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!
More often than not, Delphine could be found in the Olson house, painting away. However, Noah had drilled how important it was to keep the fire going, so she sometimes had to venture outside of the house to gather wood, especially if Noah forgot to bring in the day's wood.
It was her fault he'd forgotten; she'd kept him up late, and then distracted him early in the morning, but had promised to do his morning chores while he went to do something--she didn't ask what, but with LongNight approaching, she figured whatever it was, was rather important.
Paint smeared across her face, she hurried outside, through the snow, a fur cloak tossed across her shoulders haphazardly. She knelt in the deep snow to gather up wood, starting back towards the house and tripping. Cursing, and cold, she dug through the snow to gather the wood, before realizing that wasn't the best idea.
Tala very nearly hadn’t wanted to leave the Kraai, the warmth of the fire had been so inviting, and she’d been able to trade a few of the many reindeer bone carved items she had in her pack for some food and a place to sleep. It might’ve been nice enough to stay in for a bit, but she was here to see new things. The weather had let up enough from the harsh winds that marked her arrival, that she could now take a walk outside and feel quite comfortable in the warmth of her reindeer pelt clothing.
The evidently damaged structure that looked to have been a castle of some sort, which she could see from a distance, tempted her curiosity and she considered going to explore the rubble. She supposed she should find out what exactly the rubble was before traipsing about in it, though. She’d do some investigating, first.
She wandered the town somewhat aimlessly, her backpack on and her quarterstaff in her right hand leaving little holes in the snow alongside where she walked. The snow was deep enough that even her wide leather boots that were made for snow were sinking a fair bit, and the staff made no difference but she carried it out of habit more than anything. A few roads were blocked by more rubble, so she found herself wandering about in the maze of buildings until she chanced upon a woman in the snow, who looked to be gathering up scattered wood. ”Do you need help?” She asked quickly and hurried over. The biggest rule of her people was to be helpful. No one could survive their lifestyle alone. To offer help everywhere she possibly could was a lesson that was sure to stick with her for her whole life.
Delphine flushed, when a voice sounded out, asking if she needed help. Not Noah, thank the gods. She managed to stand, and find the person that had spoken.
"Please." She wasn't the sort to turn down help, and she could easily tell the woman in front of her was not a native, her accent was different. Off.
Gathering what she could carry, she started back towards the house, "Can you just grab that up, and come on in?" Delphine had very little in way of self-preservation. Or perhaps she just didn't care, or think that people in Halo could be dangerous.
The mere thought of people not being dangerous made the blonde woman chuckle, as she dropped the wood by the fire and shook out of her furs and boots. If the stranger entered the house, she'd find the furniture was in disarray, all on one side of the room, and a variety of green paints were scattered around in various jars and buckets, different size brushes all around the main room.
The home was small, and the chill was quickly trying to weasel its way in. "Thank you, so much," she reached to claim the wood from the stranger, "I'm Delphine." She began to tend to the fire, kneeling in front of it.
"Please, feel free to take a seat. You aren't from Halo, are you?" She inquired, warming her hands over the fire, before she moved towards the kitchen area. "I'm not either--do you like tea?" She's already leaning on her toes to reach the uppermost shelf in the cabinet where she's organized the teas, something warming.
Tala wasted no time in bending over to gather up additional pieces of firewood. She balanced the pile of wood against her chest, supported by her forearms. One hand stayed grasped around her quarterstaff, so the long wooden pole hung down towards the ground and she had to walk cautiously to avoid hitting herself with it. ”Of course.” She answered, following along after the blonde.
She stood rather awkwardly after entering the home, while she waited as the woman took the wood back. ”You’re welcome.” She said softly. The new language still felt strange on her tongue and in her ears. Her own language was meant to be spoken in lower, lilting tones that didn’t match the words of this one. Being able to speak a new language at all was an unsettling feeling, though not one she disliked. ”My name is Tala.” She answered, with a deep nod of her head that signified greeting in her homeland.
Tala eyed the chairs in the unevenly furnished room, and debated saying no and going on her way. She was awful at small talk, and taking a seat would guarantee there would be some. She quickly reminded herself that this was a time of new experiences, and let her pack slip off of her shoulders and placed it gently on the ground beside a chair in which she sat down, somewhat rigidly.
She shook her head in response to Delphine’s question. ”No, I’ve just arrived a few days ago. Oh, tea…Sure.” She answered, but tea was uncommon where she came from, since most herbaceous plants couldn’t survive the weather. Sometimes in the summer months where things were half thawed there was a plant or two some of the elders would steep, but it wasn’t common. ”Thank you.” She added. ”You said you’re not from here either? Did you… portal?” She hesitated before the word as she tried to figure out if the usage of it made sense. She was pretty sure that the portalling was common knowledge and not taboo to mention, but that was just from her one interaction with the man who had called her an “outlander”. She very much liked the term, actually.
"I did portal here, yes. I did... not come to Halo first, but I live here now." She explained, nodding thoughtfully, as she seated herself with her own cup of tea, settling the other cup down for the woman.
"I've been here... two years? Has anyone explained to you about LongNight? That's coming soon, and you should make sure you're aware. My last homeland didn't have LongNight, so... maybe yours did not either?" Delphine furrowed her brow. She sipped her tea, letting it warm her, sighing quietly.
Stretching out, "Please, excuse the mess. We're... redecorating." She explained, with a shy grin. Noah had given her full artistic control over the house, and she was handling it with care. It already felt like her home.
06-12-2020, 11:06 AM (This post was last modified: 06-12-2020, 11:09 AM by Tala.)
”Thank you.” Tala said as she leaned forward to grab the cup, enjoying the warmth on her palms and fingers where they wrapped around it.
She was relieved to once again get confirmation that other parts of this world existed. The first person she’d met had told her as much, but she couldn’t help but worry that the entire universe may truly just contain planets of snow and ice. It’s all she’d ever seen so far, and she portaled her because the stories said there was more. ”Where did you, um, portal into? What was it like?” She stumbled over the word ‘portal’ and it’s usage again.
”Ah yes, someone mentioned it but didn’t give many details… During the dread season we had some days with very little sunlight, but nothing that sounds so ominous as the LongNight is described to be. What happens, exactly?”
Her eyes followed around the room. "It seems nice. To be honest, I'm not very familiar with what a house is meant to look like. My people didn't keep houses, even when we'd pass villages I'd hardly go in. You could've tricked me into thinking this was how it was supposed to look." She said with a wry smile.
Delphine laughed, shaking her head. "Ah, I portalled into... a place called the Hollowed Grounds, with many others from my homeland. We were trapped there for a while, the gods here are finicky." She explained, lips pulling into a smirk, as she sipped her tea. "It was mostly a ruined place. But I have also been to see the ocean, and the city by the ocean. You can get anywhere by portals." She explained.
When she asked about LongNight, she hummed. "Well, in the Grounds we had monsters... but it's a long time of complete darkness, which probably means Halo will be really cold. I'm not sure--all my LongNight's were spent in the Grounds." She explained, "But we can ask my housemate, when he comes home about it. He's lived here his entire life." She wasn't ready to qualify her relationship with Noah. Let it be something, because she was certain it'd end.
Let it be something she didn't mind losing. Though that was a lie; she was very attached.
Tala smiled fondly at the thought of the places Delphine mentioned. ”I’ve only seen an ocean covered in ice… I came here to see something new. For a moment there, I was a bit worried the entire universe was nothing but snow, ice, and barren grass fields.” While ‘something new’ was an oversimplification of her reasons for portalling away from her life and everything she knew, it captured the overall goal. She needed adventure.
”I had spoken to someone who mentioned it would be freezing, yes. It’s always cold where I come from, but the blizzard I came in during was worse than the ones back home. I am just glad I came prepared, or I would have died right from the start.” She ran a hand over her reindeer pelt clothing when she said prepared.
Her eyes softened and she tilted her head as she gave a warm smile. ”Nomadic, yes.” Her native tongue didn’t actually have a word for it, but it seemed whatever magic had given her this new language had included definitions for words she didn’t know in the first place.
”We had giant herds of reindeer, several hundred large during the light season when the calves had dropped. Most of our life was spent moving the herd around to where the grass, shrubs, or moss was accessible. They can dig under some snow to reach it when necessary, but they would eat a whole field clean in a matter of days, so we had to keep moving. We just had tents for our shelter, they were quite warm given that basically our only material for, well, anything, was reindeer pelt. Plus, bone and antler.” She found that she liked talking about her home, even though she was happy to leave it. Saying things about her clan out loud was a new feeling, given that she had only ever been around clan members and had no reason to tell them about themselves.
Delphine listened with wide-eyed interest, "Oh, the world would be really boring if it were all ice and snow! Torchline, that's where the ocean is, it's warm and there are fish and plants and... oh, the Greatwood is a large forest, though I've not yet been..." The woman breathed softly, "...I can only imagine the plants I'll find when I go, though."
She smiled when the woman mentioned she probably would have died, showing up in the snows without already being accustomed to the cold. "When I came here, I showed up in... I think a thin dress for warmer weather? I was blue, really cold... I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't have very much." She smiled softly, "But I'm learning, and I've got help."
The woman seemed to like the word 'nomadic', and she grinned. "In my homeland, we traveled through portals from war, to a new place, where we were the first to live there. Or well, that's what we thought." She furrowed her brows, it was very similar to being an Outlander here. Probably why she didn't give it much thought. "But we lived in this settlement and... ah, it was really warm, with forests and trees everywhere! But we were walled in... because it was safer that way." She fell quiet, for only a second, reminding herself that now wasn't the time to miss her parents.
"I only got to go outside of the walls once or twice, and the person who kept me inside them isn't in this world. So I've promised myself, I'll see everything I can."
The giant herds of reindeer catch Delphine's attention again, and she shifted to sit closer to Tala, clearly enamored by the tale. "I had no idea that reindeer ate that much! That's amazing."
Delphine hummed, "Back home we did not have reindeer or much snow. But we had magic. I was able to make things different, like... that paint on the wall? It's still wet, but back home, I could have dried it with a touch. I used to bring back the dead, but I can't do that anymore. I'm not sure anyone can..." Realizing she's rambling about a topic the woman may not understand, she paused, and studied the woman, hazel eyes thoughtful.
"This world has a lot of magic, very similar to my homeland. Did your world have magic too?" Delphine was only half paying attention to Tala, though she was very good at multitasking, so the other woman most likely would not notice. She was listening for Noah, like an overeager puppy for their favorite person to return home.
Tala’s soft smile had a pleasantly amused tone as she listened to Delphine ramble a bit. ”I can’t wait to see it - all of it. The forest especially. We had some forests but they were pretty sparse. Do you know much about plants, then? I knew what was and wasn’t edible back home, few plants as there were on the tundra, but I know nothing of what’s safe here.”
Curiosity was probably the strongest force within Tala, and she leaned forward slightly, showing she was enraptured with the hints of a story in Delphine’s words. ”What were you walled in for?” She asked.
She laughed and thought of the vast fields that her reindeer cleared effortlessly. ”Oh yes, they are insatiable. In the winter they eat pounds and pounds of reindeer moss - lichen - in the summer there isn’t as much snow so they dig through it and eat until they fall asleep, and then get up and eat some more.” She spoke fondly. She thought she may miss the reindeer the most, as much as she loved her clan, the reindeer had a special place in her heart.
”Bring back the dead?” Tala asked, blinking in surprise. They had very little magic where she came from, certainly none strong enough to revive anybody. ”A little bit, in the city there was a caster’s guild, but I only went to the city one time; right before I portalled here. I heard many tales of their magic, but I’m not sure what among them was true. You know how tales can be.” As much as she loved to pester every single person they met on their travels for information, she knew better than to believe it all.
Delphine grinned, "I do. My mother was a botanist, and she studied how to create hybrid plants and how to breed the very best quality out of a plant series... and of course, medicinal value." Though she still was not sure of all the plants here. But she doesn't think that Tala needs to know that.
"Safety, I think? The world outside the walls was... dense forest and nobody had gone there before. Eventually we did expand, but... it did not go very well, I think?" She didn't remember more than one visit to the Outpost. One time in the forests beyond the walls.
She nodded slowly, "Yeah. But now, all I can do is..." If Tala caught sight of Delphine's arms and legs, she'd find crisscrossing scars, but the woman leaned to claim a relatively sharp knife, she'd used it just that morning to cut herbs. Drawing the knife across her palm, humming softly to herself as if this was all normal.
The knife was placed aside, as Delphine held her now-bleeding hand out towards Tala, so that she could watch the cut slowly knit together again. "I was a healer back home, and... I haven't got quite the same power here, but I can still heal." She nodded as the woman explained, magic was a bit of a fairytale in her land.
”Hybrid plants…” Tala repeated in an impressed manner. ”I didn’t know such a thing was possible. Though, I’d imagine there are beyond many things I don’t know about plants.” She was an avid researcher, sure, but there was nothing to research back home about plants, given there were so few plants.
”Is that why you came here then?” She asked, hoping it wasn’t rude to pry about someone’s story. It was going to take her a while to determine what was and was not socially acceptable. Just part of having always been surrounded by family, and so few strangers.
Tala’s eyes widened as she saw Delphine bring the knife to her skin. ”Oh!” She yelped in surprise as the woman cut herself, but her bewilderment turned to fascination as the skin mended itself. ”That’s amazing.” She whispered, still enraptured in staring at the healing hand.
Delphine launched into explaining hybrid plants, making it sound easy when really it all depended if mother nature was a fan of the idea; as Delphine was not a fan of genetically modifying plants if she could help it. Grafting plants together and such.
She shrugged at the question. "Well, I didn't have a real choice in coming to Caido. I was portalled with a bunch of people from my homelands." She explained, easily. It was simple as that; they'd been mass portalled in, not one at a time. For a while she had wondered if her husband had done it to get rid of her; as neither he nor Iris came through.
Delphine smiled at Tala's excitement, and offered her a room to stay; knowing she'd have to smooth that over with Noah, but with LongNight so near it wouldn't be for a long, long time.
She'd show Tala her room, and retire to hers, to wait for Noah.
