EVENT LOG: GRAVES

[inthenightmods]

EVENT LOG:
GRAVES

characters: everyone.
location: Bonfire Square.
date/time: July 12-19.
content: mysterious shrines appear and bring visions of death.
warnings: likely violence and potentially gore.

time to pay your respects.

It happens when no one is looking, when most of the town is asleep and the rest are inside. A makeshift cemetery has come to Beacon, taking up residence in the middle of Bonfire Square. Each monument, shrine, and altar is dedicated to someone who now resides here, a memorial of their previous life.

Some may be drawn by curiosity, others by fear, and some may simply have to pass through this strange graveyard to get to the Bonfire itself. Whenever a person gets near, the altars beckon with a mysterious urge— an urge to approach, and an urge to leave something behind. They will feel compelled to make offerings at the various shrines, but doing so has a curious effect; it causes one to experience the death of the person whose grave they've honored.

Whether you resist the compulsion or give in willingly (or something in between), you'll also have to wrestle with the fact that a grave exists for you. Will you let your death be known, or try your best to keep it secret? Destroying it sure won't work, as it will return— with a duplicate somewhere else in town.

However you choose to deal with this, one thing is hard to ignore— this a tangible reminder of your death, and the fact that it's probably permanent.

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Comments

[equinoctials]

[ He doesn't regret it.

He doesn't, to the tune of repeating that thrice. Riku believes him from the first time, having seen and felt what he had. Relating the way he does with that selfless instinct to protect what's important, even at one's own expense. Except where Riku's sense of duty and guilt exist, Daylight seems full of effervescent sunshine in a place so absent of warmth and light.

Yet in spite of the way he shines, he seems to shy from the attention even as he yearns for the contact. He's earnestly good in a way few are.

Riku thinks he would get on famously with Kairi and Sora, but these... really aren't the sort of circumstances that lend themselves well to social calls. They're all on edge because of these markers, these altars or graves or whatever one wants to call them. ]

And that's why I think your heart is strong. Doing something so selfless without regrets.

[ Riku's comfortable with silence, like the one that falls heavily into the space on the end of his words.

He looks up. ]

Wanna talk about it?

[sunborne]

I- Um- I don't- Maybe-

[ daylight clearly hesitates when the offer is made, stuttering through several different answers while his winglets continuing to hide behind him. it’s clear he wants to talk about it - he didn’t say no just yet, after all - but he seems scared about the prospect.

wait- that isn't right- he is scared. daylight doesn’t like the idea of being so vulnerable, so open to others. especially for a situation like this. it still feels raw, his... demise. if he really concentrates hard enough, daylight can still feel the way the metal was torn apart by the blast, feel a space where they shouldn't be a space in his body.

but then he looks back at his marker, optics dimming at the names besides his own. he wonders how his parents would have fared with all of this. would they have known what to do? would they have been able to help people out? would they be willing to open themselves up to others?

... ]

... A little bit, yeah. [ his smile here is a little sad and a bit unsure but he wants to make an effort here. ] I might be kind of vague at some stuff so, um, sorry in advance. I’ll do my best...!

[ because it’s all he can do at the moment and he wants to do. he really wants to. especially for riku, who has been nothing but nice to him during their last chat. ]

[equinoctials]

[ Being the kind of guy who does a lot of scrambling for what he means to say, himself, except it's all locked up on the other side of an often somewhat ambiguous expression, he doesn't try to rush Daylight into settling on an answer. He just lets it happen. If it was him put on the spot, a show of impatience as he tries to put together a reply would only cause him to clam up or worse, shut down the conversation.

He knows what he's asking is a lot. At the same time, however, walking away after witnessing something like that without at least checking in on Daylight is callous, and he likes him.

It doesn't seem like Riku objects, that Daylight might keep some things vague, he's hardly one to talk when it comes to keeping secrets, for playing his own cards close to his chest. Rather, Riku looks around, only to sit there on the ground, setting his lantern beside his bent knee.

A moment later he looks up, patting the ground at his side, like he isn't inviting a towering, seemingly mechanical being to join him. This, too, comes with the territory of being exposed to other worlds and other forms of life, the disparate properties become something to expect. ]

Take all the time you need.

[sunborne]

[ daylight sends the most grateful look to riku, smiling a bit to show his appreciation for his patience as he begins to try and tell the story.

it's- it's definitely difficult for daylight, it seems, whenever he stops and stumbles. there's a lot he tries to keep to himself still, a lot he doesn't think he can explain perfectly, and a lot more he doesn't really understand.

what happened, basically, is that daylight feels guilty for what had happened. he had let the woman - erinyes, affectionately known as erin to him - unto the ship in the first place. he had given her access to board the starship, to enter their territory and have a chance to try and kill one of their in the first place. it was because daylight had bonded with erin over circumstances the two had shared, making him look up to her as a big sister over time. it was why he had refused to listen to the others when they had voiced their suspicions against erin, when one of them (emergency aid, a close friend) had begun to dig into her past and find inconsistencies with some things she had said.

he defended her. in the end, even when there were a lot of lies and half-truths exposed, daylight had insisted that she deserve a second chance after all she'd been through. daylight doesn't explain in-depth what happened to erin exactly, but it must have been bad for him to clearly still hold sympathy for her. erin might have lied about some stuff but hadn't everyone, at that point?

(at this point in the explanation, daylight felt bad for throwing in the others' faces how they lied to him about important stuff in the past, but he felt like it was the right thing to do then. he gave them a second chance despite it all. erin deserved a benefit of the doubt then.)

and, well, look at how that turned out for him and everyone else. ]

... I'm just worried for everyone else now. My friends. Erin. The others on the starship. It was chaos when I...

[ it's still hard to admit he's dead. ]

Anyways, um, yeah. That's what happened. It's why, at first, before meeting all of you guys, I wanted to go back home. To see if they're all safe. Since we can't go back... [ he falls quiet, looking more upset now that he's had to think this over and look back at all the mistakes(?) he had made. ] I hope they're fine. All of them.

[ yes. even erin. he wants to know so badly why she did that. he wants to know if she's sorry and if she's safe. ]

[equinoctials]

[ Riku understands.

He understands how insurmountable it can feel, to have these things in him and such insufficient means to express them, or the idea that breathing them aloud makes them too real, that others will see something weak and strange for your admission. He understands so he doesn't press him for an answer.

Riku means it when he says things like take all the time you need and think about it and decide for yourself what's best for everyone. Because he understands how they're all made more whole by the ways they touch the lives around them, so that impact can't be written off.

And Daylight died. Regardless of anything else, that alone makes this the weightiest of subjects. He's allowed to approach with trepidation, with grief and concern. That's all right.

Hearts are unpredictable. ]

That was Erin? The one who...

[ Riku's question comes with a palm pressed against his sternum, over the steady drumbeat of his heart. It's one thing to be concerned about friends, about family, that's what one expects of a denizen of the realm of light. But if that's who it was who killed him...

Riku finds that puts a hot band around his throat. ]

Daylight--