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!
"It's moving about!" Sam pointed out, as if this was a great defence of his reaction. Still, he did his best to buck up a bit, forcing himself to hold the bag closer to his body and to have a slightly less disgusted expression on his face. He was at least not so upset over his snake-holding that he couldn't walk a bit further, so he began to head further into the woods. "I...know there's a nice pond somewhere around here. It's a nice place to sit...I used to come here a lot when I was about 12..to er, hide, you know."
Maybe she didn't know. Sam had always thought of Evie as the one that received all the love, all the praise; maybe she'd never needed to find a solace away from their home.
With confidence for once, he shook his head at Evie's comment. "She loves me, so I'm sure she'd like to know you too. You're my sister, after all." Smiling, he nudged her. "Sounds like you're starting to care about me, Evie."
"That's what living things do little brother, or have you forgotten?" Her grin is impish, recalling her young days imperiously lording her knowledge of life and plants above his head. Childish information at best in comparison to the breadth of her expertise now. Still a great piece of leverage when you're young and bratty. A history she doesn't care to remember right now, so she merely hums softly as he directs them towards this pond he speaks of. "For me, it was always Amalia or the Ruins. So many places to hide there." It's not quite terse, but controlled. A way of saying she understands, that their lives were not so different beneath the veneer of control and perfection the Wordsworths always projected. That is only now fading away like crumbling lacquer for Evie.
Sam's teasing is far too bold, and she narrows her eyes at him, tsking her tongue even as the corners of her lips twitch in betrayal. "I'll have to show her the improved Wordsworth model," she snipes. Only to soften as he nudges her, rolling her eyes despite the truth of the statement. "Bite your tongue Samuel. Can't have you letting everyone know I'm getting soft." A roundabout agreement, one she knows he'll understand, and emphasizes with a far gentler look than she has ever really used for him. The words aren't within her grasp just yet, but they're making progress together.
"I'm not dead, you know. Just alive in a different way." Sam insisted. He'd heard from people before that assumed the Ascended were undead, vampires or zombies almost; it was not really the truth. They were just people that got their sustenance from another source, whose heartbeats pushed fluid around their bodies and not blood.
It was both a surprise and a confirmation of suspicions to know Evie had had to hide too. She had been the 'better' child, but their home had been such a horribly negative place, full of conflict and anger...anyone would want to escape it sometimes. "Mmm...the ruins always frightened me a little as a child. I was scared of ghosts." Now it felt silly, now that he knew souls were snatched away by Ludo or left to stay with The Voice.
The trees around them began to thin out in one direction as something like a path appeared, old gravel and grown-over moss marking the way. "You always like to tell me how you're the older one, though. Doesn't that make me the new model?" He asked, a playful smile on his lips as he made his way down the path.
Evie isn't so self-conscious as to since, though she does shoot Sam an apologetic expression. "Sorry, that's not what I was trying to imply. You've always been squeamish, it's frankly hilarious." She may have very mixed feelings about the Ascended, but Sam is her twin brother. The status of his personhood and state of living is something she will defend, no matter their tumultuous relationship.
The minimal tension - a wonder in itself - dissipates as he admits to bring afraid of ghosts. Evie grins at him shamelessly, glad to be proven right yet again. "All the better of a hiding spot for me you see." It's the safest answer, not wanting to reveal that she has never - and likely never will - meet Ludo or any of the other Heralds. Easier to be vague but honest. A trick to perfect lies that she learned from a young age.
As they wander down the path that emerges from the undergrowth, Sam gathers his sass back into another little burst, prompting an offended gasp from the elder twin. "You take that back! You're just sad you came second in the race, I'm sure The Voice will appreciate my wisdom from my vastly superior time in the world." A haughty sniff and tilt of her nose skyward helps to conceal her smile. Wherever they're heading, she finds she doesn't much care. It's a pleasant walk already.
"I think most people would find it hard to hold this." He argued, though he was now doing a better job of forcing his face and arms to be still as the snake squirmed about in the bag, no matter how badly he wanted to yell and throw it far away. Her accidental comment about his aliveness or lack thereof was forgiven with a simple smile and hand wave.
He smiled a little bemused at her next words. "Are you trying to tell me you're a ghost? I think I would have heard about it if you'd moved onto the next world and were coming back to haunt the town. I'm sure everyone would be very irritated by now." Sam teased, imagining a ghostly Evie stood over the shoulders of shopkeepers, correcting what they were doing.
The path split off into two parts - a higher one that seemed to be half made of tree roots, and a lower path heading down; Sam paused for a moment to look between the two, then took the downwards path. "More time or not, I can make myself invisible and you can't." He insisted, for a moment making his head disappear to prove his point. "Have you ever even used your channelling abilities?"
"But you're not most people, you're Ascended," she teases back, smirking as he forces his squirming to a minimum. The unease is still clearly broadcasted on his face, which is enough to prompt her continued glee at his expense. Plants may be her realm of expertise, but animals are not far beyond that. At least hanging snake's are one of the friendliest of their kind in Caido. Though she doubts venom or a bite would even do anything to Sam, which is both a cause for curiosity and a notion that prompts relief.
She's tempted to shove him for his teasing, though he'd probably drop the snake, and so she glares at him playfully instead. "I'm already annoying as I am now, don't discredit me Samuel. I already intend to haunt you for your entire long life after I pass. I'm sure Mort will allow it." Except Mort wouldn't, and that's something she can't ever reveal, because this tremulous connection already means too much to her even in its infancy.
Grateful that they're avoiding the tangled root-path, she shudders dramatically when Sam makes his head disappear. "That will never not be creepy, ew." It just looks disorienting, mildly terrifying, and it gives her the heebies. His question makes ice trickle down her spine, but it's a question she has fielded for nearly thirty years. Tilting her head arrogantly she scoffs. "Of course I have, I'm just not going to subject anyone else to your antics if I can avoid it."
"Well, this Ascended still doesn't like holding a snake." He argued back, though it was getting easier as time went by and the creature relaxed, seeming to still in one specific coil shape along the bottom of the bag.
Sam snorted as she promised to come back as a spirit: in some ways, he actually wished it could happen. The death of all those around him, distant sisters or no, was one of the things that terrified him the most about his life as one of the The Voice's children. One day, he would be 100 and still the same and everyone he knew would be dead; it was a chilling thought. "I'll make sure to have a life you won't want to haunt. I'll just write boring books and kiss my boyfriend all night." He laughed, making something close to a kissy face; something about Evie brought out his silly side more than usual.
Laughing again at her declaring his disappearing head as 'creepy', he made himself whole once more and pulled away a branch, revealing before them a clearing with a small pond and a stone, a tree behind it (with some very not-natural scratching, some of which could look like 'SW' if one squinted). "Oh no. I do not want to see any Old Gods. I'm sure they'd burn me alive right now...which I would like to avoid." Stepping forward to sit on the rock he chewed at his lip for a moment in thought. "...When you speak to them, are they kind to you?"
"Stop being a weenie, it'll go to sleep soon," she tosses back, aware it's already settling but not able to resist getting one last jab in. Not that he lays down and takes it, immediately undermining her attempts at threatening him with haunting him for eternity. The girl tips her head skyward and groans loudly and dramatically at the idea of such a disgustingly boring existence. "At least you didn't say you'd have a ton of sex, I'd rather die a second time than see my brother's bare ass every night." She grins at him, hoping the crude angle will give her the advantage. Or at least force him to stop making that kissy face.
And no making his head invisible didn't count for Evie there.
The idea of the Old Gods makes her skin crawl, perhaps as much as Sam's if he could feel it physically anymore. They'd likely smite them both just for existing in the same space. Two birds with one stone. She's momentarily distracted by the reveal of the little lake, and takes up roost beside Sam, sprawling her legs in an unladylike fashion if only to claim more area than him. His question only deepens her unease, making her regret their growing closeness, that he feels bold enough to be able to ask this of her now. "Yes, though they have no tolerance for stupidity either." There. Keep it simple, vague, a lie that she can upkeep as they speak.
There were very few people Sam would allow to tease him about sex, and he was surprised to find Evie was one of them. "Well, that comes naturally after the kissing, I suppose. You'll just need to be a polite ghost and not come in, won't you?" He laughed, a little uncomfortable and a little amused. Still, the kissy face was dropped.
As she sat, he considered telling her what they both knew, that their mother would be slapping her ankles and making her sit 'like a lady'; then something about the atmosphere, the fact that they were actually getting along for once without their family hanging over them like a dark cloud...he left it. "Then it's a wonder they speak to you at all." He commented, the joke too easy to make.
"...I don't miss it, you know. Being able to talk to them. The Voice is enough." Sam mused, dipping the edge of his shoe in the water to make ripples. "Perhaps if we'd had a better mother I wouldn't like her as much; I'm not an idiot. I'm sure everyone thinks I stay with the Voice because I need.." He sighed and made a face. "A mummy. Maybe they're not wrong."
"I'd rather imagine you celibate and sing loudly to cover whatever sounds you make," she says with a dramatized face of distaste on her countenance. It had been her one relief, to know that the Ascended couldn't have sex in the normal sense. "I don't want to know that you got laid before I did." Which slips out almost unbidden, with a touch too much wistfulness to it. Her little fling with Rory had never been more than that, had never gone 'all the way' as she would have once childishly said. At this point she'd rather have fangs of her own, it almost seems easier that way to get the deed done and over with.
As they sit along the rock, she jabs her elbow out to the side at Sam for his insolence, though mischief sparkles in her eyes. "Who let you be this bold? I'm going to push you in the lake, see if you can sass me from underwater." He probably could with the whole not-needing-to-breathe thing, but at least all she would hear would be bubbles instead of his teasing.
Her gaze is drawn by Sam disrupting the surface of the water with his foot, watching the ripples spread out as the tone turns more serious. "She did many terrible things to us, Sam. I don't think it's wrong of you to look for a maternal presence in someone else." Her voice is subdued, reticent to reveal her own problems with their mother, but unwilling to let him think she judges him for trying to find that kind of love and acceptance in someone else. "What matters is that she is kind to you."
While it was far too much information, Sam was surprised to hear that Evie had apparently not, as she put it, 'gotten laid'. She'd always been the more popular, attractive one - he had simply assumed that some time in her teen years while he was miserable learning to make books, she had been off having affairs with whoever she wished. He tried his best not to show a reaction to the news on his face and only replied: "Well, I'm very sorry to ruin your fantasy."
She was right; he was being far more sassy than he ever had before. "Fine. I feel like I'm owed some teasing, though. You used to call me all kinds of names." He'd never been quick enough to come up with any in return. He'd always been ready to respond to their arguments an hour later when he was sat by himself and thinking of smart things he could have said.
Evie's kind response to his musings were a further surprise. "Perhaps you're right. Did..you ever find something like that? For a while my mentor was like a father to me, but..." He sighed and shook his head; Evie would know that he had only lived for a few years after Sam had become his pupil in the bookmakers shop.
Evie makes the best 'ughbleh' face she can, twisted up and dramatic as she sticks her tongue out. "Don't say the word fantasy, you're ruining this whole day. I'll just haunt someone more interesting instead." It's easier to joke about her own impending mortality instead of ruminating on the fact that Sam will outlive her ten times over. That nothing but catastrophe or murder or war will take him away from this plane of existence. Meanwhile she will age and die no matter how well she takes care of her body. Will Mort's arms be as warm and kind for her, an Abandoned, when she meets her end? Or will she be cast aside in death too? Too dark of thoughts even for the playfulness they wrap it in, and she's happy to move past it.
"All fitting and very creative so don't go putting them down." She's not at a point where she can apologize for her behavior, for mocking and bullying him when they were younger. Though 'younger' is only an out for her, considering three seasons ago it would have still applied.
Sighing, she dips a toe in the water in mimicry of Sam, watching her ripples chase after the faint lingering ghosts of his. "Not really. Amalia's mother maybe, when she was teaching us. I never found anyone else to fill that role for me though." She had been taken from them so soon, and Evie still misses her dearly. More than she will probably ever miss Maria.
"Oh, you don't want to hear about me and Nate's fantasies?" Sam laughed, though he had no intentions of ever sharing with his sister the various things he and his partner had gotten up to, especially since the other man had Ascended; things had become...creative. "Pity for you."
There could be an argument about the names she had called him, one that would get more serious than he'd really like to. A lot of the words had echoed in his minds for years later, had lead to his eventual prolonged breakdown, even the ones that seemed childish or less serious in retrospect. He just rolled his eyes, trying not to show that he was bothered.
Almost like a little game, he tapped the water again too, trying to make his ripples appear just after Evie's. "Amalia..." Sam wrinkled up his nose. Perhaps it was unfair to judge her family just because he didn't like Amalia, but if they were anything like her...
