll shoot the idea down with some sort of Hessean saying that’s actually an insult.” The red head exhaled, tucked close to the Hexxos and feeling his words against the freckled skin of her throat, meeting onyx eyes again as Ezre found a way to respond to her concerns.
​​
​​and so the road before us is as open as our minds—our hearts—allow.
​​
​​Lilanee couldn't help the smile that crept across her face, her field warming around her at their comment.
​​
​​Rubbing the bridge of her nose, the teenager moved one arm to prop her elbow on the window sill and her curled fist against the side of her head.
​​
​​ “I understand the concept of the ante and afterlife. It is a fascinating prospect actually, and one that has persisted through time and culture. Of course, I know now that the concept isn't just a theory, in way of ghosts and Raen. I just struggle to…my brain wants to fight me. I need to sit down and tangibly study these things. Write my own notes, do my own research;” She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand, before sliding it against tattooed skin.
​​
​​ “Mmm…We should definitely visit your home. I think I would find the answers my brain wants there.” The Hessean murmured softly, looking out of the window as they lay together in silence for a moment, interjecting with her random trivia like a security blanket. She startled slightly in surprise when Ezre spoke, returning her arm to hold them again whilst snuggling closer to the Hoxian and closing her eyes. It was hard to keep them open honestly.
​​
​​ “That’s a curious, and strangely accurate theory, cxil.” The young woman said quietly, listening to their words, but also not, as she found her mind falling back into the tendrils of sleep that it had escaped from. Soon, whether Ezre was still awake or not, her breaths would be little more than steady deep movements, and she would be asleep. After the highs and lows of the day, then the emotional and needful conversations on the airship, the Hessean was mentally drained. What desire had built within their small private room had sifted away with the conversation on the Cycle and Raen.

Perhaps it was for the best.

Perhaps they both needed rest.
​​
​​Hopefully, they would both get some before they met Alethia Kuleda. Because if anything, Lilanee knew in her heart they would need it.