driftfleet | [ open ] .002 though I am empty, I still warn the sailors on their way

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[ open ] .002 though I am empty, I still warn the sailors on their way

Who: Katara
Broadcast: Written, Video
Action: Yes! Blue Fish and Planet
When: Message sent Monday, midmorning. Some backdated shuffle action.

[After giving it some thought, Katara decided to make an open network post. She wanted to write it out, but as part of her habit from living with Toph, she decided to both transcribe and say it aloud:]

I want to thank the person who put the memorial into place. If you get in touch with me, I can help you get the number to fill in.

I know that a lot of us have been pretty impacted by what we found here. I don’t know how long we’re usually on a planet, but I was thinking… it might be good to have some kind of remembering ceremony by the memorial? It feels important to find a way to show honor to the lives that were lost here. I don’t know what kind of funeral rites they would have preferred, and there’s no way to respectfully move them, so… maybe some fire and some music? Does anyone have any ideas?

I know that this might not be for them as much as it is for us, but… I think that’s important too.

(OOC: Please feel free to threadjack all up in this conversation; Katara would like to make this a community effort, because it feels like it’s something that’s needed to her.)

[The confetti is still as annoying as the last time it happened, but Katara is happy to be on her brother’s ship. She’ll want to wander around and meet everyone, though no doubt Sokka will soon join her to give her an Official Tour. (Did she really need to know every single detail about the ship and all its history? Probably not, but now she does, unless someone saves her.) She’ll spend some time in the kitchen and try to figure out what she needs to bring up from the planet, and then do the same thing in her new room.

Before she heads back down to the planet, she’s going to try to linger long enough to meet everyone.]

[Since the Blue Fish will likely be her permanent home as long as she’s on the fleet, that means that Katara will be doing what she can to take advantage of the free… everything. Her first stop is a hardware store where she picks up a wheelbarrow and several cans of water-based paint. The color - some shade of blue, though she wants something a little lighter too. She’ll be there pondering over choices for a bit.

She also has no qualms about stealing a good idea from the Vanquish when she sees it, and will pick up a chalkboard for the kitchen there as well. She spends a long time staring at a small electrically powered fountain for noise, trying to decide whether or not to get it. For now, she walks away.]

Hmm… maybe I should get different chair too?

[So feel free to find her, either at the hardware store or wheelbarrowing her way back to the shuttles! After dropping the paint off in the cargo hold, she’ll return once more to the planet for a bunch of canned fruits and vegetables and rice… and maybe go back for that fountain.]

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[She's not sure why the idea of filling up the bunker makes her so uncomfortable; it should be just like filling in a grave. Maybe it was because she felt that those skeletons should rest undisturbed? Maybe she just didn't like the idea of what would happen to them, once they were filled in? Maybe because it... seemed like such a big, final step.]

...we'll have to think if filling in the bunker is appropriate. Maybe there's someone who came across records of their burial rites while they were researching, or maybe we can go to the library and look... I don't know why, I just hate the thought of being behind disintegrating their bones further.

[Though he can't see it, since this is voice, she does glance back up again.] But I do like the idea of bending incense down there - or even at the entrance of the bunker. We can see if we can find some?

Everything has to end some time. [Aang says it gently. It's been a long time since he's been with Katara, but he remembers how sensitive she can be to the suffering of others. It's one of the many things he's always liked about her. But Aang doesn't see allowing their earthly remains to linger as a service--it seems more like leaving them with a tie to their past lives, one that might keep their spirits from moving on to live again.

But he's not going to press the topic. Whatever these people's traditional funeral rites were should take priority, if they can ever figure out what they were.]

I'll look for incense. If I can't find anything, I'll think of some other way to do it. A creative blessing is better than no blessing. [He'll bend the smoke of a scented candle. He'd even just bend air through wind chimes--anything to help release the spirits.]

[But why is it that the things we want to end, last, and what we want to last doesn't?]

...that sounds really nice, Aang. [...except, the other conversations have her thinking... but she doesn't want to talk to Aang about this over the journals...] Do you think - would you mind meeting me somewhere?

...I can meet you.

Where would you like to meet?

[Aang is always a little wary of announcing his location on a communicator like this.]

Are you still on the planet? We can meet by the Rec Center and go for a walk or something?

[Whereas long habit in Luceti has trained her... if something is important, you don't talk about it through the journals. And all these other conversations have her thinking, and she values his opinion in these matters a lot.]

The Rec Center is the place we stayed in Ba Sing Se. Meet me at the Earth Emperor's Palace.

[With that oblique direction, Aang turns his communicator off, and he won't be accessible through it again as he hides it away so no one can track his location with it.

He uses high, circuitous routes, doubling back multiple times to keep from being followed, before he settles down at the place that would be the Earth Emperor's Palace, if the Rec Center were the building they stayed in while they visited. That happens to be a bakery, and Aang settles on the roof, keeping an eye out for Katara.]

O...kay...?

[THAT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO FOR HER, AANG.]

[As such, it takes her a little while to remember how to get there. Also, this town is not like Ba Sing Se, the grid layout of it making figuring out how to go into the circuitous route toward the inner circle of the city complicated, to say the least.

On the plus side, at least she's going there directly.

Not the not-so-plus side, it takes her a while. Considering the roundabout way Aang is going, he's probably not going to be waiting too long, be he'll still be waiting.

He'll probably see her approaching long before she gets there, frowning and hesitantly trying to get her bearings.]

[Aang isn't waiting long. He spends the time watching out, wary of the possibility that someone unpleasant will find him, until he sees Katara and he perks. Although he's not entirely without wariness, still.]

Hi, Katara.

[He draws attention to himself up on the roof, waving for her attention.]

[Even frustrated with how long this is taking her to figure out, Katara still lights up when she sees him. She waves back.]

Hey, Aang!

[And she starts to walk more quickly toward him.]

[Aang glances around to make sure she wasn't followed before jumping down from the roof. He lands easily on the ground, a little bit of airbending slowing his fall.]

What'd you want to talk about?

[I don't know what to do.

The words are hot on her tongue, and they almost fall out. But he looks so young, and the directions to find him were so... paranoid... that she catches them in time.]

Um... I don't know much about this kind of thing - I mean, I know what our village would do when someone died, but other villages had different traditions too and... everyone I'm talking with has a different opinion. I was hoping you could take a look at what people are saying with me and we could work something out together that's... respectful and helpful, for all these different opinions and traditions?

That sounds like a good idea to me.

[None of them know what the dead would have wanted, so the best they can really do is mush up a bunch of traditions and hope that it works out.

Aang points to a bench on the sidewalk before sitting down.] So what are people suggesting?

[ Katara sits down beside him and takes out her communicator. ]

Well, some people seem to think that we should leave them where they are; other people agree with you that we should take them out... Loki volunteered to magically preserve the bones so that we could move them. But there seem like a few people who use magic here who have different opinions on it too. [She passes him her communicator and directs his attention to these two conversations in particular, since they sounded like people who did this sort of thing as part of their occupation.]

Edited (html is the forever enemy) 2018-04-30 19:52 (UTC)

Loki?

[A strange look comes to Aang's eyes momentarily, a short shudder. He thought he'd made friends with a kid named Loki who looked about his age, but then he pushed Aang into a pool of acid.

Aang shakes it off without explanation and takes her communicator. If he held everything someone did in the arena against them, he'd have no friends.]

Why don't we just blend everything together, or do a bunch of different things? Rose could commune with the world's spirits, I could do a blessing over the bodies, and we could take a vote on how we leave the earthly remains, whether we think they should be buried or left alone in the tomb or something else.

[ She can't help but notice Aang's reaction to Loki's name, just as she notices the way he won't explain.

He's not explaining a lot of things to her recently. She's not sure how much longer she can keep letting them go.

But for now... she allows her focus to be directed to the problem at hand. ]

I really like the idea of doing a bunch of different things. But even with magic preserving the bones... we'd need to have a much better alternative for them then just leaving them in peace where they are. I don't know what that could be.

...and honestly, Aang, I don't know if I want to move them.

[There are so many of them.]

Why not?

[Aang really doesn't like the idea of just leaving them where they died, in the place of such suffering. He wishes he knew what they would have preferred.]

Is it because there are so many? [The practical concern of how to move and bury or destroy so many bones is a legitimate one. Aang doesn't know how much time they have.]

...mostly, yeah. [ Which... goes beyond the practical concern. To have to see and handle each of those bodies... she just... doesn't want to. She's a little ashamed of that, and her hand loosely hooks around her opposite bicep. ] Have you been down there?

Yeah, I have.

[He doesn't sound too disturbed by it. After what happened to the Air Nomads, then watching it all over again in the Capitol and everything that happened in the arenas, he's grown numb to mass graves. They're places that are worthy of respect and solemnity, but he has grown grimly comfortable with the dead.

...Which does lead him to a logical conclusion.]

If you don't want to handle the bodies, I can do it.

I don't think any one person should do it.

[ She frowns a little. ]

...I just don't know.

[ It's a rare thing when Katara doesn't know the "right" thing to do in a situation. It sits heavily on her. ][ ]

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[ open ] .002 though I am empty, I still warn the sailors on their way

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