Laura Villenueve (stcosmas) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2017-05-30 08:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | chernobog, marassa jumeaux 1, marassa jumeaux 2 |
i cannot guess what we'll discover
Who: John & Laura [ The Marassa Jumeaux ] & Matt [ Chernobog ].
What: The Marassa Jumeaux and Chernobog find themselves slightly at odds in a colorful cemetery.
Where: Inside yo' mind.
When: Here and there.
The small houses rose into the darkness with a scattered purpose, their bright colors glowing phosphorescent in the lack of light like a double exposure on film. Each splattered the night with a different hue: neon pink, sunny yellow, grass green. All were representative of who they now housed, how they had been in life; for each was a tomb, a standing monument to the dead souls lingering within their small, four-cornered walls.
Their line created a jagged horizon for anyone observing the city of the dead from afar, and they lived up to their name well; none moved, none breathed. There was nothing to ascribe life inside the small, walled village, until a figure lingered inside a rectangular doorway, considering its exit. Closer inspection revealed a tall person of indiscriminate gender, a winding sheet hiding any defining features. It seemed unsure about venturing out from its small home. A wind blew by, scattering gravel and making beads hanging from crosses dance with a clattering song. This seemed to entice the figure, who moved carefully, slowly, almost...floating on air.
In fact, its steps did not touch the ground, and it moved carefully. Even though it made no contact, a small gust seemed to push pebbles and other detritus away from where it might have walked, as it moved from one tomb to the next, apparently seeking something as it peeked into doorways and around corners. Each attempt was met with failure and disappointment, the figure's steps slowing as it did not find what it sought.
Finally, it paused before a bright blue tomb, the color jarring against the dirty sheet that wrapped the figure up. It peeked dimly into the doorway, and brightened.
"Here we are. Where have we been? Here, the whole time?"
"Possibly." The figure seemed to speak to itself; the voice was the same, reverberating with twin musical, genderless tones. "But perhaps not. We remember others' faces, and a dwelling not quite like this. Perhaps we sleep here, and wake elsewhere." One hand reached for the other, fingers tightly intertwining. "Were we summoned? We see no priest here."
The first figure brightened, shining in the presence of the second. It took on female attributes; a slimmer form, curved, a swell on its chest. Its fingers wrapped in its sibling's, holding tight.
"We do not know. We have seen nothing, aside from us." The cemetery stretching out from around them in a slightly circular pattern, empty of everything they were used to. No flowers brightened the hard, stony lines of the tombs; no chalk wrote emphatic words to the afterlife, begging for favors and blessings. It was a strange sight, this empty rainbow laid out before them.
"Perhaps we should walk?"
The second figure nodded. As its other half had done, it adopted the suggestion of a masculine shape: broader shoulders, a harder edge to its jaw. It moved forward, hands still laced together, its stride confident in spite of the strange surroundings. As they walked, they drifted closer to the most colorful of the tombs, those painted and repainted with loving, mournful hands. These places resonated strongly with the second figure. Places of death, of decay that spurred a greater understanding of life.
"We feel a presence," the being said, after a time. "There is another here. Not a priest… one similar to us."
And there was another presence, a few rows of graves away, if you could call it a presence. It was thick like fog and lingered on the ground, but it was the color of a fire-fueled smoke. Black and sooty and drifting over the crumbling pathways and gently brushing over the corner of the colorful graves as its passing seemed to drain the color until the brightness returned and the fog-like creature continued on.
Chernobog was not familiar with this landscape. He saw all seasons, winter with snow and summer with greenery, but this small city of small buildings was unique, as were the bright colors. He spun and drifted amongst the objects performing the search he had been wrapped up in ever since he came back to conscious thought. He didn’t want to get into the intricacies of the why or the how he had returned, but he did find himself asking over and over where is my queen and the question bubbled to the forefront of his mind with the hint of finding an answer when he noticed a figure of a woman… with a man?
Turning his drifting form, he spread out even more and allowed the air to take him. He came closer to the couple but did not speak, not yet, as he preferred the quiet observance.
"It is," the first figure agreed, as they drifted toward the smoke creature. "And it is not." It came to a stop, pausing a few feet away from the interloper; its twin stopped at the same point, the two of them moving as one as they floated over the ground. They seemed to muse over the creature for a moment as if wondering what to make of it; the first figure's eyes, a chilly white with no pupil to speak of, were fixed on the creature.
"Who are you, and how have you come here?"
Black eyes followed white, a sharp gaze that pierced the dark cloud. One arm folded tightly across a barrel chest. "And why," the second figure demanded.
Chernobog paused, for someone who was never noticed by mortals, he was garnering a lot of notice since returning to thought once again. Slowly, he collected himself. The drifting fog of his form gathered together, making something less see through yet still not quite corporeal. He righted himself as he took the form of a man and turned white eyes to the pair.
Then he spoke with a voice that drifted over air, lazy and thick with accent, “I am the black god and I do not know how I have come here. Who are you? Why are you here?”
"We do not know," the first figure offered, her shoulders rising and falling; her grip on the second figure's hand never wavered, and they remained steadfastly in place, as though frozen. "We do not know this place, either, but it is familiar. We do not know of a black god; what is it that you serve? What do you do?"
The second figure studied closely the shifting being before them. It was clear it did not trust this ever changing creature, who called itself by no name at all. The figure frowned, a deep crease forming between unblinking eyes. "Who are your priests, your supplicants?"
“I serve no one but myself,” he replied, standing a little taller and building himself up. “I serve what I was created to do. I take the souls of mortals and gather them within me. I am the darkness to my brother’s light… you have not seen him, have you? He is the white god, but I and mortals call him Belobog. Mortals and he gave me the name Chernobog. But what is the name that you are called?”
"We are the Marassa Jumeaux." The second face frowned at the third, thinking carefully on the stranger's words. If it was impressed by the stranger's newly confident stance, it gave no sign. "We have not seen your brother. Should we find him, we will guide you to one another. It is not right for kindred to be apart." The first figure nodded, clearly agreed with its other half regarding this sentiment.
It drifted closer, silent as his gaze slid up and down the height of the black god; the two figure's arms stretched, still attached, their joining like a lengthening umbilical cord. "You gather souls," the figure repeated. "What, then, do you do with them?"
The first figure closed the widening gap between itself and its sibling. "Do you take them somewhere? Do you consume them?" The words were spoken with a slight hesitance, as if it did not want a true answer but could not stop itself from speaking, from asking.
“Consume is an appropriate term,” Chernobog replied slowly, inspecting the two figures with some sense of judgement. Whether he liked or disliked what he saw was unclear. “And it was beyond my choice to be parted with my kindred. My wife Marzanna has vanished as well. Or rather, I vanished before, which was beyond my control. I lost control of myself, mortals lost their faith, and I diminished. Belobog and Marzanna were left behind and I cannot find them.”
The first figure shook its head. "How terrible. We hope that you are reunited with them soon. As we said, if we see them, hear of them, we will do what we can," it offered, though it was little hope. "But tell us more. Consume souls? Why?"
"And how?" the second asked. "Souls are not a thing easily consumed, unless I am mistaken. They die and pass on, of course, but to be eaten..." Its head shook, a mirror of its sibling's. "It seems unjust."
Chernobog tipped his head to one side and smiled. “And what is it that the both of you do? Who are you to judge how souls should be disposed in my world?” His head moved and tipped to the other side and his glowing eyes narrowed. “This is the second time I have met beings that are not mortal who are not from my world and have such opinions…”
"Good then, that our opinions are shared," the first figure offered. "We guard the gates for our dead, welcoming family home after their long journey. We are the first to be contacted when the living wish to speak to the spirit world, the first to be pleased, the first to be sacrificed to, only after Papa Legba.
"Only souls who have done wrong on their journeys should have such a punishment inflicted on them, Chernobog," it added, steadfast in this described 'opinion.' Its other half nodded in clear agreement.
If Chernobog had eyebrows, he would have risen them. “My you’re a judgemental bunch,” he murmured. “Your world is obviously different from mine, how you handle your souls is different, but I do not criticize your methods." He kept the fact that he sometimes forced the souls out of mortal bodies before they were ready to be released to himself. The pair before him would surely harp on him about that.
"You do not even know our methods," the first figure pointed out, though its shoulders seemed to slump in sympathy. "But you are right, we have no place to judge. Each culture is its own. We cannot say what is right or wrong, only what our worshipers must adhere to."
"But we will say," the second figure added, "that we are grateful for our worshipers' sake they are not governed by your rules. Do you maintain your base solely through fear? We question the wisdom of a god who relies exclusively on terror."
“That kind of talk is what caused me to devour souls,” Chernobog pointed out with a wispy finger. “I once embraced the souls but mortals are unkind and prone to influence. They began telling stories, they began changing the meaning of my name, the significance, and my purpose. I could feel their words and beliefs, their curses, making a change in me. I remember what I was before, but I cannot return to that. Not unless mortals stop judging and cursing me. I am but a creature of their making.”
"We live and die by their whim," the first figure agreed, sounding sad. "It is not for us to say that this should change. We are as much their creations as they are ours."
The second figure thought on this, and though it plainly did not like it, it saw the wisdom in its sibling's words. At last it nodded, slow and deliberate. "True," it said. "Perhaps you only play your part, and parts can change with time. If this is what your people require, we should refrain from harsh judgment." It nodded, this decision apparently as pleasing as the ones that came before; due in no small part, of course, to the influence of its other half.
“I appreciate that,” Chernobog replied with th that smallest ounce of friendliness in his voice. Oh how he missed the old company of his wife and brother, they understood. “Well, I would hate to keep you waiting from… your drifting.” He waved a hand at the pair of them obviously uncertain of what it was the two were up to.
The dismissal in his voice was impossible to miss, but the second figure paid it no mind. There was a painted city to explore, after all, and the companionship of his sibling, far preferable to that of anyone else. It drifted away, quite content to leave the strange being to its own devices. The first figure at least offered Chernobog a passing wave with its free hand, but it likewise moved with its sibling, not wishing to keep the other deity when it so clearly had other things on its mind.
"Good luck finding your family," it offered, as the pair moved away.