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!
Naavi was not keen on leaving the Greatwood, because the person she had once left alongside was gone. It was strange, leaving the embrace of her wood for another, but she knew she needed to do it. She needed to gather some mushrooms that she'd read about in one of the tomes, and she'd not been able to find them in any part of the Greatwood.
So, she'd pressed her wings to her back and covered herself with a cloak, hood drawn so as to hide her ears. She had briefly considered seeking out an Ascended, because she had questions but... she had decided not to do that alone.
Certainly, she was trained in combat, as well as healing, but she was not much of a fighter. Not like her Alcyone had been. She settled on the floor of the woodlands and began to carefully harvest mushrooms, whispering under her breath her thanks to the land beneath her.
She was familiar with these woods, wandering them more often now that she had little to fear from other creatures who might roam them in the night. Ascending had lent her smoother, faster motion across the land, as she did not tire, especially if she had recently visited a shrine.
Slender limbs verily danced across the land, a blur of pale beauty and grace flitting beneath moonbeams and shadows alike. The sun still stung too much when it touched her skin - she would not tempt a fire to consume the newly-birthed second-life the Voice had granted her so soon, and so she mostly kept her ventures to the evening hours.
It wasn't as if she could feel the cold that coated the land in clumps of snow and chills on the air.
Sharp eyesight gave her insight into a world that was once blind to her. Suddenly, as her piercing blue gaze caught on something unusual, all motions paused, as she considered it with a tilted face. "What are you doing?" she asked the hunched figure before her, her voice lilting and sweet, soft and curious.
A voice spoke out, and Naavi shifted, slowly. How she briefly wished for long hair. "Gathering mushrooms. Want one?" She asked, turning brown hues onto the strange girl. Pretty, though certainly not someone that Naavi knew. She didn't know many humans. She had hoped to, perhaps, run into the pretty girl she'd led to the shrine again, Aisha.
Young, though her idea of young was different than the human's idea of young. This one was definitely young by human standards. The ones she was gathering now were simply edible on their own, the medical properties came when they were part of a recipe.
Mushrooms, that explained the other's presence and purpose, hunched in the undergrowth. Searching for sustenance that Evelyn no longer needed - how quickly had she forgotten that she once used to do the same? No more did she eat, since the change, and even before, for famine had afflicted her and her family, starvation was imminent, until the Voice's blessing extended their lives beyond what the Old Gods would have allowed.
Azure gaze flickered to the earthly delights in the small woman's hands, before a polite shake of her head is given. "Thank you, but your need is greater than mine." Cherubic tones sweetly chorused, a small smile on her lips. "I'm Evelyn," she offered, before kneeling in the brush before the other. "What's your name?"
Naavi dipped her head in return, as the girl refused to accept mushrooms. She wasn’t going to force food on another. When her name was asked, she gave a half-truth, quite easily. “Sen. It’s nice to meet you, Evelyn. Are you from these parts?” Her own accent suggested that she was, but perhaps not from the Hollowed Grounds. The Greatwood was nearby, but aside from her short stature and her ears, which were still hidden under her hood, she looked just as human as the other.
Or she hoped, there were more minute differences, but perhaps the stranger wasn’t looking that hard. “I was wondering, actually...” She hummed softly to herself. “...do you know anything about the New Gods? I know quite a lot about the Old… but not a lot about the New.” She couldn’t lie, but she was speaking the truth; she knew as much as any other fae about the Voice.
They were supposed to hate the Voice—and she did—but she did not hate Ascendeds, she simply could not bring herself to hate an entire race of people, led astray by a god. She was certain they had been led astray.
The girl nodded in response, though there was something of a shadow across her face as her expression subtly changed. "Yes, I'm from around here. A farm, on the edge of the Outskirts." It brought an uncomfortable memory to the forefront of her mind, an inopportune time to reflect on the new implications behind her 'home'. Her home now consisted of her and her sister, their parents and siblings all gone, all dead. The expression passed in an instant, as she blinked away the memory, banishing it for now, to deal with at a more appropriate time.
A blonde brow raised in curiosity as the small woman before her asked her question about the New Gods. Evelyn immediately broke into a toothy grin, her sharpened canines clearly visible over the edge of her plump, curled lips. "I know plenty about the Voice." She declared proudly, head tilting as she noticed a curious detail about the other's features. Did she have unusually shaped ears beneath that hood, or was it a trick of the moonlight and shadows? She let it be for now, her voice sounding again. "What do you want to know?"
Naavi studied the stranger, lips parting in a soft grin. "I would like to know... do you know any Ascendeds? And why they became Ascendeds? I'm trying to understand the motivations behind the New Gods and their followers." She explained, having made note of the others sharp teeth.
"It seems so surreal to me, that anyone would want to become an Ascended... I've heard such terrible rumors about what the Ascended are." She explained, careful of her tone, her facial expression, and her words.
She glanced over her shoulder, the Greatwood in the distance. Close enough to flee too, but so far away at the same time. Beneath her cloak, her wings were twitching slightly, though it would be passed off as the wind rustling her cloak.
"My sister and I Ascended not long ago." She gives the statement proudly, not hiding the fact as she grinned broadly - she rather enjoyed how she looked with her fangs. Evelyn heard talk of the rumours just as much as anyone else - it was why, of their whole huge family, only she and her sister had made the commitment to Ascend, to walk into the wondrous clutches of the Voice, to feel her love, her embrace, for all eternity.
"We had a choice to make. We had already watched our family, devout followers of the Old Gods, die, with no godly intervention saving them, despite their pleadings and their offerings." It was a sad tale, but one she was growing used to telling. Her voice had taken on a strange tone, thick from emotion, her gaze flicking down as she remembered the time that had just come to pass.
"Mabel and I wanted to live. So we asked the Voice, and she gave us life. We chose life." A life without hunger, thirst or pain. A life to dance and frolic across the midnight plains, to hold her sister's hand and to keep on living.
Speaking of which, she heard a voice calling to her on the breeze. 'Evelyn!' it sang, and she knew the tones well. "I must be off." She said, rising from her position to give a small wave to the slim woman before her. "Perhaps I'll see you after Longnight!" And then she was off, moving perhaps a bit quicker than a normal child of her age might, to be swallowed by the shadows of the night once more.
