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!
kidnap me from my reality & crushed pieces of my soul
"That's where you're wrong." Remi chuckles, breathing in the scent of Ronin made so much more vivid here in this world of make-believe. "Pretty sure if being married means I have to share my food with you, it also means you get to share in the blame of my political mishaps." Right? That had been in their vows, hadn't it? In so thinking the world shifted to mirror that Leafchange evening when promises had been made. The words they'd said to one another then hadn't come close to covering the scope of what life would bring, but still, they'd made it out, with new promises and a deeper understanding of their commitment to one another. "In a world where I can have anything at all, you're still all I want." The Lullaby whispers, the fantastical realm of their minds just set-dressing. All Remi wants is already here, in his arms.
"You have." He chuckles, reaching for the spoon which is still softly glowing. "It has your light...so maybe it will stay." Now it was Remi's turn to cling to naive hope.
colour me outside the lines until my shattered heart is whole
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin gasps, outraged at apparently being dragged into this as part of his vows, the Star smiling wickedly, his fingers stroking along the alchemist’s lower back. ”I would object, but I’m scared you’ll withdraw sharing your food with me. And I can’t have that.” He chuckles, glancing up and around them as the world grows cool and crisp, and the sky fills with stars. His smile softens; it might be set-dressing, but Remi has impeccable taste.
”Mm. I know how you feel. I don’t need anything else here. Just you. Just hearing you, feeling you... it’s enough.” He leans back again, starlight all but beaming out of him, and he chuckles as Remi produces the spoon again. ”I hope it does. You can dig your way to me. Or just eat ice cream with it until I come back.” He lifts his hand, a bowl of ice cream appearing in it - the very same one he’d intended to give Remi when Sugar had stolen it.
kidnap me from my reality & crushed pieces of my soul
He means it too. In a world where he can have anything at all he likes, Ronin is the only thing he wants.
Well, until there's icecream. That understandably changes everything.
"Tell her I'm sorry again?" Clever as the dragon is, the complexity of what's happening might be a bit above her ken, and the Lullaby can't stand the thought of Sugar trying to reconcile what she knows and trusts with the creature who tried to attack her. Using his glowing spoon, the Lullaby helps himself to a large mouthful of icecream. He's very tempted to kiss Ronin and slip half of the spoonful into his husband's mouth, but he resists. He'd already lost out on the real thing once today as it is.
colour me outside the lines until my shattered heart is whole
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”I will. She’s worried about you. And glad that she could help. So I think you’re good - no hard feelings.” Ronin smiles softly to his husband, dutifully holding the bowl so that he can help himself to as much ice cream as he wants. He’d hold it until his fingers went numb and his hands fell off if he had to, but luckily it doesn’t come to that. They spend a great deal longer than the glow of the spoon like this, talking and swaying with some invisible breeze, rocked gently on the swing.
But all things have to end, and eventually Ronin feels the pull of wakefulness. He grumbles where he’s wrapped up in Remi’s arms, having been snatching a chance to actually rest between their antics, the Star sighing to his husband. He reaches out and grabs the spoon, setting it aglow again, pressing it into the other man’s hands. ”I will be back as soon as I can.”
The light has made everything worse? better? dull and flat.
I can see, but I know not what the shadows are of. All I know is that they now have voices and starlit eyes that crinkle with amusement. I think I've even seen a hand—certainly, I've felt them, small fingers against mine, tugs on my shirt—and I think I'm supposed to run follow them.
I open my mouth to scream ask her them to wait, but they don't, because I can't. I follow like a ghost trying to break through, but the light is fading...fading...
gone.
I am with her. It's cold and gods if that isn't a relief. Her blood sings over my skin and I want to paint her portrait with it. Her eyes glow without light, her laughing mouth a chasm into which I might fall forever. I think I'm falling already.
There was something I was meant to hold onto...something I was supposed to remember. It was..something small? Yes. Small and silver. It fit so easily into my hands, and it was supposed to help. Help with what?
Oh, I remember now. It was meant to help free me. To help me get back to him her.
Yes. I remember now.
It was the knife.
because i can't be alone with all that's on my mind
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin can’t remember if he has ever been ice skating in his life. But here in the twilight world of dreams, he can do anything. And so he drops from his own sleep and into his husband’s blazing a trail of starlight on ice, sweeping in a wide arc and cutting through darkness to find the man he loves. If he was glowing before, he’s beaming now, the Star’s expression one of joy and excitement as carves figures of eight in glittering clarity.
”Remi!” he calls, a glassy lake spanning out around him as his imagination fills in the details, his usual clothing replaced with something more befitting the snow; fur-lined and billowing around him, he might have stepped straight out of DeepFrost. ”Remi, there’s a cure!”
09-09-2020, 06:04 PM (This post was last modified: 09-09-2020, 06:04 PM by Remi.)
REMI
the lullaby
walk me home in the dead of night
The light thickens the shadows. It givens them a temporal feel that the Lullaby gravitates towards. He can taste them now, and hear the words they're saying. She's saying. Daddy, don't go! We've only just found each other again. I'm not where you think I am, I'm "Remi!" Please, you have to "Remi, there's a cure!"
The shadows flee, but the Lullaby doesn't. He rounds on the fur-clad man with a menacing snarl and a mouth full of viciously sharp teeth. Every step he takes toward Ronin makes the ground shake with his anger. The closer he comes the more the light saturates him, and by the time he properly reaches Ronin he looks bewildered and exhausted.
"You.." Blinking and only just realizing now that he's standing on a sheet of ice, wings shoot from his sides to help with balance. Remi certainly has never skated on ice before, and it doesn't occur to him to place blades on his feet as Ronin has. "You came back." He mumbles, clearly still in the thick fog of his nightmares.
because i can't be alone with all that's on my mind
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
It shouldn’t surprise Ronin to see Remi worn so thin, and honestly, he’s too buoyed by the news he’s bringing to let it concern him as much as it should. He’ll worry once he’s been able to give his husband a desperately needed shred of hope. Slowing on his skates, he raises his hands in placation, trying not to fall with the trembling of the ground. ”I will always come back,” he says, cheeks rosy with elation as he smiles to the Lullaby. ”I’ll always find you. Come on.”
He reaches out, and providing Remi doesn’t object, he’ll draw his husband into his arms, lifting him up enough that his toes can skim the ice while Ronin skates them around. ”I thought I’d give us a chillier backdrop. Since we’ll be on our way to Halo soon. It’s been a day, since I saw you last,” he whispers, though it feels like a thousand years.
09-09-2020, 06:19 PM (This post was last modified: 09-09-2020, 06:22 PM by Remi.)
REMI
the lullaby
walk me home in the dead of night
The words don't quite make it all the way down to where Remi might understand them fully, but already his mind is thawing. Aoife's voice is far away, as are the shadowy fingers. As is the message she was trying to tell him.
Letting himself be lifted, his wings shrinking away to make way for his husband's arms, Remi laughs breathlessly against Ronin's shoulder as he wraps his arms around him. Puffing a cloud of air, the Lullaby shakes his head with delight, letting the thin shirt he'd been wearing be replaced with a coat not unlike the one Ronin was wearing. "A day?" Skeptically said, Remi can't quite reconcile the amount of time he knows a day to be, with the infinity he's just endured to make it here. "It felt like..." Only..he doesn't know, and so he trails off with a melancholy sigh against the fur lining the Star's collar.
"Wait, if you've found a cure...why do we need to go to Halo at all?" Remi asks, trying not to let himself fall too quickly into unfettered relief.
because i can't be alone with all that's on my mind
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
The best part about dreams is that Ronin doesn’t have to think about where they are going; more ice and snow-capped trees spring up around them as they skate, leaving him to concentrate wholly on Remi. He leans in to kiss the Lullaby, his lips warm against the chill of the air around, and he hugs him all the closer for it. ”I can’t even imagine,” he whispers, not wanting to think about how long it’s been for Remi. ”You’ve got me for a long while now, at least.” Why? Because he’s decided it, that’s why, and the world bends to their thoughts.
”The cure is in the Climb. In the hot springs water,” he explains, nuzzling a stubbled cheek against Remi’s to be purposely annoying. ”Amalia had some in a canteen. I was there when she drank it, yesterday. She’s better. She’s not sick any more, Remi. She’ll be coming with us through Halo, to the Climb. You’ll be better soon.”
"And here I thought I didn't like the cold." The Lullaby murmurs happily against his husband's chilly lips, enjoying the pulse of warmth that flows from the Star. "I guess it's wrong to say I was having a weird dream before you arrived, but.." Glancing over his shoulder where now evergreen ring the quiet lake on which they skate, Remi frowns at them for a moment. "..I can't remember now." He sighs lamely, turning back to Ronin.
Huffing against the abrasive nuzzles he's receiving, the Lullaby snaps his teeth playfully near Ronin's ear. "So that's it then..just...some water?" It sounds a bit anticlimactic, but gods if that isn't a relief. "That sounds far easier than roses and thorn-pricks." It still meant venturing through Halo and into this strange unknown land, and likely he'd be half-mad for most of it, but with Ronin and Amalia as rational adventurers in this? It actually sounded doable.
because i can't be alone with all that's on my mind
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”I don’t feel cold at all,” Ronin murmurs back, tilting his head to rest it against Remi’s as they skate on glass, frost nipping at their noses and fingers and chafing their cheeks to a rosy blush. He almost feels like he can close his eyes here and merely drift here, relaxed in the Lullaby’s presence, and he tries to duck his head away from snapping teeth with a cheerful grin.
Humming his agreement but too joyful at having seen it in action to care, the Star slows to skate in a slow circle. Up ahead on a bank of snow, a campfire crackles merrily away, flanked by a log bench perfect for two. ”It helps that you’re not hunting us down and trying to bite chunks out of us as well,” he remarks, wrinkling his nose in memory of the blight. ”Want to sit and roast marshmallows with me?”
"No?" Remi murmurs, surprise lacing his tone. Wrapping his arms around Ronin's neck—a romantic gesture to be sure—snow fills the Lullaby's palm which is then dropped down the back of the Star's upturned collar. "And now?" He wonders, holding the (presumably) squirming huntsman close.
"I could do that if you like...to make it more sporting for you." Remi chirps from behind Ronin, holding tightly onto his husband's hand that he might pull him across the ice. Later he'll ask where Ronin learned to skate, but for now, he's far too interested in the fire and the promise of snacks.
"Do I ever." The Lullaby beams. How many lifetimes could they experience, locked away in a dream world of their own making? How many different aspects of the world were now at their fingertips? Sitting down, in Remi's hand appears a perfectly forked stick, ready and awaiting a sugary puff. "'Mellow me." He instructs, holding the stick out to Ronin and waggling his eyebrows.
because i can't be alone with all that's on my mind
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Remi’s arms move around him and Ronin is well seasoned in this trick, and he’s already trying to back away, cringing before the inevitable even happens. ”Remi, no—” His laughter is strained and he ends up squirming a rather fetching dance against his husband, nearly toppling them onto the ice as he tries to shake snow out of the back of his coat. ”No, no. I’m quite alright, thank you. Let’s keep the hunting-me-down to a minimum until I know you aren’t going to bite a chunk out of me. In a bad way.”
Grinning over his shoulder, he dutifully tugs Remi across the ice, and it’s with a flamboyant swing that he propels him up and onto the snowbank. ”I was hoping you would say that,” he murmurs, trekking up behind him and letting the blades on his feet melt into snow boots. They could stay here endlessly, and Ronin would be lying if he wasn’t tempted. Didn’t Safrin warn something about that? He can’t remember.
Ronin sits beside his husband, a paper bag of large, fluffy marshmallows appearing in his hand. ”With pleasure.” He winks, spearing two of the treats on each forked end of the stick. ”You reckon we could do this with my antlers when they grow out again?” he asks.
