|
Later in the night…
The bonfire is already prepared in the middle of the Freehold Hollow, a pile of wood and kindling all set up. As the Longest Night draws to a close, Lux steps out of the crowd and demands the attention of all—not quite a blinding light, but a flare that lights up the darkness for a flash and draws the eye towards them. They hold in their hand a lit candle as they walk to the pyre.
“Winter is a time of darkness and cold. When we must decide what is dearest to us, what we wish to preserve and what we wish to reap. The cold is harsh and takes from us. So it is important to know what you wish to protect. What you want to cling to to plant in the spring to see grow. This is a time to carve away the rots that will keep us from surviving… And thriving. Think of what burdens you, what hardships you’ve carried this past year… And throw it into the fire. Prepare yourself to grow strong and new.”
Lux kneels down, putting the candle to the kindling. It lights up quick, the flames spreading in a wave of light—light that mingles with their own mien and mantle, for a moment. The firelight flickers like an aurora borealis, the prismatic cold colors of Winter, before the fire turns hot, spreading heat through the Hollow. The darkness is pushed back, drawing everyone in to bask in the warmth of community and sacrifice.
Bailey approaches the bonfire, frowning at the kindling that is going up fast. They’re cautious about getting too close, being made of… well, straw, but they get close enough. From their pocket she pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. The page is unfolded and smoothed out, revealing a crude sketch. The pencil is faded, but a building can be made out. She stares down at the paper for a long moment, then exhales a breath, crumpling it up into a ball between her hands. Face set, she tosses the paper into the bonfire, then turns to walk off back to the edge of the festivities.
At one point during the time the fire is still up the broad shouldered Spring courtier makes an appearance, wearing a thick mess of winter clothes, bearing her large sword on her back. Is Spicy back from traveling elsewhere?
She set a box down onto the ground next to the fire, pulls out a folded piece of fabric, it's dark blue and has some yellow stars on it. it looks worn and torn.
"It's time I stop missing what I can't have back." She folds it further, packing it tight and throws it into the flames. It goes up in flame in a significantly accelerated fashion. She kicks the box back into her arms and walks away from the fire. (edited)
At some point in the night Ylva wanders over to the fire and tosses in her carving. It is a model of her, down to the detail, carved with an open Gristlegrinder maw.
She mutters under her breath. "I think its time for you to go."
Roger approached the fire, with a box of papers. It wasn't clear what was inside, except the outside of the box said Contracts. He threw the box into the flames and watched his past life of crime burn away.
While it couldn't be said that he had the artist's touch Asbolus had made a valiant effort at it between his conversation with Lux and Roger earlier in the day, approaching the fire with a piece of paper folded neatly in quarters. "No more waiting." He said quietly, placing the page upon the flame and watching as the edges caught and it swiftly turned to ash. Once all was said and done he stepped back, giving others space to make their own offerings.
Evan plodded up to the fire carrying that olive drab duffel, and bent to pull a similar bundle from inside- this a crumpled mess of an old OG-107 uniform, Vietnam era, stained with soot and reeking of smoke and char, wadded up and cinched tight with some olive drab cloth. "Done bein' a soldier. Bein' a piece on a board. Nah. Not for me, fam. Y'ain't my general, mothafuck, y'all can HAVE this back." A whip of his hand and it pitched into the flames. He bent and zipped up the duffel, now empty but for some more jicama, and moved back away from the flames once more.
Avery approached quietly, a bit nervous. A few of their feathers were gathered in their hands. For those that knew their normal look, they could see the few spaces on their cloak that were incomplete around the shoulder blades. A place that they wouldn't need to see but they knew was there. Now intentially imperfect.
Avery whispered to themself. "I'm not his anymore...I can be me...and be here with friends." Avery lets the maybe dozen feathers, all bound together by twine, fall into the bonfire before they move away.
As the fire burns, Joy eventually shows up here, the white hoodie tied around her waist, showing off a green tanktop torn away from use. She's carrying a stack of papers, tied together by rubber bands. It seems to range from bills, study notes and pages torn out of various books.
She kneels next to the fire and starts to burn each of the pieces of papers one by one. Tests, study notes and other communications from when she went to school, her lease at the motel, her first pay stub there.
Then, within her hand, a specific bill, one she found when exploring a market with other people of the Shackamaxon Freehold. Of course, she kept the information on it written down somewhere. It seems as if she struggles heavily with letting that one go, her face twisting between hatred and distress. "I will mourn my hatred for you."
Then she chucks it into the fire. She falls back, sitting on the ground, watching the slightly brighter flare up in the flame through a veil of tears in her eyes.
She takes several deep breaths, shuddering at first, but through control, it becomes deeper, complete. Freeing, in a way. A blast of complete cold swirl around her as she puts on her Ice-type hoodie and just leaves the area at a slow, deliberate pace.
They've been helping Doll keep the food stocked up -- with no Steward of the Midwinter Hearth, someone has to keep the Feast going -- but at some point, Teagan slips away to the Bonfire at the end of the night, carrying a tightly-rolled bundle.
There's no explanation, no words, no elegy to whatever it is they choose to leave behind. The Mirrorskin unrolls the bundle, unfurling an extremely worn quilt, machine-made but relatively high-quality when it was made a long, long, long time ago. They drape it over the fire, the gesture fanning the fire and sending sparks and dancing tendrils of flame swirling up into the dawn.
The cotton batting catches, puffing up as the orange, yellow and red cotton burst into flame. Threads shrivel and briefly sizzle. Teagan watches it for a moment, hands in the pockets of their long charcoal leather coat, and their skin ripples as if turning itself inside out. The black onyx of their skin gleams as it roils like boiling water, rippling outward as that black turns into something chrome-like, the silver and glass of liquid mirror replacing that black onyx for a handful of seconds. They stand there, skin reflecting back the burning quilt, smooth Mirror on every inch of visible skin save the shattered mirrors of their eyepits, until all the cotton has well and truly fluttered up into the sky as wilted ash.
Then, still silent, they turn on their heel as the iridescent black returns, and walk off towards the tables again. Back to work.
At some point Artie steps forward out of the night. All evening, his leather bag has been at his side, kept close without clinging to it.
When he takes his turn before the flames, the smith reaches into the bag and extracts a crown of laurels dried and golden with care and age.
Holding them up he solemnly meets the gazes of those who watch. "There's a phrase we all probably know: to rest on your laurels. It's a thing I've been doing for a while really. Not that I'm anyone special or anything, but even still... I'm still just a page. Someone stewing beneath the victories and endeavors of our Freehold. Someone who should be giving more and being more amongst our number. So this year I burn the safety of past victories as a minor player in hopes to grow and make new ones as someone worth mentioning."
And with that, the page flicks the ring of leaves into th fire. Naught but kindling at best, it is gone in an instant, little but wisps of thin white amoke dispersed in the cold night (edited)
Vorpal shows up late in the evening's bonfire burn (but don't let that stop you setting your visit whenever it's appropriate! It took her a long while to figure out what she wanted to burn. She knew the concept, but the token was... trickier.
Time handled that for her.
She arrived with a simple, but functionally fantastic little candelabra she carved from wood, with her own fingers. It felt more proper to make it herself, with herself. Half of the nine stands are empty. Five have plain white candles, tiny ones, stuck in. The center stand, the tallest, is the only one that's lit.
She sits, and sticks the hannukyiah in the dirt at her feet, and takes the shamash to help light the other four. "This is what you get," She said to the flames as the newborn fires started to melt their way down the little candles. "Halfway through. You get the first half. The one where I was..."
Scared.
"Nervous. About reaching out to my people. About what might keep me separated if I tried."
She watches the little flames eke their way down the candles.
"But the only thing separating me right now are those nerves. That's what you get. The nerves. The dithering, the distractions. You get that first half.
I get the half that comes next."
She sits there, in the quiet and the dark and the hot front and frozen back.
Waiting for the candles to burn down.
Sigrun arrived late in to Jackie's vigil, carrying a bundle with her and holding her spear. She was dressed in her corpsewife get up of pale linens and funeral wrappings, white make up, and charcoal in the mouth and over the eyes. She was wearing some conspicuous raven feathers, which are as out of place on her as a Cowboys jersey.
With Jackie's help and after a long night of tripping shrooms and ritual bloodletting, Sigrun revealed the burden she carried and her intended donation to the flames was none other than her mildly storied blade Sigsverd, broken at the tang. It along with some runes and its sheathe were consigned to flame with a conclusion of ritual prayer.
Full log: https://www.fromdusktilljawn.com/wiki/Logs:Let_It_Shine
[CW: Pregnancy, blood loss, frank norse discussions of mortality and the meaning of being, a very brief christian bible camp song.]
Lux is one of the last to leave an offering for the bonfire. They come as most of the crowds have left and the fire is dimmer. They've changed out of their gown, back in dark comfortable layers. Their expression is no longer joyful, but introspective, lost in their own thoughts and gaze distant.
They step up to the flames and pull out a folded piece of cloth from their jacket pocket. It's folded too tightly to really make out what it is, but Lux knows that it's a pillowcase. The Bright One runs fingers over the soft material slowly, before quietly tossing it into the fire, where it quickly catches and burns.
Not long after Lux, as the winter sun fully returns, Ziv slips out of the shadows. The Siren, in soft-soled boots, moves mostly on their toes, and comes to the edge of the fire. She reaches her hand out, silently, and drops a broken watch into the fire. "I'm done being on autopilot," comes her voice, low and resonant, singing when she's still speaking. "I know what I want."
Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out a kippah which looks a little too big for them, and pins it into place with a pair of bobby pins before slipping back into the rest of the ebbing celebration.
It's about the middle of the evening, everyone in their own circles of friends and associate, when Jack breaks away from the festivities to approach the fire. He pulls a battered paper shopping bag from his backpack, and a broken down cardboard box, as well. Both the bag and the box have seen better days - still useful, the bag clearly holding something with some weight - but they've been around the block a few times.
Jack hunches over the paper, as if shielding it from prying eyes, and puts the box back together again, before dumping the contents of the bag into it. There's dull jingling, the clink of metal-on-metal, buffered by leather. It's a distinctive sound for anyone who knows.
"...Enough is enough," he mutters, and tosses full box and empty bag onto the fire. His hands deep in his jacket pockets, he watches the cardboard catch, watches the leather dry and shrink until it's burnt and gone. Sparks and charcoal fly into the air, and his own charcoal silhouette gives up a bit of its own, tiny scribbles dancing away to join the embers of a past life as it spirals upward and into the night. He waits until he can't even see the metal, the rings and studs, before he turns with a slow breath and returns to the celebration.
|