destinystrings | [OPEN] the first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event

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[OPEN] the first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event

Who: Pharos, and

destinystrings
Where: The Scorpio Ward, the middle of the afternoon, walking around in the snow.
Summary: This is the first time the child personification of death has ever personally experienced snow and needless to say, Pharos is just as endlessly fascinated with it as any kid would be on his first snowday. Therefore, exploration is in order!
Warnings: Small children being cute, and Pharos being weird as usual. Also probably mentions of death because this is Pharos we're talking about here, and that's what he does, think about death?

There's a little black-haired child wandering about the Scorpio district today, scrambling up the ridiculously high staircases, walking through crooked alleys that crisscross the ward, and popping his head out one of the doorways that open onto the thin air of the mild snowstorm and staring down at the snowy street below, watching the flurries of snow buffet the people wrapped up in their warm coats as they moved up and down the district. Demons as well, both those ill-suited to the cold and those who basked in it, in their element, flickered from place to place, busy even in the first snow of the year.

It's not the elaborate constructions of art that interest him, nor the countless crafts shops lining the streets; it's the snow.

It's... incredible.

He has never seen anything quite like it. Yeah, sure, he had witnessed it in his container(s)' memories, but he was detached from those recollections, and had observed them as if from behind a thick sheet of glass. His entire existence had been lived through others, never through his own eyes, and it was a change to touch and feel things firsthand for himself. A nice one, even if the cold air chilled his skin and numbed his fingertips unpleasantly.

One of the Arisatos, being the responsible quasi-guardians of Death they are, soon after the first icy snowflakes drifted down in clumps from the overcast gray sky, had realized what little protection Pharos' thin black-and-white striped uniform provided him against the cold weather and outfitted him with a slightly over-sized, puffy gray winter coat, gloves, a lilac blue scarf wrapped around his neck, and decent fur-lined snow boots instead of allowing him to walk around in his sandals and lose all of his toes to frostbite like he had originally planned to. Clouds of white vapor hung in front of his face as he breathed out.

Wide blue eyes gazed up at the sky, attempting to track every swirling dot of white that fell out of the heavens. Every now and then as he wanders silently from place to place, he stops and tries to catch the snowflakes before they touch the ground. Feel free to run into him anywhere in the Scorpio ward; of course, sometimes it's easy to lose track of small ghost children in the swirls of the white snowfall, and Pharos certainly appears wraith-like with his pale skin and luminous blue eyes.... So be careful about that. Maybe your eyes will play tricks on you.

But don't worry. He just wants to play in the snow for awhile.

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Neku decided he didn't like snow anymore. Snow reminded him of dead things, and dead things reminded him that he was technically still dead, even if he'd been brought here from the instant where he was apparently going to be returned to life. Even if his body was flesh and bone and gave all the appearance of being alive, he was still tied to the Reaper's Game - and in part probably would always be, if only in memory. So to cheer himself up, Neku headed out to the Scorpio ward to get some art supplies - mostly just sketchbooks and pencils, but some spray paint too.

... Was there someone out there? It was hard to see with all the snow, but he had the feeling of being watched. He shook it off, and brushed the snow out of his hair. Thankfully he was bundled up - he was really glad his threads came with him. Cautiously, he worked his way over to an out of the way alley, and took out a red can of spray paint, starting to make a base coat. He was no CAT, but he still had a dream of making art that made people think.

There was someone there, a silent presence but they made no sound as they blink, taking note of the person with bright orange hair trudging stubbornly past through the snowfall, and temporarily takes his attention away from marveling at the delicate snowflakes. It's the state of this soul, this deceased soul, that interests him more than where he's going, actually, but Pharos felt compelled to keep an eye on this human. Soon, Naku arrives in an alley way, sheltered from both the wind and the snow. The child trails after, curious.

Sooner or later, when Neku thinks to look up from his artwork, there will be a young, ten-year old boy crouched on his haunches a couple feet from him, lilac blue scarf tucked over his mouth, staring unblinkingly at either his incomplete spray-paint art, or at him. No footprints in the thin crust of snow lead to him. Pharos doesn't say a word.

It takes a few minutes before he looks away from his art, and he blinks in surprise at the feeling of someone staring at him. He turns, and spots Pharos, taking a few steps back, startled.

"Hey... uh..." How did he deal with kids? He was never the greatest with them, to say the least. "Uh... hey there. Shouldn't you be headed inside? It's pretty cold out here."

His smile is an innocent one, no malicious intent towards Neku shown in his movements or his lighthearted answer even as the orange-haired teenager backed away from him. His small hands rested on his bent knees.

"Hello," he nodded cheerfully as a greeting. His forehead crinkled in thought as he pondered the next part of Neku's words, before shrugging them off idly. Why should he go back inside? "It's snowing; I wanted to play in the snow."

"Oh. I uh... I guess that makes sense. Just don't stay out too long, okay?" He had to be a responsible person for the little guy, right? ... Responsible. Right. Okay.

"Are you out here all by yourself?" He didn't see anyone with him... it was dangerous for kids to be left alone, right?

"Heheh," Pharos chuckled in answer. Even in this alley, sheltered from the bit of the snowstorm, frozen cold snowflakes fall out of the heavens, speckling the pavement and a few of them landing and melting harmlessly on the fresh red coat of spray-paint Neku had applied to the wall.

The ten year old boy nodded, not particularly concerned with being by himself. "Yes, I am."

"Do you wander around on your own a lot?" It'd only been a few years ago when his parents let him start walking around Shibuya totally unsupervised and all. Someone that young probably shouldn't be left by themselves for too long.

... Or something. He was really not good at this.

"All the time," was Pharos' absentminded reply as he stood up from where he was crouching and took a few steps through the dusting of snow on the ground towards the section of the alley wall that had been splashed with crimson. His arms hung tenderly at his sides, like a childs'.

He asked, eyes glancing from the vivid paint on the stone to Neku. "What are you making?'

"Right now it's not anything, but I'm going to end up painting a fox on here. There's an artist at home called CAT... I admire him, and he inspires me to start trying to make my own art."

And practice makes... well, if not perfect, then better at least, right?

"So this is your art?" he asked. So he's aspiring to be an artist, to paint his own artwork because of his admiration of this CAT even after his death? That's good. People getting inspired by each other, he means; that's excellent. (The dying part is almost a sidenote.)

He glanced at the wall, the cold air stinging his cheeks; the orange-haired boy was right, it wasn't anything at the moment, but he could see how the bright red sprayed on the stone could a base for a fox fashioned of sharp, bulky lines and vivid hues.

It's okay, he'll get better. But he nodded, picking up a can of orange spray paint, before picking up the red spray paint and handing it to Pharos.

"If you want to paint something too, go ahead. ... Just don't tell anyone where you got it, okay?" He grinned a little bit.

He held the can of orange spray paint in his hand and curiously shook it a couple times, listening to it rattle before slowly returning the nod with a secretive half-smile of his own. "Huh, really? I wouldn't."

Then he moved down the wall from the beginnings of Neku's artwork to give him space, and pondered what to spray onto the alley wall. Orange... Hm.

Edited 2012-12-07 00:43 (UTC)

He chuckled a bit, and picked up the green instead. He could keep working on the background before he started on the fox itself. Gradually, leaves started to form in puffs, attached to winding stems that seemed to grow from the small piles of snow on the ground.

Spring would come eventually, both for this place and for him. He'd come back to life. He had to.

Pharos is clumsier when he starts working, lacking experience or any particular skill with the spray can. Nor is the personification of Death terribly imaginative. He finally began from the bottom of the wall and built up a canvas of pure orange raising upwards from the covering of snow and leaves defined patches of the wall untouched.

After awhile, he wanders over and takes the red spray can back to his section of the alley wall.

And between the flares of bright color are the outlines of a line of... coffins, rectangles of bare unpainted stone; two long sides to the right and left and four shorter sides, three on the top and one on the bottom of the crude outlines. Simplistic. Not much attention paid to the details. But clear. Pharos doesn't offer much chatter, focused on brightening the edges of the outlines.

Neku looks over after a while, curious what he's made. What he sees makes a shiver run down his spine. Really? That's what he painted? Why's someone as young as him painting something like that? If he had painted it, that would be one thing...

... That's actually kind of worrying.

"Any particular reason you're painting coffins?"

Sorry, he has these morbid tendencies. And it's like he's particularly creative when it comes to art. Pharos glanced over at Neku at his question and blinks. The red paint is splashed with the skill of an amateur over the orange, mixing together haphazardedly and darkening the hue of the colors. Snowflakes tumble down out of the dull gray skies, landing in the alley way and melting.

Very simply, and a little confusedly; "... Why not?" Neku, elaborate on your inquiry.

"Most kids your age don't really think about death that much." Did something happen to him? It's weird... and he stares up at the shapes again. Even if he came back like Joshua said he did... when he first died, did anyone other than his parents bother to mourn him?

He huffed out a breath into the cold, sharp air, "I suppose they don't..." Of course they didn't; they're children. Why should they worry themselves about a concept as abstract and distant to them as dying was?

"It's nothing to be afraid of," Pharos added, holding up a hand and almost brushing his fingertips against the wet paint, staring up at the coffin-shaped rectangles of bare stone. Death, that is. Death was an end. With life, and anything really, it eventually comes an end. To worry and suffer over such an inevitable fact was time better spent living your life to the fullest.

Nothing to be afraid of? Well... aside from the obvious pain (though he didn't quite remember the pain)...

"I think it's less dying itself and more what comes after. ... I know I definitely didn't expect what happened after I died. But before you die you just don't know."

He walked a little closer to Pharos. Why was this kid so strange? He reminded him a little bit of Joshua in some strange way. ... Though much less of a jerk.

"Afraid of the unknown, is that so?" he remarked, still smiling off-kilterly, and showing absolutely no surprise at Neku's comment regarding his being dead and not expecting what happened afterward. Well, it was good that this soul knew it had died.

"There's nothing especially wrong with that," Human nature to be fearful and all, and being scared wasn't a bad thing per se. It was still sad to him though. It was just him waiting at the end of every road, after all. And he harbored no malice towards any of them. His small hand dropped back to his side and he turned to face Neku when he moved closer. "But likewise, there is little about the eternal sleep to be so worried about."

"Some people are worried about who or what they left behind - people they never got to say goodbye to, or things they didn't get to finish. Other people just don't want to be forgotten."

He shrugged a little. It was a little weird holding this kind of conversation, but whatever.

"I was more angry than anything else. I didn't think it was fair - and it actually wasn't, though I guess it ended up being good for me in the end. But most people are afraid of the uncertain. It makes them jumpy when they can't prepare for something or know what to expect."

"That's be expected, honestly, of people," He mused. "Why would anyone want to be forgotten? Why would anyone want to depart without a farewell? ... Why would anyone want to die?"

Again, Pharos saw no issue with this; anger, fear of the unknown, of being forgotten, of being unimportant, of dying altogether, unwillingness to let go, to move on, that was... normal, no? Not particularly rational nor controllable, just human. He himself could not fully comprehend the pain of it entirely since he had never suffered a personal loss in that sense. But if you fought to hold onto your life, that meant you wanted to live on some level, and Pharos could not fault them for that.

(It was only a group of teenagers that seemed to share any fervor for life in his universe, enough to fight for it against the on-slaughter of shadows. But too few, too little to stop the Fall.)

He nodded at Neku's words of how he had been angry over the unfairness even if it had turned out for the better and peoples' jumpiness at the uncertain. He sees no weirdness here!

"In this world, people die everyday, regardless of their feelings on the matter," he said, as matter-of-fact as remarking upon the weather or on clothes someone was wearing that day. The wind blew, the earth rotated, and people died. Simple as that and just as noticeable to him. "Fairness doesn't exactly enter into it. And well, you can't exactly erase fear of that sort from anybody, can you?"

"No, you can't. But I think it's just human nature... not that I'd really know a ton about that myself."

He's still just getting used to thinking of other people. You can't expect great revelations from him yet.

That's fine, Neku, he's not asking for great revelations from you.

Mother could. The Fall would. A faint giggle issued from him, and he turned his attention back to the row of coffins lined up and painted upon the alleyway wall. "Mm, why not? Not good at understanding others?" All of the sympathy, man. Humans are weird.

Picking up one of the spray cans!

"Not really." A little bit better now... but still.

"Any ideas on what to paint next?" He's just gonna keep a look out for any police officers walking around...

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the_usual_stuff - 2012-12-28 05:43 (UTC) - Expand

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