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!
Seemed that what Morgan suspected was right and that it was unlikely they were going to find plenty of plush bedding in crates holding items for the kitchen, unless she wanted to sleep on pots for the night, which she absolutely did not. Neron joked about booze, but when she glanced over she found that the idea actually appealed even though Morgan knew it was a terrible idea. "Keep the keg out." She said simply.
The suggestion of sleeping on boxes was not one she liked, as made clear by the face she pulled as Neron said it. Desperately she reached for a long, flat box towards the back of the corner, hoping it might contain something they could use. When she opened it and saw some kind of fur and material, Morgan excitedly pulled out...a rug, shaped like a bear. Sighing, holding out the musty rug before her, she laid it down on the floor.
"..It's better than nothing." She declared. "If you get some boxes, we could put this on the top. It only needs to be big enough for me, after all, as you don't sleep."
Raising a brow and chuckling to the Warden, Neron gives her an obliging nod and moves to roll out the keg into a more accessible position. There are a couple of steins, too, and he places one atop the barrel so Morgan can fetch herself a drink whenever she pleases. By the time he’s finished, the Glacier has found something much more interesting, Neron tilting his head and watching her arrange a rug into a makeshift bunk.
”Oh? I forgot, I just stand in the corner in the shadows and wait.” He folds his arms across his chest - not sleeping does not equate to not being comfortable, but he obliges nonetheless, upturning a couple of boxes and helping to arrange the rug atop them. Stepping back and seating himself on a crate, he waves an imperious hand.
At first, Morgan ignored Neron's sarcastic comment, hating that it actually made her feel a little guilty about not preparing space for him too. Maybe Ascended didn't sleep, but she didn't know that that meant he wanted to stand around all night and watch her (and actually, that thought was more disturbing than him sleeping next to her).
Going to the keg to pour herself a skein of the ale, she knocked it back in remarkable time that spoke to some past practice and slammed it down, needing the wave of courage it would give her for what she was about to do. "Fine." Morgan went to get two more boxes and added them to the end, pulled the rug over a bit further: the covering was sparse now, but it could just about stretch to cover enough for two people.
"I am going to take my cloak and shoes off, but nothing else." She stated simply, hoping to avoid any inappropriate comments when she began to unbuckle the fastenings of her cloak before laying down on the makeshift, rather uncomfortable, 'bed'.
Neron is almost entranced by the practiced way that Morgan downs the stein of ale, having to look away to hide the smirk on his face. ”I ought to hold a drinking contest,” he says quietly. ”I bet you would draw quite the crowd. You’d probably win, too.” Quite what he would offer as a prize is another thing entirely, though for Morgan the Hailstorm has a few ideas in mind. Ideas that would probably get him slapped full in the face.
He completely misses the way she’s setting up a space for him until she speaks again, too lost in his own thoughts, and Neron tilts his head as he sets eyes on the makeshift ‘bed’. ”Madam, I would not expect anything more than your cloak and shoes in this cold,” he remarks, slipping off his own shoes before moving to settle down beside her on the admittedly musty bear rug. ”Your cloak would probably be better suited as a blanket, besides.”
As Neron brought up drinking contests, an unusually mischievous smile appeared on Morgan's face, the memories he'd just made resurface hard for her to ignore. "It would not be the first I'd won." She said simply, letting him imagine the rest, sure that he had quite the vivid mind to come up with something.
Thankfully, he didn't make too much of a comment about what she was choosing to take off, and Morgan tried not to think of what he might expect without the cold. Neron did come to lay beside her and while his point about the cloak was a good one, she was hesitant to share a blanket with him...eventually, the cold won out and she reached for the cloak.
As she leaned to grab it, she misjudged the size of the boxes; as she tried to stop herself from falling off the edge, Morgan let out an instinctual arm to try and grab at something to lift herself back up: that something just so happen to be Neron. In a moment she would be mortified, but for a second she was pressed against his side, holding on with one arm.
Raising his eyebrows at Morgan as he settles on their sort-of-sleeping-space, Neron does indeed have a good enough imagination to conjure the Warden’s previous prowess at drinking competitions. He’s enjoying the parade of images in his mind, in fact (and if they turn into the Caido equivalent of a wet t-shirt competition halfway through, well, that’s between him and his imagination), when his companion abruptly grabs ahold of him.
”Careful,” he says with a chuckle, barely able to stop himself from being dragged off the boxes with her. Shifting to roll over and thus pull her further back onto the bed, he raises his eyebrows down at her. ”And here I thought you were the picture of grace and skill,” he says, thinking nothing of leaning up on one arm and reaching over her so he can grab the cloak instead. ”If you wanted to get close to me, though, you just had to ask.”
Morgan's brief tumble resulted in the worst possible outcome she could have imagined, Neron reacting to pull her back and in the process lifting himself over her, in a position far too reminiscent of dreams she liked to pretend she didn't remember (though admittedly, most of her dreams actually featured her over him, but that was a small detail).
"I've been more than close enough to you for a whole lifetime." She replied, thinking of kneeing him in the balls but resisting the temptation, partially out of tolerance for Neron and partly out of the knowledge he wouldn't feel it. With the cloak over them she stared at the ceiling, laying flat on her back as close to the edge of the 'bed' as she could, trying to come down from her embarrassment (which was enough to be colouring her cheeks).
With the sound of soft wind outside and the room dimmed as it was, it almost felt like a normal bedroom, with the exception of the man beside her. "...If you don't sleep, what is it you do all night?" She asked, feeling a need to still fill the silence for a while longer.
”And yet,” Neron murmurs, sounding far too pleased with the arrangement; if she had decided to knee him in the balls, he’d have deserved it wholeheartedly. Instead he finds himself laying on his back, arms tucked behind his head, gazing up at the ceiling and waiting for dawn - or at least for Morgan to fall asleep that he might lose himself to distraction without worrying he might miss some riveting sass from the Warden.
Glancing across at her as her voice slips through the dark, he shoots her a smile she’ll hardly see at this low level of light. ”I read a lot,” he says. ”Sometimes I try to read the stars. Other times I close my eyes and think - it’s like sleeping, but a little more productive.” Honestly, it’s maddening sometimes, but then he doesn’t get tired, so it’s not such a problem.
Morgan had never had sleepovers as a child, having been far too serious for those kinds of endeavours (she had no gossip to share, did not care for sweets, and liked to go to bed at a reasonable early hour), but she imagined that if she had, this was similar to what it might have been like. Uncomfortable sleeping arrangement, dim room, lowered voices talking about nothing particularly important. Admittedly, she had not previously imagined it with an Ascended man she barely tolerated yet also found herself oddly fond of talking about his nighttime routine next to her.
Life had a way of surprising you.
"It sounds exhausting. To never be able to truly let your mind be blank for a while." Even Morgan, who valued productivity and hard work to the point of it being a pseudo-religion, appreciated the benefits of a good nights sleep. "Do you not miss what you gave up, Neron? I...I'm asking genuinely--" As a friend, she almost adds, then thinks better of it. "--The ability to get a nights sleep, to eat a pleasant meal...and if you find yourself a partner one day, you won't be able to enjoy all the benefits that brings either." Personally, she didn't see how what he'd gained beat out what he had lost.
”It is, sometimes. Not so bad, when your thoughts are pleasant enough to manage.” When they aren’t, however, that’s where Neron finds himself with problems. He’s closed his eyes now, in fact, content to talk and to imagine what it would be like to fall asleep again, to merely blink the night away and have it be morning. They blink right open again, however, at Morgan’s sudden question, the Ascended glancing across at her with a raised brow. He considers, at first, that she might be sassing him or asking rhetorically, but it certainly doesn’t seem so.
”Of course I do,” he says quietly, the admission between them and the room that surrounds them. No one else, he imagines, would coax such a truth from his lips. ”Waking up feeling rested, enjoying the sunshine, good wine and better food... I miss it. But... at the time, it felt as though there was little other choice. I couldn’t let Zariah manipulate me any more. Of course, had I known she would be lost to the Tundra...” Yeah, maybe he’d have made a different choice.
"If you can keep your thoughts pleasant all the time, you possess far more control than I imagined." Morgan said plainly, sure from what she'd seen in Neron's more vulnerable moments that he couldn't. She herself was prone to the odd bouts of pessimism, as she imagined most people in a position of power had to be; the responsibility weighed on her soul even as she relished it.
As Neron looked over at her, Morgan turned to look back at him; the closeness this created between their faces would in any other situation make her move away, but something about the dim lighting and quiet of the room made it alright. "So...had you known..." She softly trailed off, understanding the implications and surprisingly, feeling her heart hurt for him a little.
"Is...there a way for you to...be un-Ascended? Is that something you'd want to do?" Morgan asked, still turned towards him, eyes searching his face for answers beyond his words.
”Bold of you to assume that I have all that much control to begin with,” Neron quips back, his tone gently teasing, though it’s banter for the sake of banter at this point. There’s something quietly comfortable in exchanging blows and parries of wit with Morgan - perhaps it reminds him that there are those out there who can mentally backhand him. And perhaps he likes it.
Still, as the conversation becomes more serious, he lets the humour slip away somewhat. He huffs out a laugh, but it’s almost entirely devoid of humour, and he shrugs his shoulders to Morgan. ”A dangerous line to tread, even thinking about it,” he murmurs, though it’s clearly not a no. ”Back in Northaven, my family was bound to the royal family through magic. We couldn’t betray them, or else we’d... I don’t know. Die horribly, I assume?”
He clears his throat. ”The Voice... She, ah, promised I’d suffer the same fate, should I ever go against her. And I am quite keen to stay alive.”
Letting out a quiet huff of air as a laugh, Morgan only shrugged at his comment. Sitting up a little, leaning on her elbow, she gathered her hair to one side, took it out of it's clasp and pushed it over her shoulder as she listened to him speak, laying back down when it was organised. Not many saw her with her hair down, Morgan usually opting to wear it back for practicality, but it was dim and she doubted Neron would mind as long as it was out of his face.
"So it seems you have gone from one rigid prison of rules to another." She observed quietly, no sign of gloating or cruelty in her voice, just simple observation. "It's a shame, because...well. You are more than enough on your own." Perhaps that was too far for their fledgling friendship, but Morgan was honest: Neron was clearly able to stand on his own two feet without assistance from a Goddess. "Do you...mm. No, I should not ask you such personal questions."
Deciding to leave whatever it was she wanted to ask, she settled down onto the horrendously uncomfy box bed. "Goodnight."
Something softens in Neron’s expression as he watches her unclasp her hair, the wild curls framing her face (however briefly, before she arranges it elsewhere) in a way that he finds unnecessarily endearing. ”You ought to wear it down more often,” he says, the remark directed up at the ceiling rather than to her. ”It suits you.”
He supposes it is a sort of prison, and his lips twitch in a wry smile. ”Only one rule this time though. And only one consequence, too.” Swift death - and it will be swift if he is lucky, he imagines. Turning his head to look back at her at the compliment - sudden and unexpected from Morgan of all people - Neron can’t actually remember ever being enough for anyone. And when she pricks at his interest further only to close the shutters down, he lets out a softly outraged scoff.
”How cruel,” he murmurs, adjusting his arms behind his head. ”You know that I will have to lie awake for hours now, with nothing to do but imagine what it was you could possibly want to know. Put me out of my misery, won’t you?”
