the weather vane will say it smells like rain today

[lancifolium]

WHO: Lily Evans & You!
WHEN: Throughout early June
WHERE: The farm mostly for now, hopefully branching out to the woods, the trials, etc.
WHAT: A catch-all! Some farm and forest based things, maybe the trials will make an appearance (hopefully)
WARNINGS: None so far, will update as needed

( starters in comments, both open and otherwise, feel free to hmu if you don’t see anything that suits either via pm or on plurk, or toss starts my way, whatever’s clever. if brackets are more your thing i’m good to match format. )

Comments

[scrapgege]

It's also not something I can do, and yes, it's very old. But this place is very old. The woods are very old, and so is the earth, and the water.

[Which he doesn't particularly mind, but now that she mentions it...]

I don't know if this rune is old, though. It was there where we arrived, but i can't get a sense of who put it there or how long ago.

[lancifolium]

[ Looking back at the rune on the ground she considered what he'd said, leaning slightly to study it once again. ]

Do we know anything about the farm's previous occupants?

[ Turning back to the man she smiled, shaking her head as she held out her hand. ]

Forgive me, I'm Lily Evans, it's nice to meet you.

[scrapgege]

[The man cups his hands in front of his body and gives a small bow of his head.]

I'm called Xie Lian. Well met.

hmmm, this place belonged to a man named Anurr. Or it still does? It's actually a bit confusing. Anurr was apparently a very well respected chief among the people here and people tell legends of him and he used to use this place for meetings and things but... apparently, he's still around? And I'm not quite clear if he's alive, or dead, or undead. because the stories people tell about him go back at least four or five generations, and I know humans don't live that long.

We ended up here so we'd get outside of the city.

[lancifolium]

[ The more Xie Lian spoke, the more surprised Lily looked. She had heard bits and pieces about Anurr, and his rival Unhalad, but knowing that he had once lived on this farm was something she had not expected to hear. ]

Humans certainly don't. He's who the people in the woods follow, isn't he? The rival of the one who brought us here? Unhalad?

[scrapgege]

Yes, I think so.

I think... I think they're both a lot older than they should be, somehow.

And the body in the lake...

Hopefully she has already learned about the body in the lake.]

It's the man who was chieftain before Anurr, and that he killed and replaced.

Or, well... I don't know if he was killed. They tied rocks to his limbs and drowned him, but given how this place is... it's possible he didn't die.

[lancifolium]

I know the body in the lake.

[ The surprise in her expression was replaced very swiftly by dread. Lily frowned at the elegant gentleman and shook her head, her eyes going wide. ]

It's not a dead body at all. It kept me down there.

[ She looked troubled just having mentioned it, her voice going soft full of worry. ]

When I came to this place, those people in the forest pushed me into the lake and that body kept me down there until dawn. It's not dead, at least, not at all in the traditional sense.

[scrapgege]

... It kept you down? Physically? For a whole night, but you did not die?

[But she feels human, though. Although... there seems to be some kind of power there.]

We had to fight off some of the forest people when we first arrived here. But we haven't really seen any of them in a while, not up close. They don't really approach anymore.

[lancifolium]

[ Lily shook her head, frowning at the question. ]

I don't know how I didn't die. I remember being pushed and I remember the horrible grip it had on me.

[ The bruise has faded considerably over time, but she lifted her arm so that he could see the faint yellowy outline of the bruise, shaped like a handprint she had found on her arm once she had gotten free and dragged herself to the shore of the lake. ]

[scrapgege]

...Did you feel weird afterwards? A bit fuzzy headed, as if you'd... forgotten something?

[He wonders now, after what the Merchant said.]

When I arrived, we were all kept on a ship and they had a mirror. A cursed mirror. And they'd put us in front of it and it would borrow things from us. Memories. Abilities. the mirror was broken when we were freed from the ship but... the Merchant said its curse was transferred to the body in the lake.

It takes pain and bad memories away from you.... but only a little. Not completely, they come back after a while.

[lancifolium]

The part between stepping off of the train in London and ending up at the lake's edge with those people pushing me - that's the fuzzy bit.

[ Her loathing for the blank space in her memory showed on her face, shifting uncomfortably as she crossed her arms. ]

Why would they borrow things from you? To sponge off your ability?

[scrapgege]

I think people said they'd want to... replicate our abilities, somehow. But something went wrong when the mirror broke. The curse escaped.

It went to the body in the lake, and it started giving back the things it took. Some of it. But not all to the right people. Some people saw memories that weren't theirs, but the people whose memories it was also remembered it so...

[He looks slightly frustrated.]

I don't understand how it works. Or the real purpose of it. All I know is that it doesn't work the way I know a curse should work where I come from.

[lancifolium]

[ By the time he had finished speaking Lily's eyes were round. ]

It's not like any curse I've heard of either.

[ Unconsciously Lily lifted her hands to her chin, covering her mouth while frowning thoughtfully. ]

Curses can be awful, they can do a good deal of harm, but a curse escaping to a new host when its original object was broken?

[ She shook her head. ]

At the very worst it would drive the person who broke the object to madness or death, but escaping? The implications are rather bleak, if dark magic like that exists in this place.

[scrapgege]

I know curses that can move from people to people, or objects to people. What i don't get is what it does exactly. And also who could be powerful enough to create it in the first place.

[Definitely bleak on all counts.]

Hopefully you'll be fine, but you should ask Young Master Wei for a talisman just in case.

[lancifolium]

Would the thing that brought us here be powerful enough, do you think?

[ He seemed knowledgeable on the matter, and far more familiar with the way things worked in this place, she was eager to hear what he had to say. ]

A talisman? For protection?

[ They weren't widely used where she came from, but she had read about protective sigils and in Ancient Runes. ]

[scrapgege]

Probably. We still don't know how they did it, after all.

[Unfortunately, he doesn't know much more. One thing he knows is that this place put back a curse on him from his own world that had been previously removed, and that too seems impossible, and yet....]

Yes. They're drawn on pieces of paper, and they're really efficient if the person making them knows what they're doing.