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!
And my hands are not clean, maybe they never will be
A pleasant warmth spread from the fireplace in the kitchen. The light it offered had been added to by a few candles, but the room was otherwise draped in shadows. It was still early. The sun had not risen yet, but through the window overlooking the city beyond Korbin could be seen the heavy dark clouds that preluded a storm. Deepfrost was upon them, and it was only a matter of time before the time between snowfall would be counted in minutes rather than days or hours.
Korbin was up early. He usually was; a habit formed by need and maintained because it was in his nature, and he liked having the quiet morning hours to himself. Weaver liked sleeping in when she got a chance, and these days there were more chances for that than ever before. Busying himself with breakfast preparations, he was humming to himself without quite realizing it as he kneaded the dough. More out of habit than anything else; he still couldn't hear himself, and the melody was made disjointed by his relentless hiccups.
Honestly, he was getting used to it. All of it. But it didn't make his ache for music lessen one bit; it was a constant ache in his fingers these days, like a lump in the throat or an itch he couldn't reach to scratch.
But they can still carry you home when you are ready to sleep
What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
She actually was up quite early this morning. It had been a few days since she’d been hunting with Noah, and she’d skinned the luxere and had the leather soaking in the back room of their house. It was a good sized piece of leather, and she was pleased with the results so far. Still, there was a lot of work to be done to turn the hide into proper leather, and she wasn’t about to present Ludo with subpar leather.
Given that she needed to be at the Kraai later that day, she’d gotten up early to set to work. With the leather well soaked, she begins to scrape the flesh from the skin. It is slow work, but her hands are sure and well practiced. She’s made decent progress when the sound of her brother, a combination of humming and hiccups, reaches her.
Weaver sticks her head out from the door, chucking a stray piece of meat in his general direction. She’d have called for his attention, but that clearly wasn’t going to do any good. Besides, it was a nice excuse to throw things at him. If he looks her way, she’ll nod toward the room she’s in, inviting him to join her.
And my hands are not clean, maybe they never will be
With the dough kneaded to satisfaction, Korbin divided it up, set it aside on the counter and covered it in a towel to rise. He was dusting flour off his hands when something stinky and vile came hurling at him through the air, and slapped him wetly at the side of the face.
Cringing back, Korbin made a disgusted sound and stared down at the strip of half-rancid meat that flopped to the floor, then turned with a murderous expression on Weaver.
"You're cleaning the ktchen next time," he said ominously. The deep voice was quiet and a bit unsteady, rusty from disuse. Since he couldn't hear any replies, or indeed his own voice, Korbin had mostly just stopped trying to speak. It seemed very pointless.
At her invitation to join, he made a face. Looked around to see if there was anything to distract himself with and use as excuse... but no. Stew was simmering on the stove, the bread was rising, and he'd been too meticulous about cleaning dishes as he went along; the room was pristine.
He sighed. Nodded, and followed her off to the back. Dreading the silence that was their only option these days.
But they can still carry you home when you are ready to sleep
What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
She really couldn’t have planned that throw better if she tried. Honestly, she’d just been hoping to hit the counter near him, though maybe she didn’t throw with quite that intent. ”Worth it,” she sing-songs, hoping he can read lips. If not, he can certainly read the look of pure amusement on her face. If he wasn’t going to cause trouble anymore, she’d just have to do it for the both of them.
Weaver ducks her head back into the room, returning to the messy and tedious work of removing flesh from skin. She’d need to get the fur off next. Korbin steps inside, and she pulls another knife out from her waist and hands it over to him, not forcing, but figuring he’d rather keep his hands busy. It was a big hide and could use two people working on it.
There also happens to be paper and pencil beside her, as if maybe she’d had it there all along, waiting to catch her brother. She picks it up, not particularly concerned with the pieces of flesh left from her hands. Love you, little brother, she scribbles, turning the paper his way before settling back into working on the leather.
And my hands are not clean, maybe they never will be
Maybe he should put something nasty in her pie the next time he made some. Or possibly he might find something itchy and rub her sheets with it, so she couldn't sleep - ruining her favorite pastime seemed adequate punishment.
But even the petty thoughts of revenge failed to cheer him up noticeably. His expression remained overcast as the sky outside, and while he took the offered knife and started working without objection, his thoughts were far away. If he'd been moody and brooding before the deafness, it had quickly taken a turn towards melancholy ever since.
He threw a quick glance at the note she held up. Then just nodded and turned back to work. Felt the fog within numb any sentiment there might be. Probably he should try to smile or say 'me too'.. It just felt pointless.
Most everything did, lately.
But they can still carry you home when you are ready to sleep
What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
He gives her no reply, though she’s not sure she’d expected one. Still, she offered her olive branch. There wasn’t much else she could do besides wait out the storm now. If only he knew just how she actually felt, though that was the sort of thing she could never really put into words for him. How she’d take all his pain in a heartbeat for him, if she could. How she’d push away the clouds that covered him, if there was some magic that would let her. How she’d tear the world down for him, if only that would bring him peace.
But she cannot find the words to adequately describe those things. She cannot describe to him how much she loves him, for there is nothing big enough to compare it to. All she can do is work on the leather in silence with him. Just them. As it should be.
Besides, if she fixed it for him, what would he learn? Nothing. She can imagine the lesson Straia might give to that, about how you have to let others fall down and pick themselves back up. You can offer a hand, you can help brush off some dirt, but when you see them about to trip on the ledge they haven’t noticed, sometimes it is worse to warn them. Sometimes you have to let them learn to pick up their own feet. But damn if it wasn’t painful to let them learn on their own. How their mother did it so easily, Weaver will never quite know.
And my hands are not clean, maybe they never will be
He much preferred it when they could actually argue. Clashing wills and fists until he inevitably ended up with his back on the ground and enough bruises to feel contrite. At least that way he could apologize. This silence was slowly killing him though. It left him too alone with his own thoughts, too trapped in a bad headspace with no escape. And the mental contact through the Attuned bond was too close, too intimate. It showed off too many things about himself to people he didn't want to have that close. It was one thing to open up to someone he loved and trusted; another to let people in when the only thing between them were the inability to truly get rid of the other. It was... humiliating. Exposing, on a soul deep level.
As he held the blade of the knife between both hands and worked it over the hide to scrape off the coarse fur, Korbin wished he knew how to break out of this vicious circle he had found himself in. Out of fear of the pain losing people brought, he pushed them away and closed himself in solitude. To protect himself, and thus his sister, he told himself. Yet as he pushed away others, so too did the distances between them increase... and that only made the fear grow.
In theory it was simple. Just let them in. Let them wreak havoc upon his soul, come and go, do whatever if it meant she would smile at him like she used to. Without that lingering shadow of worry in her eyes, that always made his gut wrench with guilt. In theory it wasn't difficult at all to let go and throw himself headlong into the new, the unknown...
In theory.
Yet he struggled even to remain civil with people these days. Always in edge, ready to snap and snarl, lash out whenever the fog of indifference let up. Always in guard against anything that would make him feel too deeply.
Korbin sighed.
"Loren offered me a job. As assistant. I said yes."
His rusty voice cut through the stillness - not that he could hear it being sliced to ribbons - and looked up. To see how she would respond.
But they can still carry you home when you are ready to sleep
What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
She rather preferred when they could argue too. They always argued, after all. Arguing was at least a quarter of their regular conversation, if not more. Not quite like the arguments they have been having, ones that are too deep, too raw, but still. There was something normal about the arguments. It was better than the silence, his unwillingness to talk even though he could. He was deaf, not mute, after all. Still, if what she could get was sitting in silence working together, she would take that.
There were certainly times that they sat in silence together. They spent so much time together that they didn’t always need to speak, though there was something different about chosen silence versus forced silence. Though this moment felt a little like both. Communicating was hard, though not impossible, and not for the first time she wishes for the Attuned bond. Not for the first time she is jealous of the conversations Loren can have with him that Weaver cannot.
Still, she has to remind herself that having Loren in his life is a good thing. It has been years since Korbin had a male in his life, and no matter how much Korbin might pretend not to like the healer, Weaver suspects Loren was in fact growing on him like a fungus. Yes, he told her about that. Hopefully her suspicions are right or there’s going to be a whole new set of arguments when Korbin finds out just exactly what Weaver thinks of the Outlander healer...ah well, that’s a problem for another day.
Eventually, he breaks the silence, and she looks up from her own section of the hide. They are making quick work of it together. She’d have to let the hide dry out before it could properly be tanned, but if they could get all the fur removed this morning, it could dry and she could be well on her way to completing the leather.
Her smile is all the answer she needs, clearly pleased to see her brother trying something new. Something that might suit him, in fact. He knows the need for a good healer as well as she does, though from a different perspective. She has never asked how much he watched the healers working on her, or if he’d largely only been there when they were not. She gives him a nod of approval, light in her amber eyes. Picking up the pencil, she scribbles a simple good on the paper.
And my hands are not clean, maybe they never will be
It was a bit like seeing a cat lap cream from a bowl. It was all her smile brought to mind. Pleased, a bit smug looking, to his eyes... and altogether annoying. He didn't need the scribbled word to see what she thought about it, and in a very contrary way, the boy suddenly wished he hadn't done it. Taken the job, or told her about it. Either, both.
She was really a bit too happy about it, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously at her.
"It's just a job," he told her with rough voice, and there was something flat in his gaze. Hard, even, like the blue of flint. It rejected any notion she might nurse that there were anything behind the decision other than his usual hunt for profit.
To be honest, his argument with the Healer had quite smothered what enthusiasm he might have nursed about the job. Only stubborn pride kept him from backing out again.
But they can still carry you home when you are ready to sleep
What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
She is a cat, and she always laps cream from the bowl. After all, she finds good in most things, even in things others find no good from. She seeks it, knowing that it’s there if only one looks hard enough. There is more good to be found in this world than they know, then they are willing to see, and so she hunts for it. Her look should not surprise him, and perhaps it doesn’t, but it seems to annoy him all the same.
She stops scraping the hide to scribble on the paper again. Can’t know till you try, she writes, flipping the paper back around for him to read. She gives him a shrug, attention turning to the hide once again. He kept hunting for profit they didn’t need anymore. The Kraai provided enough, though she doesn’t mention as much. He should be able to find something that brings him both joy and profit, and she won’t diminish his efforts by deeming them unnecessary. After all, the Kraai could fail, though with Deepfrost closing in on them, at least for now, there’d be little to do besides drink.
And my hands are not clean, maybe they never will be
At some point, Korbin had stopped looking for the good things. Had grown so tired of losing them, or never finding them in the first place, that he just quit trying to find any. With no hopes or expectations, there was no risk of getting let down. No gain, no pain. And thus began the descent into this darkness. A quiet surrender to the darkness, sped up by the changes around him.
To some, the struggle was what kept them going. Without the need to fight for every breath... what was the point in breathing?
Or maybe that was just an excuse. A fumbly attempt to explain what couldn't be put into words, a compulsion to wrap depression up into a format people could see and understand, make them nod and admit that, oh yeah, there is a reason to be sad about that. Name the monster and maybe it could be defeated. At least, if he could muster the will to keep fighting. Now that it was no longer necessary for him to keep his shit together in order for them both to survive, Korbin slowly lost his grip on that.
"Don't know what? That it won't suddenly make everything the way it was? You keep waiting for something that won't happen, Weaver," he sighed, sounding tired. Bone weary, like the day hadn't just begun. "The kid you're looking for isn't coming back."
He had lost that happy, mischievous child somewhere along the way. Maybe when Straia left. Maybe he'd been dealt the death blow when Erebor died, and been bleeding out ever since.
All he knew was, that he couldn't remember how to smile like that anymore.
But they can still carry you home when you are ready to sleep
What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
They were two sides of one coin. No pain, no gain. She looked for the good because at least then she would have it for a time. It was a reason to live, something to cherish, memories to hold tight to. To live without anything good is not living. It is existing. What is the point in merely existing? Someone may have said their life before the portals were opened was nothing more than existing, but she would disagree. They had lived. They had loved. They had made a way for themselves and snatched joy from the pain and the sorrow.
Now, when everything else is becoming easy, living is becoming so much harder.
She looks up, giving him a look, like he should know better, and like usual, he is underestimating her. He is so often underestimating her (and she him; perhaps they cannot help it). Weaver picks up the pencil again, writing in her lazy, looping scrawl. No. You won’t know what you like until you try it. You won’t know who you want to be, not who you were.
She isn’t a fool. He isn’t a child anymore, and though she misses that child, that doesn’t mean she expects him to come back. Though she has changed far less than he has, it’s not as if she has stayed the same. Neither of them are children. She stopped being a child after their parents died, forced to grow up and care for Korbin. He stopped being a child perhaps then too, though perhaps not until Erebor passed away, when there was no one left but them. Still, this brooding, angry man is not him, not really. Or at least, she hopes it is not. She hopes that somewhere underneath the hurt and the rage and the pain is the man he is meant to become.
And my hands are not clean, maybe they never will be
He rolled his eyes, biting back a surge of irritation. Korbin hated how shallow his temper was these days, but couldn't seem to find an outlet that actually made things better.
"I already know what I want... but it's not something you would like," he muttered, and turned his attention back to the hide.
Possibly, she was right. He didn't know what he wanted, and staying the way he was certainly wasn't working. It might seem like the boy enjoyed the temper and the tantrums, the surly attitude he was giving anyone, but it was far from true. He didn't like hurting people, or arguing. Not these kinds of arguments at least; it was one thing to bicker and throw words around, and another entirely to deliver the kind of poisonous remarks like he did these days. But the only thing that seemed to give him even a moments reprieve was to make others as miserable as he was...
Which, of course, only made him feel even worse.
But they can still carry you home when you are ready to sleep
04-30-2020, 09:15 PM (This post was last modified: 04-30-2020, 09:15 PM by Weaver.)
What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
She just ignores his eye roll, the knife still in one hand, which she is vaguely tempted to hold to his damn throat right now. Why? Just for fun, and because he deserved it. Never mind the knife in his own hand, because she knows she can get the better of him.
Instead she returns to scribbling on the paper. Cause you like everything I do? Who gives a shit if I don’t like it.
Really, he should have expected that response from her. She does her thing, and though she always factors him in (even if he doesn’t believe that), his existence doesn’t stop her (well, mostly...there’s some things, but he doesn’t need to know). Still, the point is that he ought to do his thing. Regardless of what it is (well, mostly...but he probably won’t go murdering babies so it’s fine), she will love him anyway. Even if their paths diverge, they will always be siblings. It will always be them.
