OPEN | let's change from the heart, let's shout

[nomorules]

Who: Anyone and everyone! That means you! Yes, you, c'mere.
Where: The stream and the lake.
When: July 12th, evening.
Rating: PG in case any of y'all get wild with that decorating.
Summary: Come and take part in a mini lantern ceremony, Wonderland-style. Mingle away, comrades!
The Story:





The evening of the 12th, visitors who feel like moseying their way to the stream where it empties out of the forest will be able to enjoy a summer celebration in the Japanese style. Outdoor lights illuminate the area, and tables hold all manner of art supplies and blank paper lanterns waiting to be decorated.

Didn't catch the network 411? Someone around will surely explain: it's a nod to toro nagashi, the paper lantern ceremony meant to guide the souls of the departed by decorating lanterns and setting them loose. Maybe you have a departed soul you'd like to remember, or a prayer to make. Maybe you'd just like to write a note message-in-a-bottle style. Maybe you just feel like taking the air and enjoying the sights. The choice is yours!

Either way, once the sun has set and lanterns have been decorated, the candles inside will be lit (remember fire safety, kids!), and the lanterns will be released into the water.

Gather at the lakeside afterward to watch them empty into the lake and enjoy the ambiance with some food and drink. Because we could all use a little more light in our lives, no?

Comments

frisk | ota

[determinedest]

[Maybe they shouldn't be here. They don't know a lot of the people here, they're rapidly starting to realize - or if they do, it's only in superficial ways. More like an imposition on something meant to be intimate.

Their work is quiet and restrained. Faint paint-strokes across the paper of a lantern, sketching out rudimentary shapes.

The first, a smiling flower with gold petals. The second, a tall, blue fish-like warrior, fiercely squinting with a single golden eye. The third, a white-furred goatlike monster, a shirt striped in yellow and green. The fourth, a man wearing a grinning cat's mask. The fifth, a skeleton, tall and lanky, with a stripe of crimson about his throat to symbolize a flowing scarf. The sixth, a small girl with short hair, bearing a sword in hand. The seventh, a boy with a baseball cap and a mess of curly hair, his grin gapped with missing front teeth.

Friends who have left, every one of them. They remember everyone who leaves.

Each one, lit and sent out across the liquid dark of the water in turn. Their gaze remains shadowed, almost deathly still but for the slow blink of hooded eyes.

They've not really allowed themself the time, really.

To grieve.]

[pleasereset]

[Asriel didn't really need to be here. There weren't any lanterns he felt he should make - after all, this place seems to bring back the dead. But he's curious what a lantern ceremony is, and he has all the free time in the world now that he couldn't leave this place. Still, despite the somber atmosphere, seeing the lake lit up with paper lanterns was an incredible sight.

He sees Frisk closer to the lake. Watches them for a while as they make their own lanterns. He... should probably let them be. It looks like they're doing something important.

After a lot of indecisiveness and hesitation, Asriel decides to give a quick hello.]

Howdy, Frisk.

[The voice is coming from behind them, and Asriel curiously glances over to see what kind of lanterns they're making.]

[determinedest]

[It's maybe a little awkward to be caught making lanterns memorializing the last two times he was here - or the last one time he was here, along with the flower he asked them not to think of as "him". That's...his decision, isn't it?

A world of memories and words left unresolved still separate the distance between them, but they still smile faintly. Trying to be the friend he deserves to have.]

Hi.

[Maybe he wouldn't have much reason to be here. But after a year, they've learned that sometimes people don't come back.]

Are you...gonna make any? [they say, shifting Undyne's lantern to cover the one with Flowey painted on it.]

[pleasereset]

[Luckily, Asriel hasn't noticed the ones with him on it.]

Um... it's to send away souls, right? I'm not really sure who I'd make one for.

[Chara's alive, and the thought of making a lantern for them was kind of a painful thought. He isn't really looking to "send them away", out of fear it might really happen. Everyone he's really cared about is either here or should be living happily on the Surface.]

You made one for auntie- [Asriel bites his lower lip, feeling a little embarrassed.] -you made one for Undyne?

[determinedest]

[Auntie?

They can't quite prevent the small parting of their lips, the faint lift of their eyebrows in undeniable surprise. Even if he corrects the slip of the tongue immediately, they maybe - they hadn't realized that he -


But...Asgore was her father too, wasn't he?]

She used to be here. Um. Over a year ago.

[Probably...best. If they don't address his little slip directly. He already looks mortified enough about it as it is.]

[pleasereset]

[If he could blush, he would be. But he continues on, as if Frisk hadn't heard his slip-up. He started calling her "auntie Undyne" when he was too little to really understand that Undyne wasn't actually his aunt, and it stuck even as he got older.]

Oh... really? It would've been nice to talk to her again.

[Without y'know, trying to kill her.]

She went home?

[determinedest]

A long time ago.

[Frisk nods at that. Before...before he did, actually. Just a little while before. He'd slunk into Alphys's room, appropriated the face and voice of the woman she loved and missed, and started to laugh.

They still remember that night. Who could forget it?]

Sometimes people disappear.

[pleasereset]

[Talk about awkward...

Asriel doesn't remember that night. What he did, how he hurt Alphys. As far as he understands, Undyne simply disappeared and the rest of the monsters here had to move on with their lives.

Still, to just up and disappear. Would he just up and disappear one day too? Would Frisk and Chara?]

... I see. So that's why you made a lantern. Since I don't have any to make myself, do you want me to help with yours?

[determinedest]

If you want.

[They spread Zacharie's out, still flattened as it is against the table. He's not quite painted in yet.]

This one's for Zacharie. He was, um...

He was a friend.

[A friend they trusted with their SOUL. With advice, and with a story about their life that they never succeeded in completing. There were a lot of things with him they'd left unfinished, with the unspoken expectation that he would simply be here forever.

...


Maybe he's happier like that.]

[pleasereset]

[There's a lot of questions that Asriel has, about what kind of people Frisk has met. What kind of things they've seen in Wonderland. It seems like everyone from his world has been here such a long time.

There was so much that happened, so much he doesn't know about... it's a little overwhelming, thinking about it all.

So he just starts with the simple questions.]

What was he like? Oh um... where do you want me to start?

[determinedest]

He needs a candle. A white one.

[Asriel, with his fire magic, is probably good at lighting one like that. The easy instruction makes it...it's better. Eases them into talking about him a little more.]

He was, um...he was from a video game. He knew it was a game too.

[pleasereset]

A white candle... okay.

[Asriel hasn't used fire magic in a while, it feels like. But it's easy enough to use a little magic to light a candle.]

Really? [Ah, so someone else knows how it feels.] ... Was it weird for him?

[determinedest]

It was weirder for everyone else. [They've achieved enough distance to be able to smile at that, now, the hard beat of panic that clouded their mind with a fuzz of indescribable static.]

He didn't mind it.

[Well, no. That's not exactly true.]

[A little soberly, they add - ]

But I think it made him sad.

[eatsyourscience]

[Souji notices Frisk as he's setting his own lantern into the water. He hesitates, then lets the lantern go before straightening up to move closer to where they're standing.]

You came.

[determinedest]

[They're just letting Zacharie's go, watching it drift across the dark sheen, when Souji approaches. He's familiar, now - a pale blur of his hair, and they don't even flinch anymore.]

Yeah. I, um...I wanted to remember everyone.

Everyone that's left.

[eatsyourscience]

[He nods. That had been the approach he'd taken, too.]

Are they okay at home...?

[Maybe they were people who'd had no life to go back to. Or maybe Frisk didn't know and the uncertainty prompted their inclusion.]

[determinedest]

Some of them.

[They sit back on their heels. Dustin's goes next. They...have no idea what his future might be like. If Eleven's with him, maybe he'll be okay.

They can only hope that he'll be okay.]

[eatsyourscience]

[He nods. It was the same for him. He'd written their names on a single lantern and he quietly admires the work Frisk put into their lanterns.]

A few I know aren't.

[He gestures at the lanterns bobbing in the water, shadowed by their reflections.]

What do you think of all of this?

[determinedest]

I think it's nice.

[That's the most generic praise possible for a ceremony like this. Solemn as it might be, it feels a little like a final goodbye that they never got to have, for many of the pictures they painted on their lanterns.]

Is this...do you do this back home?

[eatsyourscience]

Yes. Me and Ryuji are from the same place, so we know a lot of the same....observances.

[He can't call it a holiday or anything. Observance is the next best way to put it.]

Something like this is...cathartic. It's a way to physically let go of something that isn't physical.

[determinedest]

Yeah.

[It makes sense, in a way. A funeral feels more morbid, for those who haven't died. And as for those who have...

It's hard to say. They could always come back.]

It's a way to say goodbye.

[eatsyourscience]

But it feels really final. It kind of takes away hope that you'll see them again, doesn't it?

[determinedest]

I guess.

[Their gaze lingers on two lanterns in particular: one painted with the shape of a golden flower, its smile wide and slightly insincere, and one with a goatlike child, white-furred and wide-eyed, on its front.]

Maybe it's not really goodbye. It's just...

It's a "see you later, alligator."

[eatsyourscience]

[He smiles.]

Yeah. I think that's the best way of thinking of it this time.

[He looks at the same lanterns they're looking at.]

Who are they?

[determinedest]

Two of the same friend.

[Their thin shoulders lift in a small, slight shrug.]

He's back, actually. But the other hims are still gone.

[Are they separate people entirely? Do they count in their own right, or should they be pieced away from the whole? Does a memory of a separate timeline need to be parsed? Without sequential memory, do none of them count as the same Asriel?

...it's possible they shouldn't be considering concepts as complicated as that right now.]