logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: LIGHT UP THE NIGHT

Entry tags:

EVENT LOG: LIGHT UP THE NIGHT

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: november 5-7.
content: use that bonfire!
warnings: n/a. please cw tags appropriately.

maybe we can bring back the light

Shortly after Robin's network post, a magnificent display of fireworks will start to launch from the lighthouse! They're odd-looking, though, given that they glow but don't cast light. But still cool to watch! The best place to view the show is at the beach, but some of the bigger explosions can be seen just over the treetops from town, and they can certainly be heard from all over Beacon. Exciting! Maybe! Robin sure thinks so! The fireworks will continue for a couple of hours before a very colorful grand finale, after which the lighthouse beam will shine red again for the duration of the event.

Meanwhile, back in town, Rastus has set up a magnificent display of his own. Torches are set up in a wide circle around the bonfire (which looks a bit less bright, given how many torches he's pulled from it), ready for the taking. You don't even have to talk to him first! He's lingering nearby, though, and... has looked more excited about things in the past. This is gonna be a bookkeeping nightmare, he can tell.

In any case, the torches are free for the taking, but do remember to report any torch movement to the event header on the item requests page. Don't let Rastus's fears become reality!

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Aziraphale is laughing along with Rosinante up until the point where he isn't.

"Rosinante!" he exclaims, coming over to inspect his hand. "Do be careful, please. Are you alright?" If allowed, he'd take Rosinante's hand into both of his and apply a little healing, which wouldn't heal him all the way but at least get him through the painful bits of a burn.

"Fine," he says almost automatically, but before he can continue to brush it off as nothing, he watches, mystified, as Aziraphale takes his hand and the bright red mark of the burn fades slightly, taking some of the sting with it.

"That's... Wow. Thanks," he comments, as he turns his hand to inspect it, then stoops to pick up the torch. "Just like that, huh?" Not fully fixed, but obviously better. Magical healing! From an actual angel!

"You know, used to burn myself all the time at home. Harder to do that here. I coulda used your help," he says, smiling. Never in his life would he have thought an actual guardian angel might be a real kind of thing.

"Yes, well, I wasn't really allowed to do this kind of thing at home," he responds, shyly. He won't tell Rosinante that he used to be much better at it-- fixing broken bones, getting rid of burns. Bringing anything back from the dead was honestly quite trivial to do.

"It would have upset God's plans, I think. So... I like to use them here as much as I can," he answers. "To help." He inspects Rosinante's hand one more time and then smiles up at him -- all the way up -- and goes to retrieve the torch.

"Well, I appreciate it," he says, then turns to resume walking and gestures for Aziraphale to follow. He has plans for this torch, but they can talk about mysterious god plans along the way.

"Good to know, too. It seems we've been short on medics and doctors of any sort since we lost our first two."

"Did we? Who were they?" he asks, blinking. "And I'm-- really not a doctor by any stretch of the imagination. Used to be a better healer, it's this place," he explains.

He keeps going, wanting to see where Rosinante wanted their walk to go.

Well, healer, doctor, same results even if the methods are different. Maybe. Maybe it's unfair to call them similar, it isn't as if he knows the first thing about magical healing. This is the first time he's ever encountered it.

"Just good to have on hand. I got here alongside two medics from Earth. Irwin Wade, and Gene Hicks. Both from America, I think they said. Fought in some enormous war." Died there, too. Died here soon after. Poor guys. He misses Wade in particular; the man was a pleasant roommate. And he's grateful that he and Hicks had managed to patch up their differences before the man was lost to the spirits' assault.

He adjusts the bag over his shoulder, more full than usual, as they walk west. Extra rope, extra paint, in case these strange dark-loving plants have grown in thicker since the time he and Cao Pi came out this way. He makes his way toward the river, heading upstream.

Aziraphale follows but looks back as if wondering if he should have packed something for the trip. Still, he is sure that Rosinante would let him know if that were the case, and he trots a bit to keep up with him.

"The Great War, possibly? Or World War II?" Though there had been very many large wars in America's short history. "The Civil War?" he tries. There would be more, but it's not really that important. He just wants to establish a timeline. Why would they have died here so quickly? Where might they had gone?

"But yes, I'm-- more than happy to assist, even if my area of knowledge is quite lacking."

Aziraphale glances back, and Rosinante notices. Realizes yeah, maybe people here don't typically just wander off on multi-hour walks like he does sometime. In his defense, dropping the torch had distracted him from following up on his initial request for a walking buddy.

"One of those," he agrees, but man, American wars are not his specialty. He pauses at the riverbank. "Hold that thought. I should finish explaining. I wanted to head out to a ruined bridge I found months ago, and start getting it ready for repair. It'll take us a couple hours to get there. It's marked the whole way, though."

"Oh, alright. I'm very good at building bridges now, though I think possibly my assistance will have to wait until we're done with the docks. But I think we might have extra material. We did make a whole lot of planks and fell a lot of trees for the effort. I daresay I'm quite adept at planking wood by hand."

He looks very proud about this.

"Long way to drag it, though. I've already got a crew for building the bridge, we're just waiting for all this fog to clear up. Glad you're all working on the docks, though."

Fixing the mistake they made. But it does mean more people who, like him, have now had to learn construction out of necessity, and it's an awfully useful skill to have around town.

"Point is, when I said a walk, it'll be more like a quarter-day trip there and back. You have the time for it?"

No hard feelings if he says no. The dock is important, but so is a hiking break. Can't sit around and build all day long.

"Oh, that's wonderful to hear, Rosinante."

Then he thinks about the request and-- "Yes, I think I should have the time. Just today, mind."

Then it's back to work for the daily grind. You know how it is, Rosi.

"Right."

Then with a nod, he resumes walking. "You named off a bunch of wars a moment ago. What were they about?" History was always one of his favorite subjects. It amazes him how much happened in the past to make the present what it is.

As he walks, he tries to recall the history, and at the same time, tries to speak about it as if he weren't actually there at the time all of this happened.

"Let's see... Well the Great War happened for a lot of reasons. Things were already tense between a great many countries. So a war started between two of them and just escalated from there as they brought all their allies in. America actually joined that one quite late, due to attacks on their merchant and passenger ships. The Treaty of Versailles was eventually signed by all parties in an effort to halt all further wars.

"One of the countries in question felt tricked into signing it, and in having to pay lots of war reparations, decided to subjugate some of its people and invade several other countries for more land, thus starting another Great War, at which point the first one was renamed to World War I and the second one to World War II."

"The American Civil War was the earliest, and happened because the north and the south of America couldn't decide whether or not they ought to own slaves. A president was elected who sought to end slavery for everyone, so there were skirmishes, and then a war started."

He pauses. "This is all an oversimplification, of course, they were long and remarkably brutal."

He nods slowly as he takes it all in. "I wish I could say the kingdoms in my world were somehow less violent, but a lot of that sounds awfully familiar. You probably could have guessed at that, though." Given his occupation and all. It's tragic that people seem to find so many reasons to kill each other, no matter where in the universe they are.

"Those two medics I mentioned earlier. I think, based on what you've said and what I remember, they were involved in that second world war." And he shudders, remembering what he saw and felt. Flying machines dropping unending streams of bombs, people dug into trenches that were wet and cold and full of mud, so far away from home with little hope of ever going back. Rosinante himself may not really be a peacetime soldier, but nothing he ever experienced personally was so bleak. He hated every moment of that last mission, every second of fear and anxiety and absolute loathing and twisted familiarity, but he can't objectively say he was worse off.

"Oh," he answers, a little sadly. "I hope they are safe now, perhaps in the afterlife they are meant to be in," he adds. "Out of any war in the history of my Earth, that one claimed the most lives. In total, eighty five million." He neglects to mention that he added three to that tally, or rather, that Crowley did by saving Aziraphale from a group of Nazis.

"I was trying to stop the next one," he says. "The next war-- this time, between angels and demons. They wanted to have it on Earth. They would have killed everyone. Seven billion people, gone." He heaves a sigh. "I don't know what they'll do now."

Rosinante looks abruptly over at him, wide-eyed. Eighty-five million? Seven billion? Numbers he can barely even imagine alive, never mind dead. Even counting the fishmen and the merfolk, who have far more space available to them than land-dwellers like humans and giants, he's pretty sure his world doesn't hold those kinds of numbers.

"Why?" he asks, shocked. "Why Earth? When there must be so many other worlds that don't have people at all?"

"Oh," he said. "Earth has been around a long time. At first it was just two, but, you know. They liked making children, and here we are. Or, I hope. I hope by the time we return-- if we return, there'll still be an Earth left to save."

"That means we've got to beat those World Eaters!" he adds, energized. "So then I can figure out how to get home."

"Right..." That didn't answer his question, did it? He's not sure if it was supposed to. Perhaps the number of people is the reason, rather than a reason to avoid it.

But just as confusing is Aziraphale's impression that going home is something he might someday be able to do. Sure, he's an angel and maybe death means something different than it does to a human, but it seems to him he'd wonder if it's possible in the first place before trying to work out how.

"Have angels come back from the dead before?" Maybe that would explain it.

"Well," he says, not having expected that question. "No, but usually when angels die, we... cease being. Our very souls are destroyed. It rarely happens. Mostly to demons, actually."

He shakes his head. "People generally don't come back from the dead either, where I'm from," he says.

"Mm." Wishful thinking, then. Ambrose remains the only one who has said anything to the contrary, and again he holds off on mentioning it in case the conflicts between angels and a devil-worshiping warlock extend to this world as well.

"This place is a hell of a mystery," he says instead. "Robin must understand more than she's letting on, since she's been here for so long. I'll admit, before coming here, I didn't really know if a soul was even a real thing."

"Yes, I do believe she knows much more than she lets on. Worrisome, I think, that she's our best shot at getting out of here and no one has even seen her in person." In fact, no one had even seen her face until quite recently. He can't believe that was something she'd been doing for two decades.

"Have you found anything else from your sky tracking? Are they... coming closer, does it look?"

It's true, and it's frustrating. He's seen her in silhouette in person, at quite a distance, and that doesn't really count any more except that it does suggest she exists at the lighthouse and isn't just making the whole thing up. That shouldn't even be something he should need to consider, but she hasn't inspired much trust.

"Dunno," he answers. "I guess it turns out that with stars, the brighter ones aren't necessarily closer, and even the closest ones are something like years apart. Daylight said he could try to figure out how close they are by measuring something called parallax, but he needs a known distance first. And the only person with the instruments to measure that distance is Robin. Of course."

"Naturally," he answers. "Did she claim to have such instruments?" He was speaking to Crowley, who wanted to fly to her and threaten her. He promised not to speak about it to anyone, but he never said he wouldn't pretend it was his idea.

"Because, you know, we could possibly fly up there. Haven't everyone else tried by land?"

Listening to Crowley is dangerous.

"She did." But didn't seem to know how to use them, so all he can do is wait and hope Will can instruct her even though they clearly despise each other. It's one of those things they'll need to set aside so they can make some progress.

"Flying would be risky," he acknowledges, but nods as he considers it. Yes, everyone else has gone by land. The jellyfish spirits were capable of a sort of flight, slow and gentle, but he hasn't seen anything with actual wings yet.

So maybe it would be doable. Maybe they'll get themselves killed, but maybe they won't. And the payoff, should they succeed, would be immensely beneficial, wouldn't it? To really know what's in that lighthouse that Robin refuses to tell them. If he were to speak purely out of concern and safety he'd tell Aziraphale no outright, but if he's willing to chance it, they could all stand to gain.

"If you do that, be ready to leave on short notice," he cautioned. "If you can't take things, take photos. Find out as much as you can."

If the spirits attack, if somehow Robin is killed, they'll need to be ready to replace her if they're to stand a chance. But if one of their number becomes the new Keeper, they might find themselves with someone far more cooperative in that position wouldn't they? Interesting.

"Well, no one said I was planning to do it," he waffles, thinking he's probably done it again and gone too far with this explanation. "Anyway, if I did, I'd be very careful. I don't trust her as far as I can throw her, which is just as well, since I've got a surprisingly strong arm."

Unnecessary information, probably. But he thinks it might lighten this very dark mood he's curated between talks of wars past and wars pending.

EVENT LOG: LIGHT UP THE NIGHT

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