hadriel_logs | Event Log: Regret This

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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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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.

"True. But then you wait a generation or two and suddenly there is a slave revolt on your hands. Those can be a messy business."

Not that Ushahin has ever experienced one personally. None of Urulat's many races had ever held stock with enslaving any of the others. They were more focused on the conflict of god versus god. He's just seen the patterns of people repeat themselves over and over again.

"Why would there be?"

It's not that he has never witnessed an uprising, but never by slaves, and the concept seems very silly to him. Sure, peasants have no chance to win, either, but at least forming a group is easy for them because they live clustered together and there are way more of them where they live than other people. Neither is true for slaves, by what he has observed. And anyway, it's not like they are that different from the farmers and other low hierarchy people around them in the first place. Some of them even seemed to do quite well, by what he observed when he was in one of the big cities downstream many years ago.

"People tend to value their freedom. They resent being put into a cage, even when it is for their own good. Here, I shall give you an example." Time for another story. He's just full of them. Twelve-hundred years has given him a lot of time to store up memories.

"I knew a vain sorceress who would bind those young and beautiful to her, keeping them close because it pleased her. Not all of them appreciated this. When war came to her doorstep, she could have freed them. She didn't, because of her vanity, and one of them resented being enslaved so much that he tried to kill her. This allowed her enemies to storm her fortress and she lost the war."

"Most slave owners aren't evil."

There are a lot of other reasons why this story confuses him a lot because it just doesn't match up with his experience of the thing at all. But that is the most obvious to point out.

"Do any people that you have lived with have slaves?"

"Aside from the sorceress, no. It is hard to enslave a group of people when the land is at war and each group is on a different side."

He has no doubt that those were the only reasons it hadn't occurred in Urulat. The Men seemed determined to stamp out each of the other races until there was nothing left but one race to rule the land.

He doesn't think that that would make it harder - after all that would just mean that you have a lot of prisoners that can be turned into slaves - but then he's used to a world where, even if some areas don't have outright slavery but something structured a bit differently and with a different name, it's always been a thing that existed somewhere.

"Do you feel better now?"

He doesn't know that Ushahin felt bad when he came up to him, but he has seen enough people around to know that almost everyone seems to feel quite crappy these days.

Ushahin pushes his fair hair back from his face and looks at Muscovy. He pauses for a moment before he answers. "You know, I think I do."

Just a little, anyway, but that was more than enough for Ushahin. It was better than having a dark cloud hanging over his head all the time. "Thank you, young one." Having a friend around is a good thing indeed.

Muscovy simply smiles in return. He's glad that Ushahin feels better, and also glad that they can be like friends around each other and that he could do something for Ushahin, because such things make people closer when they're not forced. And also, it was nice to listen to him. Both because he's a really good storyteller and because it is nice to learn more about people.

"If you want to, you can stay longer."

If Ushahin does so and falls quiet, he will simply pick up his singing again, his voice rested enough now to continue for a good while longer.

"I will."

Ushahin closes his eyes when Muscovy begins to sing again. It's peaceful, driving the other voices in his head back until all he can focus on is the one singing. It's not a perfect situation, for the guilt will return full force, but it helps just a little. That's all a poor mad half-man like Ushahin can ever ask for.

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Event Log: Regret This

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