What do you get when two ruthless assassins raise their daughter travelling through the wildest reaches of Caido? Take one look at Theea and you'll get a pretty good idea. Cheerful and tenacious in equal measure, and curious beyond all else, she began her journey on a mission to find those her mother once called family. And find them she did, soon rubbing elbows with demigods, leaders and even ghosts from the past. Her determination is resolute, her thirst for knowledge unmatched. We can't wait to see where her next adventure takes her!
Congratulations, Theea!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
OG Skinning provided by Kaons, with functionality and many custom plugins made by Neowulf!
The coastline presented itself as a meeting point of terrestrial and aquatic environments, both fully saturated by the local star’s radiation. The ocean's surface, reflecting wavelengths primarily in the blue spectrum, gave the illusion of sparkling—a purely optical phenomenon but one seemingly appreciated by the local species.
The air was dense with moisture, approaching the consistency of a gas-liquid hybrid. This “humidity” induced notable physiological responses in the local inhabitants: increased perspiration, lethargy, and frequent vocal complaints. Nonetheless, the "Torchers" continued to congregate in this environment, displaying a peculiar tendency to embrace discomfort and even the possibility of irreparable skin damage.
Not one to judge, Vox decided to "relax" and "enjoy" as well. Having noted the way most dressed while on the beach, Vox likewise opted to wear a single piece of waterproof fabric that he placed across his forehead. "Standing" in the water, his entirely appropriate number of legs covered nearly to his patellofemoral joints, he reached out with both fingernails and cuticles to splash at the water.
It was a beautiful Longheat day, if you didn't mind the mugginess.
Tal, surprising no one, absolutely did mind it, and his frequent vocal complaints were a constant low-grade litany under his breath as he slogged through the sand along the shoreline with an empty box under one arm as he forged along the coast from Kaiholo. His bare brown feet were occasionally dampened by the surf rushing up onto shore, since he'd figured out that the wet sand was the firmest, and his footprints were swiftly washed away behind him as he traveled.
'Stylish' was not a term usually applied to the courier - not without Koa or Alys's help, at least - so he lacked the colorful flair that most Torchers sported. A lightweight linen shirt hung half-unbuttoned from his lean shoulders over plain brown trousers rolled up to the knees as a concession to the gentle waves he sometimes splashed through. A pair of smoked goggles covered his eyes to protect them from the sunglare off the water, but they didn't save him from the sight of... someone standing knee-deep in the water a little ways from shore.
He didn't trip into the surf, but Tal did stumble over a piece of driftwood while he was busy squinting in bafflement at the... man?? with a swimsuit or something on his... head???
"Ow! What th'hail...?" he muttered, hopping on one foot while trying to rub his stubbed toes and not drop the box at the same time.
Vox, who had no readily apparent genitalia to speak of and so hadn't made the connection between that and where bathing garments normally went, had opted for his head. Had he known this was causing someone to stare, he might have stared back—he was very good at it, owing to the number of eyelashes and irises he possessed—but as he hadn't, he didn't.
Standing, Vox rotated in an effort to confirm whether or not he was 'splashing' correctly. He thought he was given how the water was moving around, but it was such an odd activity that he wanted to double-check. Maybe even triple-check if there was time for it.
Raising at least three fingers but no more than twenty in Tal's direction—it was the sort of greeting Vox had seen Torcher's make to one another (he thought)—and waved.
But not the watery kind.
At least, he didn't think so.
He blinked, brow furrowing as he tried to count the number of fingers involved, and then gave up as the headache started to set in.
He cleared his throat and opened his mouth again, thoroughly distracted from his stubbed toe and clinging to his empty box like a drowning sailor clinging to a plank on the ocean. He wasn't quite sure how to process what he was looking at, from the unnerving lack of genitalia combined with the more or less normal number of things like legs and cuticles and eyelashes, but he was pretty sure that it was not, in fact, an entirely normal Torcher enjoying a day at the beach.
"Who th'hail are you?" he asked bluntly, with all of the charm and tact that he was so well-known for. "An', uh... what are ya?"
"Who the..." Vox glances around. "..palmtree are you?" Unless the social norm was to pick a type of weather? Frowning, Vox tries to smoothly recover. "Er, I mean, who the hyper-hydrous-vapor-content are you?"
Yeah, that sounded a lot better. Surely that was right.
Still waving, as far as he'd seen the wave had to be accepted before one could stop, Vox beams, revealing teeth that went together about as well as tertiary colours on the colour wheel, or like whole-grain wheat and cacti. "I'm a member of the Family!" No doubt Vox' voice would sound familiar, Tal have head it in his head a time or two (or 6).
Oh. Oh. He knew that voice, it was just usually bouncing around with unsettling cheerfulness inside his skull when he heard it. Hearing it from the outside was actually kind of weird in comparison? Which was something he could mull over later, when his brain had stopped doing the heeby-jeeby wriggles as a four alarm klaxon to the tune of danger, Will Robinson! Danger! blared an adrenaline-filled counterpoint to his thoughts.
Which went something like: Oh shit oh fuck oh fuckity fuck fucks it's HIM why's he here am I gonna die why's his suit on his head? He's looking right at me oh gods he's loo--OW!
The final thought was correlated with Tal losing his battle with gravity in the sudden spinning of his sanity, and his ass hitting the hard-packed sand just above the current tide line. The courier winced, holding his box up protectively between himself and Vox. Peering around it, he finally realized that the other, uh... being? was still waving.
And smiling - ish - which kind of undid any good the waving was doing to reassure the merely mortal man upon the sand.
"Wh-what d'you want?" Because being precise with his words under pressure had never been his strong suit, Tal failed to specify that he meant right now, here in Torchline, instead following his question up with another: "An' why?"
And no, Vox, Tal did not wave back. He was too busy trying to use his empty box as a shield, which kept both of his hands occupied.
Blinking, Vox's eyelashes came together in precise alignment like a venus flytrap.
"Want?" He repeats, still waving. Hopefully, Tal would wave back soon, his arm was getting rather tired. Oh! Maybe that's why he was being asked? "I want to complete our social-initiatory communicative exchange in order to initiate further interactions. Vox hazards sounding a touch uncertain. "I would have started with H E L L O but since you skipped over it, I thought perhaps going for gestural signs to establish mutual recognition was in order."
As for why?
"Errr..." Now Vox's blinking was more like the vibration of a very rusty beard-trimmer. "I don't actually know. Is that important?"
Oh, Vox. That was a lot of big words for a kid who had spent his summers running away from people on the Tundra to digest. At least his confusion over the cascade of complicated vocabulary put a pause on his cringing for the moment. Tal blinked, trying to parse what he had just heard and an Ascended might have spied a little wheel spinning in infinity behind his eyes. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it, brow furrowing fiercely into a scowl of puzzled thought.
"Social... initia-what now?" Okay, hello was at least in his lexicon, and 'gesture' and... if he broke it down, he knew or could figure out what each word meant individually, it was putting them all together that was giving him a headache. "Y'mean y'want to... shake hands?" Tal hazarded. So close, and yet so far. "Uh..." He looked at those mostly normal cuticles and gave a hard shake of his head. "...Nah, no thanks."
It was amazing how confusion could short-circuit fear when the two emotions were usually so closely linked. Tal didn't exactly relax as he puzzled over Vox's uncertainty, the question being turned back on him with all the grace and power of a Wimbledon tennis service. "'Course it is. I think. Probably," he amended, his scowl deepening as he waded further into the treacherous waters of philosophical debate. Given that he'd left his water wings at home, it didn't bode well for his side. "I mean, are y'here t'interact by infectin' folks?"
