fromthefog | Prayer Box

This is a place to send your prayers to the Fog god. She may not always respond, or she may respond in ways you don’t expect, but she is always listening.

Speak, she hears you.

OOC note: As of April 2020, threads with the gods will be capped at three NPC replies! Please keep this in mind when writing god prayers to make sure you get everything you need out of the thread. It’s also possible to handwave prayers by titling your comment HANDWAVED PRAYER. Handwaved prayers lack our usual flourish, but you can expect a faster response!

As of February 2024, god prayers will be handwaved only. Please only submit a prayer if you have a question for either god which needs answering in order to progress your character's arc within Ryslig. If this is something you need to tier up within the god boon system, or just to set up a player plot in general, please don't hesitate to submit a prayer about it! You may shorten it down to an OOC summary of what your character is asking. This will allow any of our helper mods to reply much faster, without having to dig into the specifics of either god's personality/writing quirks. Should this limitation be lifted again in the future, this note will be removed.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

At Larry's suggestion, Five makes his way to the lakeshore. Instead of going in the morning to watch the fog dissipate, however, he bundles himself warmly and heads out in the dead of night to watch it gather. His breath comes in plumes, and he idly thinks that it, in itself, could be an offering to help the Fog grow.

He was never religious at home. Devotion in the Hargreeves family was to duty and to the world at large. But he's been assured to treat it as a conversation. That helps burn away a little of the awkwardness he feels as he sits down at the water's edge and watches the gathering dark.

"I'm not sure how to address you. Miss Fog? No one really covered that part. Anyway, I'll get to the point: you probably know who I am, since you're so powerful and you brought me here in the first place.
My family only ever called me Five, but ... Fiddleford calls me Horatio. And I think I like that better. I want to help make this a better place while I'm here. It was supposed to be my duty to save the world from armageddon, and ... now that I don't have that, I feel like just mixing drinks for people is ... ridiculously superfluous and a little jejeune. I've joined the Lighthouse, and that feels like a start, but ... I always get to one goal and want more. People tell me you want to rebuild. How can I help?"

As Five sits at the shore, the waters laps lightly mere inches away from his shoes, and yet some how, it's as if its chill can be felt all through out. When he speaks into the darkness, each warm breath mingles with ever growing creeping fog. It's his last statement, however, that catches her attention; How can I help?

His breath seemingly freezes in the air, twisting and chilling, until it resembles something of a hand. There's a cool sensation against his skin as it seems to warp and caress his cheek before disappearing into the surrounding fog. What follows is a harsh whisper cutting through the air, from no direction in particular.

"All work and no play, hm, little Horatio?" her voice is teasing and cold, but somehow not condescending. "Some would call such a duty a horrible burden, but for one like you, it is merely the way things are, correct?"

An echoing chuckle ripples through the fog, but then quiets, thoughtful.

"Should my stray pets accept their new lives and the gifts I bestow to them, this world could flourish like never before. After all you've suffered, does it not stand that you should protect a world you have a hand in shaping?"

He gasps at the sight of the hand, but doesn't startle. This is a test, after all, and he stays still, letting that chilly hand touch him. Once it's gone, he listens to the voice intently, giving Her his full attention. 'Little'. The word sticks in his craw a bit, the same way it does when the Handler uses it: if the Fog brought him here, she knows full well how old he truly is, and that he is small only in stature. However, she gets what he was starting to say, and what he didn't: his life is one of service, always has been, always will be, and he sees no point in trying to change it after this long.

"I'm not going to be one to assume that I could control anything. Shaping, if I did anything like it, would be minimal. I've had my share of enforcing a certain course of events. I don't want to use deadly force anymore unless I don't have a choice. Feeding is, of course, one of those instances where it's necessary. ... But I feel like I should make that clear."

He frowns a little, but it's more out of thought than any sort of disdain. "Why do you call us your 'pets', and not ... followers, or subjects, or something like that? Just out of curiosity."

"Because I love you."

It's stated plainly, as if it were a known fact that should have been obvious. The fog curls around him, and Five may hear something like a whispering hum.

"I've had followers, and devoted subjects for longer than you can imagine. But those are merely humans, desperate to grasp a power they don't deserve. Even when they wish to please me, it's out of fear, a desire to sate a force they do not understand.

I do not wish that for you. I want you to live freely, and to your fullest potential, pet."

It's certainly a new argument for him: to be told he's loved as a means of reasoning and logic, the answer to a question and not as a ploy. No one has ever outright Loved Him except perhaps Dolores, and he's self-aware enough to know exactly what her love really was: a coping mechanism that wasn't really doing its job anyway. The things the Fog speaks of seem, to him, cut from the same cloth as the reason that he never sought power during his years in the Commission, no matter how many times the Handler tried to convince him it was a good idea. It is one thing to know you are above and beyond most people, another to have to watch them grovel and scrape and consistently prove it. Why do people keep pets, he wonders? They don't really give you anything but company, and -

"Oh."

He thinks he might understand just a little. He's not about to presume to understand everything, but ... the starlight sheds just enough of a glow to limn the edges of a thought as Her blanket creeps over the peninsula.

"So you thought my powers as they stood were ... an obstacle to that potential, and not a tool to chisel it from the raw material." He makes a thoughtful face. With everything that he's been thinking over and over, he wonders if that may in fact have been the truth of it. He was so drunk on his powers as a child and so self-assured of his own abilities that they'd just made him cause history to repeat itself. It was a dangerous question to ask, but ... it burned too hot to hold.

"What do you see as my potential, then?"

His mind was fifty-six, sure, but somewhere still hidden beneath the layers of dried blood and fragile moth wings was still a fourteen-year-old looking for validation, guidance, and praise. He hated it, but he couldn't hide from it. Not when that chill, damp touch felt so ... strangely welcoming. Like the damp mornings when he would crawl from under tattered blankets, the only living soul in the Apocalypse, and the world's carcass was his for exploring and rebuilding, and it had somehow felt like a good thing. Rare moments, but ones that had gotten him through all the others.

A gentle laugh whispers through the wind, fog curling around him.

"I see many things, little Horatio. And for you, I see someone wise, steadfast. Cunning. You are cutthroat, but you are not cruel. You know what true sacrifice and true suffering is. You continue on despite being ever so tired." There's another cooling, refreshing whisper against the shell of his ear.

"Wouldn't it be oh so wonderful, to truly be able to save people? To make a difference? I see someone who could truly help the rest of my children, and even these wretched humans, undeserving of kindness."

The fog suddenly begins to retreat, ever so slowly, and there's a brief, bitter sting of frost in the air.

"However, what I see means little if you can't share my vision. I wonder, where do you think this path will lead you? Where do you want it to lead. . .? Please show me, dearest pet. I will be waiting."

With that, the fog fully disperses, leaving Five alone at the shore once more, with only the sounds of the tides, and the creaking of the surrounding forest in the night wind.

That is ... certainly a lot to think about, Five - no, Horatio, he's Horatio now - decides. He sits there for a long time as he processes what she said. He is tired, but this brief conversation courses through him like a strong, fresh, artisan cup of espresso for the soul.

The brief sting of frost makes him shiver, and even rimes the very topmost tips of his ears, but he pays it no mind, preferring to sit in the sounds of the lake so as not to break the spell of the experience too soon.

Wise. Not cruel. Able to make a difference. All of these are things that he had thought were far, far behind him after so many years at the Handler's heel in the Temps Commission: things he thought had been taken from him as some cruel, karmic punishment for doing whatever it took to get back to his family, to save their world. But if the Fog still sees them in him, they may yet still be there after all.

He isn't sure yet where he wants to mark and blaze his path, but he has a feeling he will find an answer if he's alert and mindful. At last, he gets to his feet and looks out for one more glance over the open water.

"Thank you," he says into the clear, crisp night, before turning and making his way back home, looking forward to his warm bed and whatever clues to his future may come in his dreams.

Prayer Box

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TY mods! <3