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!
Sunlit Shadows (mastered) | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
Type: Grey | Style: Offensive | Level: Mastered
Deadly Recall | Can recall 1, or 2, or 3 of her feathers to her hand, within a range of 30ft. Recalled daggers do 1/2 damage when recalled.
Rescue (Mastered) | Remi can bring a fellow Old God demigod to his side in a time of crisis for three concurrent posts. One use per thread. If the summoned demigod also has mastered this ability, they can remain until the end of the thread.
Haulani’s market hums under awnings bright as cut fruit, heat lifting off the stones, salt threaded through the air. The parchment between them has gentled the edges—especially with the fact that it's Kaisel's voice and stupid laugh she's treated to rather than just the written word—and it’s far too easy for Flora to feel the old rhythm wanting to take her, the familiar tilt toward him that used to happen without thinking. The hurt sits just beneath the skin, though, close enough to spill over if she isn't careful. She misses him; of course she does. He’s still one of her best friends, but missing isn’t permission, and missing doesn't change the past.
Even so, instead of waiting where she said—by the stall with the green-glass chimes—she ghosts the market in daylight, literally; a white sheet tossed over her head like mischief in mourning. Two impatient eyeholes turn the world soft at the edges. Children point; a vendor hides a smile; Spice perches in the shade of a crooked sign, pale and pleased, her mind a cool prickle of encouragement.
When Kaisel arrives, warmth rises on reflex; she lets it lap against her ankles while making sure to keep her footing. She falls in behind him at a careful distance, the sheet whispering at her ankles, the market flowing bright around them, just waiting for her moment to strike.
I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff, finding some peace in an honest love Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in
Torchline's market has always been alive in a way that isn't quite comparable to any other one he's been to. Haulani is a riot of color and activity on any given day, a natural destination for trade of many sorts, laughter just one of many exchanged goods. It's something more than the natural bustle, a type he's known in other locations, if just on a smaller scale. It has more to do with the way this place is consistently colored with a tint of Flora's gold to everything, which has less to do with her monarchial oversight here than all the memories she's had a hand in creating and left gilded in him. He'd not bothered much with this region until her after all, the sand still a nuisance, the sharks still a concern, but everything else has started tipping the scales further into appreciation and affection for the sun soaked city.
He moves through the tide of people with a fresh eye for everything, taking in the sights of what would be his new home. All the while he's searching for the designated stall where Flora had said to meet her, trying to hold back the nervous swell that's roiling in his gut at the idea of seeing her again. He wants to, of course, but after everything he isn't exactly sure how to be around her any more, the usual patterns disrupted in a way they've never had to overcome before. The parchment at least brought some normalcy, and it's surprisingly easy to feel closer to her with it, her voice rolling off the page with all the expressions behind them there in his mind. This isn't pen and paper today though, and while he knows it's helped bridge some of the gap, it can't shield every potential mistake he'll make today.
Adjusting his pack over his shoulders, the keychain swinging extra wildly with the movement, Kaisel finally spots the glimmer of worked glass. He brightens a touch, less steady steps becoming more sure, though the finger trap he's been fiddling with tugs tighter against his held fingers as the nervousness wriggles through his hands. Scrunching his fingers together and apart to flex the woven toy, he drifts around the wares, waiting for her to arrive.
Sunlit Shadows (mastered) | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
Type: Grey | Style: Offensive | Level: Mastered
Deadly Recall | Can recall 1, or 2, or 3 of her feathers to her hand, within a range of 30ft. Recalled daggers do 1/2 damage when recalled.
Rescue (Mastered) | Remi can bring a fellow Old God demigod to his side in a time of crisis for three concurrent posts. One use per thread. If the summoned demigod also has mastered this ability, they can remain until the end of the thread.
Flora drifts with the market’s tide until she is a pale ripple at Kaisel's back, the sheet turning her into a rumour that moves. He stands by the green-glass chimes, the Stormbreak token on his bag catching Torchline sun like a small, stubborn star; the sight of it tilts something in her, and she tips it upright again with will alone. It feels wrong to be this close and far too easy all at once—muscle memory aches to stand beside him, to lean a shoulder, to lace a joke between his nerves and her own—but Ludo has given her orders and the cotton over her curls grants a kind of permission that ordinary air would not.
She ghosts the last half-step, breath held. Through one crooked eyehole the back of his neck is a warm, sunlit target; she rises onto her toes and sends a slow draft across his skin, cool as the inside of a sea cave and just as deliberate. The chimes answer with a faint porcelain rain.
Something shifts beneath the sheet and stills it with both palms, smoothing cotton and breath until she is only hush and salt again.
I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff, finding some peace in an honest love Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in
His shoulders rise up as a shudder crawls along his neck, hairs disturbed just enough to be noteworthy, but so light it can only be something sneaky, like a mosquito or maybe a pickpocket going for his backpack. He whirls suddenly, body tense as he readies for a swing or a grab. His fingers are accidentally bound within the toy though, pulling apart too quickly to properly release the trap. This would be bad enough on its own, but punctuated by the jolt of surprise at seeing a ghost instead of an urchin, and Kaisel stumbles. His elbows flap at his sides with the failed effort to raise a hand, fingers squished into a vice of wicker pressure, and fear wilts his outrage into a warning wail, "g-g-ghost!"
His momentum reels with all the abrupt changes to where it thought it was going, so he staggers back, very unathletically, into the stand of glass displays with a piercing chime of too many fragile things striking each other forcefully. It's the only thing that keeps him from fully falling onto his ass, although whether that's an actual good thing or not remains to be seen as the merchant's cries grouse up, honking every imaginable complaint and combination of curses like a pissed off goose. "GHOST!" Kaisel repeats, like the rest of the onlookers aren't panicked enough about the VERY real threat in front of them, and all the while the infernal finger trap binds him like a tiny straight-jacket, unyielding under his repeated attempts to tug for freedom.
Sunlit Shadows (mastered) | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
Type: Grey | Style: Offensive | Level: Mastered
Deadly Recall | Can recall 1, or 2, or 3 of her feathers to her hand, within a range of 30ft. Recalled daggers do 1/2 damage when recalled.
Rescue (Mastered) | Remi can bring a fellow Old God demigod to his side in a time of crisis for three concurrent posts. One use per thread. If the summoned demigod also has mastered this ability, they can remain until the end of the thread.
Flora can’t tell if Kaisel's playing or if terror really runs a cold finger up his spine—the eyeholes give her the world in little crescents, and all she catches is the jolt, the stammered g-g-ghost, the helpless flapping of elbows made more tragic by the finger trap. Either way, a grin breaks wild beneath the cotton; she bites it down, snickers snagging in her throat like pearls on lace.
The stand erupts in a bright clangour of glass, a hundred small notes colliding. A nearby merchant—long-suffering, salt-cured—curses the soldier under his breath. "It’s a trick, moron," he declares, and reaches with exasperated authority to yank the sheet.
The sheet comes away in his fist and drops empty to the stones.
"Wh—?" he manages, the rest swallowed by the crowd’s startled hush. Where Flora stood is only heat and air; the queen, of course, is invisible.
What she carries is invisible too—until the instant she reaches from nowhere, quick as a thought, and tucks a small, cool life down the front of Kaisel's shirt. The frog blinks into visibility as it leaves her fingers, a damp flash against sun-warm skin; then it decides the shirt is a swamp worth conquering and kicks for freedom, springing and scrabbling and thumping tiny heartbeats against fabric.
I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff, finding some peace in an honest love Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in
He finally fumbles enough with the damned toy to free his hands fully, the trap tumbling down somewhere near his sneakers, forgotten as his gaze narrows upon the Torchline Terror. Like any good episode of Scooby-Doo, the ghoul has been trapped, and that voice rising from it suggests this is a villain worth unmasking. It's distinct enough to slice through all his held breath, recognition edging in on caution and analysis like a thing that doesn't fit, no different from stumbling upon your teacher out in the wild and not behind a desk where you always thought they lived, just come to find they aren't an NPC and have a life too.
"Flo-ro?" he asks with a sharp doubt, but the more he looks the more the ghost does waver with the quality of fabric instead of the ethereal plane. The unveiling doesn't reveal a smug golden queen though, just an emptiness that feels like a magic trick at this point rather than a haunting. His eyes pan the crowd, skipping over still grumbling merchants and confused shoppers, some of whom have already started to turn back to their own business, like commotion of this scale is nothing to bat an eye at here.
He doesn't spot anything that'd give her away, but he has a suspicion.
He reaches back with freshly freed fingers to grasp at something, anything. Hopefully no bystander's dick, because he's aiming blind, trying to catch her as much as he's certain she's working an angle to snare him, again. It's at this point that the frog materializes in his shirt, disgustingly cold and moist and leggy. His shoulder pitch up again with the surprise of the icky sensation, and he breathes out harshly as he cranes his chin down, eyes locking with the blinking frog. "RUUUUUPERT!" Kaisel accuses, disdain and disgust hand in hand. He swipes up the offending creature right as it goes to jump on his face and absolutely yeets it up and over the crowd before he's truly thought about it. "Eugh! FLORA!"
Sunlit Shadows (mastered) | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
Type: Grey | Style: Offensive | Level: Mastered
Deadly Recall | Can recall 1, or 2, or 3 of her feathers to her hand, within a range of 30ft. Recalled daggers do 1/2 damage when recalled.
Rescue (Mastered) | Remi can bring a fellow Old God demigod to his side in a time of crisis for three concurrent posts. One use per thread. If the summoned demigod also has mastered this ability, they can remain until the end of the thread.
Kaisel's blindly searching hand grazes her waist in a glancing sweep—nothing lascivious, just the accidental tide of bodies in a market that never leaves much room for air—and then the cold, indignant frog takes center stage and saves them both from the awkwardness of it, launching Kai into a full-body shudder and an aerial yeet that sends the creature skimming over a chorus of gasps and laughter.
Flora flickers into view in the space his panic leaves behind, laughter breaking bright and helpless from her as if the sun has found a chink in the clouds; tears bead at the corners of her eyes, quick and crystalline, and she swipes at them with the back of her hand without bothering to tame the grin that’s already taken her mouth. The sheet hangs from the merchant’s fist like a defeated flag; Spice trills approval from a signpost; Ludo’s satisfaction chimes faintly in the wind.
She’s dressed for the season’s edge: a seaglass-green cardigan that catches the light with a scatter of barely-there sparkle over a white tank and worn-in jeans, the soft fall of her curls loose around her shoulders, hiding most of the dark bloom on her neck, and smelling of jasmine and something sweet; the sort of fragrance that made it feel like summer despite the nearness of Deepfrost.
Grinning, Flora tips her chin up to him, brows lifting, the smile going crooked and gloriously unrepentant. " I knew you’d be no good with ghosts!" she laughs accusingly, amusement curling through every syllable as she nods toward the parabola Rupert traces into legend, "and that stunt with the frog makes me believe your toad story even less."
I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff, finding some peace in an honest love Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in
Her reemergence into visibility isn't startling, it's a damned relief, proof that there isn't some other shenanigan tucked up her sleeve, or down his shirt. Although, she can pull off plenty while in plain sight, so he doesn't lose all of his wary edge just yet. It is enough to smooth over his paranoia, defenses (useless as they had been) lowering, especially at the bright, lovely sound of her laugh.
He can't quite match her beat for beat, given this is very much a laughing at him scenario and not a laughing with him one, but it's contagious and utterly absurd and he has never minded bearing the brunt of a joke. It starts as a smile quirking up the edges of his frown, set there by the frog and the chaos, and then it quivers free as a series of chuckles that have his hand holding his face like it might keep some of it back. "Because why would there be a ghost here!" he says in utter delight at her mischief, well aware when he's been properly had. Loath as he is to admit it, this might be the best one she's pulled on him yet. "And, my fingers were trapped!" Obviously. "So I was disadvantaged." This excuse would never fly with his commanding officers and he doesn't think it'll carry any more weight with her, but it's the best he's got.
"What!?" Now he's completely rolling back into their normal flow, his disbelief at her disbelief like something they can keep stacking with more and more put on show. "I launched him, just like the big one!" Well, Nova launched him, but same same. Scoffing, he reaches out quickly to wipe Rupert's wetness on her arm, a taste of her own medicine in some small manner which absolutely isn't enough payback, but will do for now. He still owes her for Niki too. "Look!" he swings his backpack around to his front, pointing at some patterns of ruin where the acid had drizzled down on it. "That," he taps proudly, "is the toad's burning death spray. Had to toss out the clothes I wore that day."
Sunlit Shadows (mastered) | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
Type: Grey | Style: Offensive | Level: Mastered
Deadly Recall | Can recall 1, or 2, or 3 of her feathers to her hand, within a range of 30ft. Recalled daggers do 1/2 damage when recalled.
Rescue (Mastered) | Remi can bring a fellow Old God demigod to his side in a time of crisis for three concurrent posts. One use per thread. If the summoned demigod also has mastered this ability, they can remain until the end of the thread.
Flora’s laughter spills bright and breathless, but there’s no edge in it; the lines that crease at the corners of her eyes are warm, and the shaky little inhales between them belong to the pure absurdity of the scene rather than any delight in his distress. When he demands why a ghost would be here, she beams up at him with mischief lit full in her face. "If you really knew all a ghost’s tricks, you’d know they love the places no one expects," she says, conspiratorial as a secret passed hand to hand. Then, with a theatrical little moue and a hand to her heart: "Oh no, disadvantaged. Tragic. I’ll alert the authorities."
He reaches foir her, and for one bright, dangerous beat she thinks he means something else—an arm catching her waist, a tug into his chest, the kind of kiss that silences laughter and starts it again lower—and the thought makes her breath catch even as she holds steady. Frog-slick fingers swipe her forearm instead; heat rises to her cheeks, not quite embarrassment, not quite disappointment, not quite relief, just the rush of a feeling she refuses to name in a market full of witnesses. She rubs the damp into her skin with exaggerated care. "Great for hydration," she declares, deadpan, as if every apothecary worth their mortar stocks amphibian serum.
"Tell me you grew up in a boring city without telling me you grew up in a boring city," she adds, rolling her eyes with fond cruelty as Spice chirrs agreement from her perch. She tips her chin at the scorched map on his bag, brows lifting. "And that looks less ‘burning death spray’ and more ‘you tried to cook something more ambitious than toast again.’ "
I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff, finding some peace in an honest love Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in
"Is that so?" he scoffs, unable to even pretend offense with the sweep of his smile ruining the game. Clearly not since she hadn't even been a real ghost. He was not about to UHM, actually her though, and she isn't wrong, to some extent. Ghosts can be anywhere, which is part of what made her stunt believable if now utterly obvious in hindsight. "That why graveyards and such have such a reputation, huh? Sounds like ghost expert has to get tacked onto your long list of names." The smirk turns into a fluttering eyeroll and a grumble that doesn't quite find the form of words when she falls into the most obvious theater yet. It only furthers the insistence that she end up with frog remnants smeared on her.
Her response is nothing like he pictured. It's awful, in fact, and for a moment he is rooted, too stunned to even blink. Completely aghast at the idea of frog skin care his features scrunch up in full distaste, leaning away from her like the frogness is contagious and he wants nothing to do with it. "Ew," he says around the outward stick of his tongue, unable to hold back the precursor of a gag. "Is that why your face wash is green??"
He shudders the thought away, much happier to focus on frog murder than beauty products. "Oh, sorry, we can't all be a wild child half feral in the woods," he mocks in return, swinging his pack back around behind him. He knows the proof and the truth ring have to have left some mark, so this is just her at this point, and though it hasn't fully hit him yet that it's a glimmer of what they had been, he's happily caught up in the moment of it than the realization. "Umm, pretty sure toast isn't cooking you momo. It's toasting." He glances up in thought. "Could maybe be considered roasting?" Like a marshmallow, in which case, is that cooking? No. Definitely not.
"Kinda like how you always get roasted," he grins, and reaches to bump her shoulder with his, forgetting that maybe he shouldn't.
Sunlit Shadows (mastered) | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
Type: Grey | Style: Offensive | Level: Mastered
Deadly Recall | Can recall 1, or 2, or 3 of her feathers to her hand, within a range of 30ft. Recalled daggers do 1/2 damage when recalled.
Rescue (Mastered) | Remi can bring a fellow Old God demigod to his side in a time of crisis for three concurrent posts. One use per thread. If the summoned demigod also has mastered this ability, they can remain until the end of the thread.
Flora rolls her eyes with all the ceremony of a queen knighting a fool and lets a grin tilt through anyway. "Please. I have a literal ghost for a twin and a father who used to wrangle spirits for Ludo," she says, amusement purling low and pleased. "Of course I’m an expert." His shade of green is a reward she pockets shamelessly; she inhales like it’s perfume, then widens her eyes in saintly innocence as the memory of a certain algae mask surfaces. “"My nonna—the witch—swore by frogs for all of her beauty routines," she adds, nodding with solemn conviction.
He calls her wild and wood-feral and she snickers because she is and was, pretending to weigh the philosophy of toasting as if it matters to anyone but him. Then his shoulder bumps hers and the market tilts—just a breath, just enough—to have old warmth snagging on fresh bruise. She lets the contact slide past with a graceful step to the side, laughter softening into a clear-your-throat kind of sound as she resets the air between them.
"Anyone who doesn’t know if toasting counts as cooking," she says lightly, looking up at him and trying not to hear the words he'd said about Caly or feel the distance that had stretched until she'd snapped, "definitely doesn’t know how to cook."
I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff, finding some peace in an honest love Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in
Some of the playfulness wanes beneath the truth she uncovers, a reminder of lessons learned from hardship and exposure that transcends the pages and theories he's been taught. His dramatics dull to just a smile, fond if anything of all that she has proven to be capable of, even if it means he keeps losing out to her. "So then you should have the best spooky stories," he points out with an expectancy needing proof. "We'll have to swap tales one night. Around a campfire with s'mores and stars. Maybe go camping in the Greatwood or a graveyard." The offer rolls off easily, like it's ordinary to continue to put her into the image of what will be and not just hold onto what has been. For him, it is. It doesn't erase what distance has found its way between them, but he's certain that they will find a way to cross it again, because he doesn't mean to stop trying to.
His repulsion settles into a final nose crinkle. "Now who's fibbing?" His gaze narrows upon her, like the squint might help him find the tiny thread of her lie so he can grab hold and yank it apart. "Frogs are probably only good for curses." He'd not minded them until they stole his gummy worms, but his dislike runs deep for that one act. His forgiveness, normally freely given, can be withheld when certain lines are crossed, evidently.
The boundary he'd just tested by mistake becomes evident as it bends with a rubberband of possibility. It threatens to bounce back with a bite if pushed too far, but also proves willing to give. He'll take it over the breakage of string beneath tension or the erasure of a line in sand to the tide. Still, his breath shortens as the clarity of what he'd done quiets both of them in small ways, his grin dropping away as her laugh dies out.
"I can totally cook better than you," he challenges, rising up a bit taller with it. "I've been feeding myself this whole time in King's End, meanwhile I'm sure you've got royal cooks or something." A pause, something sly creeping in at the edge of where his smile previously sat. "Or do you think putting in an order qualifies as cooking?"
Sunlit Shadows (mastered) | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
Type: Grey | Style: Offensive | Level: Mastered
Deadly Recall | Can recall 1, or 2, or 3 of her feathers to her hand, within a range of 30ft. Recalled daggers do 1/2 damage when recalled.
Rescue (Mastered) | Remi can bring a fellow Old God demigod to his side in a time of crisis for three concurrent posts. One use per thread. If the summoned demigod also has mastered this ability, they can remain until the end of the thread.
Flora’s grin tips sly as she lifts her chin. "Oh, I do," she says, voice velvet with promise. "The kind that leave you awake for a week, counting shadows and regretting every creak in the floorboards and making it so you can't close your eyes around mirrors." His campfire offer earns a small, thoughtful hum that sits close to her ribs; they’ve made so many plans that never found a night, and the awareness of it brushes her skin like static. Still, she nods, letting mischief soften the caution. "Yeah, sure. If you think you’re tough enough."
He tries to poke holes in her witchery and she huffs a laugh, eyes bright. "Please. How would you know anything about beauty or witch secrets?" Her mouth curves, wicked and fond. "You think ‘disgusted by frogs’ counts as a credential?"
When he straightens—competitive heat making him taller by sheer insistence—she watches it happen with a smirk that reads the posture for what it is before rolling her eyes in theatrical surrender. "I have cooked for you," she reminds him, a flicker of chocolate and dawn tugging at her smile. "Those pancakes you inhaled so fast you forgot to breathe? Ringing any bells?" She steps forward and to the side, steering them out of range of the glimmering minefield of glass before Kai’s elbows write a eulogy for the chimes. "Come on, chef."
Glancing up at him as they fall into the flow of the market, Flora hums casually. "Do you ever wish you were tall?" she asks, light as sea-wind.
I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff, finding some peace in an honest love Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in
"Perfect," he says with a ring of mischief to the tone, as if she's just walked into a very cleverly laid trap and not potentially the other way around. Her fearful warnings are waved off like he knows there's no heart to them, or doesn't think there is anyway, which might be in part because he's already doing some of those things after living in King's End and the fear of them is worth more than the actuality. "I would love to find out how little sleep I can actually live off." Certainly would have preferred to put that to the test with her via other means, but ghost stories will do.
A gasp of offense leaves him at her insinuation, "are you saying I'm not bonita?" The direct result of not knowing anything about beauty, as it would be. "I'll have you know my skin doesn't glow like this all on its own. It just distinctly lacks frog spit as an ingredient." He seems to notice something on her though, like a piece of lint or something similarly out of place, and leans in a touch closer, scrutinizing. "Explains why you have a fresh wrinkle, just—there." He sticks his finger out towards her neck, and if she looks down, he'll flick his finger up at her nose, expecting the horror of a line to snare her.
The shadow of her claimed and marked skin remains unnoticed beneath her curtain of hair, and probably for the best.
"Ah, never said you can't cook," he corrects, one finger lifted and wagging. "Just said I'm better. If I do recall...at least one of the pancakes was rather burnt." An unfair jab, he's well aware, given he'd been the source of the distraction that burned it, but he wasn't going to offer that up freely. Her title only earns a satisfied smile as he steps in beside her, because whether mocking or not, he rather felt it suited him. She could have witch doctor, frog kisser, ghost buster, but he'd stick with master chef.
His head turns like a marionette at her question as they find pace, silent before a delayed scoff skips free. "I'm tall!" An arm flies up to his head and ghosts overtop hers, demonstrating the clear difference like she's gone mad. "How fucking tall do you mean? Because Sunjata height seems miserable, bet he has to duck under every doorway and gets a crick in his neck just writing letters."
