乙巳 005: 小暑
Jul. 2nd, 2025 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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vivala[video broadcast]
[Is it time for another Yanese festival? Shu bows to the video feed with her usual greeting.]
Hello, Corsairs. We are in the midst of difficult times, once more. I am glad that our aims have succeeded thus far, but it seems as if the fighting will become more pitched shortly.
Perhaps some levity is in order. In Yanese culture... [here we go again] the middle of the seventh month of the Lunar Year is called the Hungry Ghost Festival. The correct word would be preta or 餓鬼. It isn't the best translation, but there is a folk belief that the spirits of the ancestors return during this time and need to be honored, then escorted back to the afterlife. Normally, this is a very solemn affair, but of course, as ancestral veneration is not a part of your cultures, we can focus on the merriment.
Please join me this evening. We will make paper lanterns and paper boats and escort them down the river to the beyond.
If that is not to your liking... [there is a faint twinkle in her eyes] Perhaps we may share some ghost stories.
[action, by a River Somewhere That Is Definitely a Real River in this setting]
[The days are long in the summer. When the first rays of the sun begin to glimmer golden red as it descends below the horizon, Shu appears with quite a large number of candles, folding paper, and calligraphy pens.]
We guide the souls of the ancestors back to the beyond. The flowing water is the barrier between life and death. The river escorts them. We honor them with a few words and we write our hopes for them upon these lanterns.
The ancestors, of course, do not have to be your actual ancestors.
[action, for Turtles]
[It is high time that they keep their appointment andhear embarrassing stories about Donnie when he was a wee turtlekin share a meal together. Having some experience now with Raph's bottomless pit of an appetite and his, ah... completely undiscerning palate, Shu has thought long and hard about how best to improve his experience with food. The feast she has prepared is slightly different: instead of being set out family style, she plans to bring out one dish at a time so as to guide the direction of the meal more closely.
Of course, he is equally as likely to just inhale everything as he is to learn anything, but one can only try one's best.
She leaves the door unlocked for them. They are welcome to come in and out whenever they please, even if she has never actually said this.]
[Is it time for another Yanese festival? Shu bows to the video feed with her usual greeting.]
Hello, Corsairs. We are in the midst of difficult times, once more. I am glad that our aims have succeeded thus far, but it seems as if the fighting will become more pitched shortly.
Perhaps some levity is in order. In Yanese culture... [here we go again] the middle of the seventh month of the Lunar Year is called the Hungry Ghost Festival. The correct word would be preta or 餓鬼. It isn't the best translation, but there is a folk belief that the spirits of the ancestors return during this time and need to be honored, then escorted back to the afterlife. Normally, this is a very solemn affair, but of course, as ancestral veneration is not a part of your cultures, we can focus on the merriment.
Please join me this evening. We will make paper lanterns and paper boats and escort them down the river to the beyond.
If that is not to your liking... [there is a faint twinkle in her eyes] Perhaps we may share some ghost stories.
[action, by a River Somewhere That Is Definitely a Real River in this setting]
[The days are long in the summer. When the first rays of the sun begin to glimmer golden red as it descends below the horizon, Shu appears with quite a large number of candles, folding paper, and calligraphy pens.]
We guide the souls of the ancestors back to the beyond. The flowing water is the barrier between life and death. The river escorts them. We honor them with a few words and we write our hopes for them upon these lanterns.
The ancestors, of course, do not have to be your actual ancestors.
[action, for Turtles]
[It is high time that they keep their appointment and
Of course, he is equally as likely to just inhale everything as he is to learn anything, but one can only try one's best.
She leaves the door unlocked for them. They are welcome to come in and out whenever they please, even if she has never actually said this.]
no subject
Date: 2025-07-13 02:00 am (UTC)"Tell me about her. What you remember. And I shall tell you about Jie. In speaking, they will be closer to us. And perhaps... we will remember more."
no subject
Date: 2025-07-13 02:48 am (UTC)"Her name was Aryll. Zelda helped me remember." He hadn't realised he had a sister, not until Zelda told him. If not for her help, he might never have remembered. "She liked birds."
no subject
Date: 2025-07-13 03:12 am (UTC)"A lovely name. Do you remember if she was she older? Younger?" Link has a protective energy she would associate with older siblings, though his... gremlin hoarding ways are a little chaotic. "Did she look like you?"
no subject
Date: 2025-07-13 03:26 am (UTC)"...Yes?" He says after a moment. "She had...hair like mine. With a headband. Big smile."
That last one maybe wasn't so much like him.
He glances sidelong at Shu. "Was Jie...younger?" Did terms like younger and older even apply to Shu and her siblings?
no subject
Date: 2025-07-13 03:52 am (UTC)She interprets his brief hesitation correctly with a faintly amused chuckle.
"...I am in the middle, actually." Her great secret. "But I am older than six, so I am still a big sister. Our ages are determined by when we first gained consciousness, you see. Jie was -- " She pauses. "She was..." Her expression becomes pained.
"I think... she was fourth."
But she does not remember. Shu sighs after a long moment. "...Every year, I remember a little less."
no subject
Date: 2025-07-13 04:05 am (UTC)Link had found written records helpful. In fact he'd managed to learn quite a bit about himself just from shamelessly reading Zelda's 100 year old diary.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-13 04:16 am (UTC)"She has ceased to exist across time. There never was a being named Jie, you see. Any written record has also changed to reflect this. And will change. All that remains is... her impact. You see, as I mastered agricultural techniques, Jie became a great scholar, a teacher of literary craft. Much of Yan is literate because of her endless devotion."
Her smile is proud.
"And so, even if one day, I, too, cannot remember -- at least, she lives on in that way."
no subject
Date: 2025-07-13 04:43 am (UTC)"...What about a story?" he says. If her impact still lives on... "Not history. Legends."
It wouldn't be the same, of course. But it was at least one small way for her memory to live on.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-14 07:36 am (UTC)“A legend…?”
She turns the implications over in her mind.
“A sort of fictionalized version of her story? Like the one I tell about Shennong?” She sounds slightly troubled. “…The line between truth and fiction is sometimes hard to distinguish. I wonder… at what point it would be allowed to persist. I have never examined the implications of our existence in that manner. It seems as if it may be testing a… boundary.”
She says this not in the sense that she does not wish to test a boundary, but more as if she does not even know how to begin to do so.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-14 09:14 am (UTC)She...doesn't like the idea, does she?
"You don't...need to..." he starts, before the words dry up. He's said the wrong thing, hasn't he? He was trying to help, but instead he's just...upset her more.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-14 10:55 pm (UTC)“I am not upset. Merely… pensive. If such a thing were possible, it would indeed be better than the alternative. How… do you think such a story might begin?
Long ago… there was a great scholar.”
no subject
Date: 2025-07-15 12:07 am (UTC)Then he nods; yes, that is a good way to start. It sounds like many of the legends he's heard of.
"Ten thousand years ago," he suggests. Hylian legends often started that way. Whether or not that timeframe was anywhere near accurate, Link had no idea...but it was a legend. It didn't need to be completely accurate.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-18 01:43 pm (UTC)"Ten thousand years ago, there was a great scholar. Her name was..." She pauses. If she gives the real name, the veil of non-existence that shrouded them would likely take effect. "Well, her name is not important. Only that she loved words. Stories, poetry, legends, and texts."
Shu pauses.
"...What would be a good reason - a good storytelling reason - to start teaching people how to write?"
no subject
Date: 2025-07-19 06:54 am (UTC)He can only think that this lost sister of Shu's...she sounds a lot like Zelda.
"...There was a Calamity," he says. "The schools were gone."
Which meant no one left to teach the children. It was the whole reason Zelda founded the school. Though that was his world's history.
1/2
Date: 2025-07-19 12:47 pm (UTC)Shu coughs to cover up the brief moment in which she arches an eyebrow critically. ...Luckily, it's dark.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-19 12:53 pm (UTC)She repeats.
"...But this was a Calamity made by man." She'll tell the story a little more closer to the real truth, perhaps. "Only... only certain people were allowed to read and write because they didn't think the regular people were good enough. And then... as time passed, fewer and fewer people knew. So it was the Great Forgetting."
This hadn't actually happened, but the first part had been true, to some extent.
"The Scholar couldn't let such a thing happen. She thought... she thought that it was very, very important that everyone knew how to read and write. If they were great kings or small farmers, everyone should know. So... she set off on a journey."
no subject
Date: 2025-07-20 07:12 am (UTC)He is really not the best person to help with this.
Right now though, his eyes are going wide. "They...weren't allowed to read?!" It's an idea that would be unthinkable in Hyrule; an educated populace was considered a boon. Zelda certainly would have found the idea that some people weren't allowed positively horrifying.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-20 01:06 pm (UTC)She frowns slightly.
"Long ago, it was not known for a peasant to read and write. Perhaps 'not allowed' is a strong way of putting it. But they were never taught and so... in essence, it was the same. There was no chance of bettering or educating oneself. That is what Jie changed.
"And so, in this story... when the Great Scholar traveled the land -- she first decided to standardize and streamline writing, so that everyone could understand each other's texts. Just as I could not read your photographs, so people across the land found it hard to comprehend each other for they used different scripts.
"Next, she began to transcribe all the great texts of the land into this new script. All the most beautiful poetry, all the most influential philosophy. She wrote and she wrote and she wrote until she had mountains and mountains of scrolls and beautiful calligraphy.
"Finally, she took on apprentices everywhere she went. She taught them the beauty of words and of literature and she bade them teach their families and their friends, to start schools and to copy her scrolls. And though this story is short, her work was long, for all this took many, many decades. And as the seeds she planted throughout the land took root, literacy, once rare in Yan, became more common than not. And as her story spread, the people called her... the Divine Author."