{ pfsb } by the fireside

[for_tradition]

A fireside – the proper kind, with the scent and crackle of flames as they transmogrify the passive energy of wood into heat and light – is something one just really can't have without wood to burn. 

The swimming fish are an added bonus, but really don't lend much to the ambience beyond novelty. 

It's very pleasant to sit by this fireside, real or magicked up as it might be, while ferociously taking notes. The warm, flickering light of the flames reflects off Abigail Pent's smooth brown hair and the silk of her skirts – the rich brown of excellent milk chocolate, struck through with gold – and illuminates her neat, slightly cramped handwriting. So engrossed is she that when the waitrat arrives with her ordered tea, she doesn't notice until the creature gives a polite half-cough, half-squeak.

Glancing up, she peers myopically at the proffered tea set. (She is wearing two sets of spectacles, but forgotten to put either over her eyes. One sits lightly on her hair, the other hangs around her neck off a cord of brown silk.)

"That doesn't look right," she tells the waitrat. It certainly is tea, but the stunted white pot and small, handle-less cups don't look at all like the bone china she'd expected.

She looks about, searching – ah. Getting to her feet in a rustle of fabric, she accepts the tray from the waitrat and makes her way over to the table she'd spotted, where a tall, slim young man has received a bone china tea service and plate of iced biscuits. "Pardon me," Abigail says, smiling as she approaches him. "I believe our orders were switched."

Comments

[lightamidchaos]

At 'I'd heard they were here," something about the way he holds himself relaxes, infinitesimally.

"I am sorry," he says, as gently as he can. "It is not uncommon, not to recall, from what I have seen."

[for_tradition]

“Ah,” she says, seeing the way his shoulders soften. “Yes. We can discuss them later. And you’re right, of course: violent death has a way of sending the soul scurrying into the River, and not always with much memory intact. But I was discussing the Eighth,” she continues, brisk.

“They are soul-siphoners. A dangerous and tasteless practice, if you ask me.”

[lightamidchaos]

The gentle cast to his expression shifts to polite interest, and then into complete incomprehension.

"Soul-siphoners?"

[for_tradition]

"You see it most clearly with an Eighth necromancer and their cavalier," she tells him. "The necromancer... oh, what's the best way to put this? Dismisses the soul, then leverages the power which rushes into the empty vessel left behind."

[lightamidchaos]

He stares at her in horrified disbelief.

"They separate a person's spirit from the body and force a possession?"

[for_tradition]

"Not a possession," Abigail says, firmly. "If the spirit has wandered that far, and something... else... has taken its place – well, that would be hideously dangerous. But it's a nasty business all told."

[lightamidchaos]

He shakes his head, forcefully disagreeing with her. "If the spirit has been driven from the body and another power enters in its place, creating a demonic entity from a living human, how is that not a possession?"

[for_tradition]

"I suppose it depends on your definition of possession," Abigail says, sipping thoughtfully at her tea.

"In this case – usually – nothing sentient takes the place of the cavalier's soul. It is pure thanergy."

[lightamidchaos]

"Usually," he points out. "But even so, that is - you are saying that they remove the person's spirit and use the body as a vessel for the resentful energy created by such a violation. As though a person were no more than a spiritual tool, or at best a beast. It is abhorrent."

[for_tradition]

Abigail smiles at him, warm and maternal.

"You see?" she says. "You are nothing like Silas Octakiseron."

[lightamidchaos]

Lan Wangji is struck speechless by the kindness in her smile, the gentle assurance of her observation.

His ears flush pink.

[for_tradition]

Abigail smiles the smile of a woman who has spent the better part of the last decade foxing two children-turned preteens-turned teens.

"How are those biscuits?" she asks, to give him a way out.

[lightamidchaos]

"They are quite nice," he manages, and takes refuge in his teacup, still a little flustered.

"You are very clever, Lady Pent," he adds, after a moment.

[for_tradition]

"Yes," she agrees, without vanity, then laughs. "You must forgive me my little tricks, Hanguang-jun."

[lightamidchaos]

"There is nothing to forgive," he assures her. Slowly, the pink color fades from his ears.

"How did you know?"

[for_tradition]

"Sometimes, people are more willing to accept conclusions when they arrive at them themselves, instead of being told," Abigail muses, curling her hands around her teacup and enjoying the warmth of it.

"Or if you mean: how did I know you'd despise soul-siphoning?" She shrugs, delicately, and sips at her tea. "Call it an educated guess."

Her warm brown glance flicks to the layout before them, then back at him. "You have shown several kindnesses and a good deal of humility in the short time we've been acquainted, despite being in a position of power in a sect not unlike my own. No one with those characteristics is likely to condone the wholesale dehumanization of soul-siphoning."

[lightamidchaos]

He absorbs that for a moment. Xiongzhang would like her, he suspects, even though she is a ghost in the way of this place.

"Most people do not realize," he offers, after another moment. "What I feel."

[for_tradition]

"I expect most people of your acquaintance don't look you in the eye," Abigail says, brightly.

It isn't how things are on the Fifth, but she knows enough of the other Houses – and beyond – to guess that, for this reserved young man, things might be different. "But I always have been a busybody. And we're peers, of a sort – although you have some advantage, still being alive."

[lightamidchaos]

He hasn't really thought about it before, but suspects she may be right.

"In the inn, it might not be as much of an advantage," he offers, as gently and respectfully as he can. "Are you content here?"

[for_tradition]

"I'd be more content if my husband would join me, but he says moving across the liminal planes tickles."

She says this comfortably as she carefully arranges her skirts. "But for the most part, yes, I am. Look at this place! All the time and resources in the world to continue my research."

[lightamidchaos]

Lan Wangji blinks at that. "Moving across the liminal planes?" he repeats, not certain he has heard her correctly. "Are you - forgive me, are you saying that you are able to travel freely between the ghost realm and this place?"

[for_tradition]

Abigail nods at the door. "There is nowhere else for me to go but back to the River," she says. "Or across it. But that's another story."

She pops a piece of fruit into her mouth and chews with evident enjoyment. "I admit it's a bit unusual, but I like to think that maybe someone here thought I wish Abigail Pent were here and give me an inroad."

[lightamidchaos]

Wei Ying does not even see a door, he knows, although returning to their world is an impossibility and he does not think he would wish to depart elsewhere. The idea of moving back and forth between the ghost realm and here is not one that had occurred to him before.

"It might be," he says, cautiously, thinking of Harrow's work in the library, of mentions of a spirit magician's skills. "I have not known others such as yourself who were able to move between the realms as you describe. Nor do I know your River."

[for_tradition]

"Well," Abigail says, sparkling and warm, "I don't mean to brag, but I'm the greatest spirit magician of my generation. But the River!"

She lights with a scholar's passion, warming to her subject. "What happens to the spirits in your world, do you know?"

[lightamidchaos]

"When a person dies, for most, their spirit enters the cycle of reincarnation," Lan Wangji tells her. "There, depending on their beliefs and actions while living, they may journey to Diyu, the underworld, for judgment and eventually be reborn."

Quiet grief flickers in his glance for an instant, but his tone is ruthlessly calm as he continues. "If a person dies with resentment, they may become an angry ghost. Unless such a spirit can be liberated and set free to rejoin the cycle, they may be lost."