Welcome to Gaia! ::

Another crafting table of sorts sat facing the fountain at the center of the plaza. On it sat stacks of seed paper cut into strips and clay plant pots filled with potting soil.

As promised, there were directions on the table:

An old Kerberan tradition for honoring the lost: write their names on paper infused with seeds, then bury that paper in a garden and let it grow, so that something new and beautiful comes from grief.

Feel free to memorialize anyone you like, and plant the papers in the pots provided. You can leave them here and I’ll find a place for them, or you can take them home; this is wildflower seed paper from Earth, so no space plants, sorry!

On the edge of the fountain, away from everything else, sat three pots, with tiny corners of seed paper poking out; Kerberos’s own little memorials.

Caledonia. Not dead, but lost to corruption, and Kerberos’s own fault.

Chrysocolla, who had Ascended, and killed her planet to make herself a vessel for Metallia’s will.

Sheikh, who had never gotten a chance to discover who he might be, free of the Negaverse.

Although the names were not visible, he knew who he carried. And when he wandered by the table, he lingered by those three pots for a long, quiet moment.

Deep Space Sailor Jörmungandr

Jörmungandr left his resin flower to dry, and made his way over to the table of memorial slips. The table was empty as he approached--perhaps that was a good thing. If most of the visitors didn't have names they wanted to write down and bury, perhaps that was a sign that they were carrying less burdens. He hoped that was true; it was a nicer explanation than people being too shy or too callous, at least, which both seemed like options. But perhaps if there were others who were interested, having someone sit down and start might kickstart things.

The last time he had come to the Bloom-and-Wither Festival, he hadn't felt the need to participate in this particular tradition. He'd preferred the drinking, the dancing, the food and the shops and the people. The celebrations of life and bounty and harvest, rather than the remembrance of the dead and gone. But that had been a thousand years ago, and Jörmungandr had been a different man, then. He had not yet seen pain and suffering on the scale he had now, and he did not carry so many names in his heart. More than he could write down reasonably. More than he even knew; so many had died without him ever knowing their names, all over Jörmungandr the world, as the plague he had personally unleashed spread and consumed.

He could not write down every name. And it felt cheap, to take a slip and simply write the people of Jörmungandr; certainly that would be easy, and it would indeed be a memorial for all of them to some degree--certainly there were monuments like those, to a class of dead and not to individuals. But it didn't feel right, to Jörmungandr, to do that. To take what felt like an easy way out.

Not when there was something so much more personal he could do.

There had been five people with him, when he descended into the heart of the ancient temple in that old, forbidden city. When he'd parted the last wards and found that oily black stone and watched its poison begin to flow out. When he had damned and doomed his entire world and everyone on it, given them over to the cold embrace of Chaos.

They had all made it out of the temple that day, but one by one, the curse from within it had claimed them, until Jörmungandr himself was the only one left alive.

Keren. Bright and clever, a linguist whose translations had put them on the right path to the city.

Alos. Their cartographer, a big man with a loud laugh and steady hands.

Cinere. An expert in mechanics and mechanisms, who had gotten them past the mechanical defenses of the temple.

Hecatrys. An expert on the jungle's ecosystem, without whom they would have died from bad food within a week, Jörmungandr was sure.

Kalir. Their security, as it were, a warrior and swordmaster who had traveled nearly as much as Jörmungandr himself as a hired blade.

They had been his friends. His companions. And now, he buried their names in flowerpots, to be left on a world that treasured the memory of the dead.

It was all Jörmungandr could do for them, beyond the rites he'd done as each of them passed. He couldn't say if it felt comforting. But it felt like...something, at least.

Deep Space Sailor Jörmungandr

Jörmungandr was not, if he were honest, entirely prepared to be approached. He did not let himself linger in mourning for long--a thousnad years of running and seeking any shelter and supply he could find had left little time for contemplation, and once he was on Earth, the allure of living again was simply too powerful to wallow.

But he had let himself, a little, here where it was invited and expected.

It also meant he was more than a bit lost in thought, and more than a bit startled when someone approached him. He didn't quite jump, but he did turn a bit sharply to face--

Ah. Someone else, not of Earth, even more apparently at a glance than he was. his horns could hide in his voluminous hair, his scales sometimes took a double take, his tail might be a ribbon, but she was blue, immediately a shade he had not seen among Earthlings.

She was like him, then.

He tilted his head to the side, briefly, trying to recall where he knew that name fro, and then--ah!

"We're roommates, then, I think is the word Earthlings use. Murikabushi mentioned your name, but I don't think we've met. Certainly not like this." He smiled, ever so polite. "Sailor Jörmungandr. It's a pleasure to put a face to the name, Kua'kua."

Despite his best efforts to defend himself against its onslaught the nagging presence at the back of Bacchus’ mind hooked its will into his sinews, maneuvering his long limbs like a clumsily articulated skeleton toward the table. He refused to meet the eyes of anyone else around him as anger built within his chest.

At his own failures?

At the accusations of the dead?

At Kerberos for drawing him into this place?

There was no telling and that only served to stoke his fury.

With a frustrated grunt, he grabbed a stack of the memorial slips and began to write furiously. It had been centuries since he’d made himself drag pen across parchment…or whatever material composed these flower sheets, but with his trembling strokes he sent his crimes flowing through the ink. No human would be able to read the text, well, almost no human, but he suspected that Tempesti wouldn’t pry if he asked her not to. Not that his gracelessly rendered nepreid lent itself to easy translation at a glance. Faltering muscle memory struggled to ensure that its spiraling roots carrying even his words into the other world.

Blood and flame, the cutting iron smell mingled with the sickening sweetness of what remained of the minds Chaos had compelled him to silence. Nearly every one of them had begged him to.
Those who could still speak.

Told him that it was their only chance for freedom as creeping tendrils burrowed relentlessly through their muscles, wrapped each nerve in the slender mockery of their false roots until nothing of who and what they were persisted into the empty world.

No matter how many times he’d attempted to coerce himself into believing the truth of their words, the effort proved far greater than his tired soul could muster. Even as Bacchus had desperately attempted to bind himself in the numbness he’d been told should claim him, each flash of silver and red cut free his mind in a screaming torrent.

The fact that he could count the names he remembered on two hands felt nearly as cruel as the acts themselves.

That they blended into centuries of faceless horror.

Burned and unremembered.

Buried without ceremony, with no groves to claim for their own.

Only the vaguest idea of where he’d put any of them to rest lingered within him. What names he’d managed to keep found their way onto the paper. Too few. They deserved to be remembered as much as he deserved to have each one of them seared blazing into his memory. Maybe the self-flagellation was pointless, but it would have felt worse to let himself slip past without any sort of acknowledgment.

Reaching the end of his stack of papers, Bacchus’ expression grew still grimmer. Names he wished he could forget, could burn from his memory. Names he perhaps didn’t deserve to remember.

Temair Scíath, pulled into the bloody inferno. Victim of a monster’s blade. Sacred rendered profane in a single strike.

Nuada, died alone for his pride.

Mother

The rest remained unwritten.