sixthiterationlogs | [CLOSED] a grave it is

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[CLOSED] a grave it is

WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: The bee hives, behind the Town Hall
WHEN: December 27th, well after the storm
OPEN TO: Kylo Ren
WARNINGS: Possible violence, certainly threats of it
STATUS: N/A

The other clues hung from the bottles of beer had taken some of the surprise out of the gift Kira had found in the old schoolhouse. Follow the cards hadn't seemed much a priority without a deck to follow, unless the place was trying to send him back into the fountain for another round of aching limbs and needles stitching his skin to his bones. Not exactly the afternoon he was after when the snow finally cleared a bit, so he'd asked after clues to the other--a library, archive, and finally been pointed south along the trail to the building. It had been as strange and antiquated as the rest of the village, wooden desks and chairs, the slate of the blackboard as cold to the touch as the rocks and earth outside.

Credence's gift had been balanced on its edge, seeming old and new at once--old fashioned, but glossy to the touch. His hands had been fidgeting for days without his deck, and somehow Credence had willed into existence a replacement.

Smaller than the deck from home, and just a standard deck of 52 playing cards, but beggars couldn't choose, and they were charming--far less inexplicably than the giver.

Once he'd found them, he'd spent an hour in the dark schoolhouse, shuffling them between his hands, getting used to the feel of them. Sensing the weight, asking them basic questions, testing if they'd respond. That extra sense was still weak, and they were hardly made for this purpose, but eventually they'd rolled over like the sharp-eyed cats on the jokers, and stretched, and fallen into a kind of shape he understood. He'd halved the deck, taking top and bottom cards from each pile, and made himself a compass: spades in the north, hearts to the south, clubs and diamonds for the east and the west. Shuffle, halve, do it again: after four, the cards slipped in his fingers and scattered on the desk as he shuffled, defying another test of what they both already understood.

Interesting, that the deck wasn't near as polite as the person who had conceived it. Kira had smiled, and picked them up, and set out to see where they wanted him to go. He still couldn't travel far, especially in this weather, but a five of clubs seemed a reasonable distance to walk from the schoolhouse door. It took him around the large building opposite, into a large field of white snow, until he was standing at a low wall, a chorus of odd stumps with boards laid over their tops standing along it. Everything appeared untouched, blanketed in the new snow falling gently from the grey sky, and he was about to pull another card to see where he might now turn, when an unnatural black caught his eye.

Ice formed on its side, as if it had been caught in a thaw before another freeze, a small black shovel stood unfolded and struck into the roots of a tree. Kira brushed new snow from the top of the handle, and a tag dangled free, its nondescript text and final message strangling a laugh in his throat. He still had the strange toy from the piles of gifts in his room, still unable to remember how he'd dreamed up such a creature, and he wondered if Kylo Ren had thought up his own gift in that tense moment of their first real meeting.

"Time to dig a way out," he read, "or a grave." His first tug of the handle didn't free the shovel from the frozen ground, and he considered just leaving it. Who had time to be this dramatic, he wondered, before brushing his thumb over the cards he'd spent an hour shuffling in a dark schoolhouse. "What an absolute piece of work."

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Raleigh had likened it to a yeti, furred and humanoid, and Kira was disappointed that the body had gone with the passing of the heavy snows. His mother and her mother before that hadn't kept to their own, had always been part of a circle of curanderas and healers, made themselves up to date on the spirits and creatures of the Americas--they weren't living in Japan or England, anymore.

For all his resistance to the place, he's undeniably curious about the creature. If he can put a name to it, it could be a clue about where they were, what kind of other threats might exist in the canyon.

Maybe hell is a real place after all, and soon he'll be carrying rocks up to the top of the canyon, to lay at its lord's feet. Using the line they cut through the snow as a marker, he turned right: they didn't have very far to go this time, the point just west of where they stood. "Could you describe it? Raleigh said it was furred, but a bit like a person. Did it have horns or claws? Hooves?"

"It was a large beast. Thick-furred, taller than a man by a head or three. It was hard to tell with it on the ground. Smelled like rotting death." He turned when Kira did, making a new path of tracks in the snow. This time they were closer together, and it made the conversation easier, not having to glance over his shoulder.

In his mind it had seemed just another of many beasts he did not know, scattered throughout the galaxy. Not a wookiee, but in many ways reminded him of one and made him wonder if it could speak, and the others had just failed to attempt communication. Not that he cared. It was dead, and now gone.

"Looked like it was rotting itself, too, what I saw of it." It had been half buried in snow already by the time he got a good look. "I didn't see the feet. Long limbs, though and the upper ones had claws that looked made for ripping other creatures apart."

Tall, furred--not a yeti, or Raleigh would have just described it as a yeti. The climate lends itself to the guess, but Kira and his family hadn't dealt in urban legend, though the city was full of them. The real things, the real dangers, were usually human or spirit, usually started as one or the other.

He recalls Credence, with his ugly shadow. What were the creatures that started as men, which one had lived up north?

Ask a card, he thinks, now that the deck is in his hands. It seems too important a thing to leave to his own guesswork, so many years out from his mother's lessons, from adjusting the html of her geocities upgrade website on the subjects. Shuffling the deck between his hands, he lets a card catch between his fingers, slip sideways and fall to the snow.

Face down: perhaps the only clue he has for the position, in a deck of reversible images. When he plucks up the four of diamonds, the smell Ren described almost washes over him on the breeze. As faint as if it were across the village, the cold air cutting its stench. Greed, selfishness, rotting apart.

Snow melts against his fingers, running off the gloss of the card. Maybe they were north even of the border, maybe it was a clue to the place or just a symptom: "It sounds like a Wendigo. They're--" he seethes a breath through his teeth, trying to decide if everything he's seen and felt, if the existence of this place, won't let him slip comfortably into doubt of their existence. "They're people who resort to greed and cannibalism, possessed by evil spirits. They eat human flesh, and it makes them grow larger, so they have to keep eating more."

The word means nothing to Ren, but the way Kira speaks of it and the description he gives does. Even if not a race he knows, he knows of plenty who could also fit into those descriptors, albeit most without the 'evil spirits' additive. He makes a barely there sound of acknowledgement, watching the world around them for movement in the trees.

"You know something of them, do they often crawl off from their graves? Do they travel alone or in groups?" Two questions, simple but deeply informative if Kira has something to offer on the matter. In the meantime, Ren lets Kira do the leading. For all he may not put stock in the cards, he firmly believes in the force, and there's a chance Kira has tapped into it.

Ren's deep voice doesn't exactly brighten for the conversation, but Kira feels that steady thrum of frustration reduce to a murmur, hears a tightness leave his voice. Like he's relaxing into the urgency of it, or the gathering of information is infinitely easier and more enjoyable to him than more colorful kinds of interaction.

Maybe he's on the spectrum--either way, it's a key to him. Kira might find a way to be useful to him, and in turn make use of his brawn and overall concern for order and security.

It's unfortunate then, that his knowledge is word of mouth. "If you had more than one person resorting to eating people, yeah, you could get more than one; but I think they're territorial, they'd wind up competing for food once they got big enough."

The other question competes with his attention for the tree they've come up to, and he stops in front of Ren, looking up and up the dark trunk until he can see the top of it scraping the grey sky, several body lengths above the rest. "You have to burn the bodies after you put them down, though you can do that with weapons. Does that look like a vantage point to you?"

"Then it's likely the missing body means we could be looking at it back on the prowl, if it is what you think?" His question could wait, however. He stops when Kira does, squinting up to the top of the fir. Of course it would be a tree, and one of many near the village, but also one of the tallest trees around. It's very likely Kira is fucking with him, but if it's anywhere near as useful as the knife, it's worth it. He eyes the tree quietly, scanning it up and down before squinting hard toward the top again.

"Enough so to be a possibility." He admits finally. It isn't ideal, in fact it's rather an annoying turn from what he's been hoping for, but it is worth the shot and the risk. He loosens the rope and slings it over his shoulder, pulling his gloves off one at a time and shoving them in his pockets.

"Don't suppose you found an ax before the shovel?"

He shakes his head, the brown knit of his hat darkened by melting snow and the tassels swinging. "No, though I think I gifted a few that day. I could ask around if you need one? Didn't seem like the gifts had a time limit."

He isn't quite goading him, in that he doesn't say aloud if you don't want to climb it, but there's a smile threatening from the corners of his mouth despite the serious topic.

It helps to suppress it: "That or another one dragged it away. They aren't stupid, they do try to avoid letting anyone who discovers them live. Might be why the stories vary. But it's a spirit, so yeah, I think it wise to assume it's out there."

Ren stares up the tree, considering his options while Kira speaks. Climbing the tree would likely be a foolish endeavor, and there is little to no guarantee that Kira has led him anywhere productive. A few cards and a feeling aren't exactly concrete evidence, and he isn't even sure what he is looking for with the fracking boxes.

He sighs and shrugs off his coat, slipping the knife out of his belt to wrap up in the coat with the shovel and setting both aside in the snow. He rolls his shoulders and glances over one to Kira.

"Makes wandering around the woods more or less alone seem like a great idea, doesn't it?" He reaches up to grab a branch, giving it a strong yank and causing several branches of the tree to shake and drop their snow to the ground below.

"There's a knife in my coat if it comes running for you." He smirks slightly, grabbing a higher branch and focusing on finding a good footing as he starts his attempt to climb it. The snow was still deep enough it could probably cushion his fall.

"You say it's a spirit, but it has a physical form. They injured it and thought they had killed it, I saw the body. I thought spirits weren't meant to by physical."

Edited 2017-01-23 02:37 (UTC)

The smirk is met with a dull frown before Kira gives in to the impulse to roll his eyes. Hopefully the gesture is universal to Ren's home planet, and the frown remains a moment while Kira wonders where the thought comes from. Had Ren really told him anything about that? It didn't feel like just a joke, or the joke Kira would usually make. Considering Ren's social skills, it was rather unkind, even for him.

"I think you're likelier to fall out of that tree onto your own knife than I am to put it in anything. And unless you heard or saw something the contrary, they aren't really supposed to be an issue in daylight."

Which comforts very little, when he thinks they aren't supposed to be much confused by doors either. "You're a spirit in a physical form. Some spirits just get warped, and the form follows. Evil shit changes you, it's why they smell like they're rotting."

And thank god: the air around the is clear and cold, no ugly stench on the wind. It doesn't stop Kira from glancing around at the other trees, and back at their trail filling in with the gentle snowfall, but it lets him visibly shrug before looking back to the tree.

"Good to know. It is really unwise to go around advertising your inability to stab things, though." Ren responds as he finds his footing properly, making his way up the sturdier branches with the ease of someone who has both climbed trees before, and possesses the upper body strength to pull himself up where necessary. He makes it about a third of the way up before the tree starts to shake with his movements, dumping snow periodically from its boughs and showering them both in white powder.

Evil shit changes you. Ren wants to laugh, but he resists the urge. There's an old echo there in a more familiar voice, and he can just hear Luke again. The dark side changes you. Old tales of how it twisted and warped those who allowed themselves to be taken by it. Physically as well as mentally.

The dark side hadn't given him his scar. A girl with a lightsaber had.

"Don't get buried. I don't want to have to dig you out when I get back down."

"At least you have the shovel for it," he calls, a single hand lifted to his mouth to guide the sound. It's otherwise quiet: the wuft and crunch of snow falling from branches onto more snow; the wind dragging between thick branches; the groan of wood tightening and bending in the winter air and under Ren's weight.

The tree is large enough to support him. It might be a welcome diversion to follow, but there are diversions and there's idiocy: if he fell, if he were truly hurt, there was no real structure to deal with it.

"I don't think I have to advertise my inability to do anything," he calls after, the silence starting to swallow him and prickle at his spine. It had been even stranger in Manhattan, streets gone dark and empty, lit by flares or road blocks and shrouded in fog. The city that never slept had been bashed into a coma. "I do notice your thinly veiled astonishment every time I manage to breathe and walk at the same time."

"Or your ability to walk at all." He calls down after, with a hint of amusement. The snow proved difficult for some. Ren had grown use to the deep sink of his feet into it, but he had seen a few people struggle, and repeatedly fall, trip, or put too much weight into strides and steps that moved too far for the terrain. He reaches a point where he can actually see the box, wrapped in neatly black paper and tied to the unsteady tip of the too tall tree. He frowns, studying the branches and doing the math in his head.

Whatever it was likely wasn't worth the risk, but he had come this far, and one of the hidden boxes had been a knife. He looped his arm tightly around the trunk, hugging the tree as he cracked one of the longer branches off from it with much bending, shaking, and a sickeningly loud Crack that echoed in the still air.

"You might want to move further back." He yells, twisting the branch in his hand to try and knock the two foot long box loose from its thin twine binding.

Kira of all people had to believe in the sometimes perfect alignment of the universe: he took two large steps back, obedient but still looking up, watching the branches move and the tree sway under whatever the fuck Ren was doing--when he tripped on the high snow and his own momentum.

Attempting to correct could only make it worse, so he tipped flat into it, a greater whumpf of snow swallowing his silhouette, elbows out and his body trying to fold up despite the soft landing.

This is exactly why he hadn't bothered with the tree. Hopefully this was far back enough, the wind not quite knocked from him and a moment of just--quiet. A moment of being a kid in a snow drift, the world blocked out, muffled, not yet freezing. It's actually warmer down and out of the wind, waiting for the snow to soak through his layers.

Ren knocked the box down, looking after it as it fell just in time to watch Kira disappear into a snow bank. He was lucky enough the box, containing as it happened, a rather study and sharp machete, landed a fair distance away from the dip in the snow in the form of Kira's body. Ren makes his way down a bit faster than his climb up, his footing still remembered clearly, and backtracking his steps only reaching a mild hitch near the bottom when his boots slip on a frozen branch. He drops down into the snow from a few feet into the tree, sinking in with his legs, but keeping his balance.

Ren doesn't bother with the shovel or the box as he makes his way to the depression in the snow, peering down at Kira with his head cocked to the side.

"If you wanted time to play in the snow, you didn't have to wait for me to climb a tree. I wouldn't have buried you." And yet his tone seems to almost jokingly imply he would have. His humor slipped into the conversation for just a moment, brows arched as if Kira had intended to take a spill into the snow.

"Do I need to dig you out?"

"And risk the very high possibility you just want to hit me with a shovel," he asks, staring up at the grey sky beyond the edge of his silhouette. "I think I'll get myself up, thanks."

He's in no hurry, having heard the sound of the box hitting the snow, knowing there's time yet to collect it before heading back. "The cards worked," he says aloud, as much to himself as Ren. "I guess that's good to know."

Muted as they are, he still has his abilities. They're still a functional thing, still part of the world around him. It isn't a clue of what the world is, so much as assurance that some of the old logic still applies.

Raising a hand out of the hole, he wonders if Ren will do him the favor of taking it, in exchange for his psychic services. "You don't have anything else to look for, do you?"

"I have better weapons for that then a shovel." He offers, as he picks his coat up and shakes the snow off it, pulling it back on over his shoulders. As Kira reaches a hand up, Ren grabs him by his wrist, letting Kira grab onto his arm for a sturdier hold before easily pulling him to his feet, the faint curl of the Force pushing at Kira's back with a surprisingly gentle push in addition to Ren's help with his arm.

"I do, but I think they can wait for another day." He says as he leaves Kira standing in the snow to collect the box. He doesn't open it, tucking it under his arm. If it ends up being something that's a token of his past again, he doesn't want Kira around for it.

He eyes the young man, considering his earlier comment. The cards, or something, had worked. For all he didn't seem it, Kira might be useful. He was a thin, frail, form of a man, but then, so had Hux been. He considered both equally useless in combat, though he knew Hux was far more useful than he let on. But Kira knew things about the creature here, about Ren's world, and he had a connection to the Force, or something like it. One that could be put to use even here in the canyon that seemed to dull and mute everything.

"I know where to find you." He comments, not intending it as a threat, as he picks the knife and shovel back up to prepare to head back to his own living space. Kira was someone he was going to have to keep an eye on in the future.

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[CLOSED] a grave it is

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