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!
He has been in Torchline for perhaps three days, and he can count the number of hours of sleep he’s had on one hand. It’s starting to take its toll - it always does at this point - and Finn knows when enough is enough, so he takes himself away from the streets and the people and the noise, and steps down onto the beach. It’s a bleak day; the clouds are storm grey and it feels dark even though it’s the middle of the afternoon. Finn is alone, but for a few wandering souls.
Without removing his shoes, without caring for the wet sand or the tide creeping in, he sits himself on the beach. His curls are mussed by the sharp breeze, and he closes his eyes - no glasses, today - to let the roar of the ocean fill his ears. To let it all fill him up, until it’s all gone. Until there’s no Finn, there’s no Torchline. There’s just the whisper of the waves, and his mind out at sea.
Amalia, too, is walking the coast, enjoying the crash of the ocean, the sting of the breeze, the threat of the looming storm. There is something in the expansive nature of the sea that both frightens and enthralls her, makes her feel beautifully insignificant, as though if she lets the tide wash over her it will leave her as clean as the sand.
The sand is not clean today. It is muddled with footprints, the telltale signs of bare feet and damp toes, but the tide is coming in. There are people, too, or person, rather: a man sat just at the edge of the water, looking for all the world asleep. Amalia might have walked around him, left him to his own devices; indeed, she walks past, quiet yet attentive, intending to do just that.
But the tide is rising and the man is not moving, and as much as she would like to disappear into the ocean, she cannot allow that for him. Barefoot and quiet, the Shield changes trajectory, coming to a stop behind him (please wake up, please wake up) and softly clearing her throat.
"Sir? You should consider moving... the tide is coming in."
He’s out there, adrift and at peace. The noise in his mind is nothing against this, against nature’s roar. Not quite asleep but certainly not entirely awake, Finn has pulled his knees up, arms and head lolling upon them, eyes drifting shut. But there’s a voice, one that jars him into wakefulness. The storm in him returns and his feet are wet, and he turns to look over his shoulder and up at the woman.
You look like an angel, his addled mind wants to say, still caught between dreaming and here. But he blinks hard, stilling his tongue before he can speak, and nodding to her. ”I’m sorry - thank you,” he murmurs, shifting to get his feet under him and rubbing his eyes as if that might erase the shadows beneath them.
”That will teach me for sitting so close, I suppose,” he says, gazing down at his wet shoes and pants, covered in sand. ”Were you passing by? I would hate to think someone ran down here on my account.”
He wakes up, which is a relief, grogginess evident on his face. He rises and she steps away, giving him space to collect his bearings. It isn't until his hands fall away that recognition hits her, a name springing, surprised, to the tip of her tongue. "Rem-?"
But no, because his eyes are blue as the Oasis where Remi's are green as a shallow sea. But otherwise? The man could be her friend's reflection, a mirror of the Alchemist that Amalia scarcely knows these days. "Oh, I- sorry. You look like someone I know."
Suddenly self-conscious Amalia pushes her hair behind her ear, an anxious smile curling at the corners of her lips. "It's, it was nothing. I was walking by. Had you been out here long?"
The name almost leaves her lips and Finn can practically taste it on his own tongue; it isn’t so bad now, having met the man who wears his face, and he rubs at the back of his neck. ”I look like Torchline’s governor,” he confirms. ”No one was more surprised than we were, I assure you.” It is still the case, in fact, and probably has contributed to his restless nights.
None of that really helps explain who he actually is, though, and he flashes a swift and lopsided smile in her direction. ”My name is Finn. Thank you again for saving me from the sea. I... don’t know how long I was out here.” A fine start. ”How is it you know Remi?”
Oh, so he's met his errant twin. Amalia can feel heat and color rising on her cheeks, her inherent anxiety bubbling easily to the surface now that she need not fear the tide. "I can imagine," the Shield says softly, trying not to stare at him and utterly failing, her dark eyes slipping ever back to his haggard face. "It's... uncanny. Even now."
He's got a charming crooked smile, sweet and boyish (much like Remi, and there's another pang of deja vu). "Amalia," she offers in response, toes curling as the first wave touches them, pulling away the sand from beneath her feet. The gratitude for saving him earns a shy nod and a fleeting smile, an expression which quickly fades as she looks back to the sea.
"I, ah, I knew Remi in the Hollowed Grounds, before he came here. Are you from Torchline? Or...?" He doesn't look like he's from Torchline, but then, what does she know?
Finn is not good under scrutiny, and he shifts uncomfortably beneath the weight of her stare, a hand running along the scruff on his cheek. ”Yes, it was when we met, too,” he agrees with a soft laugh. ”If I did not know better I would swear we were related.” But he does know better - he knows too well, in fact, so that train of thought is useless. Luckily enough it’s derailed entirely when Amalia tells him her name, Finn’s gaze locking back on her with a stunning sort of focus.
”Amalia?” he repeats, very nearly letting her surname (and everything else he knows about her) spill from his lips. And now it’s awkward - really awkward - and Finn is exhausted and it’s too much, even out here on this empty beach. ”I... uh. You have a very pretty name,” he offers. It’s lame. They both know it.
Moving swiftly on. ”No, I’m not from Torchline,” he confirms, shaking his head. ”It has been a while since I saw the ocean, though. Sitting out here helps me to concentrate.”
Never in her immediate memory has someone reacted so strongly to her name. Amalia blinks rapidly, her eyebrows wrinkling, the flush in her cheeks only rising at his strange, stilted compliment. "Um... thank you?" Her hand reaches to the back of her neck, as though trying to rub away her blush. "Finn is nice, too." Even lamer, if that's possible, but the Shield is woefully out of her depth in the face of this strange encounter.
At least he moves on quickly, clinging to the lifeline she's thrown (or is he the one who's thrown it?). "Oh... how long have you been here, then?" An Outlander, Amalia assumes, especially if he comes from near the ocean.
Stepping back from the encroaching tide, Amalia jerks her chin toward a nearby log. "Would... would you like to sit? What are you concentrating on?"
07-16-2020, 07:14 AM (This post was last modified: 07-16-2020, 09:46 AM by Finn.)
FINN
Finn does not think anyone has ever complimented his name at all, so they make quite the pair out here on the sands. He cannot stop his mind from whirring, his assumptions and predictions collapsing in on themselves like a house of cards. If Amalia is here (and oh boy is that an interesting one, standing before a woman rumoured to have been face to face with Vi himself) then she is not in the Hollowed Grounds. And that means Dorian...
Is on a wild goose chase of Finn’s own making. He knows he will feel the sting of that slap (mental, physical, emotional - he doesn’t know yet) in the near future. Aware, suddenly, that she has asked him a question, he gives a quiet nod, a confirmation that he is happy to sit. Suddenly being on his feet feels like too much of a burden.
”Only a few days,” he says of his time in Torchline, sinking down onto the log and letting his tired eyes settle on the encroaching waves. ”I was trying to concentrate on... not concentrating,” he murmurs slowly, as if only coming to that realisation himself. ”What about you? Do you live here?” How wrong has he been?
She sinks down in front of the log rather than on it, pressing her toes and body into the sand. Leaning back to look up at her strange and unexpected companion, Amalia cannot help but wonder how many thoughts must spiral behind the distracted, dark blue gaze. None or a million, the girl thinks; there is no other option.
"I know that feeling." She's tucked her knees beneath her chin, a customary position for the Shield. Looking out at the water now, Amalia hums a thoughtful note. "No. I live in the Hollowed Grounds. I came here for... for a break." A break from reality, from her endlessly shifting world.
Turning so her cheek is resting on her bare knees, she fixes her slanted gaze back on Finn. "Have you been to the Grounds?" Light curiosity coats her alto voice, trying to stick to easy subjects, to keep him distracted from whatever it is that left him at the mercy of the sea.
Leaning his forearms on his knees, Finn returns his gaze to the sea up until the point that he catches Amalia glancing up at him. He finds it hard to look at her, knowing what he knows, who she is, who she might be destined to become. She seems so small for a weight so heavy. Huffing out a laugh that doesn’t quite succeed at sounding amused, he ducks his head in a nod. ”A break?” he repeats. ”I can see why. It is quite peaceful here.”
Even with the rain, the grey skies, the mist. It reminds Finn of home in the best ways, rather than the ones he’d prefer to avoid. ”No, I have never had reason to visit,” he says of the Grounds, absently spinning the ring that adorns his thumb. ”What is it like there? All that time behind a barrier...” It must have been overwhelming when that ended, he thinks.
The encroaching storm boils in the sky, so familiar to a girl raised in a grey world and yet so entirely, importantly different. Coiled up around herself though she is Amalia feels strangely safe, unusually at ease in the presence of this stranger- Finn. Unknown, without any expectations placed upon her, or so the Shield believes. It is soothing to find solace in anonymity.
It is good she does not yet know how wrong she is.
"It's... Home." Dark eyes drift again to the far horizon, the designation one she's both reluctant to give and yet fiercely protective of. "I grew up there, under the barrier. Without the Old Gods. When it came down..."
She trails off. How to say the world changed for better and for worse, that ever since that fateful night her life has been thrown into endless turmoil, as swift to shift as the sea? Curls if lilac spring to life in golden locks, the shift unbidden but as natural as breathing. "It was the worst thing to ever happen... And the best. I never knew how beautiful the world could truly be."
He likes the sound of he voice, a faint smile touching to his lips as he turns a stormy gaze back down at her. If he’s surprised by the twists of lilac in her golden hair (he isn’t) he doesn’t show it, Finn more accustomed than not to visual disturbances even when he isn’t bespectacled. Especially now, when he hasn’t really rested in days, it’s hardly surprising and even less alarming to him.
”Without the Old Gods,” he repeats, utterly unable to imagine such a thing. He exhales softly and lets his eyes slip shut, as if the weight of his own thoughts is too much. ”I cannot imagine a life like that. How did it feel when they were finally present again, for you? When the heralds were freed?” Beautiful and terrible, is the world. That is how Finn has come to experience it.
”I imagine, too, that there must have been some guilt. For the Voice being free as well...”
"We had the Heralds," Amalia is quick to clarify, affection for them thick in her low alto voice. How strangely pleasant, to speak to someone who seems to share her views on the gods. "They did much for us. Have done much for me. I will forever be grateful." As though on cue a leopard's tail extends out from her spine, wrapping around her luxuriously to fend against the wind's sharp chill.
How did it feel to have them present? Gods, there are no words Amalia can give, no way to truly express her relief, her joy, and yes, her guilt. "It felt like... I don't know. Like a shroud falling away. Like the stars were brighter than before. Even if we didn't see them, knowing the gods were there..." She shakes her head upon her knees, biting on her lip. She had seen Vi, and that experience blazes like wildfire in her breast, a flower blooming against all darkness that had come before or would come again.
Relief and guilt. Closing her eyes, the Shield exhales a soft sigh. "I wish it hadn't come at such a high cost. I wish..." I wish I could go back. Undo it. But she can't, and so there's no point in dwelling on that dream. There is only forward and the future, only the sea and sky.
Turning again so her cheek is on her knee, Amalia looks at Finn. "What about your home? What is it like?"
