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!
Ordinarily, Melita would’ve explored the vast sands and reaches of Torchline, inspired by its glorious shapes and tantalizing sun. Except she’d barely churned her way through Halo, and though ruffled in parka, in furs, in gear she’d rather not wear in the glimpse of summer, she was still tempted to reign, to rummage, to prowl the unknown. Curiosity and inquiry reigned supreme in her mind, and clutching Fangorn deep in her arms, afraid he’d be lost amongst the hustling world and bustling townspeople, her eyes set their sights upon portions of the columns, the avenues, how they differed from the Hollowed Grounds’ settlement, where streets curved and bent, where snow inhabited and cold stuck into one’s senses. Survival – this place translated survival, endurance, persistence, and perseverance, and at the very least, despite the mountains never being in her heart or soul, she could understand its depths, could share in its fortitude.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
02-16-2020, 12:27 AM (This post was last modified: 02-17-2020, 09:20 PM by Loren.)
They say blood makes you related but
loyalty makes you family
Loren had almost forgotten about the lucky rabbit's foot he'd gotten from that strange merchant. When Maea had banned him from drinking more than a flask a day, he'd found himself needing something to distract him. So he'd taken to carrying the rabbit's foot around, rolling it between his fingers.
Today, he'd discovered that he was running low on bandages. So he'd gone out to Snowcloak to see if he could get some cloth to make more. Although he'd developed a strange resistance to the cold during his time here, he still put on a cloak and gloves just to be safe.
Astra was always happy to accompany him on a trek, so she trotted along by his side. Every once in a while, she'd dart off when something excited caught her eye. People knew her, and even the hard folks of the Citadel had a small smile on their faces as she passed by.
Loren didn't. Then again, he didn't smile at much of anything these days.
A familiar shock of red hair caught his eye. Frowning, he slowed his steps. "Melita?" He rubbed the rabbit's foot, since he wasn't the biggest fan of Melita and she wasn't the biggest fan of hers. "What are you doing here?"
Her eyes scanned merchants’ wares, an all-consuming, effervescent smile, a bobbing of her head in time with comments and shopkeeper persuasions, lifting and lilting notes still managing to scramble from a world that seemed cold and fraught. But then again, perhaps one could always say the same of the Hollowed Grounds, of the Rift, who’d never been caught without some sort of bedlam or disaster clutched in its grasp.
She didn’t expect the voice bounding from her side, swinging her gaze to Loren: familiar and unwanted. The layered grin fumbled into a frown, and she didn’t bother hiding the motion, the nuance, Fangorn somewhere by her ankles, hissing and grumbling a greeting to Astra that would likely go unnoticed as soon as some fan hit particular flames. The girl inclined her stare elsewhere almost immediately, as if the man wasn’t worth her time, narrowing the gold into slits, casting aloft at scenery on the horizon, on castles and palisades nearby. “Exploring,” a shrug across her shoulders, a clench to her jaw, a dangerous outset brimming along and behind her bones. “You?”
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Astra, lacking Loren's dislike of Melita, trotted right up to the redhead woman and Fangorn. The luxere looked up at Melita for just a second before Astra bent down to give the gourd a friendly look. The healer, however, kept his eyes trained on the redheaded woman the entire time.
At her response, he smirked a bit. "Sure. And how's your exploration going? Enjoying the many beautiful sights of Snowcloak?" There was just the barest hint of mockery in his tone. He spread his arms as if to gesture at the less than gorgeous surroundings.
Lowering his arms, he rubbed the rabbit's foot, that same slight smirk lurking on his lips. "Me? Oh I live here. Didn't you hear? I've got a cabinet position and everything. Very important around these parts." His voice came out sarcastically.
Melita had no misgivings towards the luxere either; the lithe little deer had never done her wrong, and she always had a particular fondness for the beings who tried to keep monsters at bay during LongNight. Her hands quickly went to pet and scratch the top of the companion’s head, while Fangorn hissed out his own salutations. Meanwhile though, she considered Loren’s obnoxiousness, if she wanted to feed into it, if she wanted to raise further petulance because it was what they did – truces gone after games were completed, rendered moot, pointless, in the wake of senseless tragedies thereafter.
Her eyes did trail after what his arms meant to encompass – the desolation scrawled behind minimal towns and cities that dared to rise from the stark outliers and the press of frigid, glacial vestiges. There wasn’t splendor, but perhaps it had no right to encompass opulence or grandeur, not when they all struggled to survive. And maybe that was why the familiarity struck her so deeply; it was much like the Rift, with its decaying strands and threatening abyss. “I like it,” another shrug. It wasn’t the warmth of the Dragon’s Throat. It wasn’t even the compassion of the Hollowed Grounds, but it had its own appeal – as if she enjoyed walking along the serrated edges of a knife.
As for his new cabinet position and importance around here, she really didn’t care. An almost indifferent monotone flickered through her, eyes on the luxere, and not him. “Congratulations. Must be doing wonders for your ego.”
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Astra, obviously, enjoyed the scritches from Melita. The luxere let out a contented bleat. And then an excited one at Fangorn's hiss.
Settling to the ground, she continued bleating at the gourd, almost as if they were having a conversation.
However, Loren obviously had a very different, and not particularly pleasant, reaction to the redheaded woman. "My ego is fine, thanks for asking. How's yours? Still bruised?"
Raising his eyebrows at her, his smirked deepened. "It's almost like you're not impressed." He tilted his head to one side. "Or you don't believe me." His own tone indicated that he very much didn't care about her opinion of him or his position.
Fangorn was content to continue the grumbling and bleating conversation, conveniently trying to ignore the bristling accord settling in along his bonded. More than once he glanced upwards to find an unsettled, rapacious looking grin postured across her features – and inwardly he was either gearing up for some kind of fight, or just preparing for an inevitable onslaught of terror and ridiculousness. If vampire gourds could roll their eerie eyes, he would’ve.
The girl snorted, walking along, intentionally not looking at him – her tone indicating the lightest amount of menace, of malice, simpering and slinking within. “From what? Your cheating?” Her ego hadn’t been mangled or maligned – but her temper had unfurled; stone golems breaking bones when staffs weren’t enough to render her into the ground. The honeybee child, for all her compassion, for all her willingness to assist others, held grudges hard. One would only have to look towards Kiada to watch it rapidly unleashed. “I don’t have to resort to those tactics.”
She wasn’t impressed – it was true enough. Her opinion really didn’t matter either. Neither of them would hold high regard for one another; stupidity, mercurial whims, and tempestuous edges had cast them both in a less than effervescent light. So she didn’t answer his rather rhetorical remarks, bending down to inspect wares as they passed, making light of the situation, as if nothing more than the ether or wind. “What’s your position?” Jester?
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Astra would pause every now and then to give Loren and Melita worried looks as well. However, the luxere was mostly focused on her conversation with Fangorn. Loren, though, only had eyes for the redheaded woman.
As Melita walked past, the healer fell in beside her, walking easily, with his hands by his side. The one closest to her held the rabbit's foot, and he rubbed it as they moved. Smirking at her comment, he shot her a challenging look. "Oh, so you think you could beat me in a straight up fight, anything goes?" Snorting, he shook his head. "I doubt it."
Raising his eyes at her question, he found himself grinning outright. "Grand Healer." It came out smugly.
Anything goes, like she’d even have a chance without magic, without shifting, without all the other additions everyone else seemed to embody and inhabit. Her weapons would only go so far – he’d shown her that when she was blighted, snapping, her arrows meaningless in fits of levitation. She still didn’t look at him, rolling her eyes hard into the sky, into the passing landscape of heavy stone and frost. “What would be the point? You wouldn’t play fair.” Had he come over here just to pick a fight? What on earth was this man’s problem?
He could doubt her all he liked. She knew her worth. She knew her value. She knew some aspect of limitations (and sometimes railroaded over them). Her experiences with Loren had taught her things though, strangled in those moments of screams and pain, unforeseen torment; what should’ve been safe, what should’ve been fine, had eclipsed and shattered.
Grand Healer; she snorted at that too. “Do you injure all of your patients first?” Does that make you feel better?
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Letting out a huff of humorless and bitter laughter, Loren shook his head at Melita's response. "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but fights aren't fair." Then, though, his eyes narrowed and any hint of teasing and mocking slid away, to be replaced by a chilly anger. "Of course, you could always just channel something again." His words were hard and his eyes were positively frigid.
However, the dark amusement bubbled up within him once more. "Not all of them. Just the ones who ask." Smirking a bit, he turned his head to regard her carefully. Then he leaned forward and dropped his voice to a feigned whisper. "Some people like it rough." There was something almost suggestive about his voice.
“I’m all set on your advice, thanks.” Dismissal, snorting, as if she had no idea that fights weren’t fair. As if she hadn’t experienced them over and over again – lost her mother, lost her sister, lost everyone else who mattered, no matter how hard she tried. Maybe she would channel a god again, if he refused to leave her alone, if he intended to ignore all the warnings signs, thickheaded and incapable of picking up on her demeanor, the flames, the fire, stirring beneath her skin.
What she didn’t particularly enjoy was him truly in her space – leaning forward, the subject matter not even a notion in her mind, as she raised her staff to block his advance. “Get away from me.”
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Snorting at Melita's reply, Loren shook his head. "Sure, because one mistake, which I apologized for, invalidates everything I have to say." Clearly unimpressed with her ability to hold a grudge, he gave her a mocking look.
As her staff came between them, he grinned, the expression far from pleasant. Raising his hands, rabbit's foot still pinched between his thumb and forefinger, he took a comically large step back. "But of course." Staring at her, he tilted his head to one side. "You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were afraid of me." Despite the idle tone in his voice, his eyes were sharp, and filled with a barely contained disgust.
Her head whipped back towards him, eyes narrowed, a dangerous conflagration drifting into their gilded sights. Oh, she could hold grudges – one only needed to ask Kiada. But they were never unfounded things; never appearing out of thin air, or because her temper flared at treacherous angles. There were foundations, reasons, for her rage, for her rancor, for her bitterness, and it’d been his cheating, inept, unwinding stupidity. Because she’d had faith that they would’ve practiced with staffs, with skirmishes, with challenging one another – and not to the point where he’d taken it. “No. It’s because you broke my trust. Training isn’t about winning, or breaking someone apart. It was about learning. And you took it too far.” They’d already discussed this before, but perhaps his thick skull just had trouble absorbing it.
His next words were so ridiculous that she erupted into wild, savage laughter. “Gods, you wish.” Then she turned to move away again, ambling along the market.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Loren just smirked at Melita's accusation. Shrugging, it was clear he wasn't bothered in the slightest by her opinion of him. "You're right, I did. Sorry, again, not that you seem capable of forgiveness." Unsurprisingly, rather than apologetic, his tone was almost mocking, and definitely smug.
However, his eyes narrowed almost slyly. "If I remember, you also accused me of being out of control." Tilting his head, he let out a derisive laugh. "Control that you so clearly lack." The words were a challenge, and he stared unwaveringly at her.
Grinning at her laughter, he followed her through the market. "Despite what you might think, I don't want you to be scared of me." Then his voice grew almost icy and his eyes tightened. "I just want you to admit you're a hypocrite."
