maskormenacelogs | Untamed/MDZS catch-all

I am with you.

[His agreement is accompanied by an earnest expression of concentration, his brow furrowed as he listens.]

The water. That's why there was so much water everywhere. You were standing in it with all those corpses. Ghosts.

[He shudders when he says 'ghosts.' Though he is trying to match her words to her memories, untangling what had happened from what he himself had experienced while watching them...just. Strange ghosts. Not his favorite.

He eyes her though, and then their surroundings. She is wrapped around herself.]

Are you cold?

[She nods] Mm. In that area, water is considered especially sacred and worshipped like it’s its own deity. I guess in away it’s not wrong...

[Cold? She feels—numb. Her brow furrows slightly and she shrugs.] A little. It’s more just... Trying to comfort myself...I guess. It’s not like I mind talking about it, it’s just—history. [History that she happened to experience firsthand herself but. Whatever.] But it’s...a lot.

Where was I... Oh, yeah. So, the mountain ended up becoming this sacred place and this religion sprung up around it. There were priestesses on the mountain—only ever women. They had an ability called ‘mitori’. It’s... an ability I have too. I use it to exorcise spirits, but its original purpose was... Well. People would come from all around to visit the mountain on pilgrimage. They’d choose a priestess, go up on the mountain with her, and... kill themselves however way they wanted. The priestess’s job was to watch them do it and, using mitori, see into their souls. They’d take the pain of the death from them to experience it instead. They’d take on all the sins and secrets of the dying person so their soul would be cleansed and they could move on.

Most likely... Most likely if they’d still been around during my time, I would’ve been one of them too. [She shrugs as if to say ‘whatever!!’ Nbd, it’s fine it’s all fine.]

[Concern floods him. Both that she is cold, even if only a little, and that she would have been a priestess of this kind. In the abstract, he also worries about these people she speaks of, but much of his education has dealt with deaths of many sorts and there is nothing to fear from a cleansed spirit.]

But that is not a task for someone who does not seek to take it on. Of course it is a lot. All of it is a lot.

[He lets out a frustrated noise. Then starts taking off his outer layer of the robes he had worn tonight to be fancy for the swear-in. At the moment he is glad he did, because the clothes of this world he has been wearing do not always have a jacket.]

[She shakes her head, about to protest that he doesn’t need to use his robe, but... Well. It’s nice? Reluctantly she gives in and accepts it with a soft sigh] The majority of them did it willingly. I’m sure a couple were forced, but from what I know you had to choose to be a pillar—at least, back then.

Anyway, once a priestess... Couldn’t take anymore, [for lack of a better way of explaining it, since she didn’t really know what ‘when their hearts got too full’ would mean] they were put in those reliquaries filled with yomi. The priestesses would be... They weren’t dead, exactly. They were sort of stuck in-between, just... The yomi would make them relive all the deaths they saw, all the pain. The more they suffered, the better. They’d stay like that for... Years, really. As long their will held out, they’d be in that box, neither living nor dead, perfectly preserved. That’s what they did to me, in one of their important shrines. [She wonders if she should feel a little flattered by that, but she doesn’t.]

Once their will gave out, they’d be...dissolved by the water. And another girl would take their place. They did this for— God, who knows how long. Hundreds of years I guess.

Then one day things... Went wrong. A man who went on the mountain to use them got scared. He didn’t want the priestess to know the terrible things he’d done in life, so he killed her to escape. But when he realized that any priestess that looked at him would know, he... massacred them. A few managed to escape to the surrounding villages, but most of them were killed. Bodies thrown in the sacred pools and stuff. That much negative emotion and resentment was too much for the Great Pillar and her ritual failed. The yomi spilled out and only a few seals were able to hold. The place became cursed.

Because there’s no one there anymore willing to sacrifice themselves, sometimes the mountain just...draws in girls who have strong spiritual power. Forces them into boxes and traps them there to keep trying to purify things. It became a rather infamous suicide spot, so people are still breaking into the place and going up there to off themselves. No one really investigates when someone goes missing there anymore because of that... [She shrugs a little and shakes her head, pulling his robe tighter around her shoulders.]

[Jingyi drops his robe over her shoulders with satisfaction. Cold is cold, and the topic that she is telling him about is causing her more than enough discomfort without it. Once it is around her and she keeps speaking, however, he hovers. There is no other word for it, trying to be close but not too close because he does not know what she is feeling and does not want to interrupt her.

He does not care whether or not he upsets someone—he only tells the truth, and the truth should be something that everyone can handle—but he cares now that he will upset Miu as she speaks of her memories, of what she has experienced. Her anger at having him see them when she had before said she would only tell him of them...now that he is giving this thought, her anger makes sense.

Nodding as he follows along with her words, remains as close as he dares.]

I can understand choosing to be a pillar. That is what the ghost woman was speaking of? Being a pillar? [He does not wait for an affirmation.] It is terrible that the priestesses go until they collapse, and then for as long as they can after. For someone to take that upon themselves, or to be forced to do this thing—

[He wants to second-guess another world, because he means "terrible" as full of awe and the deeds of immortals that crush those who take on the mantle. Mythic.]

—but you were--you didn't collapse. The place caught you, because of this man.

[The tragedy of it is that he understands this kind of thing. The faltering will of a single individual can leave a gap through which horrors can enter.]

But you are out. You escaped. But this place. I know that it is in another world, but is it still like that? It did not look like you left after you were pulled free. Did you--did you stay? Or were your memories not in order?

[She glances up at him, at his hovering, and eventually decides she finds it irritating. She reaches out to take his sleeve again and to step closer, so that she can press her forehead to his shoulder and just sort of hide her face away there.

It wasn’t the violation of her memories itself she found infuriating—it was aggravating, but considering how much she did it to others, did she really have a leg to stand on?—but rather it was an anger born of fear. She was worried about what Jingyi might think of her, of her home.]

It’s a bit jumbled up. I was stuck in that reliquary for—a while. I don’t actually know how long. A week, maybe more...? [She shrugs.] Yuri—the other girl—she rescued me. We were both looking for people on the mountain though, so we couldn’t just leave... I went back a few times—to help her, or to...find who I was looking for.

[A pause and she seems to be struggling with what to say about it, her fingers clenching tightly at his robes and shaking slightly.] That’s who... the ghost woman was talking about. The person I was looking for, that I found there. My... My mother. I couldn’t leave the mountain until I found her. And then, I couldn’t leave because I wanted to help Yuri see this through. Trying to end the curse and everything.

[At Miu's taking the initiative to lean against him, Jingyi's arms come up and wrap around her shoulders. He will hug her within an inch of her life if that is what she needs. The hug is not tentative, especially not when he realizes that she is shaking as she speaks.]

It is okay. It is okay.

[A ridiculous reassurance, but he says it anyways because he understands about seeking parents. About mothers and fathers and what happens when they are taken away. He squeezes her shoulders in his embrace, not shy at all in his attempt at comfort.]

Did you end this thing? You and this Yuri? You found your mother?

[He has an ominous feeling even as he asks.]

[There’s a noise of relief and she exhales heavily, winding her arms around him to accept the hug.]

...I found my mother. I don’t know if it’s ended yet though. [Miu closes her eyes, shaking her head.] That last memory you saw—I fought that spirit and opened the reliquary anyway. I found my mother and got her back to Yuri’s place. But pretty soon after that is when I ended up here, so...I don’t know what’s happened. Or will happen. But Yuri... Yuri’s strong. She’ll end this, one way or another...

[She just hopes it’s not the way that requires Yuri to literally throw herself into the arms of death.]

[Jingyi pets Miu's hair. He is concerned, foremost, and layered beneath that is a riot of residual anger at both bigger and smaller injustices. That someone would have desecrated someplace like that of which she speaks. That she had been forced by fate to go through something so horrible.]

I am sorry.

[He is all sympathy. When he had asked before if she had been dead before she arrived--well, he had not forgotten her answer, but now it has context.]

Your friend will figure it out. She got you out, after all. So I do not think you have to worry. And you found your mother!

[That has to be a silver lining! And Miu is here, which Jingyi thinks is far preferable to half-drowning in demon water.]

And I am sorry that your memories--that I saw them when you did not want me to.

Not your fault. [None of it was, from the memories being seen to what had happened within them. There was nothing to be sorry for.

But his embrace is nice and the hand soothingly petting her hair even better, so she closes her eyes and lets herself relax against him.] But...Thank you.

[Miu goes quiet for a moment and then sighs a little] There’s...a little more. What the woman called me—A Shadowborn... It’s... [It’s something she should tell him about, simply because avoiding it in the aftermath seems too much like, well, lying.]

Yomiko. ‘Child of the underworld’ or..’child of the yomi.’ It means that... my mother was a living woman, but my father was... a spirit. I was born ‘half-dead’. [Half-jokingly she adds:] People are supposed to be balanced with yin and yang energy or something, right? I’m pretty sure I’m entirely pure yin.

But... It does mean I’m something not...entirely human, I guess. I don’t know. There isn’t a lot of information on it—we’re extremely rare.

[He doesn't stop petting her, but he does pet her a little confusedly for a moment. Out of his mouth pops the nonsense:]

That is okay, I have a lot of yang energy.

[Because, look, he has had to sit through many theory classes. He even took notes. The idea of half-dead sends a spike of alarm through him, though.

He pulls away, but only to put his hands on her shoulders and to peer into her face, searching for what, he has no idea. Ghost traits? Expressions? He has not planned that far ahead. Her shoulders are warm under his hands, so it seems to him that she is less ghost than she is human.]

You look mostly alive. It is not going to make you die in some strange way, is it? [Because honestly that is what is important here.]

[That makes her laugh at least and she smiles at him even as he pulls away to examine her. There’s no outward show of her half-ghost nature at least, and she shakes her head.]

No. At least, I don’t think so. There’s not a lot of research on this sort of thing? But... It... Cut my mother’s life really short. It took a lot out of her to bring me into the world. All I know is my spiritual power is off the charts and her life was shortened.

[Which she suspects is why she left, in part. Miu sort of gets it, but it doesn’t make her like it any more.]

[Jingyi rubs his thumbs across the fabric of the robe he'd loaned her, along the bones in her shoulders, brow furrowed in concentration as he listens with an increasing desire to tuck her under his arm and take off with her, even though they are about as far as they both can get from the mountain that has caused all of her problems.]

Her life, not yours. And if you have that much spiritual power, and Hanguang-Jun is teaching you, then you are likely to live a very long time.

[Golden cores would do that. Oh, but...]

Ah. You know, you probably have already found the thing that would make you die in a strange way.

[She’s not sure who he has more faith in here with that—Lang Wangji, or herself. The corner of her mouth twitches into a slight smile, but it quickly turns into a frown of confusion.]

What? I have?

[He blinks at her. When he speaks, he sounds very serious.]

I do not know what else you would call being trapped into a mountain full of demon water and almost dissolved? Do you really want to find something more than that? That is a very strange way for being half-ghost to kill you.

Oh yeah, that. [She sort of laughs a little, shaking her head.]

Well... Hopefully Yuri can break the curse. I won’t have to worry about the creepy demon water anymore.

[Miu shakes her head again and then leans into him once more, taking a breath.]

...Even if I don’t like that someone saw those memories... I’m glad it was you, at least. You’re... I like you, at least...

Your friend will. [He gives her a decisive nod. He has declared it to be so.] You should never have to worry about creepy demon water.

[He pats her hair again and tucks his chin against her. He will keep her like this as long as she wants to be kept like this.]

Good, I like you too. I do not know what I would think about sharing memories if--

[He cuts himself off, blinks, and what she said several minutes ago finally sinks in. He does not push her away, but he does ask:]

What do you mean that you are used to seeing other people's memories?

[She can feel it before he even says it, knows that her attempt to distract him from all of that hasn’t happened. It feels like she almost got off scot-free and then...

Miu winces a little, fingers curling into his robes.]

...That’s how I exorcise spirits. When I touch them, I...basically I relive their deaths. I experience everything they did—everything they thought, saw...Felt. I take the pain of their death from them, all their sins and secrets and stuff like that, and it lets the soul move on.

[Miu pauses, hesitates, and then adds reluctantly.] I can do the same thing to the living sometimes too. If I want to.

[The little details she has been telling him combine and he is offended on her behalf.]

Then it is very good we are definitely teaching you a better way to get rid of the dead. That is a terrible way to do it and probably makes you miserable.

[He pets her hair slightly more aggressively for a second. After that, though, his curiosity kicks in and the questions come thick and fast as he thinks of them almost before he finishes the one before.]

But how often do you want to see memories? That sounds dangerous. What if you find out something you did not want to? Can you pick memories? Do you read minds? Or is it only memories? [A startled pause.] Have you read my mind?

[She makes a small noise of half-hearted protest—hey, you’re messing up her hair, Jingyi!—but then the barrage of questions comes and she goes tense. They’re not questions she wasn’t expecting, but she’s a bit grumpy about having to answer them regardless]

I don’t ever want to see them. I find out all sorts of things I never wanted to know, especially how people feel about me. I’ve learned to just tune it all out. And no, I don’t pick memories—this ability... It goes to whatever the most traumatic memory is. Whatever hurts the most, I see.

And no, I haven’t read your mind. I have some control over it. If I saw any of your memories, you’d know. But...Yeah, it... can read minds too. Peoples’ thoughts and feelings... It’s so exhausting... Like I said, i just tune it out...

[Jingyi feels her tense and is puzzled by it, but she is answering his questions, so he focuses on that instead.]

Whatever hurts them most or whatever hurts you most?

[Ah, he is upset about it either way.]

Is this thing something that happens always? You cannot make it stop? Right now, you know what I am thinking? Or you could if you were not ignoring it? How does it work?

[He is not thinking in words at the moment, only emotions, and those are mostly prickly distress and unhappy concern.]

Whatever hurts them the most. The ability is supposed to be a healing one—taking the pain of their trauma and transferring it to someone else.

[Jingyi has so many questions, Miu isn’t sure if she’s impressed or annoyed.]

If I wasn’t ignoring it, or if your emotions get too intense, then yeah I could read your mind or whatever. It’s been like this since I was— ...Young. Really young. Around 3, I think? I don’t know, I just...learned to live with it. I didn’t really put a lot into the ‘how’ or ‘why’ after a while. I was the only one I knew who could do it and no one could—or would—help me or believe me, so I just dealt with it myself.

[She leans back to look at him, slightly exasperated.]

Do you want me to? I barely need to to get what you’re feeling. Concerned. A little distressed. Unhappy. Sound about right?

[He does not know how he feels about all of this. Well. Concerned and distressed, apparently. But beyond that. He agrees with her assessment with a small nod of his head and a frown.]

That is right.

[Jingyi's true power is thinking zero percent about anything before he asks every single question that pops into his mind. Now that he has asked, however, he is forced to slow down a little and actually make sense of her answers. The sense he gets out of it, though, is that she has been seeing inside of people's heads since she was very small. Just like fighting ghosts. And everything else. With no support. Residual anger sweeps over him, an echo of his original fury. It does not burn as high, as he is no longer surprised, but it burns equally as hot.

He breaths out a heavy breath and considers her expression.]

It happens when you touch someone? So you will always just know if you are paying attention?

[He is not pulling away, though, even as he asks for confirmation.]

[He watches her and she, in turn, watches him, wary and uncertain. Sure his thoughts don’t hint at disgust or anger towards her, and she feels her heart weakening at the idea of it being on her behalf instead.

She nods]

I can usually handle it, though. Sometimes it’s just...a lot. I don’t really like crowds too much because of it. But my job back home meant dealing with a lot of crowds and people all the time. [She closes her eyes briefly, weary, and sighs.] I got used to it, but I don’t like dealing with it if I don’t have to, you know?

But I... learned pretty early on that people don’t really... Care. People lie. They always lie. And they’re greedy. It’s so... [She trails of and shakes her head.] I was always really aware of what anyone ever wanted from me. It was never ‘me’ just... What I could do for them. What they could get from me.

[Jingyi does not quite understand why Miu seems to be watching him warily, so he scrunches his face up, wrinkling his nose at her in response.]

They sound like terrible people.

[He is a Lan, after all. With a sect motto of "be righteous," and breathing in that particular atmosphere since was born...well. If other sects are clearly inferior, then these random mediocre people from Miu's world do not even count.]

Did no one teach them it is not good to lie? Or be greedy? It is good that you are around the GusuLan, because that kind of thing cannot happen.

[He might personally be awful at following all the rules all the time, but that is him, and he is honest about that instead. His faith in everyone else is absolutely blinding.]

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Cw: vague mentions of suicide in this thread

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