[ Open-ish ]

[darkestbefore]

Who: Yona and castmates/adjacent CR
When: The days after the Age-Swap Event
Where: Yona's Temple
What: Catch-all to deal with fallout from the new arrivals and things discovered during the age swap event. Also probably a picnic.


[ The day after time is restored to normal, Yona sticks close to her temple, mind still reeling from what she had learned and the hectic events of the past few days. Between the arrival of her two newest shinki and some of the conversations she'd had with companions over the past few days, taking some time to process it seems the wisest of ideas.

But even though she doesn't venture far from her own temple, it doesn't mean she doesn't welcome anyone who stops by for a visit, clearly happy to greet anyone who stops by. Especially if they are people she needed to talk with anyway.

As for those staying in her temple, she does her best to make sure they get settled and comfortable, answering any questions she can to try and make this new arrangement as smooth as possible. And if there's a sudden resurgence of bad dreams in the aftermath of one particular shinki coming back to live in this place with her... well. She does her best to hide the evidence of it. ]

Comments

[justclaws]

[She does not let go. If anything, she holds tighter.

[Kija hardly knows if he should be sad or glad as he lets her guide him away and into - yes, there is an orchard. Rows of trees hung heavy with fruit, a slight breeze: a welcome sense of privacy, of separateness, of safety. Let them think what they will of his need to speak to the Princess alone. It is this place that makes it necessary, this place and its demands and the distance it has cleaved between them, when no distance existed before.]

What is the last thing you remember of home?

[darkestbefore]

Ah, we were traveling back through the Fire Tribe lands. [ She glances up at him curiously at the strange question. What was he looking for. ] We'd gone back to Ik-su after Awa but he told us it was not yet time for the sword and shield the prophecy spoke of to appear. So we headed out to see where we could help close by instead.

[ Not that they'd arrived there yet, however. Although there had been a slight detour to a hot spring on their way. Because OVA timelines like to mess with things. ]

Why?

[justclaws]

Ik-su?

[So what of the future?

[The past is off-limits, to shinki certainly. But the future? What could one share of that? It seemed an age since that meeting with Ik-su, and - and after Zeno it seemed, almost, as if it had happened to another man entirely.]

I remember a lot more than that. Princess, I cannot promise that such a thing will never happen, but Jae-Ha and Hak... I cannot understand how they can be here as shinki. Unless they are both from a time beyond my own, they should be as alive as you or I.

[darkestbefore]

[ His words draw a startled look from her, her gaze flying to her face and searching it with a sudden desperate hope. ]

What are you saying, Kija? I saw... When they arrived, I saw....

[ Even the memory of it has her hiding her face in her hands for a moment because her chest has clenched tightly and it feels hard to breathe. She's been trying not to think about the moment of their deaths she'd had to witness, memories that were not her own burned searing into her own thoughts now. She hadn't been doing very well at putting them from her mind, however. ]

[justclaws]

I feared you might.

[The deaths of strangers were enough.

[That they - and there it is, or there it is again, the wall one breaks one's head against: he does not even know what to call these men! - would force the princess to witness something so terrible, to go through all that over... over who knew what is horrific, it is terrible to witness, to know his own words have caused such pain; it is all quite perfectly infuriating. It is inexcusable! Oh, if only he knew who was behind it all!

[Should he touch her? She has let go, but now she looks so perfectly devastated that Kija wishes she had hung on just a little bit longer. He reaches out to her, then hesitates, one hand a tentative inch or three from the Princess's shoulder. He has no right to do this.]

I have seen no such things. I promise you that. And I - they say I came here as a shinki, too, and I swear that is simply impossible! I have forgotten nothing, Princess. No man could forget a thing like this.

[darkestbefore]

Wait, Kija, wait. Slow down.

[ She holds up one hand to stop him, because there's far more information in those simple words than there might seem on the surface. Her chest is still tight, the words hard to force past the lump in her throat, but she forces them out all the same, even if her voice is a little shakier for it.

She searches his face, sorting through the flow of words, his emphatic statements, and tries to decide where to start. ]

Who has said you were here as a shinki? Is such a thing even possible? That you would be brought here as one, only to be changed to the other?

[justclaws]

[Of course, it is a lot to take in.

[Her voice is shaking. Why is her voice shaking? Perhaps he should have touched her sounder after all.]

I did not understand it myself at first. When I arrived here, I met men who knew me just as surely as we know one another, and who were surprised that I should understand so much of myself, and nothing at all about this world. These were honest men, Princess, they had no reason to lie. There are others here, too, quite like myself. It would seem the Gods of this world are indecisive.

[That is unsatisfactory, too. It is no kind of world, where the Gods are capricious as men.]

[darkestbefore]

Indecisive?

[ Her voice cracks on that word, and there is a flare of something in her gaze, but she catches it before it can flare up and quickly spins about to face away from him, giving herself a moment to try and compose herself. And to control the sudden surge of heat she can feel tingling along her palms, dangerously close to the surface.

But as there's no one here to unleash any of that on - except one of her dear friends and her orchard, there is no choice by to try and stifle it back for the time being. ]

Do the souls they bring here really mean so little to them?

[justclaws]

Princess?

[He should not have spoken.

[Her voice breaks. There is something in her gaze he cannot begin to define, and Kija wishes he could take back that last incautious word, take back all of it, if only it would make her feel better. He had intended - he is not quite sure what he had intended by calling her aside and speaking of the unspeakable. He had hoped, all the same, that it might help - that she would know this was not forever, this was not certain, that there was more going on than could be understood, never mind seen...

[And now this. He should have touched her shoulder, and said all the right things; there is a knot in his stomach, hard and painful, and his breath catches at him. He should have known how to comfort her.]

I am sorry. I should not have--

[And then she speaks again, and he falls silent. He gazes at her back. He wishes more than anything to find the men behind this, to throw them at the Princess's feet and demand they answer her. How could they do this to her, to all of them? Unforgivable.]

I cannot say. When they toy with our lives, they must feel themselves justified. Such men always do. It is despicable.

[darkestbefore]

[ Her hands are trembling and for a moment there's a strange shimmer in the air around her before it fades, easily dismissed as an effect of the sun, perhaps.

She takes a deep breath. And another. And after a moment, she can turn to face him again. And while she's not completely composed, she at least looks more in control of her emotions. For the moment. Although there's a fierce light in her eyes as she moves back to his side once more. ]

You have nothing to apologize for, Kija. None of this is your doing. Any more than it is Hak, or Jae-Ha, or Zeno's. We are all being toyed with here, it seems.

These men you spoke to, who told you that you were a shinki here before... had they heard of such things happening before? Do they know of anything that might have happened to explain this sudden change? [ Was it something that could be duplicated, perhaps? ]

[justclaws]

There are others, I am certain. I have heard them spoken of, at least.

[What he needs are names.

[Unfortunately, he cannot seem to recall any. If only the people who were brought to this world had slightly more sensible names! If they could only be less peculiar, he is certain he would remember them better.]

It happens after an absence, most commonly. People who return to their own worlds as shinki will sometimes be brought back as Gods, though others will vanish and return unchanged, forgetting even their time here. I have yet to find an explanation as to why, still less what I might or might not have done to cause such a change. I have asked, princess. Such things bewilder us all, perhaps even the Gods of this world.

[There was that whole mess with Youji, with his master before: but such behavior deserved punishment, not promotion. It is all so desperately confusing.]

It must be possible, too, for a God to become a shinki. Though I have heard nobody talk of that.

[darkestbefore]

[ Yona pauses, because there's something in what he said that strikes a chord. Especially when aligned with her fears about what had happened to Hak and Jae-Ha. ]

I have heard that some are returned to their world with just as little warning as when we arrived. But shinki... if they've truly met the fate the visions we receive hint at, then there is nothing for them to go back to. And yet, they still do. If they still come back as gods, with their memories intact and potentially not dead, then...

[ Wait, now something else has occurred to her and her eyes flicker up to Kija's face in sudden concern. ] You're alright, aren't you? In the time you came from? I know you said you are far past what I know and remember, but if you were here as a shinki before..?

[ What has she gotten them all into? ]