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 glow at the top of the lighthouse was a welcome reward for the climb (Ronin had felt it would be insincere to simply ride up on his cloud), and so the hunter had walked, armed with his offering, to the shrine overlooking the sea. He had paused on the way to say hello to his daughter, lingering longer than intended, and now it was full dark and the sky was clear, spangled with stars.
Pausing for a second to catch his breath, Ronin moved to set his offerings down; they came tonight in the form of strange blooms he had found in the marketplace. Ghostly white things, they were beautiful and gave off a hazy, sensous kind of smell, seeming to glow by moonlight. What they were and where they came from was beyond him, but he thought them beautiful and so wished to share them with his goddess.
Alas, he had also come for answers. "Safrin," he spoke softly, reverently. "May I speak with you, please?"
sweet dreams till sunbeams find you, sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
'Always.' Her voice was like early morning fog on the back of his next, warm and with promises of the hours to come. Wearing a gown of white lace, the goddess appeared behind him, her fingertips gliding across one shoulder to the other, as she made her way around him. Hair in long and smooth waves down her back, Safrin looked impossibly pure and perfect in that moment, so unlike the human and passionate creature she'd been when last she saw her Star.
Coming to stand before her, her gown billowing in a breeze that did not touch her hair nor the body beneath, Safrin offered the hunter a warm smile, her hands folded before her.
but in your dreams whatever they be, dream a little dream of me
03-10-2020, 09:58 PM (This post was last modified: 03-10-2020, 09:58 PM by Ronin.)
RONIN
The whisper of touch across his shoulders was enough to send a shiver of anticipation up Ronin's spine, and the hunter had to steel himself to look at his goddess as she came into view Whilst she was not as human, as sensual, as provocative as in his not-dream, the memory of her was all too fresh in his mind, and he felt a surge of nothing short of adoration as he laid his eyes upon her.
"Thank you," he murmured, his tone low and reverent; indeed, he didn't seem to know where to look. Awkward was not something he had felt towards his goddess in a long time, but this was close to it. "I... Well. I wanted to ask about Vanya," he confessed. "About her star, in the sky... and if she might be able to rejoin our daughter. I never thought that things would turn out this way. And I understand, if it cannot be done. That it is a big ask, especially when you did it as a comfort to me. But I need to know."
sweet dreams till sunbeams find you, sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
Jealousy was a strange emotion for a goddess to feel. Normally it was something much closer to possessiveness, for she thought of those closer to her like well-loved playthings. One was not jealous of a teddy bear after all. And yet..
I wanted to ask about Vanya
Tilting her chin up slightly, eyes cast skyward, Safrin sat upon a pillar of starlight, legs folded elegantly beneath her. "It is indeed a big ask." She agrees, perfectly painted lips twitching up in a smile. "You're just full of requests lately." Safrin mused a touch wryly. The words he'd said while in her starlight bathhouse were still bright in her mind. but weren't quite as vivid as the demands of his body had been.
but in your dreams whatever they be, dream a little dream of me
Ronin couldn't see himself, but he knew his cheeks were flushed from Safrin's presence, from the mere memory of what had transpired between them. Bad enough that he had thought it was a dream, but the tattoos on his wrists said that she had very much been present, and that was... better? Worse? He had no idea.
He followed her gaze up to the sky, his fingers still brushing against the softly glowing blooms he'd brought as an offering. "I'm sorry," he said, sincere and ashamed. "I know, I..." His jaw clenched, Ronin trying to find the words.
"You're right, of course. I have fallen into a bad habit of simply asking things of you. Perhaps I can do something instead, work towards a solution myself. I'm able to sail the sky now, though not very high up..." Rubbing self-consciously at the back of his neck, Ronin finally dared to look at Safrin.
sweet dreams till sunbeams find you, sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
Turning her gaze back towards him, Safrin let Ronin stumble his way through his mortality. Of the things unsaid between them, the accusations in the back of his mind. Dare he say them? Dare he even think them?
Laughing at this, Safrin smiled fondly, shaking her head. "You think you can work towards a solution yourself? Tell me your head hasn't grown so big Ronin that you think yourself capable of plucking souls down from the sky."
Humming softly to herself, Safrin reached out to brush the backs of her fingers against Ronin's jaw. "Such tension in you. Always, such tension." She mused, her frown sad but adoring. The hunter would find his muscles relaxing, though they both knew that wasn't where he carried the true weight of his burdens. "It has been a difficult thing, for me to keep Vanya's soul where it is. I am the herald of life after all...such a thing shouldn't even be in my bag of tricks." But it was. Safrin always found a way, for those she adored.
For those she loved.
"But perhaps there is a way...though it might require more of a debt that you're willing to incur." Safrin's fingers, still against Ronin's skin, turned so that her thumb brushed softly near the corner of his mouth.
but in your dreams whatever they be, dream a little dream of me
Safrin's laughter might be fond, but Ronin still seemed chastised under it, the hunter's eyes widening at the mere idea that he might be thinking with his ego. "No, of course not! I only meant to say that... well. I ought to try and at least look into it myself first, before relying upon my goddess to do the work for me." He smiled bashfully and shrugged his shoulders. Then her fingers ghosted out to brush along his jawline and his cheek, and it felt like electricity sparking through his veins.
A soft hum of relief left him as, naturally, the tension drained from his neck and shoulders, and Ronin couldn't even deny that Safrin was right about it. He carried invisible weight with him, always, and that wasn't going away any time soon. "I appreciate your doing it. I really do," he murmured. At the time he had needed it - desperately - and it was only Aoife's death that had reminded him that there might be something more out there.
Talk of debts and whatever he was willing to incur dragged his eyes up to the goddess again, Ronin furrowing his brow. "What would it require?" he asked, tentative but undeniably curious.
sweet dreams till sunbeams find you, sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
'And where would you look, if not to me?' Safrin wondered, the corners of her eyes creasing with an entitled sort of amusement.
Stepping closer such that only the bouquet kept her from him, infinitely pleased at the sigh of relief leaving his lips, the goddess's other hand come up as if to straighten the collar of Ronin's shirt. She didn't though, preferring him slightly unkempt and ruffled as he was wont to be. "Mm, but now you would simply appreciate something else." Safrin said with a quiet hum.
"Eventually it would require you to return to the Hollowed Grounds. At least once a year." Safrin said in a low and perhaps too casual voice, as her hands dropped to the blossoms between them, plucking one in her fingers and spinning it. Looking up at him, coquettish and yet conniving, Safrin softly shrugged as her lips pursed. "But what are words mmm? Nevermind that you said you'd not return there, you can always take that back. Especially if I told you to..." There was something unsaid on her lips, and in her dark gaze. You can go back on any vow you've made, if you justify it through me, that look said.
but in your dreams whatever they be, dream a little dream of me
"Long and uninteresting books. The Loreseekers. I may try to speak with the Fae, to see if they have any information in the Observatory I've heard they've got..." Ronin rubbed at the back of his head again, thoughtful this time; there were plenty of options, but the lady before him was clearly the preferred choice - for a multitude of reasons, it seems.
And yet as Safrin stepped closer, Ronin did not feel quite... safe. It was not like their previous interactions, filled with affection and laughter and love. No, this was different in a way too subtle for him to really understand right now, and he found his eyes fixing on the flower spinning between her fingertips.
Forget it, he wanted to say. I wanted only to ask if it was possible.
"And what would you tell me to do there?" he said instead.
sweet dreams till sunbeams find you, sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
"A bunch of busywork so that when, empty handed, you could at least come here and say you tried first?" Safrin tutted at the idea. "That doesn't sound like you, Ronin." She could see it though, the hunter pouring over old tomes, wiping dust from his eyes and spinning his wheels. It was a rather adorable picture.
"To protect. To save. Never would I ask you to be the hero or would-be-king that they made you out to be." The flower rose, the petals spinning in the hollow where her collar bones came together. "But I would ask you to be the hero I'd make you out to be." She added, softly, the flower stopping abruptly.
"You've put me in a rather difficult position, Ronin." Safrin said with a summery sigh that spoke of longing and teal waters in marbled bathhouses. "To pluck Vanya from the stars is to admit I had her in the first place...a score that I'm sure you can imagine how keen Ludo will be to settle. To appease it, we might...make you suited to offer protection during LongNight in the Grounds. Such is a...difficult time for it, as you can imagine." Only he couldn't. No one could, really, because no one knew.
Pulling back suddenly, her back to him as she looked upwards with a hum of resignment, Safrin would appear mortal again. Though rather than tangible and pliant as she'd been when last they might, now she'd appear frail. Or as close to frail as she could be. "I suppose I will have to defend myself against it on my own, somehow."
but in your dreams whatever they be, dream a little dream of me
"I've done it before..." Ronin had to try hard to keep the pout out of his voice, and he directed his eyes down so he wouldn't seem petulant. It wouldn't be a state that would serve him for long, however - as Safrin said it outright, the hero she wanted him to be, he glanced up sharply, eyes wide. Something cold ran through him, too, as she mentioned appeasing Ludo through protecting the Grounds during Longnight.
Foolish and stunned, he missed the implications hidden beneath Safrin's suggestion - to return to the Grounds when he said he would not. To use the portals when he said he would not. To look Longnight in the face when it had caused him so much horror and pain.
And then she turned away, mortal and fragile as the flower she had been spinning between her fingertips, and Ronin wanted to reach for her. Wanted to, but didn't. "I... but... if I left Vanya in the sky, none of this would have to happen, right?" he said falteringly. "Things would just... go on, as they are?"
sweet dreams till sunbeams find you, sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
'Oh don't look at me like that.' Safrin replied, her voice wavering with the pout that he'd banished from his own. 'How many times have you come to me looking for purpose, and now that I call it what it is, you act surprised by it.' With a soft sigh, the goddess all but tossed her hands up in mock annoyance at him, before shaking her head with nothing but adoration in her eyes. 'Handsome and charming as you might be Ronin, followed by a dragon no less, I'd not have you be a white knight. I'd not have you wear the crown they once tried to force upon you. But that doesn't mean I'd see you wandering about either, burying your head in the sand because Remi says to, squandering your talents on wayward monsters."
Stretching out her hand again to brush at the line of his jaw, Safrin smiled sadly. "You're meant for so much more than that life, sugar." She said, the weight of responsibility one that she knew all too well.
Humming gently, the goddess shrugged her shoulders as if she truly didn't know. "Is that really what you're asking Ronin?" Safrin asked, glancing at him over her shoulder, the flower spinning in her fingertips. "For things to go on as they were, even feeling what you now feel?" Could you really leave her there, knowing what it means for her?
Turning to face him, wanting him to come to her of course, but leaving the distance between them as it was, Safrin let her eyes rake over him with soul-piercing clarity as if he were some zen garden shaken wildly out of shape that she now laboriously was trying to piece together again. "You never were afraid of the hard choices, Ronin. Never afraid of doing the hard tasks. Who are you now, that you even consider leaving things as they are?"
but in your dreams whatever they be, dream a little dream of me
Feeling ever more lost and chastised, Ronin wanted to reply but found that he had no words for Safrin. Whether that was because she was right or because he didn’t feel as though he could offer anything that wouldn’t be rebuffed was anyone’s guess, at this point. He was still meant for so much more, and while once the weight of that responsibility wrapped about him like armour, now it threatened to crush him altogether.
And who was he now, exactly? He didn’t move, watching the flower spin between her fingertips. ”A broken man,” he said simply. ”Once I was naive and optimistic, and I thought I could change the world. So I grabbed life by all the sharpest edges, and they cut me up. I’ve killed too many people, and seen too many die. I’m no longer so entitled as to think that just because I choose the hard tasks, that there will be a happy ending.”
Gazing up at the sky, though, at the star he knew shone down upon him, he couldn’t not think of Vanya. Of the mother of his child, who had asked nothing of him but to stay with her on that last, long night, until she fell asleep forever. ”I’ll do it,” he decided softly and quietly. ”To get her down from the sky, I’ll do it. To protect you from Ludo, I’ll go back to the Grounds and do what I can for LongNight.” And may the gods have mercy on him.
sweet dreams till sunbeams find you, sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
"And indeed you have changed it." Safrin noted, her interruption soft but not without conviction. "That is why I'd have you be my hero, Ronin. Don't you see?" Reaching for one of his hands, she'd trace her thumb across his palm. "You need not grab the sharpest edges any longer, but when you do, I'll protect you." Indeed his hands began to glow with soft light, her magically metaphorically reinforcing her words.
Nodding at that, Safrin beckoned his attention back to her. "Then let it be so. LongNight will be upon us soon enough, and there is much to do to prepare." Pausing, memories of hands on flesh and mouths parted in ecstasy aside, Safrin tilted her head demurely, her eyes somewhat sad.
"Do you trust me, Ronin?" She asked him softly, her voice hinged with reservation and fear.
but in your dreams whatever they be, dream a little dream of me
