+- Court of the Fallen (https://cotf-rpg.com)
+-- Forum: Out of Character (https://cotf-rpg.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=26)
+--- Forum: Important (https://cotf-rpg.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=27)
+---- Forum: Archives (https://cotf-rpg.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=38)
+---- Thread: [o] The reason why (/showthread.php?tid=11199)
The reason why - Maea - 04-27-2025
Doubt wormed it's way through the basalt foundation like creeping vines, finding and exploiting minute cracks and inconsistencies in what seemed from the outside to be an impenetrable fortress of conviction. It wasn't that Maea really believed that she was wrong to think the way she did - about life and death and the responsibility living things had towards one another - but the simple fact that so many could live and be alright with something she could not accept, led her to wonder what she wasn't seeing. Was her logic flawed? Was she mixing in emotion where it shouldn't be? Was she being rigid in the wrong places, fluid where it didn't matter – had she misunderstood something so fundamentally, and that was why Thalassa was done with her?
Plagued by questions she found no answers to in thought or dream, she took her reflections out into nature. Seated upon a branch overlooking the Stone Symphony, in crow form so as not to disturb the wildlife, she watched them. Birds, insects, a mother crocodile sitting upon a nest of eggs in the rush, the occasional pod of encantados swimming past like shadows beneath the surface – all going about their lives, all locked in the struggle for survival, reproduction, all on the inevitable path from birth to death. That much she understood. That part she could internalise and accept. You were born, you lived, and one day you died. If gods or magic interfered, perhaps the cycle could be disrupted a bit or restarted for a slightly longer existence – she was an example, as was the companions who might otherwise live far shorter lives than if they never bonded, and the demigods seemed wholly removed from Mort's guest list for the duration of their service to the gods – but for most things, death was inevitable.
So where did the Ancient fit into the pattern? Where did any of them fit? At a glance, humans seemed very far removed from the circle. The way they shaped nature and themselves made them seem apart from the rest of creation. She struggled to equate a lone woman walking down an alleyway into the waiting arms of thugs with a kingfisher spearing its next meal on the beak. It was one thing to see wolves hunt deer, and another to accept wolves turning on each other.
Ruffling her feathers and burrowing her beak into the fluff off her chest, the gore crow glowered at the crocodile. The eggs were near to hatching, and she waited expectantly for dusk to fall. There were other crocodiles in the area. The young would be a prime target for many a predator and she wanted to see what would happen. If they would prey on their own. If they would ignore them, protect them – if there was any kind of truth to be found in anything outside herself and the experiences that shaped her into who she was today.
RE: The reason why - NPC - 04-27-2025
As light faded from the sky, shadows lengthened. The thrum of life shifted, taking on a different cadence with the change from dayshift into nightlife. My no means quieter, it was the chirping of birds and cicada that traded in for a chorus of frogs, of deers screaming in the woods, of a loon crying out on some distant bog. It was a low rumble, more felt than heard, as a mother crocodile coaxed her hatchling to hurry out of their shell and into her waiting mouth. There, in the cage of yellowing teeth, they would be safe. For a time.
More eyes than the gore crows were watching. Reflective irises - catlike in the way they caught the light - revealed a smaller reptile lurking nearby. A caiman, bold and hungry, inched ever closer to the nest. When a hatchling strayed too far from its mothers watchful gaze, the caiman struck, its sharp teeth sinking into soft skin - and a life barely begun met its end.
RE: The reason why - Maea - 04-27-2025
She bled on the inside for the poor hatchling, shocked and unsettled by what she had just seen. Shifting in agitation on her branch, Maea struggled to remain where she was. It wasn't to interfere that she was here. Nor was it to judge, or take sides, or decide what was good or bad. Over and over she reminded herself that this must be happening all over the delta, all across the world. Something was eaten so that something else might survive.
But that didn't mean she didn't feel a flash of vindictive satisfaction when the mother crocodile, after safely depositing her babies in the rushes, caught up with the offending caiman and made a meal out of it, instead. It was only a momentary thing, but it shook her all over again. Taking flight to escape the sight of the carnage, suddenly her eyes found nothing but dread in the trees, in the shrubs, in the cobwebs and vole hills. A spider's cocoons held countless victims, paralysed and waiting to be devoured. A badger dug through an anthill, licking up eggs and larvae despite its face crawling with ants. On a shrub, as dawn cast a steely light over the sky, she saw a sweet looking songbird impale a bug on the sharp thorns of a bramble vine, next to the half-eaten carcass of another bird - equally impaled.
It was too much. The world was too much. Cruel, and heartless, and unforgiving - the image of the caiman's tail and rear legs sticking out of the crocodile's mouth before it went down wouldn't leave her - and she... what was she? Why was her heart bleeding if she was meant to be like that crocodile? Why was she struggling like this when Thalassa could look at it and just shrug, without a million questions popping up in her head?
It made no sense. Nothing made sense and as Maea flew back to hide herself away at home where she could process what she had seen, she thought it might be time to dig out that journal Elizabeth had given her.
[FIN]