i'm looking for an easy thing [ OPEN MINGLE ]

[hyperlit]

Who: Anyone and everyone! Who wants to look at books?
What: BOOKVALANCHE
When: Let's say from the 25th and onward for simplicity
Where: The Storyteller's Temple, in addition to the library that's finally getting some much-needed attention
Warnings: Mark anything that comes up!



The library is finally getting some renovations! Between some new bookshelves (hope someone here is good at hauling) and a veritable cascade of all sorts of books and supplies, an awful lot needs to be transferred from the Temple to the heretofore unused library, and any help anyone has to offer is much appreciated!

But, of course, there's also so very much to go through for your own perusal. Just look at all this! Coloring books, puzzle books, stories of all sorts, comic books, fashion magazines, all sorts of survival texts...you name it.

This all needs to be put away and stored in those neat little waterproofing book protectors - shelves need to be moved, supplies need to be secured, and someone should probably take inventory. But also...there's a lot of fresh new reading material on an island that previously had none.

Isn't that worth looking over?

Comments

[deathfindsaway]

[Yasha!! Please!!

To be fair, Kravitz has... lost some of his affinity for bright flowers ever since Umui. He's been thankful not to have seen any of the blood red petals again that burst from his back, his previous body already dealt with before he revived. But he knows some people appreciate them.

Maybe he should make some kind of warning about that.]

Perhaps not very colorful flowers, if you see them. I... don't think that will help with the atmosphere we're going for here, due to some extenuating circumstances. Perhaps ferns? Maybe a spider plant, hm... something interesting to look at.

[She's probably going to ask, but if she doesn't, he's not going to just dump that into the conversation unprompted.]

[barberian]

(Kravitz is not the only person to have reacted strangely to the mention of flowers around Yasha before, and she pauses for a moment when he says this, suddenly thoughtful. Of course she's going to ask, she's just trying to work out how she can say it without being so sudden about it.

As if there's any other way to bring it up.)

... Why is that?

(Well, that's right out there. Yasha glances away, folding her arms across her chest.) I mean... I was talking to Ren once, about having a garden, and she seemed to think that it was a bad idea for some reason. That's all.

[deathfindsaway]

[Yeah he kinda thought that was coming. Kravitz sighs in a way that he's done many times, with the knowledge that he needs to say something sensitive and it's going to change the tone of the conversation. Yasha is easy to discuss these things with though- she doesn't explode or otherwise become someone he needs to comfort when they've discussed more rough topics in the past. So onward, he guesses.]

On one of the previous islands we visited, a vast majority of us contracted a disease that had laid dormant in that place. What we had thought was simply abandoned was the site of a plague, and... well, forgive the gruesome description, but it caused flowers to grow inside you. And eventually out.

[He finds himself reaching to rub at his neck. Even when it all healed, when he was remade, there are still a few dots down his back, in the patterns of broken wings those blood red flowers had pushed out. He can almost feel it again, like a phantom limb under his skin.]

It killed many people, and even those who survived dealt with pain and loss. So I'm afraid many of our associations aren't so pleasant anymore.

[barberian]

(Yasha takes this all in as stoically as Kravitz might have imagined she would, she just nods, and keeps her arms folded. That all lines up. Ren had come close to mentioning something about flowers hurting people, but Yasha hadn't wanted to press.)

Okay.

(... Is it bad to imagine that it might have been beautiful? Flowers, growing out of bodies. She thinks of the bare bones grave of Mollymauk, the cold, hard lump of dirt and the stick driven into the ground, heralding his coat. If flowers had grown from him, it would have been truer to him. Colourful, that is, exciting to look at.

She sighs, and rubs her arm, and her fingers pass gently over the cord wrapped around her bicep a few times, thoughtfully.)

I understand. I'll... try not to bring it up. Flowers, I mean, if it is hard for people to hear about them.

[deathfindsaway]

You couldn't have known.

[It was beautiful, among it all. The patches of flowers all over Umui, the way that life came through in death, the petals left everywhere shedding by corpses. He finds himself alright with most flowers, but he thinks for the ones that were growing out of him, he wouldn't want to see them again. Perhaps it was a cruel joke that his were bright red, dripped out of him in long petals like blood. There's something poetic there. He's refused to think about it.]

Besides, many of us that it happened to are not here anymore. A good portion of the island, I imagine, no longer remembers. But it was certainly... well. Not what we expected.

[He doesn't want to dissuade her, as it stands. She seems to have some sort of attachment, and far be it from him to ask for his own accommodations.]

I would just avoid wearing them or anything like that. I think just as plants, it should be alright.

[barberian]

Okay.

(She can do that. Yasha doesn't have much desire to wear flowers. They die that way, they crumble, and the petals come off. They go brown, and shrivel, and then she can't preserve their beauty. She's much happier to press them into her little book, and it seems like everybody affected by this event would be happier for her to do that too.)

... Thank you for letting me know.

(It's better to find out this way, then having somebody snap at her, or become mysteriously upset over her actions.)

[deathfindsaway]

Of course.

[He has no reason to lie to her about this if she requests it. It was gruesome, but this sort of discussion is how they actually move past it. History can be rough, but ignoring it will never resolve it quietly.]

Thank you for being so calm about this whole ordeal. If there are other things I can answer for you from my time here, I'd be happy to. Though I confess I have not been here since the start, so there is plenty unknown to me.

[barberian]

Okay. If I think of anything, I'll ask you.

(That's kind of him to offer. Though Yasha knows seldom about the outside world but she's used to travelling with both more knowledgeable people and book worms, ones who seemingly know everything about every place they set foot in. It's good to have somebody like that here, too.)

Thank you.