Logs:Ritual

Ritual
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Matt
In Absentia	2020-10-22 "{What if I just left it be?}"
Location <NYC> Tessier Residence - Backyard - Greenwich Village
Living in the heart of Manhattan means space is precious, and as such, the yard behind this house is small. It is as exquisitely well-kept as the rest of the place, though; all available space has been meticulously cultivated and transformed into a lush retreat from the concrete and asphalt of the city. The borders of the garden are lined in a wealth of flowers, the selection chosen to provide a panoply of color in all seasons save winter. A grassy rock-bordered pathway separates these from the raised-bed vegetable garden that dominates its center. The far left corner of the garden plays host to a tiny rock-lined pond, goldfish and a pair of turtles living in its burbling water. To one side of the pond is a garden table and set of chairs and presiding over the pond, a large oak tree with a hammock underneath, its branches spreading out over the tall brick wall that screens the entire area off from the city outside The clouded sky has cleared in patches, just enough to show the crescent moon setting in hazy glimpses against the jagged skyline. The overhead string lights are off, but the garden is dimly illuminated by the four candles in jars marking the quarters in the grassy clearing beneath the oak tree. Matt is setting cross-legged beneath the tree, slumped against its trunk. He's wearing a soft green bamboo tee and black pajama pants covered with little orange jack-o-lanterns, holding out a small onyx bowl full of water. "As flow the waters of light, may we be healed aright." He tips the contents of the bowl into the iron cauldron at the center of the little circle. "This this our will," he intones, eyes lifting to the branches crossing the sky, "so mote it be!" Across from Matt, Luci is cross-legged as well, sitting up ramrod straight in the grass in pale linen trousers and a soft grey long-sleeved tee. "So mote it be." His voice is softer, his eyes not turned upward but fixed across the cauldron at Matt. He leans slightly back, hands pressing into the grass behind him as his eyes shift, watching the erratic dance of one of the candles. "{Though healing from these things can be a very long road.}" Matt sets the empty bowl down and sinks his fingers into the grass with a sigh. His eyes drop to his brother, placid with just the faintest twinkling in their green depths. "{Not a road the gods are going to carry me down,}" he replies quietly. "{And yet -- I did it all to myself. I didn't have to love him.}" "{You have others, to help you with that.}" Lucien looks up to the sky, now, his thumb and forefinger drawing slowly along the length of a blade of grass. "{You didn't have to. Is it a choice you regret?}" "{Gods know I've been carried often enough.}" Matt sinks back harder against the tree trunk, his mouth pulling wryly to one side, though it does not quite make it all the way to a smile. "{I do not regret it yet, though I expect I may soon.}" He closes his eyes, his power tightening its grip where it's twined into Lucien's. The weary calm of his mind, soothed by the familiar solace of ritual, ripples and shifts reluctantly as it coaxes a vast network of complex intertwined emotions toward the surface. "{Somehow re-forging love into pain isn't the most appealing task. What if I just left it be?}" Lucien's mind curls back against Matt's; not altering the tortuous landscape but only watching, pensive. "{Then you would have love,}" he replies, after a time, "{and nowhere to put it.}" His brows pull together, head dipping as he plucks the blade of grass sharply from the earth. "{Is that so different from grief?}" "{Perhaps not,}" Matt agrees easily enough. "{Except that it doesn't hurt. Does not do anything at all now. Without him it's just...}" His face twists into a mild grimace, more of distaste than pain. "{Dead and wrong.}" As if by way of demonstration he leans into the web he's just dredged up--the affection and delight and worry bound up in it are distant and muted, unreal somehow. "{I'd like to be able to remember him fondly, I think. Even if it hurts.}" Lucien plucks slowly at those feelings, one after another, picking them out of the morass to turn them over contemplatively within his own introspection. "{It will hurt.}" His acknowledgment comes with a small bow of his head. "{But there is something, I think, in hurting together. For your own processing, and your friends' as well.}" Matt's power curls tighter yet, clenching and bracing already against nothing. "{There is something to be said for that.}" His spoken reply is mild, but Lucien's words resonates brightly along the threads of the complex that connect to other similar constructs yet below the surface of his mind, but alive. From those come an abrupt answering wave of emotions, too chaotic and intense to differentiate: tender and protective and also ferociously possessive. He breathes harder, closing his eyes. When the wave passes his reluctance remains, but he pushes it firmly aside now. "{Very well, then. Let it hurt.}" With a kind of grim determination he tugs at the threads of the intricate alien thing he had so painstakingly created over the years in order to love Dawson. As it unravels into emptiness and rage and a keening sense of helplessness--so fast and harsh that Matt tries in vain to draw back. He presses harder into Lucien's steady presence even as he reaches for him across the circle with a shaking hand. These things, too, Lucien lets spill between them, over them, not trying to quell the storm but only observing it with a soft sharp breath. He shifts, moving across the circle to sit in the grass beside Matt's tree instead, arm wrapping around his brother's shoulders. "{Just do not forget the together part.}"