thecrossinglogs | THE CROSSING #1

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THE CROSSING #1

It's time.

For more detail on the particulars of the event, be sure to refer to our info and planning post!

time to choose

— CALM BEFORE THE STORM

It likely isn’t a surprise, when The Ferryman speaks into your mind again. You’ve known The Crossing was coming, and for the past hours, days, or weeks (however you prefer to section your time in this place), you’ve been feeling it drawing closer.

You’ve felt the pull on your soul, guiding you to follow The River; you’ve felt the changes in the Cavern, and in yourself, a shift in atmosphere that seems to start in the humidity of the air and sinks deep down into your bones. You feel solid. More importantly, you feel vulnerable.

Those who want to pay the toll are invited to gather at The Ferryman’s point of vigil; those who don’t will at least have the draw of The Crossing to guide them.

If you have anything to say before the split, now is the time to do it.

— LIGHTS OUT

Because when the moment comes, it waits for no one.

The Lantern doesn't extinguish immediately. Those gathered with The Ferryman (and, perhaps, those gathered near The Ferryman) will see it: a precarious flickering of flame behind glass. The light shrinks, and with it comes a feeling of something else retreating, too — something that you may have understood was there without realizing it, or that you may have assumed was simply another aspect of the light itself.

The bubble of safety, you realize, is receding. And when The Lantern's Light finally goes out, so too does the shield keeping you separated from the wraiths prowling the tunnels.

The darkness closes in. The Cavern's glowing plants are now the only steady source of light in the entire chamber, which allows your eyes to adjust, but only so much; it becomes difficult to make out the faces of even those standing right beside you.

It's time, so says The Ferryman. Make your decision.

follow the leader

— PAYMENT COMES DUE

There is no pomp or ceremony associated with The Ferryman's toll collection. You need only to be willing, and ready.

The darkness seems to shroud The Ferryman more than it does the rest of you, somehow. You can't make out the features of their face, only hear their voice bidding you to step forward when you're ready. For any of you who might need a moment, The Ferryman will wait.

A mote of light appears in The Ferryman's palms as the toll is paid, growing in proportion to the number of memories it receives. It's small, but you can feel the influence of it: that protective bubble you felt recede when The Lantern extinguished grows again around the light, just enough to envelop the group gathered here.

Time to go, says The Ferryman. And even though you can't track their movements in the darkness, the light tracks it for you: over the lip of the land bridge, and down to the black River below.

Nowhere to go but forward. When you step off yourself (even if it takes a bit of psyching up to get there), you'll find that the drop is gentle, and that your steps suspend safely over the water.

Just don't get left behind.

— HEAR A VOICE THAT CAUSES YOU PAIN

And so, you journey.

You walk on the surface of The River as if it were a wide, black road. Ahead of you, that same mote of light follows in the steps of The Ferryman, illuminating the ripples they leave in the water as breadcrumbs for you to follow. The air above The River is cold, certainly, and sometimes the icy water might splash up onto your shoes or ankles — but The River is wide, and there's room enough to walk together, even if you can't see each other well. It's as comfortable as a journey like this might ever be.

But The Crossing is a trial. You didn't forget, did you?

It starts slow: sounds from the darkness that could be voices, unless it's been dark for so long that your ears are playing tricks on you? Shouts of anger, high-pitched laughter, cries of fury and despair.

Then there are words. They beckon to you from the darkness: some plaintive, some punitive. They want you to stop. They want you to stay. They want you gone. Most of the voices are unfamiliar to you, but at least one, you know very well.

You need to keep moving. If you lose sight of The Ferryman's steps, you run the risk of being lost in the Cavern forever. Or perhaps it's someone beside you who's on the edge of losing their focus, someone who needs you to help keep them on the path?

trust your gut

— FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE

The rest of you, left behind on the banks of The River, have only your wits, the contents of your pockets, and the pull of something beyond the darkness to help you on the journey. The darkness is smothering, but not completely impenetrable: you have the glow of the Cavern plants, the faint gleam of the toll group’s steps on the surface of The River, and anything you may have picked up before you got here.

You can travel together or alone, but you must move. The metaphysical pull on you is growing stronger and more insistent the longer you stay in one place, and the Cavern, before preternaturally silent and still, is beginning to stir.

The wraiths, once silent, shapeless, harmless shadows following you about the Cavern, have changed. Where before they were merely unsettling to look at, now they have become larger and more monstrous: sharp eyes and claws, wide eyes and mouths. Where before they were silent, seemingly both unable and unwilling to make any sound, now they wail: wordless cries of pain and anger giving away their positions in the darkness.

Some of them may even be familiar to you, once they get close enough; the wraiths that before had seemingly taken a liking to you, seeking you out and following you wherever you went, now seem dedicated to hunting you specifically.

What the wraiths want from you, it's hard to say. If they catch you, they will tear at you without strategy or direction, like a ravenous animal — or perhaps a terrified one.

Any injuries you sustain during this time, whether from the wraiths or otherwise, are just as real to you as they would have been when you were alive: you bleed, you break, and you feel every inch of the pain inflicted on you.

Nowhere to go but forward. If you follow the pull in your gut, you'll get to where you're going. One way or another.

on the other side

— A MOMENT OF RESPITE

Whichever trial you've chosen, there is, eventually, the end.

You feel it first in the atmosphere: a resettling of the off-kilterness that's been surrounding you. The air slowly becomes drier, and the darkness less punishing. The plants that line the walls of the Cavern become more and more rare, their light replaced by ambient light leaking in from somewhere above you.

For the group traveling with The Ferryman, the wide expanse of The River gradually becomes shallower and narrower, until it's hardly a trickle beneath your feet, winding through the cave system. For the group traveling on their own, there comes a point where the wraiths seem unwilling or unable to follow, their shrieks in the darkness growing further and further away.

You feel it next in yourself: a smoothing of your rough edges, aches and muscle pain and physical exhaustion melting away. For any injured on the journey, your wounds resolve themselves as if natural healing on fast-forward. Natural healing is not always the cleanest or the most comfortable, though; you might be left with scars, crooked fingers or noses, or some other lasting memory of what you risked to be here.

Lastly, once The River has narrowed enough and two groups have reunited again: The Lantern relights. The Ferryman, for all that they were nearly invisible to you in the darkness, seems just the same as they were before. You made it through, they tell you, with no small amount of warmth and pride. Let's take a load off.

You should rest. If you took anything from the Cavern to help you on your journey, you'll find that it's gone from your pockets — when did that happen? Did you set it down? It's been such a long journey, it could have been a lapse of memory.

A memory? Ah, there's something else gone too, isn't there? Willingly or otherwise. If you try to reach for it now, it's like dust in the breeze, or a dream upon waking. You know it was there once, but the harder you try to recall it back, the thinner the details get. Eventually, you might not remember even that there was something to forget.

Congratulations. The Crossing is complete.

Image credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 + stock imagery unless otherwise noted

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It was an answer in form, if not in content - Celehar, intimately familiar with prying and ill-intentioned questions masked by concern, let the topic drop rather quickly, passing the opportunity for interrogation in favor of one for quiet listening. Impossible, out on the water, to know whose toll was which voice, especially having been wrapped up in his own misery, and difficult to ask about it now.

He threaded his fingers together, looking down at his hands.

"Do you regret paying the toll?"

Better, then, that Celehar didn’t ask - Sunny wouldn’t be talkative about which of the voices was his toll for a while now. Or… maybe never, not fully willing to talk, but he would be hard-pressed about it.

The elf’s words gave him pause; he stopped half-way through coloring the cat on the page. Did he… regret it? If given any choice in the world, Sunny would have simply wanted to just stay in that room back in the city. To what purpose, aside from his own false sense of safety? But… the Ferryman had said that he could only move forward.

Sunny hated change, but still he continued to move. If that fact wasn’t true, even during those four years he had isolated himself in his room, then he could have taken another way out. Instead… he kept living.

Finally, Sunny shook his head gently. “No…” No, he didn’t regret Crossing. They had to - there was no other option. “It was scary… but Ferryman kept their promise.”

A full sentence, something he could surprisingly get out without a cough, dry as his throat was. They didn’t need water here, but the trek had left him parched anyway. He was still hesitant to drink from the inklings of the River, though.

Celehar breathes in, then out again, his expression taking on a more meditative cast as he listens. He wasn't expecting much of an answer, in truth - his conversations with Sunny have thus far relied more on reading the boy's body language than his words, and given the fraught nature of the question he might have expected to do similarly now.

Instead, he finds himself letting the silence stretch not for the boy, but to ruminate on that answer. "You're right - if their word was ever in question, it's been proven fair now." Celehar didn't expect it to be a lie, but given the obstinance of some who made the long journey on their own...

"I am afraid the experience will be fraught, whatever path is taken. But..." he quiets again. "To act is no easy burden."

Surprisingly, Sunny had never truly doubted the Ferryman - or, at least, the teen hadn’t scrutinized it enough to know if their actions would be upheld. He knew others had questioned it, probably wisely, and now they had their proof. For him, however, he had always been stuck between the compulsion to move onward and his own fears overtaking him.

Nothing new there.

‘To act is no easy burden,’ though… Celehar was right.

Sunny’s attempts at drawing switched to writing. He didn’t trust his voice beyond what he had said already. Writing was always easier.

They said we could only move forward. I wonder… what happened to the city?’

He didn’t expect Celehar to have those answers, but Sunny could help think of the small shrine the other had set up. Would it still be there, awaiting a new batch of arrivals? Or did nothing beyond their present exist?

~~Existentialism at its finest. Sunny’s thoughts ran deep when he couldn’t reach his surface level comforts.~~

Thankfully he's still observing Sunny - otherwise, it might have taken longer to catch onto the switch in communication methods. Even still, it takes him some time, to note the switch from drawing to written word, and another moment to find the notebook in his pocket and flip to an appropriate page, mulling over the words.

With the question, he looks over his shoulder, towards the deep black water that they'd just passed over. The glance doesn't last long. The fraught emotion of the Crossing may be fading, but contemplating the way they came from still prompts a frission of uncomfortable tension in him. There's nothing that can be seen there, as it is - only the dark of the water, the inky black barely penetrated by the light of this new landing place.

"I do not know," he admits. "I met a man who claimed to have found a poster from a theater he remembered - perhaps it was made for us. Or perhaps it has always been here, and will be there long after us." He looks forward, now, towards the place where the Ferryman's light lingers. "Where we have come to, I cannot say, either."

The idea of a future here seemed just as scary as their past. Sunny looked down at himself for proof - he had been wearing the Captain Spaceboy shirt Kel had found for him - but now? He was back to his regular shirt, vest, shorts combo. No proof.

Instead, he drew in his notebook again: an image of a shirt and a comic book. Neither very detailed (art wasn’t Sunny’s speciality), so it came out more like a child drawing with crayon. All of his drawings were like that.

Then, more words, written slowly as the exhaustion was catching up to him, yet he seemed like sleep was the thing he wanted.

Ferryman might know?

He didn’t seem inclined to go ask that question either.

"They may," Celehar acknowledges, still looking down at his book. The drawings catch his eye, such as they are - the comic book he puzzles over but cannot resolve, though the shirt is recognizable for what it is though not, perhaps, the relevance to the conversation. He hums.

"Once we have recovered from the journey, perhaps," he decides. "They may need the rest as much as we." That light... he has to wonder, what effort carrying such a thing takes from them. What work of theirs keeps the wraiths at bay.

As he thumbs through the previous pages, seeing all the writing back-and-forth from the various groups - a few seem to have managed to give proper status updates, though they paint a grim picture of the Crossing - he sighs. "Wouldst that we knew more of the wraiths, and their dangers. The Crossing was..."

Another nod. If they were tired from simply the voices, then the Ferryman had to be even more exhausted; they had protected the group (from what, aside from the wraiths, Sunny wasn’t sure. He got the feeling that there was something deeper about their walk on the River, but he was too tired to think).

Sunny was too afraid to ask the group that hadn’t gone with the Ferryman what had been encountered. He had seen the messages on his notebook (Kel’s especially, which didn’t bode well).

At Celehar’s mention of the wraiths, Sunny shivered. Scary. Another moment of writing.

Sometimes, ghosts remain just that.

He was rarely given an answer to his own fears and specters.

Edited (Typo) 2025-01-30 00:09 (UTC)

"Sometimes," Celehar murmurs, eventually. His voice doesn't quite have the ring of agreement to it - given all his talk of the dangers of lingering spirits, perhaps it's no surprise that he disagrees with the sentiment, and finds the ghosts to be all the more concerning.

Or maybe it's the lingering doubt - the wonder, who those wraiths were. Whether the voice fading from his mind was really out there, hanging on the edge of the light, waiting for him, for all of them. Celehar bites the inside of his lip, instead of saying it. Sunny already looks worn, and the boy is quiet - his concerns are not appropriate to voice, here in this moment. Better let the young man take some ease and rest, now that the worst is over.

"Might we move closer to the lantern?" he suggests, instead.

Sunny is used to agreeing with things she doesn’t necessarily believe in - so he notes that lack of in Celehar’s words.

That was alright. It would have been more surprising if anyone believed in what he said. For now, at least it seemed like the danger was behind them. He wasn’t so naive enough to think that they were entirely out of the clear. Even in video games, moments of safety always came before further challenges.

The teen couldn’t think about that right now: about what lay ahead, what else they might have to face.

At Celehar’s suggestion, his gaze wandered to the Ferryman’s light. So warm and bright, a comfort after the endless darkness. Nodding, he attempted to stand… but his limbs were shaky once adrenaline wasn’t coursing through his veins. He very much looked like a foal trying to stand.

It's a demeanor Celehar is familiar with - it was him, not so long ago, trying to stand on limbs that fought him, still carrying the remembrance of exhaustion and pain that had smudged in his mind like chalk.

"Take your time," he says. He is as well, slowly unfolding himself from his seat, and rising. He takes the time to resettle his coat, smoothing away wrinkles and frowning over the water stains that layer the patched material, sighing and dismissing it. Not much he can do about that except take it off to dry, and that will have to wait. Then his hands come up briefly to his braid, and his lips pin together in dismay at the state of it. He does his best to smooth down the flyaway curls, and looks back to Sunny.

Maybe it's the lingering remembrance of Frieda's hug which spurs him, but watching Sunny's awkward movement, he acts on a momentary impulse, reaching out to lay a steadying hand on the young man's shoulder. His grip isn't tight or heavy, just there.

Anyone else might have rushed to help Sunny support himself - his sister, certainly - but… maybe Celehar’s patience was what he needed. To stand on his own two feet again, both physically and otherwise.

It took a few agonizing moments, several of which the teen was sure his legs would give out, but he finally stood. A bit shaky still, though able to move.

When Celehar’s hand rested on Sunny’s shoulder, his eyes widened in surprise. It was… a steadying sort of comfort. Normally he didn’t like touch - especially from people he didn’t know well - but in this case… there was that same cadence of knowing, like they operated on the same frequency.

One nod, more sure than his past ones: he was ready to walk towards the lantern now.

"'Tis good you made it through."

Just that - he might not have seen Sunny during the Crossing, buried as he was under his own lover's gentle, grief-stricken voice, but having gone through that, he appreciates all the more the strength this young man must have despite the timid exterior - glad he did not drift off into the darkness.

He lifts the hand from his shoulder, re-establishing the well of personal space for the both of them, and letting the silence reassert itself. He takes a few steps towards the Ferryman's light - slowly, leaving enough time that anything Sunny might say would still be within his pointed earshot, but not leaving the boy pressured to speak.

Sunny blinked, mild surprise on his face. It… was good he made it through? Did Celehar believe that? Truly?

Kel was always saying he was glad that Sunny was around, but some part of him had always doubted… who would want him around, when he was such a terrible person?

But… Celehar’s words sounded sincere. So when they fully sunk in, there was a brief period where Sunny’s footsteps fell to silence, as he simply stared at the man’s slowly lumbering back.

“You… too…” It felt like the only response he could say - wanted to say - as something bright seemed to fill his gaze. His steps grew hurried to catch up to the elf.

It… felt like a start. To what, Sunny wasn’t sure, but maybe this place wasn’t all scary…? Maybe there were people here who were patient and kind…?

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THE CROSSING #1

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CW: brief implication of past suicidal ideation

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