THE CROSSING #1

[thecrossingmods]

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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Comments

[witnessvelama]

So many pieces of the tragedy are hard to explain, sound horribly torrid even in his own grief-stricken telling. He's ashamed of it, in a burning way, in a tired way. What a fool he was, to think that this part of his past would not weigh him down even in death. To believe that he would simply weather this toll. And yet he must.

Better to give Need her reason to recoil now, while she still has the strength to carry on in the Ferryman's wake, and while he has the same. He swallows, though it does nothing to erase the thick feeling in his throat. The grip on his shoulder is grounding, and his grip on the strap of her apron is white-knuckled. Even expecting her to pull away, he is not ready for it. It is not his place to judge for her actions, extrajudicial or not, but he can't help but expect the opposite for himself.

"They knew we were lovers," he manages to rasp, "When they brought me the body of his - of his wife. I saw that he had done it, when I touched her body. I could not hide the truth." Could not, would not - perhaps they were the same thing, to a man with only his Calling left to cling to.

[hasapoint]

"That was cruel of them," Need says, taking these statements as they knew we were lovers and suspected he'd done it and still brought the body to me. But Celehar's gotten so tense in an entirely new way, why w- oh. Need manages to hold back an aggravated sigh. Homophobia is as common of a scourge as misogyny, and just as ready to ruin lives!

If she shows anger here the poor kid will take it as directed at him, and just now if she says they didn't approve of the two of you? or being she'chorne is like being left handed, there's no evil to it there will be some anger in her voice.

So Need takes her free hand, wet with tears, and covers his hand where it's locked around that apron strap. "It was cruel," she says again, lowering her voice and trying to use her battered hands to communicate something that speech won't get right. Celehar really should have someone here who can say the right thing, freely and easily, whose compassion is unclouded and pure.

[witnessvelama]

Her grasp communicates, in its own way. Celehar's head bows forward abruptly with the grip of her hand around his, as he takes another shuddering inhale. There's no further words, for a moment, as he focuses on keeping himself upright, and keeping the emotion at bay.

It bleeds from him eventually, the wary tension. He certainly can't start shaking any more than he already has, but the revelation has its own effect on him. It takes him a few long moments to look up once more towards the light of the lantern - in the meantime, it's hopeful that they at least won't go off-course in their wanderings.

"Many things are," he says at last, though it's more rasp than word, before he clears his throat. An acknowledgement of both their pain, less said than implied with his tone. When he finally lifts his head, he catches her eye. "Somehow," he says, "It was still - possible to move on, though for a time... I did not know how. It was only after I dreamed of Ulis's call once again that I realized I could."

[hasapoint]

Need focuses on moving forwards, clenching her teeth and dwelling in that anger to give her a bulwark against fatigue. It doesn't make sense to her, for people to become hateful about who loves whom. That it's so common across worlds and cultures is baffling. She remembers almost nothing of her early life - the thought comes with a strange, distant sting - but has a vague idea that she may have had one mother and two fathers, together. Maybe their people, her people, hadn't been afflicted by that blight. She hopes they weren't.

Celehar may have meant it for both of them, but she takes it as more of a general statement. Her heart has long been as breakable as steel, and as able to feel true pain. Sympathy is a nice gesture and wasted on her.

"The heart heals. Not in the same shape as it had been before, maybe, but... the body wants to survive. Most of the time the heart follows." Since Celehar's peering at her face, she looks back at him. The Lantern is brighter from here, they're close enough to see the figure of the Ferryman, but her eyes are deep-set enough that from this angle they're a gleam in shadow. "People can get used to anything."

[witnessvelama]

Oh, that drives him back to silence, for a long time. his grasp on the strap shifts, less clinging, more a press of his arm against her shoulder, an awkward gesture given their movement, but the best he can do to evoke the presence of a support at one's side. She may not accept that, may not notice it even, but the act of committing the gesture is as much for him as it is for her.

"So it does," he agrees, quietly. "As you said. She lived beyond this. As did I. It is not living that we do here, but..." With the light once more surrounding them, maybe it's easier to say, despite the tears on their faces and the lumps in their throats. "We too continue on. Thank you, Othalo Need."

[hasapoint]

Need notices vaguely, but interprets it only as him regaining a bit more strength to go on. "You're welcome, Prelate. Glad..." ...Yeah, her ability to come up with a sardonic but not cruel response has failed her, the only things she can think to say are pointlessly mean.

Some time later, as their surroundings start to dry and brighten and the voices are still present but softer, when the two may have put a little more space between them, Need speaks again with more vigor, though almost as harsh-voiced as Celehar. "You can ask me about this when it's done. It's all right. I've shown it to dozens of people - I can do that - this isn't a secret. We should find out how far forgetting goes. Hey. Has she been saying my name?"

Mostly, Vena's voice calls her 'you', or 'sister', or something between 'teacher' and 'master', but there are moments of a conspicuous blank, whose only discernible characteristic is that there are two syllables. It's like a thick door between them and the source of the voice whispers closed and opens again every time.

[witnessvelama]

The silence isn't disheartening, as they continue - even with the voices around them, Celehar doesn't falter and fall again, keeping pace with a wild focus. It's miserable, but the emotion wears away at being evoked, turning the jagged edges of the grief into a round river pebble, held more easily in his hand, a weight more easily dropped to the bottom of the River.

He doesn't hear it, at first, when Need speaks. It's only because the sound itself is closer to his ears than the distant calling from the ghosts that he belatedly raises his head to consider her. "I..."

"If you like," he says, in the end. "To be told it again." He doesn't make the same offer, whether or not Need takes that for a denial of wanting to hear it again - he's preoccupied with recalling the voice, with listening now to that young woman's voice. "I - no. If she speaks it, I cannot hear."

[hasapoint]

She glances his way as he falters and thinks it over, but doesn't prod.

"Hah. Well, that's something." If Need thinks back... it had been painful to hear her name, right? After she had to shed it. Too strong a reminder of what she could never return to. That must have been why she forgot it.

It would bother her, she thinks, if other people could hear it but she couldn't. This had been important once. "Thanks for checking. And you should tell me. But, later maybe." He looks like he's been dragged backwards through thorns, she thinks, not that she looks much better.

[witnessvelama]

"On the other side," Celehar promises - he might come to regret it, but for now, he speaks the words with full sincerity, as they turn to making the final steps of the harrowing journey.

After this, there will be time for rest and for the pain of the memories to fade - for now, there's merely the steps still left to take, and the voices that slowly fade from their hearing.