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!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Snow was a problem in Halo. Mostly because it never melted. It just kept piling up as more and more fell from the sky, and eventually, it didn't have anywhere to go. In Deepfrost it was especially problematic, when the awful temperatures made it dangerous to even go outside, let alone stay out there for hours while shoveling snow.
Even so, it was a task that needed doing. Fortunately, Korbin had found a rather enjoyable - and in his mind, creative - way of dealing with the memory snow that had settled on his roof. Dressed in raven feathers and already feeling the chill like a slow ache in his bones, he had taken to rolling little balls of the memory snow near the roof ridge, lined up in a neat row. And when he was done, the raven walked along and punted each snowball off, one to this side, one to that, until he had set off a number of tumbling little boulders.
And they grew. With each revolution the memory snow adopted more and more snow into its fold, cleaning the roof very efficiently. With a rumble and a crash they toppled to the street below, and in the deafening cacophony that followed - that he couldn't hear, but felt like so many vibrations through his feet - Korbin cawed with raucous delight, clearly enjoying himself royally.
Too bad for any passersby that got caught in his private little avalanche, though. Sorry, not sorry.
The only problem with the shadow-cloak was that it didn’t hide her footprints. So for those who cared to look, those who cared to venture outside in such bone-chilling cold, they might find a string of footprints traipsing along, but as the individual keeps themselves to the shadows of the houses and alleyways, not much of a glimpse of a person. There might be a shock of blonde hair, surprisingly uncovered, or a boot, or the flick of a black cloak - but little in the vein of distinguishing features, especially for two who have never met.
The dull roar of falling memory snow has her jumping back under the next houses’s long eaves, and as she peaks out, she can see the boulders tumbling to the ground. Most splatter into mounds of white powder, but one - for whatever reason, maybe it’s particularly memorable - bounces along and so she darts out to catch it, pulling it back into the shadows.
Trying to stay hidden, Wessex breaks the snowball into quarters with her talons and then reshapes one with her bare hands, then leaning one arm out from the overhang and lobbing it up at the crow with more than a little satisfied grin to herself. Two can play at that game.
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Well, avalanches and snowballs did have a few things in common. They followed the laws of gravity, and they usually made a big, glorious mess of things when they landed. Both was true in this case. Korbin congratulated himself on a job well done where he hopped around on the now snow free roof, and was just about to get back inside, when something unexpected happened.
The snow came back. It smacked him squarely in the side, and with a startled croak the bird flapped its wings, halfway into the air before the true oddity of this retaliation struck him. There was no one there. Shock and suspicion bloomed within the bird and it came traipsing down to the edge of the rooftop to stare down onto the streets below. Any traces of footprints had been buried beneath his cascade of snow, but there was a sign of one of his boulders. It had rolled off, and veered away strangely.
Intrigued, the bird flew over to the opposite side of the street and peered down into the shadows below. It really was too cold for this, but he had to sate this curiosity. Was there someone down there, or had memory snow just learned how to fly?
"Hello?" the raven croaked out loud, its sounds a little strange - and rather pointless, really, because even if someone replied he wouldn't be able to hear it.
A surprised croak leaves Wessex feeling quite satisfied - mischief building into a stifled, swallowed snicker. There’s the feeling of teenage misbehavior somewhere inside her - or fun, as she used to call it.
There’s really only so much one can do from within a cloak; throwing isn’t normally one of them. Attacks must be stealthy, furtive, and patient. Now that the bird has come to investigate, Wessex goes quite still. No breathe to fog the air, no tremor to indicate some snag in reality, nothing other than, perhaps, her voice pitched an octave higher. It wavers, mimics - is human, but perhaps not entirely?
“Hello?” she repeats back to the bird, giving it a clue to her general placement as she wavers between wanting to be found and not.
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Now, if only the raven could hear. It would have made this so much easier. But the return call is missed completely, and for a while, it just sits there on the edge of the roof. Blinking down into the shadows of the street below, thinking. The cold was punishing, and he couldn't keep this up for long, but the feathers isolated him enough that he could spare a few moments more on this mystery.
Spreading the wings again, the bird dropped down to the street below. Landed in the snow, and studied the ground, looking for footprints. There were some, but he couldn't make sense of them. It looked for all the world like someone had walked past, and then just ceased to exist, ending the tracks abruptly and without trace. No sign of other prints, so the owner was no attuned. There was no disturbance of the snow, so no wind mage to have simply flown away. That left a few more options, but they all seemed implausible, except two. Either the person had actually disappeared in thin air. Or they were still there.
Stalking cautiously closer to those seemingly empty footprints, the raven turned a beady eye upon the tracks. Looked up, to make sure no one was hiding under the roof - people always forgot to look up, but not him! - and then, quite suddenly, the heavy beak reached out and pecked at one of the tracks. To see if he would be faced with resistence, or if he'd come away with only snow and so much wasted time.
He'd be very disappointed if this wasn't actually an invisible person.
There doesn’t seem to be any real reaction to her reply, and she can’t understand why. The notion that the raven may not be able to hear never crosses her mind. She watches it as it watches her, and folks, we might actually have the answer to who watches the watchmen? In fact, Wessex is about to give up the game and disappear, going about her merry way, when the raven decides to investigate further. There might have been a ripple of movement as she turned her head ever so slightly - but that might also have been the wind and the snow, right?
As it comes closer and studies her footprints, Wessex has to figure out what to do; does she reveal herself? No - that utterly responsible and boring idea is immediately discarded. Walk away, leave footprints, and be the obviously invisible person? Or she could again, just… disappear. Gone with the wind.
Perhaps the bird misses it at first as it peeks upward - but the hood of the cloak does not protect her from things looking up, or things that have gotten under her cloak. Leaning back, trying to keep herself out of sight, she is unsure if it sees anything - what would it be, a shock of blonde hair? A shadowed face? The blinding white of a chin? Though her heart can’t race and adrenaline can’t pump, she still feels the joy in the hide-and-seek. And when it doesn’t look again, but pecksat a footprint, she decides.
Should the bird look up again or come within pecking distance of her cloak, she will teleport elsewhere. Some secrets have to be kept, after all.
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
His beak met no resistence, but that did little to settle Korbin's suspicions. It wasn't so much that he could see anything - looking too hard always made him see things that probably wasn't there - but he could still sense the presence of something and it made his feathers itch.
Stepping around the footprint, the bird absurdly pecked at it again, just to make sure it was nothing more than a regular old depression in the snow. Then, since it still wasn't convinced, it turned its beady eyes upwards again, scanning the air and the wall of the house with beady-eyed focus. The beak was half open, ready to pounce at the slightest hint of movement.
Korbin was having fun, but something about this made his skin crawl too. There were many dangerous things to find in Halo, and he very much dreaded the idea of invisible things to make the days and nights unsafe.
Well aware of how rumors spread and the likelihood that Morgan wouldn’t keep her mouth shut (they never do, do they?), Wessex isn’t too keen it comes to actually being discovered and later identified. Not because this wasn’t fun, but because things could so easily be twisted in the eyes of the paranoid, and until she can find a way to permanently deal with it, there’s no point in tempting fate.
She watches the bird closely and as it tilts its head up again, she drops the remaining snow she’d been holding and teleports away, leaving a hardened, packed half-ball in her wake. As she and the Shadow cloak disappear, it’s suddenly visible - clearly a little more sculpted than when it fell off the roof. Her bootprints, too, remain. As for what the Raven can - or will - do with the information, well that’s up to him.
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
For a moment, nothing happened. But then, out of nowhere, a snowball appeared and dropped down into the snow. With a squawk the raven flapped out of the way from it, startled and honestly a bit frightened. Since when did snow appear from thin air? Had it been aimed at him?
Huffing and hissing through half-open beak, it took the dark bird a good while to calm down, and for a time it just stared at the snowball, half expecting it to transform into some hideous monster. Then he pecked at it, and watched it crumble, then reform, just like any other memory snow.
Perplexed, Korbin looked between the snow and the footprints. But no answers to this riddle appeared, and the cold was slowly but steadily eating its way into his bones. With a final huff the raven took to the sky and winged his way back home.
He would have to remember this; something fishy had been going on, and he didn't like it. Not one bit.
