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!
The mortuary. A place she had become all too familiar with in the days following the attack during Fiat Lux. But now she came for other reasons than preparing the funerals for her nephews - which had been done quietly and with expediency following their deaths. No pomp and circumstance. Simplicity. Intimacy. Quickly. There had been far too many dead for much more than that, and she herself had been terribly busy trying to keep those who yet lingered alive.
But when she arrived, she did not come empty handed. She carried with her a special puzzle box, something she thought one in Abasi's profession would like very much. "Hello?" she called as she knocked, stepping just inside the door.
Abasi was busy cleaning, a task very important to his work, but one he'd let go lax slightly over the hectic week that it had been. People would not like to see their loved ones in a filthy room, so he made sure to regularly mop the floors, sweep the corners of the ceiling for cobwebs, scrub down the slabs between each resident.
There was only the one body left, for now - some had been treated then given back to families for burial, some had been burnt. The remaining corpse he was only going to keep for one more day; not yet claimed. He'd done his best to keep them clean and presentable, but it seemed likely that whoever this person was, they had been either alone or unlucky enough to have all their relatives die too (after all, some bodies were still trapped under the mud).
A knock at the door caught his attention and he paused in scrubbing down the walls, leaning down to put away his rag back into the bucket of water. Drying his hands on a cloth as he stepped into the front, Abasi nodded professionally at Phoebe, whom he had had to become acquainted to more so than before in the last week. "Good morning. Are there...more to be seen to?" She had rarely come with good news.
"Thankfully not. I...think we are through the worst of it now." she said with a quiet sigh, shaking her head. Her own nephews aside, being surrounded by so much death had been difficult for her. Sure, she had seen it before, but never en masse like this. "But I...well I wanted to bring you this." she said, holding the puzzle box out to him. "My nephews...well they would fill it with little offerings for Ludo, chocolates, small trinkets, and reset the puzzle then set it on the window sill. Ludo would take it and return it open and empty. I know you wish to be closer to the gods and as much as I love Ludo...I believe they are more closely aligned with your practice than mine and so you ought have it." she said with a small smile.
She would wait to make her request until after he accepted or declined the gift.
Abasi felt tension fall from his shoulders as Phoebe told him she was not here to bring more dead. With a sigh of relief he put down his towel, going to sit on one of the stools in the mortuary - it was his duty, so he would have done the work, but he would have found any more dead to see to at the moment absolutely exhausting.
No, it seemed that bizarrely, Phoebe was actually here to give him a gift. He reached out to take the puzzle box, turning it over in his hands as he heard her explanation. When she was finished he looked up and shook his head, tried to pass it back. "I appreciate this gift - I am indeed trying to become close to Ludo. But I cannot take something of your nephews, not so soon after their deaths. This should go to some other member of the family, or you should keep it. I cannot pretend to have known them well enough to claim their things." Abasi's voice was softer, gentler than usual as he tried to be kind about his rejection of the present.
Phoebe took the box back without and fuss, though confusion did furrow her brow a bit. But as he explained...she supposed it made sense. Honeyed brown eyes glanced down at her hands, holding the box close for a moment. "There is no other family." she said quietly. It was just her. Her and her alone. "I will ask Ludo what they wish for the box." she said. Ludo was ultimately the other owner of the box in a sense, they ought to decide what to do with it.
Holding the box close to her chest she looked back at the undertaker, taking a slow breath to collect herself as she did so. "That wasn't all I came for though. I...well in the wake of all this, it's become clear we do not have enough healers and quickly. I was hoping you'd consider joining the Medical College as a student. With your line of work, you already have a basic knowledge of surgical practice and anatomy. Perhaps healing wouldn't be your main work, but with some additional training, you could be ready to assist should such another crises arise." she said, having pulled her voice back from emotional to professional.
Phoebe took back the box without at least any visible offence and Abasi nodded gently at her decision. "That is probably for the best. If Ludo wishes for me to have it, I will of course look after it well. But I cannot take such an item from you at this time." Perhaps if he had known her better or had known at all her nephews - he'd never been very good at speaking to children and made it a point to avoid them.
As for her other business...Abasi hadn't known what to expect, but her offer caught him entirely by surprise. His eyebrows rose as she spoke and he was quiet for a while after, frowning as he thought about it.
"...I...am not against assisting in principle." He began, speaking slowly and carefully. "However, from what I know of the medicine your college teaches, we have different ideas of how many parts of the body function. I would not want to cause discourse within your college by presenting radically different ideas. Perhaps...if you simply wanted me to teach how to care for the dead?" As far as he knew, no one took issue so far with how he was completing his work in the mortuary.
It was not the answer she had wanted, nor the answer she had expected, and her fingers gripped the box she held tightly enough that her knuckles turned white. Why was everything such a struggle? Why did everyone have to fight her at every turn and bend? Yes, but or No, but, always but. For once, just once, could someone just agree? Her lips pressed together in a thin line as her eyes closed, taking a breath in an attempt to steady her emotions, if only to keep herself from completely losing her cool.
"The college is not particularly interested in learning how to handle the dead at this time, and the way in which the College teaches and researches is led by the truths revealed to us by Frey. To question this knowledge is to question that which the gods created." she said a bit sharply - uncharacteristically sharply even, given how even tempered the midwife usually was. But she swallowed a lump her her throat, deep brown eyes staring hard and an invisible something on the floor just passed Abasi. "But...I understand. Keeping people alive does give you less business I suppose and would therefore not be in your best interest. My apologies." she said quietly, voice tight. Gods, why did everything have to be a fight. "It is a shame we cannot help each other though." she added softly.
