26 - The Gods' Month

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone!
What: Helping the Heavens prepare for the yearly Meeting of the Gods
When: October 20 - 21
Where: Around the Heavens (and maybe some mortal shopping trips, too!)
Summary: Amaterasu has been told that the newly arrived residents of the Heavens want to take a bigger part in security and administration, so she's convinced her shinki to let them help with preparations for the big yearly gala. It's also time for shinki to rate their gods and gods to find out what their shinki really think of them....







Security Precautions

The white-robed shinki guards are working hard to secure the Meeting Hall for the arrival of all the gods of Japan. Hard-working shinki are scurrying everywhere! Despite Amaterasu's orders, they're still a little unsure of and standoffish towards the strangers who they're supposed to work with, but there's a lot of work to do, so they're happy to hand out jobs to small groups of newcomers before returning to their own duties.


• Help clear out any small spirits who might have sneaked back into the Meeting Hall after the spring cleaning, from sootsprites to nekomata, animal spirits from the park or well-camouflaged plant spirits.


• Check the magical writing worked into art or inlaid in wood all over the building to protect the Meeting Hall from attack, and make sure none of it is scuffed or damaged.


• Join in on the patrols around the building or spend some time guarding one of the gates. It's boring, but the shinki appreciate the help.


• Test the integrity and extent of the magical protections with glass balls that turn purple outside the protections on the Meeting Hall and clear inside them. But don't drop your glass ball! They're fragile.

Event Preparation

It's not just security that the shinki are asking newcomers to help with. They also have plenty of work to do getting ready for the festivities! The Meeting Hall floors need to be swept and scrubbed, the gardens need to be trimmed and tidied, artwork needs to be dusted, flower arrangements arranged, damaged furniture repaired and rafters cleared of cobwebs. Anyone with particularly good handwriting can help write out invitations and name cards, too.

Besides cleaning and calligraphy, there's lots of food and beverages to purchase! Grab a shopping list, a wad of cash, and head to the Near Shore to pick up the necessities. (Don't forget to keep the receipts.)

Rate Your God

Shinki have the opportunity to submit surveys on their life with their new gods before the big event, and even request a transfer if they want one. Early in the morning, every new shinki will be visited by a small white dove carrying a scroll that, when unrolled, reveals the following questionnaire:


What is your name?

What is your god's name?

How do you see your duties as a shinki?

What is your favorite part of life with your god?

What is your least favorite part of life with your god?

What advice would you like to give your god?

Do you wish to be assigned to a different god? []Y []N


Fill it out, discuss it with your fellow shinki, forget about it until you find it under a pile of junk mail in two months: the choice is yours! Gods will receive a copy of the answer that their shinki submit to "What advice would you like to give your god?" -- there's no name attached, but they might be able to guess.

Heavenly Record Keeping

Gods don't get to skip the paperwork entirely! Although the Heavens aren't asking them to rate their shinki, new gods don't have all of their vital statistics on file quite yet, so they get a questionnaire too. The same white doves will drop their scrolls by in the morning, with the following set of questions:


What is your name?

How many shinki do you currently have?

What are your areas of divine responsibility?

How do you see your duties as a god?

What traits do you most want in a shinki?

Do you wish new shinki to be assigned to you? []Y []N


Unlike the doves attending on the shinki, the doves who drop off the gods' scrolls will remain close by and chirp loudly until they finish and submit their questionnaires. If a god is particularly lazy about it, they might even start pecking.

In Summary:

• Help protect the Meeting Hall
• Lend a hand cleaning and shopping
• Rate your gods
• Help Heaven keep its records up to date
• Have fun~

Comments

writing

[revolutionfalcon]

[Unfortunately, there's a few people examining the writing (and not necessarily just for the reasons of checking the spellwork is secure). Soft, almost silent footsteps are all that announce someone else's presence before a deep, brusque voice comes from one side of the doorway.]

If you're going to gape, do it somewhere else. [Shun doesn't have much of a mind for mincing words, or being any less direct than this sort of thing.]

Re: writing

[doodlebuginette]

[Unfortunately for Shun, the one effectively blocking the doorway is in a good mood and not even such a blunt statement is enough to rain on her parade.

The most he's likely to get is the sheepish smile she's throwing his way before slowly scooting off to the side to let him through.]

Sorry~ I wasn't expecting anyone to come through here.

[revolutionfalcon]

There's enough people checking the wards that you should be. [Again, he puts it very bluntly, even as he moves through the doorway and to one side of it so he can start checking the sigils around it.]

I don't suppose you noticed any damage with all that staring you were doing. [He moves down the door quickly, despite the fact that he's clearly keeping an eye on her between checking the sigils - it's pretty clear he's not fond of being in this close proximity with someone he doesn't know.]

[doodlebuginette]

Maybe, but there are a lot of wards to check over.

[And sure, there'd been a couple of people who'd come through here but that was a while ago. So she's not terribly worried about it.]

Mmm... nope. Everything looks good around here.

[Since the entire point of this is to look for damage, she's just shaking her head because really she would've mentioned it before this point if she had seen something.]

Have you found much damage?

[revolutionfalcon]

That doesn't mean nobody's going to cross over the same area or want to pass through. Especially since there are people trying to clean in here as well. [He's apparently not changing his mind on that one, though he's more focused on checking the sigils even as he says it, mostly just keeping her in his peripheral vision so he can tell if she moves.]

Less than I would've expected from work this old, but a few scratches, and there's plenty of them worn down. [He could fix that himself, in theory, but if he went too far back with his decay reversal he'd end up breaking them another way.] They apparently have enough sense to take care of these, if nothing else.

[doodlebuginette]

[... And... he had a point. Drat!] Oh! Well I hadn't thought of that. My mistake. [While she's probably not as remorseful as he might hope, she does feel a bit silly now.]

I wasn't really expecting to find much damage at all. It just seems like something they'd be extra careful to keep up with. [Or at least, that's the way it seems to her. Maybe she'd been overestimating things?] Do you know how to fix them? [Because she doesn't! She's really just been keeping an eye out for any that might need touching up and making note of any spots to let someone more qualified know about them later.] Mmm. If I were going to focus on one thing to take care of, this would probably be it.

[revolutionfalcon]

[Shun doesn't want remorse, since he doesn't particularly like being apologised to for no reason, but he's fine with actual realisation of what was going on. He sounds a bit dismissive about the idea that they'd be careful to keep them up, though.]

They're better kept than everything else here, but if they let it get like this between meetings, as if they're going to keep the wards in perfect shape. [His bar for "taking care of" is low when the comparison point is the spirit-ridden, unweeded and dirty state of the meeting hall right now.]

I don't know, but I've spoken to some other people more familiar with the magic who do. It's not the kind of thing I'd step in to fix unless I was sure I knew what I was doing anyway.

[doodlebuginette]

[Remorse is probably the last thing she's feeling, so it's a good thing he's not hoping for it.]

Are they really? [Marinette is not entirely sure how she should feel about that. Wouldn't it make more sense to make sure that everything was working well, particularly things that were meant to be keeping everyone safe? Personally, it seemed like something she'd want to keep on top of. But she's not in charge, and she can't even imagine what it must be like to try and keep everything running smoothly.]

I don't really know much about magic, so I'm afraid I wouldn't be much help. I know what you mean though. [She can certainly understand not wanting to try to help only to accidentally muck things up further. That's something she can relate to, as she's been in that situation numerous times, to varying degrees of 'success'.]

[revolutionfalcon]

You must've seen the idiots getting run around in circles by the animal spirits and soot sprites. This place is a mess. If they know this sort of thing is a problem, they've had hundreds of years to find a better solution than a last-minute cleanup.

[Especially if this meeting is meant to be so "important", because right now, it just seems to Shun like they couldn't care less about the state of the place or what's supposed to be going on here. For all they like to rave about respect, it's not much of a show of it to anyone.]

There's enough people here who know it, but most of them aren't laying a finger on the wards because they'll probably get blamed for sabotage. Everyone knows the old gods couldn't care less about us.

[doodlebuginette]

[As it happened, she had noticed that by this point. But it was hardly her place to try and act like she could do any better. But even still... he did have a point.]

I have noticed. [She's not sure she'd call them idiots, though. But maybe she's just too nice for that...]

Oh. Well that's... [Okay, so she's not even sure what that is, and so she's just trailing off, completely at a loss for words. That couldn't be entirely true, could it?]

Would people really get blamed for sabotage just for trying to help? That doesn't seem right...

[revolutionfalcon]

The old gods don't have a history of trusting us. Amaterasu seems interested in making it work, but her shinki are the ones running this, and they're still wary. If they see something like that, they're not going to assume we're acting in good faith.

[The worst part is he can't really blame them, considering the attack on Amaterasu's temple a while ago. But it does make this more annoying and feel more like the physical labour equivalent of lip service than it otherwise would.

The fact that she doesn't seem to be aware of that has him somewhat suspicious of one thing, though.] I'm guessing you haven't been here very long if you don't already know that.

[doodlebuginette]

Trust is earned, I suppose. [Mari is just nodding, because that seems like the most obvious thing in the world. At least to her.] But maybe they're too focused on trying to keep Amaterasu safe to take the risk of trusting people they don't really know that well?

[No, she couldn't really blame them for that either. Still, she'd like to think that eventually they might come to realize that at least some of the newer gods and their shinki could be trusted with things.]

You're right. I'm one of the newer ones, so I haven't been around long enough to know as much as you do. [Her tone isn't snotty or antagonistic, because she's just pointing out facts. There's no reason to be snarky about it.] How long have you been here?

[revolutionfalcon]

Earning it is one thing, making us clean up their messes constantly and still not considering that good enough just because we're not old gods is another. [Shun entirely understands and endorses the concept of earning trust, but this has been going on for something like nine months now, to his knowledge. That's more than long enough to come to some kind of decision.] We even had to save Amaterasu when her temple burned, I didn't even see any of the old gods that night.

[And the new gods had been out the entire day on top of it, which meant they had less reason to be present and active in that mission than the old ones.

As for Marinette's question, Shun shrugs as if it doesn't matter, despite his answer being pretty exact.] About six and a half months.

[doodlebuginette]

[That... is not actually something she'd considered before.] Yea, that doesn't seem right. Then again, punishing someone for something entirely out of their control is never a good idea. [Apparently this place wasn't exempt from that kind of silliness.] Why are they like that? [She's trying not to be too critical because there are two sides to every story, but a lot of what she's heard is difficult to understand.] I'm just glad that someone was around to save Amaterasu when she needed it. And I'm sure she is too!

[His answer surprised her a little, if only because she would have figured he'd been here longer. But her smile is kind and she nods.] You must miss your home very much.

[revolutionfalcon]

Tradition, probably. They think we're inferior because we're human, not gods created for the role, even though they need human spirits to show them how to act. [Considering that's, in essence, the job of a shinki outside of being a weapon. It seems very backwards to Shun, but it's also something he doesn't expect to be changed without a fight.

Passing over the remark on Amaterasu, because if she's being that sunny about it already then he definitely doesn't want to share that he was one of the two who saved her, his expression twists into something faintly derisive at her last remark.]

I don't need anyone's sympathy, especially not from someone I've never met before.

[doodlebuginette]

[That made sense, but she didn't have to like it or agree with it.] Unfortunately that's a common thing, and not only among gods. [It does seem pretty ridiculous, but she can't really do much about it.

And yea don't hold your breath waiting on her to be less sunny. Sorry, Shun. She's not even going to acknowledge his expression.]

Hi! I'm Marinette. And it wasn't sympathy. You don't seem like the type of person to ever need sympathy, and I don't know you well enough to know one way or the other. I just figured that you were brought here against your will just like everyone else, and also that you would probably miss your home because I miss mine.

[revolutionfalcon]

That wasn't an invitation. [Still, he gives a faintly dismissive sound after a brief pause, starting to turn away.] But you're right about one thing. "Sympathy" comes from people who can figure out that not everyone thinks about things the same way as them.

[He starts to head off, continuing down another line of wards, but making a gesture back towards the ones on the doorway.] They're in fine condition. So you might as well go block a different doorway.

[doodlebuginette]

I know. [Even so, she'd wanted to introduce herself since they'd been speaking this long. He's more than welcome to pretend he doesn't know her name if that's what he wants to do. She's just nodding at that though.] Exactly. Not everyone thinks the same way. That's part of what makes things so exciting.

[She's not going to stop him from wandering off.] I think I'll do that. Nice talk~ [Mari doesn't even try to hide the grin as she turns to go find another doorway to look at.]

[revolutionfalcon]

[At this point, Shun mostly just thinks Marinette sounds hopelessly naive. On one hand, he isn't the sort to hang around and keep trying to squash that, but on the other, he isn't the sort to respond to it at all, really.

Without anything remotely approaching a farewell or even an acknowledgement that she's been talking to him, he goes back to his work. The only sign that he's even still recognising her presence is the fact that he keeps an eye on her in his peripheral vision until they're out of sight of each other.]