duskofthegods_logs | (no subject)

Who: Dominique DiPierro and YOU
What: The new god of Law and Justice gets to work
Where: The Temple of Law and Justice and around Vernos Bay
When: Anytime in the first week after Dom claims the throne of Law and Justice

For the first day, it doesn't seem like much is different in Vernos Bay. But soon men and women start reporting for duty at police stations. Lawyers open their offices. Judges—the priest of Law—discover formal regalia that they'd forgotten they owned. Clerks set up shop in the Temple—the highest court in the land, as it turns out, sort of like Vernos Bay's equivalent of the Supreme Court or the Old Bailey (both of which buildings it vaguely resembles, Dom thinks).

Dom surprises herself a little. She turns out to be a fussy, hands-on sort, talking to everyone she can, learning about the way things used to run around here before the old gods disappeared. There's a lot of gaps. Rules and regulations that have fallen by the wayside, records and texts that need to be recovered from the dusty shelves and file drawers of the Temple. So she spends her week everywhere—in the Temple, at this or that police station, visiting a courthouse. You might see her there—or you might just see her about in the street, trying to get a decent cup of coffee or a sandwich.

As always, her clothes and hair and makeup are on point. Still, she looks a little tired and a lot driven—and also, weirdly perhaps, kind of happy.

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The tape catches Zelda's interest, though the paper and utensils are rather odd-looking as well. She experiments with it on her own fingers as she listens to Dom's explanation.

"An adhesive? We don't have anything like that in Hyrule, to leave no marks." She's a little confused by how weak the adhesive on the masking tape seems, too.

"Sorry, I'm getting distracted." She sets the tape diligently aside and takes up a pencil and paper.

"Are the entries numbered? We can record those, as well as the general subject matter of the laws." The numbers may repeat or not, but it will be useful to have as many shortcuts as they can.

Dom nods, and lays down one of the books on the nearest flat surface that isn't too covered with other stuff.

"Title page has a brief summary of the contents." This one is Property - Land Holdings Part I. Ownership, sale, title.. "Then the entries are numbered, but apparently they didn't see fit to number the volumes. So you have to flip to the first entry." 49.I.i§a "And it would be nice to say that this is all of 49, but somewhere—" a hopeless gesture at the stacks, "you're going to find a 49-dot-20-dot-i-section a, which will be the second part of property law ownership. And maybe a third."

"Are those Is letters or numbers?" She's not sure Dom will know, though, so she starts writing the information down on a ripped off edge of paper. They won't need the whole sheet, and it makes more sense to conserve.

Once she's finished taping the note to the cover - rather genius, really - she rips another bit of paper and takes a moment to inspect the pencil tip.

"Is this charcoal?"

"Numbers. I think—I mean, I'm assuming they're like Roman numerals. Could be wrong, though."

She drops another stack of books on the desk and looks up at Zelda. "It's graphite. Harder than charcoal. You don't have pencils where you're from?"

“I suppose not.” She doesn’t even know the word. “No more than we have Roman numerals, though if I’m lucky they correspond to ancient Hylian numerals.”

She tries the pencil on her finger tip and is duly satisfied that it’s definitely not charcoal. Deciding no further inspection is warranted she finds another book to categorize.

Haha, whoops. There I've gone again, she thinks, forgetting that people come from who-knows-where in this place. Though really, the other woman's ears ought to have been something clue-like.

"What's Hylia?" she asks, thinking as she does so that she could have phrased that a little more felicitously.

The question confuses her for a moment, but then it dawns on her.

"Hylia is the name of the goddess who, it's said, gave up her immortality to save the land and founded the kingdom of Hyrule." So Hylian refers to citizens of Hyrule, not citizens of Hylia.

"Right. Makes sense." She's not being sarcastic; it's as logical as anything around here. "Reminds me a little of this concept we have in my world, in the Buddhist religion—something they call the bodhisattva That's um, someone who could step out of the cycle of reincarnation, but doesn't out of compassion for the world."

Or ... something like that. As she's saying it, Dom wonders if she's getting it wrong.

"Step out of the cycle..." It takes her a second to parse that sentence, working as she has to on context clues.

"Yes, it's rather like that. Legend says that girls born into the royal family are the reincarnation of the goddess, but it's more tradition now than true belief. It's why I was named Zelda. We still pray to the goddess Hylia, just in case."

As she explains she pulls another book to her and riffles through it, just to check on the numeral theory. So far it tracks. Satisfied, she closes the book and finishes a label for it.