From being an Abandoned who had rarely left the Hollowed Grounds, to embracing the call of adventure, to dying and being reborn first as an Ascended and then as an Ancient, Maea has gone through quite the amount of changes in her life. One thing remains common, though, in her attempts to find out just where she belongs; she’s always had a craving for knowledge which has brought her to so many places and to meet so many people here in Caido. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for her!
Congratulations, Maea!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
Skinning and hosting by the epically talented Kaons, and functionality fanciness by the coding magic of Neowulf. If you ever see either of them around, make sure to show them some love!
"By ten minutes. Which I'm sure you spent crying." Sam immediately said back with fake superiority. Evie had used her elder sibling status plenty of times when they were children, and it was hard not to feel seven again when he said 'ten minutes!'. "And surely you're also getting old, if you're so insistent on being the older one." This was a fun kind of fighting, not the usual genuine sniping they were used to; he wondered if this was how a relationship with a sister was actually supposed to feel.
Though her teasing about sex swiftly made him regret ever speaking to her. He had always been shy about physical matters and even with his relatively new experience in the subject, the mention still made him hide his blushing face behind his hands and whisper: "Evie!!"
Thankfully the topic changed, though her sad question made him uncomfortable for different reasons. For a long time he had been convinced he would live and die alone no matter what he did - it was only in the recent years with his new friends and loves he had seen that he could have relationships and love just like anyone else. Now that he had that, he knew he would not ever be able to return to the life he had had before. "Yes. I have been alone for a long time, after I left home, and it....it rots your soul, Evie. You need to find people where you can." He had always seen Evie as a popular person who found it easy to make connections, so it felt odd, out-of-place to be giving her the advice, but he would not even wish the years of loneliness on his worst enemy.
He simply nodded to the news of their parents, surprised she did not know more but not wanting to ask even more questions, knowing he could only be so invasive before she would get annoyed.
"There's no shame in a victory cry," she retorts primly, though her blue gaze is warm with amusement. It's a common contention between them, an old fight that she revels in always winning. Though it does hurt to be reminded that while she ages, Sam does not. Will not. Her smile slips a little, becomes a concentrated effort instead of a naturally flourishing expression. It seems unnatural, wrong, to have been born together and yet die so far apart. "I'm getting there, but at least I'll age with grace while you just look like you forever." It's a tragedy she has never cared about before, and yet here she is, grieving her own mortal life. Grieving her brother's agelessness in equal measure. Neither seems like a gift.
It's easier to focus on his embarrassment, grin only growing perpetually wider at his adorably flustered reaction. With a soft cackle of satisfaction she lets him be, if only because she has achieved the response she wanted. His subsequent moroseness is a sharp contrast, and Evie looks away uncomfortably as he vehemently - or as much as someone like Sam can - speaks up against her trailing question. Shrugs a delicate shoulder and sighs softly. "I suppose I meant romantically. I still have you and Amalia." Truly all she had at this point in time, small meetings with various others aside. I still have you, right? It goes unsaid, unasked. She doesn't have the right to ask it with their particular history. "But my time will come eventually. I don't think it would be so bad, to avoid the heartache that comes with love." Already she was approaching to be one of the older souls in the sanctuary. So many young Outlanders, and so many who had died in the wars between the Gods. While being a spinster hadn't been her goal when she was young, she was finding it was easier sometimes to retreat to her apothecary in solitude and enjoy whoever happened to visit her.
"I don't look sixteen, at least." Sam had aged since his Ascension, though it had stopped a couple of years ago - he understood it as a gift of sorts from the Voice, a way to let him reach adulthood despite his forced turn to her light. He would always look the way he had, but at least that was not a teenager. "When you're old and grey you might wish you had my face."
The mention of Amalia caused him to make a face, wrinkling up his nose and looking away from Evie. "Amalia doesn't like me very much." He commented, though he was sure that much was obvious to anyone that knew anything about the both of them - the dedicated disciple of the Old Gods and the shy Ascended; just sharing a guild was not enough to bring them together.
"Hm, I suppose. It...it isn't like how mother and father were, though. It doesn't have to be." He mused, staring down at his hands in his lap. Growing up his parents had seemed more like a reluctant pair of coworkers than a couple; that marriage could be something borne of true love was still something he was getting his head around.
"Your only saving grace," she teases with a smug little grin. Sam had grown up like an overeager weed - all over the place, fluffy in weird areas, something you overlooked for the sake of the rose beside it. He had grown into it in the end, as they all had, but remembering his carrot-hair fluff and big eyes still makes her smile. "Then perhaps I'll do the same someday, and you'll be stuck with me forever." There's a sharpness in her gaze as she says it, offhanded like it doesn't matter but well aware of the gravity of her own words. Oh, the horror! Perhaps if she was an Accepted it would matter, but what more could she possibly lose? It's an entertaining thought, even if she would desperately miss the sun.
Evie frowns softly at the mention of her best friend. They had grown up side by side, though even then she and Sam had a chasm between them and as such had not been invited. Still, Amalia was far too good for this world. Surely she would never be anything but kind to Sam? "Amalia doesn't have a mean bone in her body, what in the world has she done to you to make you think that?" Siding between Amalia and Sam is a tug-of-war that Evie doesn't even want to imagine, but she's curious if nothing else.
"I suppose you're right..." It's said grudgingly, but at least admitted. "But sometimes I'm afraid that we got screwed over, you know? I don't know what real love looks like. How can I give that to someone when I'm tainted by these memories of a lackluster relationship?" It makes her skin crawl to even say the word 'afraid' to Sam. To be that weak before him. Her arms curl around herself, shoulders hiking up defensively, more than prepared to spit poison if he tries to needle at her in return.
"A worse fate could not be imagined." Sam replied drolly, huffing a little laugh out of his nose. Really, he actually quite liked the idea of Evie living as long as he would; perhaps with all the time in the world they might have a chance to work everything out and become closer. At the moment it felt as if he was just at the beginning of a very long road, one that Evie might not get to finish with him.
Amalia doesn't have a mean bone in her body. Sam nearly laughed. Sure, unless you were one of the ones her Gods didn't like. "She..doesn't like that I'm Ascended. She got angry with me when I refused to speak badly of The Voice." Perhaps he now knew he was to blame for the Blight, but he suspected Amalia wanted more than that, that she would not actually be satisfied until he swore loyalty to the Old Gods.
That he would never do.
To hear Evie be so vulnerable was uncomfortable but he tried to swallow the awkwardness and give her a real response; he knew she was being brave. "I think we did get screwed over. But...that doesn't mean we can't fix it. I mean, we're going to make mistakes..." He thought of his lost memories of Remi and shook his head. "I have. But it's worth it, in the end."
"Don't encourage me then," she says with a smile befitting a particularly ravenous shark. Oh, the idea of teasing Sam for eternity is certainly appealing. And similar to what runs through Sam's mind is present in her own. Maybe they could fix things? Have nights similar to this, easy and comfortable? Or as comfortable as the pair of them could get. Get past the burnt out ruins that their parents had set ablaze between them with their expectations and betrayals. Find new growth beneath the scorched earth, and clasp hands over the wreckage.
It's a thought she can't help but entertain. A poetic sort of 'fuck you' to their parents, to the world at large. Evie had always liked those.
Evie lets her head hang back, copper hair falling free over the back of her seat as she stares listlessly at the ceiling. The fact that her best friend, her adopted sister, can't see past the Goddess that lingers at Sam's shoulder is disheartening. But unsurprising, in the end. "Everyone here is obsessed with the Gods," she mumbles bitterly, though her face remains blank and emotionless. There's no reason to summon up her anger, her distaste. "As if our faiths can't coincide. As if we don't have an entire race of people abandoned just for being born. It's stupid." Blasphemy, blasphemy, watch your tongue Evie or the Gods will punish you, she can hear in an insidious susurrous in her head, her parents voices twisting sickly in her mind.
But the Gods can't punish her any more than fate already has.
It's easier to be numb rather than vulnerable, and she shrugs awkwardly as the reality of what she has said comes down on her shoulders. Cringing away from the connection between them. "Since when did you become the optimist?" Evie lobs back at him, aiming for the familiar ground of teasing and sarcasm instead of this shaky, unstable platform of emotion she's standing on. "It's a nice thought though." He deserves to believe in it now, and she hopes that this fellow of his doesn't give her brother reason to doubt that.
"Yes." Sam agreed emphatically at Evie's words on the Gods. He had not expected such a judgement, one that he could entirely understand, from an Accepted - and certainly not from his sister. Not even his close friends could understand that the Gods one followed did not have to come between friendships. "I wish sometimes that the Ascended and the Abandoned could come to an understanding, you know? There's a woman now who is Abandoned and Ascended. We both know what it's like to be left behind by the Gods."
He truthfully was still very far from being an optimist, he had just read enough romantic books to know the right words to say. Still though, he smiled and rolled his eyes at her. Sam was sure she'd find someone soon enough; she had never seemed the kind of person destined to be lonely.
His eyes drifted back to the door, and he realised he had been gone much longer than he'd said. With everything going on at the moment, Nate would be worried. "I should probably get back home...but...feel free to come over, okay? To the shop, or my house. Do you know which one it is...?"
Evie hums softly to avoid incriminating herself any further, tongue pressing urgently to the roof of her mouth as if she could suffocate the words that press against her throat. Stifles the urge to just blurt out that she's one of them, that she understands because she is Abandoned. That he is not alone in his exile, she is merely protected by her years of enshrouding herself in the gossamer fabric of lies and suspended disbelief woven by her parents. Shackles instead of solitude. Part of her hates him for his freedom, for the way he complains about the loss and the way he suffered at their parents' hands. Because she lives a lie every day, and freedom is a laughable notion to her. The Gods would not be the ones to save her, and everyone else was dead or unreachable.
Taking a shaky breath, she swallows down the confession. It has lived like a rock in her chest for her entire life, and she does not have the power to free it now. Wonders if she ever will, especially to him. Maybe on the day she dies, she thinks with a dark sort of amusement. And he'll look just as he does now, untouched by age and illness.
Time slips by faster than she would prefer, which is a first. But as Sam hesitantly tries to excuse himself, Evie only gives a halfhearted smirk, presses a kiss to her fingers and uses them to poke and push at Sam's face as if to push him into getting up. The closest she feels she can get to kissing his cheek as she might have if they were closer. "I know where the shop is, but tell me where you're living. I'll...I'll try to visit soon." It's a tentative connection, but one she is surprised to be glad to have established.
Without knowing the secrets his sister was hiding, Sam felt they had come great strides in one conversation. He was leaving Evie for once not feeling angry and mumbling under his breath, but smiling and excited to see her again. He didn't even mind when she poked his face, laughed a little and rubbed his cheek.
Had she always been so affectionate?
"It's on end of the road that goes into the market. There's a bench outside, and a brown window with a blue curtain." He instructed, finding it absolutely surreal to be telling this to Evie when he had specifically wanted to live in that home to get as far away as he could from his family. "You'd be welcome."
With that said, he stood and smiled at her one last time. "Bye, Evie. Have a good day." Perhaps they'd never be at 'I love you', but that was still huge improvement on the usual.
Three words shouldn't rock her so much, but they do. The idea of Sam welcoming her into his home, a place where he is supposed to feel safe, is something Evie never anticipated them to be able to achieve. And yet here they are, making so many strides in one evening, and her defenses are so low that she can't help the sincere smile at his words that blossoms tentatively on her face.
"Then I'll be there." It's a promise she intends on keeping, no matter how hard it might be to force herself to go there, to tell herself that their progress won't landslide backwards. She has to try and be hopeful, even when the evidence of the past tries to point out that doing so is useless.
Sam gets up to leave, and Evie remains seated, feeling like she needs the time to collect her thoughts. "You too, Sammy." It drifts off after him, and then she's left staring at the front of the temple, feeling far more content than she had been when she'd first arrived. It's nice.
