I love you, is that okay?

Night had fallen over the Wildwood. The moon was in its dark phase, leaving only the distant stars and the unsteady flicker of will-o-wisps to light the woods. Near as pitch black as Longnight, it was hard to see what she was doing, but the task was not difficult.

Maea was digging a grave. 

For quite some time, she had pondered over which method to choose for honoring the body of an unfortunate adventurer she and her friends had come across. Knowing several - the pyre, the cleaning and arranging of bones into an ossuary, the water burial - she had eventually settled on what she could do with her hands. Bringing only a shovel and a tarp, the ancient had gathered up the broken and half-decayed corpse and gently carried her to the shrine in her arms, heedless of the smell of putrefaction or the nameless things that crawled and slithered beneath the cloth. Settling the dead to rest before the flickering lights of candles and lanterns, and taking up her shovel, Maea began to dig. 

A shovel for the deceased, alone in the knowledge of what fate had befallen her. 
A shovel for a knight that may have been a companion, similarly dead and consumed by the void-tainted creature that must have hunted him long before he fell. Maea had not found his scattered bones again, though she had searched, and the recognition of his passing was all she could offer now. 
A shovel of soil was dug away for the grave she herself never got. Her own death - the first one - had been at sea, and the bones of the body her mother birthed lay at the bottom of the Arclight ocean. 
A shovelful displaced was for Shii, the brave and loyal companion who had followed her into death. When later she was revived by the Voice, the feeble light that had set its mind on guiding her did not follow, and for all these years her heart had been empty in its absence. Perhaps part of her difficulties in fully embracing her rebirth thrice over - from Abandoned into Ascended, from Ascended into Ancient, and from a second death into the painful realization that she still wished to carry on - lay with her other half still being there, in Mort's halls. Safe and at peace. At least, that was her hope. It should be enough. It should be all she could ever wish for, that her Shii was comfortable without fear or yearnings. 

But... what of her own heart, that found no peace regardless of where she went, or how much time passed? Did her pain and longing affect the being that once chose to tie its fate to hers? Did it agonize, as she did, over the separation that should never have been? 

Those were the thoughts that passed through her mind as she dug the grave, and lowered the deceased into it, and filled it once more. Quiet tears fell from her chin and mixed with the upturned soil, and by the time she compacted the soil and placed a single yellow sprig of spring flower upon the heap, Maea finally couldn't bear it anymore. With a half-choked sob she sank to her knees before the shrine, the dirt of the grave clinging to her hands, and bowed her head in a prayer she'd never dared voice before.

"Mort... please, if you hear me - is there a way to return my friend to me? It has been so long, and it was such a fleeting, fragile light... I don't even know if I have a right to ask, after every choice I've made to remain apart. But - I - I miss them so much!"

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Maea prays to Mort for a quest to revive her will-o-wisp companion, Shii! 
If the roll fails, please use MP <3

Maea

These words are my own, from my heart flown

i have died everyday waiting for you

The wind stirred gently through the trees, and the flickering will-o-wisps brightened as if catching their breath. The darkness, so thick it had nearly swallowed the woods whole, softened—not with flame, but with something older and gentler. A hush settled, the kind that came not from fear, but reverence. And then, as naturally as moonlight parting clouds, Mort stepped into the clearing.

He looked much as he always did: boyish and barefoot, curls tousled by the wind, his warm brown eyes crinkled at the corners in a smile that was both familiar and endlessly kind. The scent of earth and sunlight lingered around him, subtle and sweet, like memory.

"Maea," he greeted softly, stepping forward without hesitation, not shying from the soil on her hands or the ache in her posture. "It’s good to see you… on this side of the barrier, this time." His smile, though warm, carried the faintest hint of sorrow—because he remembered every time he had seen her in his halls.

Mort crouched beside her, folding his long limbs with the ease of someone entirely at peace in the presence of grief. He glanced toward the fresh grave, the yellow flower resting atop it, then back to her tear-streaked face. "You’ve honoured them well," he murmured, voice like a hush of leaves in autumn. He didn’t offer platitudes or promises. He simply sat with her, with all the weight of her longing, as if he had all the time in the world. Because for him—he did.

"Knowing what you do about the difficulties of returning to this world after having been taken from it...that Shii has lived longer in my realm now than in yours, you would really call them back to you?"

The dark night softened around her, banishing anything that might have seemed eerie or frightening. She had not expected to be answered, not really, yet the presence of Death filled the clearing all the same and Maea bowed her head in awe, her breath catching mid sob. He addressed her with such familiarity, and something like a memory, or the half-forgotten remembrance of a dream, suggested to her that perhaps it was not the first time they had met. An odd sense of recognition, that gave her the courage to look up and gaze at Mort's warm, devastatingly gentle face.

"I would," she replied quickly, without hesitation. "If they too wished it, I would." It felt like a statement that required explanation, and she tried to, hoping that it would make sense. "Your halls... they are without compare, and if Shii would prefer to stay with you I will honor their wishes. I've..  for a long time I too longed to return, because I couldn't adjust to life when it had become so different to what I had known." Trapped in the ascended body that was so limited despite its vast potential, unable and unwilling to fully embrace the Voice - it wasn't until Dygra plucked her out of that fabricated shell and restored her to a world of physical sensation that she had begun to take an interest again. "But now... I've realized how sweet it is to live. And I can't dishonor the sacrifices of those who pulled me back this last time  - I want to be worthy of their kindness and friendship and hold on for as long as I can. And –" she sucked in a deep breath, wiping tears off her cheeks and smudging a streak of dirt over the pale skin, " – and just as my friends gave me the chance, the choice to come back... so I want to offer one to Shii. I love them; I miss them. If I can do anything at all to reunite with them on this side, I will."

Alys and her quest for Sasha had offered her hope, and the suggestion that Maea was actually allowed to linger in life had put cracks in the barrier around her mind that used to rule out any possibility of a reunion. Unworthy, she had thought. Pointless, since in her subconscious mind she wasn't staying long anyway. But now... the possibility of long years and plentiful experiences no longer seemed so daunting or dreadful. And she could think of nothing better than to share that time with the being that had been, and would always be closest to her heart.

Maea

These words are my own, from my heart flown

i have died everyday waiting for you

Mort listened with the patient stillness of someone who had never once rushed a soul. He watched her speak—watched the tears, the flicker of resolve, the way her hands, smudged with soil and sorrow, tried to anchor something as intangible as love to the world of the living.

When she finished, the god smiled—not in delight, but in that deeply knowing, impossibly warm way he had when hearts laid themselves bare before him. The wind stirred his curls, and for a moment the light around him pulsed with something that wasn’t quite joy and wasn’t quite grief, but something older, something vast. "I know,"  Mort said gently. "I remember how much Shii meant to you. Still means to you." His voice was soft, but there was a weight to it, as though every name spoken at a shrine, every whisper of longing carried through candlelight, echoed in his bones.

He reached into the space between them and, without flourish, cupped his hand as if holding something fragile. "Shii has been well," he murmured, smiling faintly. "Curious, quiet... still as loyal as ever. But to ask for life back from death..." He extended his hand—empty still, save for the quiet promise it held. "If you want to see them again, truly bring them back, then there are things you must gather. Things you must consider."

---

Maea has been given a quest! She must:

1. In three different threads speak to someone who has died and come back from the dead, asking about their experiences to better underwhat what Shii will be going through
2. Bring water from Frey's Breath and the Eyes of Vi
3. Understand the nature of the will o' wisps by helping them with a task (i.e., helping to guide lost souls, playing a trick on someone, luring someone, etc)

Shii was her light, her joy, her hope and every silver lining underlighting the roiling storm. It was a reason to step lightly, a cause to fight for and the quiet calm she could never seem to find on her own. Maea shivered with premonition in the soothing weight of Mort's presence, and when he held out his hand as though cupping something she couldn't yet see, her own hands came up to hover reverently around that empty space. Aching, to think it might contain the one she had lost, just on the other side of the veil. To know that they were well, and still the same as always – it was the who had changed after all these years. Forthe better, she hoped, but... changed all the same. 

With the instructions a smile of pure relief brightened her expression. "I will do it properly," she promised, grateful enough to weep if her cheeks hadn't already been lined with tears. "Thank you, Mort; for the chance, for listening – I will never forget this kindness."

Whether she succeeded or not was now up to her. Long after Mort had left, she lingered before the shrine in thoughtful vigil. When the sun rose, so too did she; Maea had some letters to write.


[FIN]

Maea

These words are my own, from my heart flown