From Attuned to Ascended to Ancient, Kiada Njovu-Reyes has been reborn several times throughout her short life, but her fighting spirit has never once been diminished. With beauty, grace and a quick wit, Kiada is the whole package wrapped in an infectious smile. Recent endeavours have found her in the heart of the Hollowed Grounds, aiding the region and bettering it for her new Ancient kin, and whatever she does next, we know it's sure to pack a punch.
Congratulations, Kiada!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
Skinning and hosting by the epically talented Kaons, and functionality fanciness by the coding magic of Neowulf. If you ever see either of them around, make sure to show them some love!
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?
She laughed a little, smiling his way. "One person's thick-headed is another person's bravery." she said with a small smile. She thought it was very brave for anyone to walk into a shrine and pray to a god they did not know, or one they did and were perhaps fearful of. But the implication of her words did not process until she saw the blush on his cheeks, and he pointed it out. Her whole face flared red and she pressed her hands to her cheeks, wide-eyed with embarrassment. "Oh my goodness I didn't mean to imply that I'm sorry!" she said quickly. "To be fair though, Frey doesn't support nonconsensual sex so unless you wanted to sleep with me it wouldn't be...I mean not that I don't want to sleep with you...and not that I do either I just mean..." Phoebe stuttered and stumbled over her words, face crimson. She groaned and covered her face with her hands.
"Please ignore me and my awkwardness. I'm sorry." she mumbled.
But thankfully the subject changed. "Frey showed me what makes up all things in the world, these tiny little things I call cells. Remi made me a micro lens that I can use to see them."
Yeah, no, there was no way Phoebe was going to be able to put a positive spin on this one. Not with Loren, at least. ”And one person’s stubbornness and recklessness has a tendency to hurt people.” It should be pretty obvious both that he was talking about himself and that he didn’t want sympathy, comfort, or any empty words from her.
As she flushed herself and started stammering, he found himself turning an even more furious shade of crimson. This was probably the most awkward he’d felt in a while, and he’d told Remi that the Launceleyn had loved him after getting chucked into a pit by the Fae, then in a separate instance the alchemist had tried to kiss the summoner, so, yeah, Loren knew a little bit about awkward. As she finally got herself under control, he somehow found his own voice again. ”Understood. And noted. And I’d be happy to forget this conversation ever happened if you’re willing to give me a pass on my own awkwardness.” His voice came out stiffly. While he would admit Phoebe was attractive, he wasn’t attracted to her, both because he wasn’t really in a place where he could handle that, and because she was, well, best friends with his ex-lover whom the Launceleyn was now avoiding like the plague.
So yeah, complicated and that way there be dragons. Never gonna happen. Totally off-limits.
Again, Remi came up, and the summoner hesitated upon hearing the alchemist’s name. Still, it was getting easier, especially after their earlier conversational stumble over the not wanting to sleep with one another by accident under the influence of the sex god, nonconsensual clause be damned. So much for forgetting. ”I think you mentioned those last time. What are they?” There, biology, a much safer topic so long as they stayed far away from reproductive and sexual organs.
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?
Her head tilted slightly as his words took an obvious turn towards self deprication, seemingly out of the blue to her. For a moment she paused, considering quietly. "Everyone hurts others, even the most careful and passive." she said with a slight shrug. It wasn't sympathy or even empathy, but her words certainly weren't empty. This was a fact of human nature. He wasn't the only one to have hurt someone.
Fortunately, he was willing to forget her blunder, and her shoulders slumped, happy that this was the case. "Yes, please." she said with a sigh, face still alight with a bright red blush. Hopefully he meant it though - but she had a sinking feeling he would be avoiding her from now on. So much for making friends.
"Let me get you a drawing of one." she said, standing and moving to a small bag in the corner. Phoebe dug through it and pulled out a small notebook. The midwife sifted through the pages as she walked back over, before placin a drawing of plant cells infront of him. "Those are cells that make up snow moss." she said. "Everything in existence is made of cells like these, though each cell looks a bit different based on what aspect of life it is making."
Yeah, obviously Loren knew people hurt people. That went without saying. But some people hurt people more than other people did, and he was among that destructive group. Even when he tried to turn in inward, avoid people, hide away from the world, he seemed to just make everything worse. Just once he wanted to do something simple and straightforward and undoubtedly good. It wouldn’t happen, though. ”That’s true.” He couldn’t exactly argue with Phoebe’s statement.
Not when he was living proof of it.
They managed to move past the awkwardness with Frey (or at least he did). As Phoebe talked about everything in existence being made of cells, Loren frowned. He didn’t know if he believed that to be true. ”So. Wait, everything? Like, water, and dirt, and animals, and the gods?” It was an incredibly alien concept to him, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. Although she’d said life, so maybe it wasn’t really everything and the healer had been careless in her words.
09-30-2019, 06:07 PM (This post was last modified: 09-30-2019, 06:08 PM by Phoebe.)
Phoebe
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?
It seemed that was the last Loren would say on that subject, and Phoebe was inclined to let it drop. She doubted he would take any sort of personal advice from her anyways.
And besides, he was curious about cells, and they had been her focus of study as of late. ”Yes, everything. The only things I’ve not been able to confirm are made of cells are Ascended fluid and the blight. They didn’t appear under the micro lens and it is because they weren’t made by the same being that made everything else.” she explained. Phoebe changed chairs to sit closer to him, reaching out to turn the pages. ”That is what blood cells look like. Those bigger, purpleish ones are special and seem to fight off infection present in a person. And that’s skin cells. That is hair…and see how they are slightly different based on the person’s hair texture?” she said, voice growing with excitement… and then she realized how ridiculous she probably sounded and blushed.
”Ah…sorry…I get really excited about this…I know it is rather strange.” she said, blushing a bit in embarrassment.
As Phoebe grew excited about cells, of all things, Loren simply quietly ate the last of his pie. If he’d been capable of checking in with himself in that moment, he might’ve even admitted that this was the most pleasant experience he’d had since...well. That was not a thought he wanted to follow to its logical conclusion, so he banished it and focused instead on the pages before him and the healer’s explanations. Commenting on the fluid and the blight seemed unwise, all things considered, so when she paused to show the different types of hair cells, he reached out and flipped between the images, comparing them. ”Interesting. Any idea why or how they’re all different?” Presumably it had something to do with their different functions, but he wasn’t an expert, obviously, since no one but the gods were an expert on this.
With the information at his fingertips he was distracted and wasn’t paying as much attention to what he was saying. ”It’s not strange at all, it’s interesting. And never apologize for being passionate about something.” It was a bad habit he had as well, so he recognized it in Phoebe.
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?
”It has to do with their function.” she said. ”And even then there is a lot of variety. So these cells…” she said, pointing to the skin and plant cells. ”Are living. They move around and even make more of themselves by splitting apart. But these cells...” she said, pointing to the hair cells ”Don’t do that. They don’t move at all and if you look…these ones are actually missing all of the smaller bits inside of the living cells?”
She blinked in surprise as he corrected her, calling the cells interesting and not strange. Moreover telling her not to be sorry for her passion. A small smile curved her lips, the light flush still coloring her cheeks. ”Sorry, I will try to remember that…I’m glad you don’t think it’s strange.”
Loren listened to Phoebe’s continued lesson about cells, his brow furrowed. This was complicated stuff, and far beyond anything he’d ever encountered before: his background was in magic and folklore, whereas this was biology and pure science. He could see what she was saying about living versus dead cells. He could even see that they lacked the smaller things inside the cells. However, that didn’t mean it made any sense to him. ”But...hair grows, doesn’t it?” Maybe that was a silly thing to focus on, but he rubbed at the hint of stubble on his chin thoughtfully. There was no doubt that his statement was true, although the mechanics of it were beyond him. ”What are the smaller bits? Inside the cells, I mean.” They probably had a fancy name too.
As she flushed and smiled, he barely noticed, seeing as his attention was almost entirely on trying to parse through all the information she’d dumped on him. ”No, this is fascinating.” Even if he didn’t quite get all of it—and even if he wasn’t quite sure why it mattered—the summoner still enjoyed learning. And it helped that the healer was obviously both a good teacher and enthusiastic about her work.
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?
She nodded at his observation about hair growth, and she had a hypothesis ready for it. ”Yes, it grows, but it comes from the head, not of its own accord. I suspect there is something under the skin that is producing these hair cells and pushing them out. But…well cadavers are rather hard to come by and I don’t think anyone really wants me to scalp them just so I can figure out how hair grows.” she said with a light laugh. A morbid joke perhaps, but when you were in her field, things tended to get a bit morbid.
”I haven’t gotten around to naming all of them yet, but Professor Nathan is from a world where they had studied cells in great detail.” she said, flipping to the plant cell picture again. ”This green fluid he says is called chlorophyll, and these little circular things around the edge are called chloroplasts. They help convert sunlight into energy for the plant, rather like how we consume food to energize us.” she explained.
He called the cells fascinating and she positively beamed. ”I am glad you think so! Everyone else seems to just be perplexed to the point of disinterest by them. I am hoping if we can better understand these cells, then we can better understand how the body functions, and from there develop better techniques and medicines for treatment of illnesses and injuries.” she explained.
It seemed that Phoebe didn’t actually have an explanation for why hair acted the way it did. Loren frowned, puzzling over the question. He could understand the issue with not having cadavers to study, but if that was the only problem, he could maybe provide a solution. ”What about fur? Does it act similarly to hair?” Holding up his palm, he poured out a minor effort of will, and a mouse popped into being. It simply stayed there, motionless, staring at Phoebe; it was entirely under the Launceleyn’s control, and unless he ordered it to do something it would just stay still. ”My summoned creatures are identical to real creatures, except that they have no independent thought and don’t feel pain. Maybe you could use them as live specimens? I can only maintain them for a few hours, though, and I have to be nearby and they’ll disappear once the spell ends.” Unfortunately he couldn’t provide human samples, but animals he could do. And he had an idea about plants, though he was loathe to suggest it, given that it involved Remi.
Thankfully, the healer distracted him before he could dwell too much on that. ”Professor Nathan?” Loren really needed to get up to speed on the Medical College: as its only student, he should actually be, well, learning both about medicine and the other healers. Phoebe's lesson today probably counted as a class or private tutoring or something though. He listened avidly to her explanation of how plant cells produced energy. ”Well, everyone else is an idiot. And that makes complete sense to me.” It was similar to how he thought about magic—learning the basic foundations of it would open up new ways of practicing it—and he thought she was completely right to be pursuing this.
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?
At the mention of fur she quickly flipped through pages of meticulous, color-coded notes until she found a drawing of rabbit fur. ”Fur cells have a slightly different structure to hair cells – they are a bit more robust but they also are non-living cells. So…in theory the function of fur growth should be similar if not identical to hair growth.” she said. She had noticed quite a few similarities between human and animal cells. While not quite identical, she presumed that they were similar enough to be comparable.
She gazed back at the summoned mouse with wide brown eyes, intrigued by what he proposed. ”You’re certain they don’t feel pain? Or fear? I don’t want to hurt anything…” she said softly, reaching out to gently run her finger over the mouse’s head. But really, if that were true, it opened up a world of possibilities. ”But…that just might be the perfect solution. If we could study and test on conjured creatures, we could extrapolate to humans.” she said, eyes lighting up at the possibility. There was so much they could learn through this that the possibilities seemed endless! ”Would you mind spending time at the college to make sure this would work? That is where I keep the microlens.” she said.
At his question she nodded. ”Nathaniel Wren. Though he usually goes by Nate. He was a surgical doctor in his world, and they were more medically advanced than here or in Northaven. With the blight sort of consuming everything lately though, I haven’t had as much of a chance to pick his brain as I’d like.” she explained.
Phoebe laughed a little as he waved everyone else off as an idiot; how ducal of him. ”So long as I am not included amongst the idiots I with neither defend nor deny if they are or are not.” she said with a grin.
As Loren had suspected, fur was similar enough to hair that they could study it and make hypotheses from those observations without the need to go grave-digging. It wasn’t surprising: people had a lot more in common with animals than they were often willing to admit. As for his summoned creatures, he shook his head at Phoebe’s question in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. ”They’re more like extensions of my thoughts than anything else, so no, they don’t feel anything any more than I do.” As the healer reached out for the mouse and rubbed its head, the Launceleyn made it stand up, salute, and then hop in place in a decidedly unmouselike manner as a demonstration of what he was talking about. ”And of course I wouldn’t mind spending time in the College, so long as you let me actually help with the experiments instead of keeping me around to make guinea pigs.” Or whatever rodent or animal she might want to test. Regardless, he wasn’t going to just sit there and look pretty and cast his spells while she did all the hard work.
Nathaniel Wren or Nate or whoever this man was didn’t sound familiar to Loren, so he just shrugged at the name. ”Don’t know him.” Still, it sounded as if the other professor had quite a bit of useful information. As for everyone else, well, Phoebe was safe in that regard. ”Don’t worry, I include myself in the idiot category. You’re safe though.” He held up his empty plate and cup. ”Where can I clean these?” She’d probably insist on doing it again, but the Launceleyn was confident he could wear down her resistance to letting him help out on that front eventually.
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?
"That's amazing." she said in awe, watching with wide brown eyes and warm smile as the mouse performed its little routine - which while not at all mouse like was incredibly adorable. She turned the smile up to Loren and shook her head. "Oh of course not. If you want to help, you're more than welcome to. Extra hands and minds are always good to have around I think." she said easily, no reservation or hesitation in her voice. Besides, he was a student, he should get to participate in research like this.
"He is a bit of a loner but I am hoping he will come out of his shell a bit more once he sees some of the advances he is used to implemented." she said with a slight shrug. But when Loren called himself an idiot, she laughed and shook her head. "I know plenty of idiots. You are not one." she said, standing as he offered up his plate and cup. "Don't worry about those. I can wash them. Are you full? I can make you more if you're still hungry." she said, reaching to take the dishes from him.
Loren shrugged, suddenly embarrassed. Making a mouse dance was the least that he could do, and if that impressed Phoebe, he was a bit worried about how she’d react if he brought out some of the more fantastic beasts. So he dismissed the mouse, not sure how to deal with the praise. He’d been weak for so long—and so used to summoning being seen as a lesser art—that he still didn’t know how to react properly. ”It’s nothing, really. And I’d be happy to help.” At least that way she’d have something to focus on regarding him besides his magical abilities. And he was glad she’d come around to her new philosophy about extra minds and hands, though maybe it had been the blight that made her so stubborn about rejecting his ideas.
Seeing as the Launceleyn was also a loner, he didn’t blame Nate for not being around much, especially if he was a newcomer and outlander from a much more advanced world. So Loren just shrugged again, at that and at Phoebe’s compliment about the summoner’s intelligence. ”We can agree to disagree on that one. But no, I’m full, thank you.” He handed her the dishes with a pang of guilt; it seemed to him that if she cooked, he should clean, and even then that wouldn't be fair, but he knew better than to press the point. Standing up, he gave Pim a friendly nod. He didn't think they had much to discuss here, but he'd see if Phoebe had anything left on her mind. If not, he'd give her a friendly, if stiff, wave goodbye.
