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!
"It's a compliment, Finn." You say breezily with a roll of your eyes. Some secret way of saying that Finn doesn't deserve the life that he's living. But you know better than to say such things, and so abstract compliments are about as close as you'll ever be able to come to offering the Spyglass your thoughts on the matter.
"Oh, have you suddenly become one of those patients who wants to be lied to? I can do that if you like." You say with a laugh, though maybe you are a bit too familiar with death. You can toe the line between honesty and being too morbid a bit better than this.
'Well, you can keep helping me learn the bones of the hand."" You jokingly offer as you stand and start to put things back where they belong. It's sufficiently boring that it may well put Finn to sleep. "So..." You spin, crossing your arms over your scrubs and looking mischevious. "Did it look like..Falke needed any help? Down where you were?"
Finn smiles without actually smiling, swinging his legs over the side of the bed to sit at the edge of it again. It might be a compliment, but that neither means he believes nor understands it, the Spyglass grabbing at his shirt and shrugging back into it, buttoning it up as he listens. ”Absolutely not,” he says warmly, glancing up at her. ”I would much rather a painful truth than a pretty lie, Doctor Hart. Though perhaps not one quite as philosophical just now.”
The idea of helping her to remember the names of bones in the hand sounds positively droll, and would likely be perfect to help him sleep. But, terribly socialised as Finn might be, he can recognise a dig for information when it’s put to him. ”No, he did not,” he says. ”He was only dropping by to see me, in fact. Would you like me to see if there might be some research that needs doing? Providing cursory checks on our demigods, perhaps? Finding out what they can do?”
one moment you’re lost in a carnival of delights
the next, it leads you somewhere you don’t want to go
"Alright," you agree, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear which has annoyingly come out of your ponytail. "Then to answer your question, no Finn, I think you'll be just fine."
You exhale, puffing out your cheeks and letting your head loll to the side. "Am I that transparent?" You wonder, knowing that you absolutely are. "No...don't say anything." You add, glumly. "He'll know why you're asking." It isn't as though your interest in Outlanders is a secret, but as it has absolutely nothing to do with your professional duties, you'd have a hard time justifying your interest as anything more than an obsession.
"I know you can't talk about them, and The Work, but..can you talk about what it was like? Out there?" Your voice is hopeful, your dark eyes adorably large. Only members of the Order are ever allowed to leave Stormbreak. For the majority of the citizens, there's absolutely no reason to venture out beyond the grey flats. You certainly have never had the chance to, though you always wonder what the world holds. What it looks and sounds and smells like.
”I am glad to hear it.” Finn doesn’t believe he is just fine at all, but on the scale of life or death, she’s probably correct. And he doesn’t want to call her a liar again, so he lets it drop in lieu of hiding his smile at catching her out on her curiosity. ”Yes, he most certainly will. Perhaps I could suggest that they visit here instead.” Any suggestion he makes will go down by a lead balloon if it’s given to Cian. But maybe Finn needs to feed the idea to Dorian instead. Might float a bit better that way.
Her questions about the rest of the world cause his eyes to haze over again, as if he’s trying to give her an answer that isn’t clouded by his own perception of things. ”Bright. Colourful,” he says, which is the case whether or not he’s looking at it through lenses. ”In Torchline the ocean is close enough to touch your feet. In the Greatwood, the trees are so tall that they block out the sky. I could get lost in it for days.” And he did, in fact.
one moment you’re lost in a carnival of delights
the next, it leads you somewhere you don’t want to go
"Maybe they have weird outlander diseases.." You say, nodding your head along as the idea begins to grow roots in your mind. "Or maybe they all carry some sort of virus with them, which could hurt our citizens." You grin at Finn, your eyes practically sparkling. "They'll have to be quarantined." You decide. "Kept under close observation." Your enthusiasm makes you sound like a stalker, but it's fine. It's only Finn. He probably won't turn you in.
You moan a bright note of disbelief and awe, imaging a world awash in colour. "I've always been too afraid to go down to the ocean." You admit, not hiding your blush or the way you roll your eyes at yourself. "When I was younger a few friends tried to get me to go to the Falling...I said I had to study, but really, I was too scared." You swallow, looking at your feet. "They never came back." And so you never again thought about going. The ocean for you is just a colour and a pattern, an ever-changing thing that makes the air feel heavy at times and offers an auditory backdrop to some of your walks, but other than that? It isn't really real to you.
"What does it smell like?" You wonder, closing your eyes and breathing in deeply. All you smell is the clinical sterile environment you almost always find yourself in, but hopefully, Finn will be able to change that.
”I wouldn’t entertain that idea too much - the quarantine, I mean,” Finn advises her, finishing buttoning up his shirt and sitting quietly on the edge of the bed, eyebrows raised to wait for her to come to the same conclusion. If the Outlanders have weird diseases or viruses, it’s likely that the Order could bring them back too. And he doesn’t want to be the person to tell the Eye that he’s under lock and key for any length of time.
Her volunteering of such personal information always comes as a surprise to Finn. A slave to his own mind, the past few weeks in Torchline - with Remi, most notably - have loosened his tongue considerably. He’s given away parts of himself that would never have left the cage behind his teeth under normal circumstances. And now that he’s back here, in the clean and clinical doctor’s office in Stormbreak, the guard comes back down. ”I am sorry to hear that,” he offers.
Closing her eyes dutifully at the question about the scents of the place, Finn casts his mind back to mornings on the docks, to sunsets in the forest. ”Torchline smells like salt and sunshine,” he explains in a low voice, his tone almost dreamlike. ”Like fresh dill and lemongrass... or hot ground, after it’s been raining. And the Greatwood...” He sighs, shaking his head. ”Moss and berries and wet grass. It smells like sweet mud. It smells the way you imagine pulling on a warm sweater would smell.”
one moment you’re lost in a carnival of delights
the next, it leads you somewhere you don’t want to go
"Why not?" You wonder, dark-eyes wide and innocently perplexed. There are any number of reasons you'd be happy to quarantine the Outlanders, not least of which is so you have a justified reason to satisfy your curiosity.
You're an open enough book; the appropriate pages have already been torn out such that you aren't too bothered with anyone reading into your life. It's all just piano keys, red wine, and work anyways. "It's nothing really. People go their whole lives without seeing things." And then, realizing he likely meant the loss of your friends, you smile quickly and nod. "It was a long time ago."
Salt and sunshine. You breathe in. You fancy you can taste something alkaline on your tongue, but it's warm and the glow from outside makes the back of your eyelids hum a warm red. You smile faintly, imaging your hands over warm concrete, the sweet smell of sand and how it must make smooth even the roughest of hands, if handled enough. Moss and sweet mud...you run the pads of your fingers over your thumb, imagining that it's slick with mud. Berries make the colour a shade more plum than your caramel skin is, and you're positive that if you let it, the mixture would sweetly stain your hands with its rich aroma.
"mmmmmmmmmm." You sigh dreamily. You keep your eyes closed for a moment, wanting to keep the bright sunlight Finn has described, or escape away into the warm and soothing darkness of the woods. Eventually, though you do open your eyes. Your smile is still there, your eyes pleasantly warm, but disappointment dulls your cheerfulness. The walls here are white. The smells are chemical (except for right now, which smells more like stale-man than normal). "Will you be heading back?"
”We have been around these Outlanders. If they are infected with some virus, it only stands to reason that we might be as well. And whilst I would welcome a period of quarantine, I dare say that Cian and Dorian would climb these walls to get out,” Finn explains, only to let a thin smile pull at his lips as she continues. The past sprawls before them like a long ream of paper, becoming more faded towards its beginning. ”Everything is, eventually,” he says. A long time ago, he means.
Blinking his eyes open slowly as he realises the silence is stretching, Finn rubs at the back of his neck and slips off the bed, as if aware suddenly that they are no longer doing much of anything productive or... work related. ”Uh,” he says helpfully in response to her question. It’s a mix of I hope not and I hope so, and those aren’t waters he knows how to navigate yet. ”Not for a few days, I don’t think.”
one moment you’re lost in a carnival of delights
the next, it leads you somewhere you don’t want to go
"Guess that means I'll be quarantining you all." You say with a bright laugh, raising your brows emphatically in Finn's direction. "Come on, Finn. Tell me you don't want to see Cian locked up in one of these rooms, given his cigarettes and meals on a rotating schedule, and stripped of all those horrible waist-coats he wears." The Eye doesn't fuss with her much, as he normally goes through Falke. Even so, she knows well the rather he has at times, and just how difficult he can be to abide.
You don't tend to find yourself in awkward situations, mostly because there are very few things you feel awkwardly about. But Finn is your patient, and you can sense in him a sort of uncertainty that probably stems from a lack of not knowing what to do next, if he's meant to stay or go, if this mindless chatter is leading anywhere, if it would be rude to excuse himself. And regardless of what you think and want, he's your patient, so you take the cue and open your palm towards the door, suggesting he's free to leave.
"That's if I don't quarantine you first." You say, presumably to his back as he walks out the door, with a chuckle. You'll follow him if indeed he's started down the hall, with a shrug of your shoulders. "Just remember to pack clothing without pockets."
”Oh, I could not possibly comment,” Finn says of Cian, wondering if the Eye would toe the line for anyone, let alone for someone like Falke’s assistant. Straightening his shirt (it’s impossibly creased, there’s nothing he can do for it), he does indeed seem a little relieved as she gives him the cue to leave. Not necessarily because he wants to, but because now there is no expectation on him to provide small talk.
”Thank you for your help,” he murmurs, nodding to her gratefully, and he is indeed already walking out of the office when she joins him. Finn glances down at her, his hands in the pockets of his pants, as if to inform her that he can’t comply quite the way he wants to. ”I will do my best,” he assures her. ”Where are you headed now...?”
one moment you’re lost in a carnival of delights
the next, it leads you somewhere you don’t want to go
{asy}"No, of course not." You chuckle. You have a privileged position, given that you're a doctor. You can't simply demand of healers the same things you can demand of spyglasses, for example, and expect that your pressure will yield the same results. Like Finn, you're very good at what you do, even if no one quite knows why. Unlike Finn though, Cian deals with Falke more often than he ever deals with you.
"Just doing my job." You say with a nod, not necessarily trying to deflect Finn's appreciation as much as you're trying to not make him feel as though he owes you anything. As Finn looks down at his pockets your mind immediately begins to offer medically relevant reasons for it, until you see his hands balled up behind the material. Hmmmmphing under your breath, you offer the Spyglass a wry shake of your head. "Well, best you not meet anyone in any dark corners on the way up to your apartment, then."
Glancing around the empty waiting room, you narrow your eyes slightly as you think. There are no windows here, so you've actually absolutely no idea what time it is. "Uhh.." You mutter to yourself, scrunching your nose slightly. "Here, I guess?" No one waiting for me at home, no reason to go anywhere else.
08-11-2020, 09:52 PM (This post was last modified: 08-11-2020, 09:52 PM by Finn.)
memory’s so treacherous
”And you are very good at it,” he counters, nodding to her and meandering out into the waiting area. There are no windows but Finn knows it’s raining outside - it had been pattering off the skylight in his apartment when he had ventured out to put his report on Cian’s desk. They stand together, two awkward souls lingering, and he offers a weak smile to her, as if sensing the end to their conversation but feeling unable to walk off the edge of it.
Until he does, inevitably - because one of them has to. ”Good night, Doctor Hart,” he says softly, with the air of someone throwing another a lifeline. Good night. It is dark outside. There will be no appointments, unless there are emergencies. With nothing further to say, Finn heads out of the waiting room and up the endless steps to his apartment.
~FINNNNNNNIGAN
one moment you’re lost in a carnival of delights
the next, it leads you somewhere you don’t want to go
