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!
What she believed she’d willingly gave up, simply returned.
As if years hadn’t taken place between childhood horrors and youthful bounding, away, away, away from the clarity of torture, it returned with full vitriol in the wake of her slumber. There was nothing to be done except to suffer in its torturous depths: waves of ghostly plumes and ethers, her mother’s hands clasped over her throat, the gasping, breathless wanton sear and surge of her lungs, her own nails clawing into naught, naught, naught, staring into empty eyes –
And when the honeybee girl awakened in a great rush of air and sobs, her hands balled into fists, sweat layered and drenched across her nightgown. “I thought-” she murmured, quietly, to herself, despite Fangorn nestled at her side, overwrought with gentle hisses and concern.
Then, try as she might to return to the abyss of gentle lulls and the roll of waves outside her window, it came again and again, a great, grand surge of horror meant to bury her beneath the sanctity of treacheries, of a woman who’d been gentle and kind and good, that the Rift ruined in her memories.
Eventually, she ceased entirely, rising and changing, then charging out into the depths of barely-morning, the dawn curling over currents, the sand soft beneath her bare feet. Fangorn could barely keep up with her motions, as fervent as they were. She was desperate for a weapon in her hands as she stalked across the grounds, as she pierced over the quiet interludes with her ferocity, with her agony, expecting bruises to be laced around her neck, brushing over skin. Except the quiver usually accompanying her back was gone, and she could only gnash her teeth, tighten her jaw, and grab a rock and hurl it into the sea.
tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. tell me we'll never get used to it
As a creature without the need for sleep, there is only so much time Nate could spend in beds. His tolerance was strong, the deal sweetened by the promise of another body there with him, but there were still times it felt wrong, times that he was seized with the urge to move, to let his days run into each other. It wasn't like any of them ever felt any different, a quiet dissatisfaction growing in his chest, spurred by the things he was missing.
It was later (earlier?) than when he usually slipped away, a haze in the sky that hinted at dawn without any of the light or warmth, the tide moving out, sands wet enough that he could follow them along with his eyes closed, feet nearly silent as he slowly padded along the waters edge. Despite everything that should have grabbed his attention, warned him there was someone else nearby, it was the splash that got Nate to open his eyes, out in the direction of the waves before sweeping them over the beach, to the increasingly familiar fiery headed girl.
"Melita?" He called softly, his steps carrying him just within arms reach and his hand coming out towards her, like he meant to hug her but got caught by the expression on her face. "Are you... okay? Why aren't you..." There were too many endings to the question to decide on one, so Nate just gestured, a little helplessly, with his outstretched hand.
Fangorn growled at her feet, uncertain, maybe a little afraid, and her fingers trembled in the cool air, in the way she pressed them into fists to muffle whatever fear and apprehension kept crawling and creeping over her too. She stared out over the sea instead, at monuments and monoliths of power, at rippling tides that never conformed to anyone, that never begged or pleaded to be released from a fabricated hell. The wild girl swallowed down bouts of feral accord, the scream begging to be released, the sorrows pent up and building, brewing, brimming over the surface. Ludo had said the memory would go away – it would be gone and she’d never have to live it, have to see it, have to be immersed in it ever again.
But it beckoned and crawled, like knives over her skin, and felt feral, felt tainted, felt demonic, as if she could split apart at the seams. On impulse, she grabbed a shell nearby and heaved it as far as she could, muffling the sob springing across her tongue, the fire in her nape a turbulent, defiant roar, uncertain about her loyalties, about her devotions, about everything nestled within.
She hadn’t even noticed Nate approaching until his voice called to her softly, along the breeze and shoal, and she flinched for a second, half-expecting something else to come unwinding from the layers between dusk and dawn. His hand reached out towards her, and she thought her flesh might be like thorns, nettles, and daggers, sharp pinpricks of devastation and ruin, a youth left to fester, to decay, to rot – shying away, something mixed between savage cretin and tempestuous urchin. His palm represented some form of comfort, and she wasn’t sure if she deserved it. So she shook her head, the rest of her body like a leaf on the wind, trying to be rigid, unyielding, and failing drastically. “Just bad dreams.” She kept her digits tucked, clenching her jaw, imagining, and struggling so hard not to, the suffocating reel of her phantom-mother’s reach. “Why are you out here?” Deflection, not a skill she was so artful at – gilded eyes an intermingling of ferocity and damage, sliding to his only for a moment before heading back towards the ocean.
tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. tell me we'll never get used to it
No matter what the answer that came to him from Melita's own lips was, it was already obvious the real answer was a simple no. People who were okay didn't scream at the sea, didn't hurl things at it like somehow it would affect the waves at all. Her head shook at the offer of his palm, and for a single moment Nate considered ignoring the refusal, reaching out anyways, just a little bit. It was his nature, to try and offer comfort in what felt like the most complete way. "Just bad dreams." He repeated instead, arm finally falling limp as he did, as he looked her over, brow raising at the trembling, at the way every bit of her clenched to try to stop it. "Alright then."
Clearly, he wasn't convinced by the cover up, but he was willing enough to move along with the subject change, for a moment. Hopefully long enough for Melita to calm down enough for them to circle back around, to bad dreams and trying to punish the ocean for something that couldn't be it's fault. "Well," Nate began in a rumble, casually shifting closer to her, "I can't actually sleep anymore, and I can only lay in a bed so long, no matter how much incentive there is." He didn't say what kind of incentive, letting her imagination run with it a little bit, the insinuation enough to pull a light laugh from between his lips. "I can't drink myself into a stupor, I can't take anything, so I walk. Keep everything moving, keep it distracted." A short shrug with that, a moment of consideration for his last thought, the fact that sometimes, he finds something more distracting than a walk, but he doesn't want the girl to take that personally. Whatever she's working through is more than fodder to keep his mind busy.
In the end though, he is impatient, and of the belief of an eye for an eye, trouble for a trouble, so Nate turns to Melita, trying to give off the air of a confident, someone she can trust when he tactlessly brings up her problems again. 'Y'know, I can't say I ever had a dream so bad I had to throw rocks into the ocean." A question, dressed up as anything but.
Perhaps he simply extended her time in the ambience instead of the desolation, and she tried to catch its tethers, wrap herself up in the solace of the sea, in the calmness of the waves, in things that didn’t alter or change. Tide in, tide out, waves undulating on their ripples, still strong and persistent, not unbidden or beholden to anyone, to anything. No promises or convictions notched across minds. No corporeal, tangible friends or families lost to its efforts. It was its own pressing being, an existence of everything vital and potent, and if she could reach into its shores, if she could bask in its essence, maybe some of it would leech and soak into her being, and the honeybee girl wouldn’t be so fragile. Wouldn’t be so caught. Wouldn’t be so daft, dumb, and incapable.
If he meant to distract her, he did so momentarily, her head turning back towards his presence, listening to the ways in which the Ascended didn’t sleep, only wrinkling her nose at some insinuations lacquered in there. “Ew.” Mostly because it pertained to her uncle, and there was no need to dig deeper into those ruminations. But she understood everything else thereafter – why she’d gone out towards the sea-salt air, why she’d chased and rampaged and threatened to lose herself near the sands and dunes, an overwhelming need to simply get away.
She would’ve let that lie, a nod to her head in comprehension, thinking to return her gaze to the swell and rise of the fathoms before them, content to permit everything to sink. Except he’d returned right back to the reason she was amongst the bulrushes and surf, and she unclenched her fists, loosened a haze, a breath, a sigh. Evasion hovered over her bones, made her want to launch, to flee, to rebel, to repel, to merely coast away and pretend none of it happened. She shrugged her shoulders, steeled her breath, and didn’t know how to begin. So her eyes went over the swell of surf and foam. “I gave a memory to Ludo – I thought it would go away.” Her jaw clenched and unclenched again, fingers unfurling from fists, sliding onto the fabric of her dress. “It didn’t. It just keeps coming back.”
Don't make me a liar, 'cause I swear to god When I said it I thought it was true
There is more in the gaze Melita throws out to the sea than Nate thinks he'd be able to understand in a lifetime, even if they were closer. What he wouldn't give for just a glimpse into it, for the chance to see what she saw and avoid all the awkward, uncomfortable chatter instead. He manages to tempt her gaze away from the surf though, back towards himself, a bright grin crossing his face as her nose wrinkles. It's a touch of normal, at least he hopes it is, before he drags the focus back onto her.
It doesn't take a practiced eye to see her struggle, to see the war between evading the reason she was out here again and revealing it. Nate is quiet the whole time, unblinking eyes watching her as she turns back towards the surf. He can't imagine the kind of weight a memory must have to be willing to give it away, can't imagine choosing to give away any of his own. They made him who he was, as far as he was concerned. But a stubborn, prideful pain is not something he'd wish one someone else, so instead he just hums softly. "Coming back as a bad dream?" Comes the soft question, his hand coming up to stroke at his chin.
There wasn't really any comfort he could offer, for either bad memories or bad dreams, but Nate moved another step closer, reaching out to actually press his hand to her shoulder this time, to offer that scrap of comfort. "Maybe this is just part of it. Some kind of last fuck you before you actually get what you need." He suggests, ill equipped to help with God matters, but still willing to try.
There were other memories she would never have thought to barter away: hours spent drifting in amongst wildflowers with her sister, laughing and playing and cajoling, pretending to be amidst the bumblebees as Clementine sang her beatific songs. Images of her mother in the herb garden, striving to name the plants, give her daughters knowledge that unfortunately went in one ear and out the other with the fiery child. Pretending to be a sea monster in the Throat’s oasis, goofy and silly and strong before she ever understood, ever knew, what it meant to be a fiend. There were more and more and more; but the one she’d handed over had been something embedded in horror, not meant to be relived. She hadn’t wanted it anymore. It wasn’t her gentle mother, but a figment of horror, an impossible rendering and irreverent chord of everything she’d ever been.
She could feel Nate trying to coax her out of the depths, and a part of her had sunken herself so deep in the fathoms that her stubborn tenacity ensured her feet were rooted and planted into its dunes. The words though gave her pause, allowed for a snippet of clarity not mired in rage or petulance. Had Ludo done this? She’d trusted the herald, always had, despite every warning proffered and extended her way. Nothing awful had ever happened to her. Even when the rags had insinuated one of the Ascended should’ve been murdered, she hadn’t swayed from it, understanding the need, the will, of vengeance and contempt, had been assured that Mort had seen it punished.
Except now she was suffering under the predilections of her own impetuousness, and the words Ludo hadn’t said, called back to the onslaught, the torture, the terror, she’d hoped to be free of.
His hand was on her shoulder and she didn’t shy away this time, merely lowered her gaze to the sand between her toes and released a heavy, heavy breath. “Maybe.” If it lasted for too long, if it kept going on and on and on, she’d never be able to sleep, to rest comfortably, to find some semblance of peace in an assault that should’ve been gone eons before. “It was a figment of ghosts, from the Rift.” She shrugged, lifting her stare back up, along waves and surf, couldn’t look at him for the time being. “My mother’s. I didn’t want it to taint her memory anymore.”
Don't make me a liar, 'cause I swear to god When I said it I thought it was true
His words were met with a long silence, something that Nate desperately hoped was a good sign. Though it could just be a petulant act, a stonewall put up between them that he'd have to try to force his way through. And he would, for as long as she'd let him. Whether Melita really wanted him or not, she was part of his family now, and Nate wanted that to actually mean something. It seemed though, that his words had inspired something other than a stubborn huff. He got a single word response, and the quiet acceptance of his touch.
With just that, Nate was willing to claim a victory, and give Melita a moment of silence before he tried to extract more information, more detail from her, but she was a step ahead of him. Even though her eyes weren't on him, he kept his face solemn, a brow rising slightly at her description of the memory that had been traded away. He tried to make it a point to not interrupt someone opening up unless it was absolutely necessary, and this was no exception, despite the questions her brief explanation inspired. "I... sorry, I don't understand. It was a fake... real memory?" That was the only way he could make figment of a ghost make sense in his mind, though it was possible he wasn't looking at the problem from the widest lens. It was possible he had gotten a little hung up on the part that mattered the least.
Nate tries to bring it back, put his priorities back in order. "It sounds like the kind of thing that would be stubborn about leaving." He squeezed her shoulder tightly, wanting to keep Melita from slipping into whatever mire she might try to while he offered unhelpful suggestions. "Kind of like a sickness. It has to run its course before it's gone, and it doesn't bother you again."
Explaining the Rift to another who might never have experienced such a level of damnation, condemnation, and consignment to oblivion left her with a turbulent blooming, set to burst in her skin. She rubbed her fingers together, until the calloused skin felt warm in the cool air, settling her shoulders into something rigid and unbent, unbroken, as if she could pretend those stalwart banners and mannerisms flickered within her now. “The Rift was a shithole, and played on our emotions. On our memories of those we cared about.” Which was the best of her guess, how her mother had come from the ether, her lovely, wonderful, beautiful, kind, gentle mother, and wrapped her fingers around her honeybee child’s throat.
Maybe he was right, and it wasn’t Ludo. Maybe it was just the rite of it, the way its horrors were damned and doomed to press inward, to linger far longer than necessary. If she’d given away a happy, contented thing, would it have done the same? Would it have traversed through her slumber, over and over, a whirl of plumes and love, before dissipating, before diminishing? She wrinkled her nose and raised her eyes upon the sea again, narrowing them as she saw forms along the waves – a pinkish hue adorned on fins – before snorting, relinquishing a little of the hardened exterior under his touch. “Well, you’re the doctor. How long does it last?” A little bit of humor, not quite meeting her gaze, trying to impart a smile on the edge of her lips.
Don't make me a liar, 'cause I swear to god When I said it I thought it was true
Nate knows the signs of a difficult topic when he sees them, hell, this entire conversation so far has been a difficult topic, so he knows well enough to hold his tongue, to give Melita whatever time she needs to get her explanation in order. Though really, what he gets doesn't explain too much, all of his experience of shitty times rooted in the unfortunately mundane. It feels rude to ask for more, when what had come so far had already been difficult, so he nods instead, accepting the Rift as some kind of terrible magic and leaving it at that. "I'm sorry you went through that." The words are offered quietly enough that she can ignore them if she wants, if they're not enough or she doesn't want to linger.
Something he says seems to make some kind of sense though, pulls Melita's gaze up, not to him, but something is better than nothing. Nate's focus doesn't shift away from her, the pink shapes in the water going unnoticed by him. "Y'know, I usually charge for medical advice. I guess I can make an exception, since you're some kind of family" He jokes, grabbing the humour in her words and running with it. "If it is like a really stubborn cold, I'd give it a week?" There wasn't really any kind of precedent for memory nightmares, at least not as far as he knew, but a week sounded like a reasonable amount of time.
A part of her longed to howl back into the void and ask it do its worst (except – if this was some layer, some lacquer, already plied to her, then maybe she truly couldn’t face it). A part of her yearned to hang her head and simply give in, sob, quake, perish, beneath the haze of incoming morning. She did neither, blinking away the barrage of tears threatening to come over her again, a subtle sniffle waging through the armaments. A light laugh, a way to mingle, shake it all away, followed on his words, on his rues and regrets, because there was nothing either of them could do about it. Her shoulders shrugged again, and she seemed to go through a whole series of movements and motions to shirk the weaknesses, the vulnerabilities, back into their shells, hidden, out of sight, out of mind. Something shirked through her throat, a I hope you never have to either or Caido is bound to come up with some other trauma for you, but neither seemed fitting, it could've already happened (what would she know?) and she merely shifted her gaze back to the sea, where worlds were absorbed.
“A week,” she nodded, as if this were purely medical components and not a nightmare, seething and burrowed, buried and hollowed, in the machinations of her mind, clearer and clearer still every time she closed her eyes. Maybe she could endure it. Maybe she didn’t have a choice.
A sigh filtered through again, before her eyes caught the pink shapes cutting through the horizon again, finned. Perhaps sharks, dolphins, or whales of some kind? A much more generous thought than the ones threatening to pierce and pursue her, she angled forward, arm extending, a finger pointing towards the scene. “Do you know what those are?”
Don't make me a liar, 'cause I swear to god When I said it I thought it was true
He doesn't know Melita well enough to see the struggle she goes through, the struggle to not give in, to despair or exhaustion or whatever cloying, overwhelming thing it might be, but Nate knows people well enough to know his words are barely a balm, despite the weak laugh they pull from her. As she shrugs, the hand on her shoulder squeezes again, trying to offer the comfort his words have failed to. "A week." Nate confirms with a nod, following her gaze over the ocean, the waves a steely grey in the tinge of morning. "Maybe less. And... if you need anything while you're uh, going through it, you have a safe place to come to." Maybe it wasn't his place to make that offer, but he needed to offer something, to keep himself from feeling too useless.
Melita changes the subject, while he's still trying to find a segue that doesn't feel to awkward, pointing out towards the waves. It takes Nate a long moment to figure out what she means, the glimpse of pink cutting through the waves. "They're a kind of dolphin. Um..." They had had a special name, Amun had told him, when they'd had to collect the blood of one. "Empanada's, I think. They've got water powers."
A quirk of half-smile formed along her lips at the offer, knowing it was there, eternally (especially after she’d bristled and berated Sunjata for ignoring, forgetting her entirely). “Thank you.” A threshold of safety and sanctums, sanctuaries beyond oblivion and nightmarish quandaries that either had no escape or she was just beginning to spiral within. At that, she bolstered her onward and upward, a massive inhale of air rushing through her chest, expelled through her mouth, before bending down to Fangorn, scratching at the top of his head.
The pink fins maneuvering their way through the surf, far more elegant and refined than she’d ever be, no matter the amount of practice, prestige, or precision (she might’ve been born in sands and surf, but they were made for the ocean swells and currents), call to her attention again. Grabbing hold of the gourd, engulfing him in her arms, her gaze traversed back and forth, from Nate and then to the sea. Dolphins; she knew what those were, beatific and beautiful to behold, once spying them beneath the waves, youthful faces pressed against god-contorted and created glass. “Empanadas,” she murmured in response, committing and memorizing the (incorrect) name to her mind. Water powers was an intriguing notion. “Well, so do I,” she smirked and snickered, the glimmers of mischief suddenly overpowering all the other miseries and melancholies she’d been holding within.
A wild announcement, savage, impish, and devilish in a single gesture and conjecture, a wicked grin forming over her mouth, followed without warning. “Let’s go see them!” Bold and audacious, a section of normalcy, she placed Fangorn back down along the dunes, instigating a chase by the gourd, as she leapt and bounded further down the dunes, rushing towards the ocean.
Don't make me a liar, 'cause I swear to god When I said it I thought it was true
As soon as the thanks leaves Melita's lips, Nate's head is shaking. Offering her a place to stay, to be safe and watched and comforted, is the least he can do. It's the least he should do really, but he's not quite sure how to offer anything more to her, not without overstepping any kind of boundary. "We're supposed to take care of each other." He offers after a moment, before she shifts, her attention moving to other, less dark thoughts. Hopefully.
The waves, and the creatures that they hide, serve to be a pretty good distraction from nightmares and restless walks. Nate, for the first time, notices the strange living plant lingering in Melita's arms, and spends a long moment staring at it, instead of towards the ocean, though he glances up whenever the girl turns back to him. Emapanada stops sounding quite so right once he hears it repeated back to him, but he's no going to correct himself, not at this point. Instead, he lifts his gaze to the girl, brow cocked up in a question. "So do you?" Water magic wasn't anything new to him, but Nate feels like he would have heard something about Melita having magic by now.
Nate doesn't get the chance to actually ask anything more, because Melita is off like a shot, her gourd left behind along with him. He lets out a bright whoop and goes running after her, overtaking Fangorn easily in his haste to make up the distance between them. He doesn't beat her to the edge of the surf, but he does go beyond her, ankle, knee deep before he stops himself, turning back towards Melita with a wide grin.
