hadriel_logs | Event Log: Regret This

Entry tags:

Event Log: Regret This

Who: Everyone!
What: The Regret This event
Where: Throughout the city
When: June 25th-July 3rd
Warnings: Sorrow is resurrected, and everyone is immediately full of regrets

Hope has finally managed another god resurrection, and the people have spoken! On June 25th, he musters his powers and brings Sorrow back to Hadriel. An orchard appears across the river, in the until now ruined part of the city, and Sorrow's temple is also restored. Hooray! One more god to make things a little more livable in this place.

Of course, it's not that easy. It never is. Along with Sorrow himself comes a wave of regret and guilt that blankets the city. All those affected will be inclined to not only be sad, but to linger over past regrets and things they feel guilty about. They can distract themselves with everyday tasks or whatever else they please, but they'll find that their thoughts drift back to these regrets regardless of what they do.

And of course, the best way to purge a guilty conscience is confession, right? On top of these persistent sad thoughts, people will feel the urge to tell others about them, to air their past mistakes or misdeeds and possibly receive some kind of forgiveness. So what if your neighbor doesn't care that you cheated on your final exams all through school? You have to tell someone, and they're right there. If it doesn't make you feel better, that probably means you haven't confessed to enough people yet, or maybe you just haven't found the right person. Better try again!

On July 3rd, Sorrow has settled in and this urge to confess your sins will die down, along with the constant regret. Let's hope you didn't confess anything too personal. Remember, you're gonna have to see some of these people every day.

► This log covers June 25th-July 3rd.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well!
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you somehow manage to end up regretfully dead, please remember to hit up our death post!

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There is one mind that contains no guilt or regret - it's a mind that seems quite content even, though there is a note of being worried.

That mind is inside the small body of a child sitting on some rubble, singing a lullaby to the two little fairies in his lap. It sounds a bit like this. The fairies look absolutely miserable, clinging to his tunic - which is no wonder. When you can only feel one emotion at once and are used to none of them lasting for long, being stuck on the same negative one for days on end sucks a lot.

Muscovy worries for them, and for everyone else, but right now it's just nice, to sit here calmly and be needed by and there for his friends, so he is quite happy.

Ushahin takes one shuddering breath after another, trying to force the specters out of his head. It wasn't his fault. It wasn't. Then who left me to die? Tanaros' voice questions. You left me to face the enemy alone, you coward. Groaning, Ushahin flings his mind outwards, desperate to be anywhere but here right now.

Then he senses it. A mind without any crippling guilt or regret. This one seems familiar. Ah, yes. The boy who had been around when the spiders were attacking. Ushahin was pleased to see that he'd survived. He gets up and starts following it back to the source.

When he hears the song, he doesn't say anything. Ushahin sits nearby and listens quietly. When Muscovy finishes, he asks, "What language was that?" A far more important query than finding out about those two little fairies clinging to him.

"Muscovian."

It's soothing sometimes to hear one of his own languages, even if he can only hear them from himself. And it's a soothing song, he hopes that it helps the fairies a bit. They cling to him a bit less hard when he sings, which probably means that they are relaxing, which in turn means that his songs are helping.

He creeps a little closer, not unnervingly close like he sometimes does when invading someone's personal space. This is just a desire to be able to hear better. "Can you...sing another one?"

It isn't just the fairies that are being soothed by the song. Ushahin felt the guilt weighing him down easing up when he listened to the tune. It's hard to listen to the voices in his mind when there's another tune competing for space.

Muscovy blinks in surprise - it's the first time that he has gotten a request like that - but then he nods and moves on to the next lullaby.

It's a different song, but it uses the words bayushki bayu as well, and he will continue to sing for a few more songs before he falls silent. He's been doing this for a while and now he needs to drink something, so he tries to not move too much so the fairies can stay where they are while he fishes a bottle of water out of the backpack that sits at his side.

There is an old saying about music soothing the savage beast. Apparently, it works on madmen as well. Ushahin sits there, unusually quiet and pensive as he listens to the music coming from the boy. He has his fist under his chin, propping it up as he rests his arm on one leg. When Muscovy finishes, he lets out a long sigh.

"There is something about music..." He trails off, unable to complete the thought. Much as he's unwilling to acknowledge his heritage, the Ellyl were known for their music and something within him responds to any sort of it especially well.

It takes him a moment to gather the words, and when he answers, it is clear that he is quoting someone.

"My lord father said that the world is made of music, because it was sung into existence. So when you hear a nice song, it reminds you of how the world looks when it is not broken."

He never really understood that one, but this strange sadness that has overcome his fairies and a lot of other people seems to him like at least their brains are broken a bit. So maybe a song can remind them of how their brains are when they were not broken, and help them to find those unbroken brains a bit.

"Your world, perhaps. Mine was made from a red jewel that shattered beyond repair. Maybe all worlds break eventually." His thoughts run sideways, going to the shard of the jewel he possesses. He's hidden it securely in his apartment. It's not entirely safe there, but he doesn't think Godslayer is entirely safe anywhere. At least there are none here who know he possesses such power.

"Hmmm, yes," He murmurs, glancing at Muscovy, noticing the faeries as if it's the first time. "Shattered into pieces, they should all be."

"No."

He is still smiling, his voice still cheerful, but there is a sharp note to the cheer now, a forceful rebuke.

"They should be fixed if they are broken, and kept safe. Because nobody will be happy when they are broken, because they will all be scared and hurting. But if everything is put together nicely then they can be happy because they can be safe and not alone and warm.

If they are shattered into pieces beyond repair that just means that you can put them back together in a better way, yes?"

What the boy says hits Ushahin right at his core, focusing the bits and pieces of his mind into something more coherent, keeping him grounded in reality.

"What a shame there was no one like you around when I was first broken. Things would have been very different." That's a regret so deep that Ushahin is unaware he even possesses it. The great idea of what-if that he never allows himself to indulge in. One day had destroyed everything that the boy he had been might have later become. After so long, he feels it is no longer possible to go back any longer.

"How do you know when you were first broken?"

It is unusual to have someone realize that they are even broken, and for them to be able to narrow it, or at least a part of the process, down to a specific event... He doesn't think that he has ever heard someone tell him that. Broken as a loss of honour, maybe. But he's fairly sure that that isn't what Ushahin is referring to here.

"It happened all in a single day a long time ago ." He doesn't elaborate further. Ushahin has never kept what happened to him a secret, but neither is he interested in painting a detailed picture for the boy. He seems innocent in way Ushahin doesn't often see.

"It's a very sad story. You wouldn't like to hear it."

"Tragic stories are no worse or better than happy or funny ones, it's only about how well they are told, my lord father says.

...His most famous work was very sad, but he didn't like it very much, I think." With good reason, considering that it is essentially 'let me tell you how my family fucked up time and time again, and then died'.

"I suppose that is true. My story is definitely a tragedy and I can tell it with some skill." He wasn't called Dreamspinner simply for his skill with entering the dreams of others. Stories were the lifeblood of Urulat, the way that memories were passed down from one generation to the next. All the races would tell them and Ushahin was no exception.

"Then you should tell it."

He likes hearing stories. Well, he likes hearing people's voices, and if they're talking about interesting things that is even nicer. And storytelling is in a lot of ways about bonding and community between those that join in on listening to and telling the story, so that makes all stories feel good even if they are sad.

With the little bit of prodding, Ushahin starts his tale. His voice, already soft to begin with, takes on a dreamy sort of quality. Occasionally, he punctuates a point with his good hand, moving it through the air.

"Well, it starts a long, long time ago in a land far away from here called Urulat. There was a boy who was born of two races, man and Ellyl. Ellyl are a graceful, fair, ageless people, but they are as cold as snow on top of a mountain top. Neither one particularly cared or wanted him around and so the boy grew up in his father's house, unloved and ignored, without even a name to call his own."

That part isn't particularly true. He'd had a name, but he'd lost it when the insanity had overwhelmed his mind and could no longer remember it. "One day, the boy went out into the city, as he was warrant to do when he was curious. He wasn't much older than you. But that day, something terrible happened to him. A mob of children, sensing that there was one different in their midst, chased after him. One of them picked up a stone and threw it. The others joined in. He tried to run, but fate was cruel to the boy, leading him to an alley with a dead end. They were merciless in their cruelty, trying to stone him to death. People passed by and not a one stopped to help him. They all just turned away. The final blow shattered his left eye and his mind all with one stone." He tapped his own left eye, the socket never fully healed and the frozen pupil a permanent reminder of his injuries.

"They left him to die that day. And he thought he would. Dragging himself through the streets, he crawled into the forest outside the city, and lay down there. He expected never to get back up again."

Muscovy listens attentively, losing himself in the bond that the soft story creates, in the images that it conjures up, in the distance that it puts between them and their immediate surroundings. He doesn't forget the fairies in his lap, continuing to hold them and use two fingers to pet them as gently as he can, but his focus is fully on Ushahin.

"How did he still move if his brain was broken?"

"Pure instinct. You can do a lot even when in the depths of terrific agony. So the boy laid down to die. But while he had been shown great cruelty, he was also shown a great kindness. The Grey Dam of the Were found him."

His voice trembles with emotion as he speaks of his mother. That is a wound still raw in his heart. He takes a moment to compose himself before continuing the story. "The Were are a race part man and part wolf. They are fierce hunters, but misunderstood by others. The Grey Dam had lost her pups and mate several years earlier when a man seeking glory had slain them in their den.

She was still mourning them when she found the boy nobody else wanted. Feeling a swell of pity in her heart, she held him close to her furry chest, running rough paws over his face. She decided that, if no one else wanted him, she would raise him as her own son. Away she went into the forest with him, away from men and their cruelties. Looking down, she knew he needed a name. So the boy was named Ushahin, which means 'Broken one' in the tongue of the Were. And he lived in the forest with his mother for many years. She taught him everything she knew, including how to use the strange powers the boy possessed. He lived there until he was called by a lonely god to serve him as a loyal companion. But that's a story for another time."

Okay, that explanation makes sense. He can even back it up with is own experience - you can always run, no matter how scared you are.

The next part, though... he cannot quite back up with his own experience. It makes him think of Rey, but when she found him, he wasn't dying. The situation just wasn't nice, and she showed him how to control the newfound (and temporary) powers of his that caused them. And her becoming his mother was a process of months instead of an instant decision, and something that they applied a name to only even longer after their relationship had taken that turn.

And back home... the only person who found him when he was little found him when he was doing reasonably well, vanished and then came back many years later as the companion of one of his worst bullies.

So, in his ears, that sounds like a wonderfully good end.

"Was Grey Dam really her name?"

"No. The Grey Dam is a title, passed down from one Were to the next. Her name was Sorash. She was a wonderful mother."

She had lived longer than almost any being in Urulat save for the gods, that was including Ushahin and his cousins. She had died well, her teeth seeking out one of their shared enemies. He tried to focus on his beginning with her rather than the end. She had been one of the only people who ever truly wanted Ushahin and he knew that love like that didn't come around very often.

"So your sister is the Grey Dam now?"

He noticed that past tense, and he assumes that if it is hereditary the Were would attempt to have children to pass it on.

"No. She never had pups again. The Were are not blessed with the gift of having many children over the course of their lives." He'd go into the details of how his god's gift had been sex and reproduction if Muscovy was a little older, but he was reluctant to tell something like that to a child. Only one race had accepted Satoris' gift and so only Men had thrived in Urulat.

"She picked her successor, a Were named Vashuka. She is a much more cautious, wary leader, but perhaps that is what they need right now."

He nods. That description makes sense, and reminds him of hid adopted father's race, at least what little Ushahin actually says. Elves ....well, normally. Not in the case of his grandparents on that side - have very few children as well. And the long potential life that Ushahin mentioned fits, as well.

"What happened to the children that she had before she found you?"

At least it sounds to him like she had ones before, the way Ushahin spoke of her 'never again' having had pups.

"They were killed. A prince sought glory in eradicating the Were and killed her mate when he found him defending the pups." It had happened the same year Ushahin was born. Not a good year at all for Urulat. Men and Ellylon had dissolved their long-standing partnership, the Were were hunted by those who saw them as enemies, and then of course, Ushahin's mother had been assaulted by a Man, producing the Misbegotten One himself.

He lets out a bitter laugh, filled with old pain. "What glory he thought there was to be found in slaying helpless pups in their den I will never know."

"Sometimes people don't think of children as children. They think of them as little enemies."

He pauses. That is something that had been getting worse back home. That not only those who were fighters would be killed in raids, but also those who were not, and he thinks he can pin it down (perhaps it is also that he has more people now that are more expansive and connected and in the way of others, or have others in their way, and encounter more people that are even more different, but that doesn't cross his mind).

"It is better when they think that they can take slaves. Then they won't kill everyone."

Because it would just be plain bad economical thinking.

Event Log: Regret This

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