Court of the Fallen
Heartlights - Printable Version

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Heartlights - Jigano - 08-22-2019

It was Isuma who first noticed Melita nearby, the gryphlet aware of the solemnity of the occasion, if not the reason for it. She took a strand off white hair in her beak and tugged gently, reep!ing to get her companion's attention from where his thoughts had wandered down dark and lonely paths she could not follow. He reached up distractedly to stroke her to calmness, but she placed a firm image of Melita's grieving countenance in his mind and he blinked, looking around to see all the others who had arrived. Amalia, Deimos, and Kiada had formed a little family group, and Phoebe was already in the arms of another man. A familiar Fae fluttered overhead while Remi performed miracles, and Sam contemplated a lantern of his own.

It was strange to be alone among so many people, so many of them who he had met over the past year. Friends, acquaintances, farmers and artisans, people from the town and others from the outskirts. There were many he might have approached, offering comfort or seeking connection, but it was Melita who caught his eye. She, who had burned so brightly now flickered dimly, her light struggling against the weight of illness or worse. He found his steps carrying him towards her, drifting to a halt at her side as he smiled faintly down at Fangorn, and Isuma dropped down to nuzzle her gourd friend, peeping a greeting of her own.

The lanterns she stood before were orange and lilac, flowered into bloom and filled with love and the odds and ends of memory, absent lives writ small across the glowing canvases of light.

"Would you like to talk about them?" he asked quietly, not wanting to startle her. Memory and remembrance, grief and comfort; he could offer little enough on this bittersweet night, but he could listen if she wanted to share the stories of those who might be unknown to any other soul on all the world of Caido.


RE: Heartlights - Melita - 08-24-2019

She hadn’t noticed Jigano approaching, senses off-kilter, too exposed, too raw, to do anything but stare at the ground, then back up, along the lanterns christened for those gone. Isuma and Fangorn were another thing altogether, bobbing and weaving amongst one another, the gourd likely grateful to have a friend not hampered or diminished by illness; but she figured it would past, and she’d burn bright again.

His quiet, hushed inquiry washed over her, and for a half a moment, she wanted to refuse the notion. They were hers, and hers alone, and those selfish intervals were the only things she had left (the beautiful sing-song notes and lullabies her mother instilled, as they picked wildflowers and found her preferred herbs, the gentle, kind, beneficence Clementine always extended, the rapturous smile, the way they protected and guided one another). Why should anyone else have them?

But then, a darker part of her wondered why it mattered, if it was all right to let the rest of the world hear about them, wonderful, sacrificial souls, who deserved far more than they ever received. Her fingers intertwined, clutched and grasped together, striving for that comfort, that solace, they’d always provided: family, gone and gone and gone again. [say]“The orange one is for my twin sister, Clementine. We were nothing alike.”[/say] She laughed there, but then it vanished, quick, subtle ethers of instigations and clarity beyond the sickness’s haze. [say]“She was compassionate and kind. There wasn’t a gentler soul.”[/say] The gilded set of her stare meandered to the lilac one, for the beatific woman who’d tried to raise her into something, who allowed her to dream and wander and be inspired by every curiosity, every powerful, potent emblem, who worried but knew, understood, the nature of her daughter. [say]“This one is for my mother, Najya,”[/say] and she’d carved her name beside her own, made it a legacy to honor and uphold. [say]“She was a healer in my kingdom. She was much like my sister.”[/say] Which meant, despite never truly knowing him, Melita must’ve taken after her father. Thanks to Sunjata’s explanations and details, no lantern had been made for his existence – uncertain if he was still amidst the living, or worth the effort at all.


RE: Heartlights - Jigano - 08-25-2019

She did not respond at first, and he did not push. This was a night of personal grief and private memories. Some people found comfort in speaking of the ones they had lost, but others preferred solitude for their mourning, and Jigano did not mean to intrude. He would have been content to stand with her a while longer in silence, but her hands shifted to channel the emotions that would not come as tears, and as she spoke he watched each lantern in turn, studying it and matching its appearance to her words, trying to imagine the family she had known.

He had not realized she had a twin. He could not imagine the grief of losing a sibling, much less one as close as twins were said to be. Her laugh was swift enough that it could have been easily missed, but he slanted a glance her way, seeking signs that she was okay.

She was most assuredly not okay, her flame diminished, her boundless energy faded and her fierce spirit subdued by what he prayed was simply an autumn fever. He wanted to reassure her that she sounded a great deal like her lost sister, but it was not a night for argument, and he stayed quiet as she contined to speak, the purple-hued lamp stealing their attention.

"Clementine and Najya," he repeated softly when she was done. He bowed his head in respect for them, not knowing if they had died in the destruction of Melita's world, or been lost to her when she had come through the portal to Caido. It did not seem polite to ask, either. She had shared as much as she wanted to, and it would be cruel to ask her to offer more than she was willing to.

"I hope that wherever they are, that they are happy." The words were sincere, though they risked being a platitude. "I think... that you do well by both of them," he added, turning to look solemnly at the wilting honeybee girl. "I have seen your kindness, in how you helped me catch flinthoppers and offered to hunt with me. You helped repair the Atheneum, and have helped others as well. And you have shown compassion in singing for the Undine, in caring for how the wolf died, and in giving Fangorn a chance when so many others would have simply smashed him out of hand." He smiled to her, a gentle expression before he looked back to the lanterns. "I hope that they would be proud of you, for all those you have helped and all that you have done, even in just the short time that I've known you."


RE: Heartlights - Melita - 08-29-2019

It sounded strange, to hear another call out their names – not nefarious, not treacherous, but there all the same, calm and soft. The following words though made her flinch, because wouldn’t they have been happier alive? Wouldn’t they have preferred to spend their days not in a tomb or a sepulcher, some ancient ruined thing, some blade of grass? They always been more than life itself, bigger, better, pieces of her essence, her core, that she couldn’t possibly replicate or renew on her own. She wasn’t a healer like her mother, and had hardly paid attention to the herbs she’d gathered until it was too late. She wasn’t graceful, poised, or gentle like Clementine, who turned her sun to the face and saw everything as wonderful, beautiful, and incandescent. Melita was sharper edges and torn apart dreams, ash and embers, coiled, serpentine insistence, vitriol and venom. Sometimes she was keen like her arrows, undaunted and unkind, intending to maul into flesh and scatter adversaries from her sights. Sometimes she was vengeful and broken, spreading her hate, distaste, and contempt for life’s circumstances with undulations of destruction. Sometimes she was weak and forlorn and could barely raise her head; starved and strangled in these moments, bringing her arms around her to soften the blows she waged upon herself.

Melita shook her head as Jigano spoke, willing denial into her blood, spattering it against her senses.[say] “I don’t.”[/say] They’d be ashamed of me she wanted to say, but couldn’t voice it without her throat quaking or discarding what little poise she’d managed to obtain. She’d done all the things the bard had uttered, but had they been in the name of compassion? Or just in experience, in brutality, in amusement, in decadence, in the calm before a storm? [say]“I also sought revenge upon another girl. I blamed her for our world being destroyed. I attacked her multiple times.”[/say] I would do it again, right here, right now. Her voice was void of feeling, cold and stark, barren, allowing Jigano to see the wilted, decaying parts of her being, so he could take back what he’d said, so he could deny her the right to even believe she was half of what her family had been. Fangorn nestled and brushed against her ankles, and the honeybee swallowed down the rush of tears threatening, clawing, scratching at her madness; because even after these nuances and notions, she refused to fall apart.

She could feel her mother’s frown. She could feel her sister’s disappointment.

And her father didn’t really matter. He hadn’t even wanted her.

She didn’t even deserve this aura of kindness from the Sage, and she knew it, she knew it, she knew it. And a part of her didn’t think she ever would; intending to continue her monstrous spread of munitions and terror upon Kiada, or on anyone who dared to cross her. [say]“There isn’t much to be proud of.”[/say]


RE: Heartlights - Jigano - 08-30-2019

He didn't know what lonely road her thoughts had wandered down, but he saw the darkening of her expression that spoke as clearly as words her disagreement with what he had said, even before she voiced it. And what could he say in return? He had not known them, could not offer an alternative point of view on what they surely would have thought. From Melita's own descriptions he assumed kindness, forgiveness, acceptance, and love to be a part of them both. Family did not always mean loving bonds, but from the care put into the lanterns and what she had said, he dared to think that love did, indeed, tie her family together, across worlds and even death.

Her list of sins - at least that she was willing to share - was small, but it brought the bard up short for a moment as he gazed at her and saw a mirror of his own insecurities and guilt. He could not give her forgiveness, nor did he think she wanted it at the moment, and certainly not from him. His increasingly volatile temper burned low tonight, at least, the solemnity of the occasion turning his thoughts more to mourning than to rage, and his weary heart reached out to her.

Isuma did as well, joining Fangorn in pressing a fluffy side against Melita's legs and purring a small rumble of reassurance as the bard offered the honeybee girl his trembling hand and a sad smile. "You are more than your mistakes," he said quietly. "You are your courage and your light, too; the help you have given unstintingly and without thought for reward, and you are a protector as well as an avenger. You do not need to be perfect. From how you describe them, they had love enough to share with you." Melita was summer's daughter, a scion of the sun. It hurt to see her lively mischief and boundless energy sapped and her confidence shredded, and the pain was only magnified but not knowing what to do or say to help.

The irony, of course, was that he could not help himself. If he could help his friend, though, he would not need to dwell on the loss and guilt that haunted his own broken heart, and perhaps they find a measure of solace together that eluded them alone.


RE: Heartlights - Melita - 08-31-2019

She leaned down to brush her fingers over Isuma’s fur, along Fangorn’s hide, a breath sharpening through her lungs. You are more than your mistakes pulsed upon her, on a proffered hand and a sad smile, and she shook her head. No, I’m not she thought back, a pervading beat of intangible, weighty things – she was far less, less, less, a shard of errors and flaws. [say]“I should have protected them better.”[/say] It wasn’t a whisper, but a bold, audacious thing sprung upon herself, on a child shoved into a portal by her mother, clinging to last remnants and then dust, on a youth who tried desperately to shield her sibling, who had strived and held it together while the dead reigned and her back was on fire, scorched, and scarred. It had only lasted for so long though – eventually the Rift snagged and took and ensnared, and she’d been left bereft, a fool of her own making, incapable of guarding anyone or anything that mattered. She swallowed down the bile, the tears, the torment, shoving them into her soul to alight them in her anguish, eyes flicking away from the bard and towards the lights, the lanterns, the existence of broken, weary, barbed souls.

She couldn’t fathom what he saw – not when the darkness had spread along her skin and flesh, had charred her into embers and ashes, little coals barely burning, yes, she needed to be perfect, she needed to be mighty, she needed to be a force, a monster, a god damned mayhem, an unfurling tempest, a thriving sea, so that no one bothered to touch anything of hers ever again.

She’d show the world what it was like to mess with her.

But the honeybee girl couldn’t listen to it anymore, as beatific and as grand as Jigano strived, she wouldn’t believe in it – their love had been a blessing, but not something she could hold in her palms anymore – her head swinging back to his, her hands hovering over a proffered alm. [say]“Who are your lanterns for?”[/say] She asked in return, more scorching than warm, more infernal than tender.


RE: Heartlights - Jigano - 09-01-2019

Should have pounded against his thoughts and twisted through his mind, sharp as any knife and he winced at hearing the words. He let his hand linger a little longer, but when it became clear she would not take it he withdrew it slowly, curling his trembling fingers against his chest, pressing them there to try and still their shaking. What could he say that would not be empty platitude? Melita deserved better than that, but her words were a refrain, an anthem that pounded through the bard's blood and hissed in a trio of mocking voices as familiar as his own. He shook his head mutely, denying that she could have done better than she had; it was hard to think of the honeybee girl doing anything with less than everything she had, whether fighting or working or having fun, and certainly she would have protected her loved ones to the best of her ability.

But of course, one's best wasn't always good enough, was it?

There was fire in her voice when she spoke again, but not the bright flame of the midday sun. No, this was a sullen ember just waiting to burn the unwary hand that stirred the ashes. Still, it was not as though the bard would turn away her question, however challenging the tone. Just as he had sought distraction from his own grief, perhaps it would help her, too.

"For Isla and for 108," he said quietly. "Isla was my friend and Isuma's godmother. 108 was... not a friend, but a mentor of sorts, and they gave their life so that the barrier would fall. And one for Edy, of course..." No lantern for the lives lost upon another world, friendships severed, family ties cut. In truth he could not bear to see their shades here upon the soil of Caido, not true souls but merely the illusions of memories plucked from his heart by Ludo's arts. No, they had died in Numeria, their souls traveling to Pharasma's embrace and the afterlife their actions had earned them. He had once assumed that when he died he would join them, but now...


RE: Heartlights - Melita - 09-01-2019

To be the best - the strongest, the mightiest, the most monstrous – had always been the epitome of her goals and dreams, stemming from the day she was old enough to go out venturing on her own. But she’d never had it – couldn’t clench the notion, couldn’t grasp the sensation, too young, too inept, too idiotic, too impulsive, a whole range of excuses and tribulations impeding her reckless ambitions. Eventually, it came to a head in the Rift, when they were plunged down into hell and there was no one there to guard them except one another – makeshift family units combining forces, blood on her hands, her teeth, her fingers, incapable of stopping herself, barreling onward and onward and onward until coasts appeared clear.

And then they weren’t.

It severed down the tracings of her scar, where it burned and chiseled, where it fanned old flames, wilted, decayed, something swallowed and consumed along her spine, bewitching her motions into feral hazes. She listened quietly, to the hushed overtures, to the way they crept and kept their furtive balances just slightly in check, afraid and wary, waiting for another ax to fall. The youth didn’t recognize either of his names, except Isla the unicorn (one and the same?), or the series of numbers, committing the sanctions of their memories to hers. Edrei was something recognized and known – blistering, emboldened infernos, the shock of her demise a swift, brutal thing; if she couldn’t protect herself, then who could? Her voice was layered and lacquered again, sticking to her tongue, to her ivories. [say]“I thought it would be easier in Caido,”[/say] naïve, maybe, but she’d left Stygian voids and abysses, had seen the sun here, had carved friends out of acquaintances. [say]“But there’s still so much death.”[/say] Her head shook and her eyes didn’t glance his way, mesmerized by the flicking lanterns, by the coiled embers, by the disastrous wake they continued to find themselves within.


RE: Heartlights - Jigano - 09-01-2019

108 had not been well-known, the sleeper awoken only to die for her goddess, as much a tool for the Voice's plans as Sam had been when he had gone into the Greatwood. Jigano was not surprised that few remembered the blond Ascended, but it pained him to see no recognition for the medic, her pebble-blue eyes and incandescent curiosity, her calm competence and her bright laughter. They had danced beneath the Deepfrost moon, and she had helped him give Isuma the gryphlet's first meal, becoming the little one's godmother only to be torn away from them in the dark of Long Night, her soul shattered and re-woven into the body of a unicorn that now held barely a shadow of the woman she had been.

He could only nod at Melita's words, hopelessly innocent and innocently hopeless as they were. "I did, too. I saw it as a new beginning... but there have been so many endings instead." Endings in struggle, in pain, in fear. Deaths in the dark and light both. Symphonies of suffering written in blood spilled across snow and fugues of flame guttering out amid the fiery leaves of autumn. The proof of it was all around them, a thousand and more lanterns lighting up the night, each one a soul lost - or more than one, some lanterns containing the memories of many in a single glowing frame. There was so little new life - Aoife, Felix, but who else? - and yet so many souls lost each season.

And now Long Night was just around the corner.

He glanced to the honeybee girl, on her faded fierceness and the shadows in her eyes. She deserved so much more than the world had given her but still she held on, bowed but unbroken, forging a path towards her future, lit by the lanterns of her past. "It just means we have to be stronger," he said softly, something dark and hungry coiling beneath the still waters of his weariness. "Strong enough to protect the ones who are left."


RE: Heartlights - Melita - 09-02-2019

She wasn’t innocent though – for everyone who believed that she hadn’t seen, hadn’t experienced every ounce of suffering – what else did they wish she’d experienced? What more should she have seen and done, committed to? She knew the scent of death, she knew the taste of blood, she knew the curse of power, and she knew what monsters were capable of – how they struck, how they blinded, how they blistered, how they wounded. In some portions of virtue and purity - maybe - but otherwise she’d been just one amongst the many that suffered and plagued their way through the Rift. They drifted through survival modes and methods, aching to persist, striving to condemn, bludgeoned, battered, and barbaric, hands clawing over cave walls and limbs rampaging over unknown land, desperation a familiar emotion. The youth ground her teeth together, a snap of her jaws, at the first statement the bard made, and she couldn’t fathom why the series of vexations and irritations hastened over her, nestled into her brow, into her fingers as they clutched together in their fumbling, quivering, shaking movements.

More animalistic, carnivorous, predacious in the moments that followed, her gilded gaze snapped to his, the compassion gone, replaced by something like rage, like exasperation, anguished and distressed, a conflagration, an inferno, a begging set of talons in their golden glow. [say]“That’s all I’ve been trying to do.”[/say] It came out like a hiss, like a growl, like a feral embrace, melancholy on the ends and strands. [say]“Stronger, stronger, stronger,”[/say] the youth whispered, and it came out like some mumbled chant, her stare fixating back on lantern lights and sprigs, mind reeling, hands quavering again, limbs threatening to unleash or drag something into the abyss that wasn’t worth having – no salvation here in their wicked airs, in their malignant blood, in the blackened vitriol surging through her form.


RE: Heartlights - Jigano - 09-02-2019

He glanced away from the lanterns to the young woman at his side, her voice a complex conflagration of mixed and twisting emotions, none of them good. He watched her as she spoke, the hissing growl of her speech sparking something dangerous in his own breast, a reminder of blood and and the hunt and the ending of small lives.

Big ones too, but fewer, far fewer of those, technically. Or rather, he didn't wield weapons with his own hands so much as he wielded people who had weapons. If he counted those killed at the hands of those he had protected and empowered...

It was not a night for thinking of that. He turned his face back to the lovely lanterns Melita had made, only two and neither souls lost on Caido's cursed land. Ah, but then there was Emmett's lantern, dark and nearly hidden in the night. "You've been succeeding better than most," he said quietly. "May your lanterns stay as few as this next year, too."

He gave her a shallow bow as he swallowed back the bitter bile of remorse and turned away to make find his own tragic trio of lost souls, wondering who among them would be chosen.

And traitorously hoping it would not be him.