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!
born from dark water, daughter of the rain and snow
She's been thinking about him for days now, and not in a good way.
Ever since Phoebe told her the truth, Amalia has been positively burning with anger. Literally, at this point: it whips like fire around her hair, leaves beads of sweat on her forehead. LongHeat has come and brought with it the scorching sun, furiously bright and deliciously clear.
Of course, he's still hiding from it.
She'd thought he'd be gone by now, back to wherever he came from. Another lie, which shouldn't surprise her at this point. So now here she is, thundering into the inn like a woman on fire, a sword in one hand, a shield in the other, and stretching out from between her scapulae are wings-
(is what she thinks she looks like. In actuality Amalia is less on fire and more very peaked, gold hair damp and plastered to her neck, a large pot lid in one hand, a baguette in the other. She doesn't have wings, either, but gods does her back itch. So same difference, really.)
"FINN ROSE... ROSEINPANTS!" the Shield bellows, knocking in his door with a surprising display of force, while somewhere behind her the flabbergasted innkeeper lets out a startled squeak. "You lying, lying... liarman!" The last word is punctuated by an accusatory jab from her sword-loaf, not anywhere near him but enough to make her point.
The door swings opens against her assault, because it hasn’t been locked or shut properly in some time. Within, the world is dark - not just because the thick curtains are drawn or because the lanterns are all out. No, Finn has made this world dark with his mind, painting the walls in black and shadow, so that nothing can peep out. Not even his own thoughts.
Were it not for the windows all being thrown open, the air would smell stale, but as it is the sweetness and sunshine of LongHeat fills the room. It’s a mess, though. Clothes everywhere, some of them shredded into careful, meticulous ribbons, and braided together to drape across the writing desk. Letters scatter there, and a compass hangs out of a hastily shut drawer.
Finn, though? Finn Roseinpants is in bed, a small and quivering lump under a tangle of blankets. The pillows are all on the floor, and he glares out at her from a small corner of his nest. There’s blood on his face. ”Everything lies,” he whispers to her.
09-01-2020, 08:24 PM (This post was last modified: 09-01-2020, 08:33 PM by Amalia.)
born from dark water, daughter of the rain and snow
The room is a mess, the bright LongHeat light somehow only making it that much worse. It would be so much easier to hate him if he didn't look so gods-damned sad. Looking down at the small and trembling mass that is Finn, Amalia can already feel her anger slipping away, replaced by a dull and aching exhaustion that makes her want to cry. But no, no, she came here for answers, and his sweet injured puppy act can't fool her any more.
She shuts the door behind herself, more instinct than actual desire for privacy, and stalks toward the unmade bed. "Get up, Finn," Amalia snarls, prodding the blanketed mass with her baguette. "You... you lied to me. I'm furious with you." Except it's beginning to sound less like she's furious, and more like she needs to convince herself and him that it's true.
”Everything lies.” He says it again like she might have missed it, the words raw and raspy. Speaking is like trying to tear paper, like trying to dig up ashes. It hurts. Something prods at the blankets and he flinches away from it, scrabbling, nearly skittering right off the end of the bed in his desire to get away from it. He’s fully clothed under the weight of all the covers, though his shoelaces are untied and his crumpled shirt is damp with the sweat of a fever.
”We wrap them ‘round us like rope. Then we jump, and we hope they don’t hang us by the neck.” He pulls the blankets over his face and rolls over to face the other way. ”Maybe that’s what killed my Ma. She ran out of lies to hold her up, so she just cracked and broke on the cliffs.”
born from dark water, daughter of the rain and snow
He moves away and instead of retreating Amalia just pursues, too tired to adjust her trajectory or energy. She collapses onto her knees on the bed, hovering at the edge of a dangerous precipice which can lead to either continued righteous indignation or succumbing to exhaustion and comfort. Both sounds good, and both sounds awful, and she has no idea what she wants.
So she chooses neither, wobbling unsteadily, the baguette her only source of support.
"My mother died from an infection." She's not sure why they're talking about their mothers now, but she's too hazy to follow the thread back to her initial point. "We didn't talk for two- three?- years before that." Her chest clenches as she thinks of it, tears again threatening to spill.
Which may have been his plan.
"Hey- hey!" Amalia's eyes light up again, the snarl returning to her lips. "You already knew that, though, didn't you, Finn Roastedantz- or whatever your name really is. This is just another trick, isn't it? Another lie." She's sweating profusely, and her legs tremble as she balances on the bed. Gods, Amalia is tired. All she wants is a nap.
”I didn’t lie. I didn’t trick.” Finn sounds very small all of a sudden, shaking his head beneath the bundle of blankets. ”I didn’t. I didn’t. It’s just you look like an angel and I wanted to fly away. I just wanted to go.” He’s trembling again - it could be the fever, or maybe he’s crying. Damned if Finn knows. Slowly he peels the blankets back; one of his hands has been badly bandaged with a strip from one of the shirts he’s shredded. It’s still leaking blood, which explains the red on his face.
With stormy eyes shiny with unshed tears, he rolls to lay on his back and peer up at Amalia. A shaky laugh rumbles up in his chest. ”You’re so golden,” he says. ”It’s so hard to look at you.” Sniffing, he lays the back of his bandaged hand over his eyes, as if to hide her away. ”I’m sorry for your Ma.”
born from dark water, daughter of the rain and snow
She doesn't know what he's talking about now, calling her an angel while she rises above him, armed with her bread and the lid of a pot. The latter of which she has at some point discarded, now that she stops to look at her hands, and the former of which is... yeah, it's bread. She could have sworn it was a sword.
There's blood on his hand when he moves his blanket, escaping from poorly constructed bandages and leaving stains of scarlet scattered all across his sheets. Without much thought on the matter Amalia reaches out for him, settling onto the bed at last and taking his rounded palm in hers. "I'm sorry about yours, too," the Shield says absently, letting a breeze that smells like lavender and summer sunshine wrap around them both. "I'm not golden, though. I'm just... tired. Gods, I'm so, so tired."
Finn, normally so careful about contact with people, can do absolutely nothing as she takes his hand, though he’s pressed his eyes shut against the world as she peels it away from his face. There’s a sweet breeze that seems to fill him to the brim, though, and his aches and pains subside... though, gods, if it doesn’t bring the fever roaring forth again. ”I’m tired too,” he whispers - a moment of clarity in the horror.
”I need to go home, Amalia. There’s just so many hands in the ceiling, trying to grab me.” A short lived moment, as it happens. Finn is still holding her hand, though - he feels like if he lets go he might slide off the face of the world. ”Do you know how to sleep?” he slurs. ”Will you tell me?”
09-01-2020, 10:13 PM (This post was last modified: 09-01-2020, 10:15 PM by Amalia.)
born from dark water, daughter of the rain and snow
She only wants to feel vindicated, to have things righted once again, but gods if she isn't tired. And it feels like so much work to be angry now, and she's so hot and weary and her skin is covered in feathers and the bed is like a life raft and they're castaway at sea. "You can't go home. We're on a boat." Suddenly Amalia feels very certain she absolutely cannot get off of it, because if she does she'll sink down into the watery floor and drown.
At the same time she is thirsty. It's confusing, to say the least.
She turns away from him a little, though doesn't withdraw her hand. Like him she needs an anchor to something tangible and real to hold onto while the world spins around them. Except he isn't real, not really, not in the way she thought. "Why did you pretend to be my friend?" Amalia asks softly, her alto voice raw with childlike grief. "Why'd you lie and let me think you liked me cus'a me? I know you work with the peacock. For the circus. Phoebe told me. I thought that we were friends."
”I don’t like boats.” Finn’s words are whispered but suddenly his hand is gripping hers tightly, the other holding onto the covers of the bed, knuckles white, and he daren’t move or breathe lest they capsize. His mouth is dry and there’s a fresh sheen of sweat on his forehead. Shadows dance across the ceiling and threaten to drop into his mouth - he has to clamp his teeth down to stop them sneaking in.
”The brothel Madame? We’ve never met,” he says, his voice thick with weariness.Her circus isn’t my circus. I have Eyes - not peacocks.” Blinking back further tears, he gazes up at her with a wobbly smile. ”I didn’t have any friends before you. I wouldn’t know how to pretend,” he confesses. ”I didn’t know who you were before you said. I was just... enjoying being treated kindly. Selfish of me. Like the tide.”
born from dark water, daughter of the rain and snow
She keeps her grip upon his hand, also uneasy with the way the bed seems to sway and lurch. "I've never been on a boat," she remarks, not particularly reassuringly, her other hand still clutching the baguette. "Last time I went in the ocean I drowned." Not fully, of course, but you wouldn't know from the casual way she says the words, as though near-death experiences were commonplace (and in her case? They rather are).
Her brow furrows at his denial; she doesn't know what to believe. They're on a boat of their own creation, and Phoebe had said many mean things to her. Had that been a lie, too? "She said you worked for... for... for the who know who I am even though I've never met them. Who came looking for me. That you were one of them. Was that a lie?" Exhausted by her new confusion, Amalia at last lets her body slide down onto the mattress.
She's lying with her face toward his, except he's upside-down. Or is she? "Who treated you unkindly?" she wonders, trying to focus on his stormy eyes and only succeeding in finding his nose. Her gaze slips down to their held hands instead. "I'll fight them. You shouldn't lie to your friends, Finn."
”Me neither. But I don’t like them.” Finn scrunches his nose, shuddering out a long breath and blearily trying to look at her, though she no longer looks how she should. Her head is on upside down, and it’s a bit frightening, truth be told. At least her hand is an anchor to their boat-bed. ”You... you drowned? Didn’t I save you? With my great, wide wings?” he wonders, the image of Remi dancing on the surface of the ocean burning though his mind, beckoning lost souls towards his waiting arms.
He smiles sadly, the gesture somewhat lopsided as he tries to turn his head to face her a bit more. ”I work for them,” he whispers. ”But that’s not why I wanted to know you. You are sweet. I’m not sweet. I’m a sour man.”
Closing his eyes against the wetness he feels on his cheeks, he shakes his head. ”I didn’t know,” he says, sounding for all the world like he’s swearing an oath. ”I won’t lie again.” Who treated him unkindly, though? The world unravels around him. ”You couldn’t fight them all.”
born from dark water, daughter of the rain and snow
She frowns, her memory fading and contorting, pulled apart by his words. Had he saved her? She doesn't think so, but it is his face that swims through her mind, breaking through the storm. "It was you," she agrees slowly, "But not you. Your face on someone else's soul."
She's released the baguette somewhere between them; it's too heavy to keep holding, and she no longer feels the need for a sword. "You aren't sour," she contradicts, scrunching up her brow and shaking her head so it rubs against the mattress. "You're soft. And hard, but inside out. Layers. Like a cake."
She watches as his eyes fall shut, reaching out with her now empty hand to brush at the tears on his cheeks. "I could try." His tears are shadows, blood and acid. She can only imagine how much it must hurt on his face. Her hand drops back onto the bed; it's her time to close her eyes and smile, a sad, half-hearted thing. "You don't want me protecting you. I'm not a very good Shield after all."
Your face on someone else’s soul. ”Killing, and saving. I’m not good at either of them,” he whispers. ”It was me. It was us.” The boat is dipping and cresting through waves that Finn has never felt, and it makes his stomach lurch but not with nausea. He laughs into the mattress to hear himself described as a cake, but even that feels like such a sad sound. He wants to swallow it all back up inside himself. ”A sour cake,” he insists.
The touch of her hand causes his eyes to flicker open, the soft brush of fingertips on his cheek opening a yawning chasm into which he wants to fall. Fall forever, with warm touches and a soft alto voice to guide the way. He’s reaching for that touch, as it drifts away, his fingertips curling around nothing but air. ”You’re not a shield at all.” He gazes across at her. ”You’re the sun.”
