Beltane

[truailligh]

Who: truailligh ; open
What: Celebrating Bealltainn*
Where: Plaza near the gardens
When: May 1st, after nightfall
Note: * Scottish Gaelic spelling of Beltane

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[inked_tale]

Amaterasu instinctively knows when someone is worshiping something within the City, and it surprises her very little that on this night of all nights, someone is taking up a sacred rite

[truailligh]

It's the crow that notices a new arrival, cawing and hopping about on Shirley's shoulder until she shifts and picks it up to set it down, one hand slipping the bone knife in place because the last unexpected guest she had was Lucifer breaking through the wards on her bedroom in the middle of the night, terrifying her.

When she does turn though, her eyes widen because she remembers this one from before, remembers the motherly tide of feelings when they spoke and a hesitant smile flits across her face, difficult to see in the dark and with the fires flickering. She doesn't know if this wolf can feel the grief that clings just a little tighter than normal now but she hopes that she can't because she's trying to cast that off, send it rising up with the smoke.

The knife is set down and she turns fully, extending a palm out.

It seems like many of us find our way back here in the end then.

[inked_tale]

At the invitation, Amaterasu rises to her paws and slowly walks towards the sacred space. Head down, nose forward, her nose sniffs at the outstretched hand carefully before nuzzling it. She remembers that this one was not fond of licking, so she refrains, sniffing up her arms. Juniper, even if Amaterasu does not recognize it by name, the smell of salty sweat and the subtle veil of fatigue around her which shadowed her grief and made it all the deeper and darker.

Sitting down beside her, Ammy wedges her head into Shirley's lap. The warm, furry weight is a physical center for that same feeling of motherly comfort and love. No judgment, no censure, just feelings of affection and protectiveness. Like a mother's arms wrapped around her child.

[truailligh]

There's a lump that crawls up her throat that she will dismiss as the smoke and not on this confusing mess that's sitting there right down in her bones. Seeing Cassandra had made her realise how much she missed having someone who knew everything about her, the good and the bad and who just accepted it. It was probably why it had been so easy for it to convince Shirley to sleep without violence after all. She was always tired. Death never stopped even if it didn't last here and she bit down hard on her bottom lip as her hands came up to smooth through soft fur.

When the feelings hit, she has to look at the fires instead of anything else, taking the time to organise her thoughts which is fiendishly hard when she's still upset and homesick and fed up of this endless city.

It's the first day of summer where I come from. Not that it matters much in Scotland but that means something for you, doesn't it? Her hands don't stop and this is really the only reason she would ever entertain the notion of having a pet because it's soothing

[solarpurpura]

Her own fire had been the night before, and its intents had been of a far more infernal nature than purification. There is no purity to be coaxed from a Morrison, no cleansing which would lift the stains, and the Hill found such rituals offensive; just as it resented to baptism of water. It makes Beltane no less holy a night, and on the heels of Walpurgis, after the dirt around their altars had been turned into a squelching swamp of bloodied land, there was always a great fest to be had when Beltane followed. Flesh dressed in fresh may flowers, heady juniper wines.

Perhaps it was the familiar smell which lead the way, or perhaps she was searching for Shirley anyway. They had not seen each other for some time, she had been ill and then the creatures had come and possessed her friend. It was worrying to hear nothing more, certainly after hearing Dawn's harrowed accounts of the experience. There was... a hunger in Eden's blood besides, a pull to eat that she was not entirely sure how she should sate it in the absence of her coven. The

[truailligh]

There would be a time in the future when the purification wouldn't lift what Shirley - or more correctly the thing in her - would do but this was one of the only chances she had to try to lift some of the grief that clung to her. In this city, people cared too much and she was the only banshee, the only one to carry their grief around and she couldn't slip away to Otherworld to try to draw some sort of strength from there and so it was time to fall back on old things, to believe in her Gods and Goddesses and that they knew what her path was

[solarpurpura]

It was the right of dreams to lift dreamers from all they know, to carry them into surreal places where only the periphery is familiar and all else moves to a rhythm that cannot be heard in the waking world. That was why Eden had preferred the dreaming, really, lifted away from her family's reputation, their kingdom of dirt and her expectations. She has accepted by now that those things are different between herself and Shirley, however, and those differences are quite all right.

Eden gathered her knees in against her chest, fingertips hooking on the soles of her worn little boots. She rested her cheek on her kneecaps and watched Miss Shirley smile.

It's all right. Eden meant that, it was not just a platitude. She was very used to losing sight of her friends for months or weeks at a time. She was accustomed to a certain kind of solitude, and to spirits drifting in and out of her world. In Promenade this had not changed. Dreamers woke, and lost themselves in their own reveries before, perhaps, returning to the gleaming city once

[truailligh]

One of the fires cracks louder, bright sparks coming off as a few logs give way to the heat, collapsing in on themselves. The noise frightens off the crow and it takes flight, off to wherever its nest happens to be and she's sure that before the night is over that she'll change form herself, maybe flying above the fires herself and then back to the city because the fires will eventually take care of themselves.

Tired, she replies which isn't much of an answer but it's a start in the right direction. Unsettled too. It was one thing to have a building I'd called home appear here because it was a building and because I'd become used to dreaming up inanimate objects by then. But the things that possessed people... She shivers, despite the heat and unbidden, Cassandra's face flits through her thoughts again. It took the form of my best friend and then I start to lose track of everything. At least when I ask the Otherworld self I know what I'm doing, or she does for the most part, sometimes it's difficult to tell if it's making her

[meitori]

Yuuta came upon the bonfires, curious about why someone would be lighting them. He had a feeling that someone was celebrating something, and it almost felt like O-ban, but it was... Western magic, Western culture. Coming up to Shirley as she passed through the fires, he gave her a polite bow.

"Hello. What are you doing, if you don't mind me asking?"

[truailligh]

Where she sat at the opposite end of the path, she looked up and nodded, attention diverted from the fires beyond the heat they were casting off in her direction, the pungent scent of the juniper carried in the night air.

Celebrating Beltane, she thought back as her answer, the first day of summer in Scotland. In the past cattle were walked between the two fires and it's a time of purification and transition. You herald the new season, hope for a good harvest. It's also for protection from harm against otherworldy spirits.

That part was not of great concern to her because she wasn't doing this for the same reason that normal people had done it hundreds of years ago or even today but protection from anything Promenade might throw in her path would be nice.

(oopse forgot about the teneka)

[meitori]

Ah, he thought back. We have a similar event back home, but I guess it's more of a fall celebration, but we do a lot of purification rituals then.

Approaching the bonfire, he smiled at the flame and heat. The juniper was an odd smell, but he figured that it was part of the ritual.

We have a lot of festivals where we light bonfires and make signs on the mountain sides, and light paper lanterns to guide spirits to the afterlife."

[truailligh]

I have Samhain then - it's on October 31st, the opposite of today. It's dedicated to harveset and the dead. She hated the Halloween aspect of it but Samhain was always special, always a time to eat with her family at the dinner table, her grandfather there too and with a place set out for her grandmother, telling old stories of the family line.

When he approached the fires, she motioned to the path between them. When people pass through them, it's meant to purify them. I don't know how much I honestly believe in that, which was a lie but she didn't know this stranger and the personal connection to this ritual, especially after what had transpired left her more guarded than normal, but that's what all the old stories say.

She nodded at that. I think I've seen some of those when I was at university. The lanterns that is. A lot of us didn't know what they were when we first saw them but we ended up finding out later. It's good to know I'm not the only one who celebrates old things they were they were celebrated years and years