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!
"So don't stop." Remi implores, tugging Ronin back for one more kiss, and then another, and another. Each time he thinks that yes, they should and can go back to marshmallows and campfires the gravity of the Star is simply too much and he plummets again. Cheeks warm from the thrill of the fire and the dazzle of his husband's lips, at last Remi does manage to pull back enough to offer up a shaky and only partially apologetic smile.
"Soon when you leave, I'll come with you." The Lullaby says with a soft shrug, trying to ignore the slow tick of time here and how it bends his expectations of reality.
"I want to make..." Humming thoughtfully, suddenly mischief seems to fill up Remi's gaze. Standing suddenly he reaches out for Ronin's hands that he might drag the huntsman away from the fire and towards a perfectly undisturbed plot of snow. Spreading his arms and letting himself fall back with a gentle woooomph, he begins to splay his arms and legs the way one might do to make a snow angel. Only instead of arc-patterns, wings appear in the snow as if an angel had fallen down directly from the sky and landed there. Or a partially shifted manticore.
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...!” Is it a complaint, or a plea for more? Ronin doesn’t even know any more. What he does know is that apparently in a dream the flushes of pleasure that ripple through him at his husband’s touch are tenfold, and his hands are trying to sneak inside the other man’s coat even as Remi finally stops his teasing. ”Yes,” he agrees, breathless and flushed and smiling. ”Yes, soon you will come with me. And I might never let you go again.”
But for now, in exchange for finding what Remi wants to do in this dream? Fine. He follows after the Lullaby, his smile filled with boyish mischief as he watches the other man flump to the ground and make a magnificent sort-of-snow angel. ”You are so perfect,” he informs him, flopping down as well to fan his arms and legs out in an arc, though in Ronin’s indentation, there is - of course - a gigantic, phallic representation instead. ”Ta daaa!”
"I imagine that might make your spars with Sunjata quite strange." The Lullaby snarls happily against Ronin's lips. Would Ronin be a better or worse fighter, to have Remi constantly at his side?
"I thought you were going to say predictable." Remi mutters from his place in the snow, turning his head to watch Ronin make similar movements in the snow. Rather than wings, there is...well. A penis. Shaking his head and clucking his displeasure under his tongue, Remi reaches over and adds two small marks on the tip of the penis.
"I know they're still small, but you can't forget your antlers." Because antlers go on the head, get it? Remi's shit-eating smile very much suggests that he does.
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.
”Strange? Or better.” Ronin grins, though is smile fades by degrees as he remembers something. ”Sunjata is sick, too,” he says slowly. ”I think I... I think I might have dreamed with him, too. It was a nightmare. He was this boy, on a bridge. His father pushed him into the river to drown...” Ronin wrinkles his nose at the memories.
Glancing back across at Remi, the Star lets a grin creep across his face. ”Sir, you are many, many things. But not predictable. Or at least, only predictable when it comes to putting snow down my collar or ice cubes in my pants.” He tosses a snowball at Remi for his trouble, gasping at the addition of two tiny antlers to his majestic penis-angel.
”I hope you realise that once it’s LeafChange and I have a full rack, I am never putting them away.”
"I guess I could act as your shield...that way you might not come home as banged up. Or better still, I could finally be the patient in our doctor-patient scenario." Remi suggests with a mischievous growl, already imagining the look on Sunjata's face should the two of them arrive, professing not to be able to take their hands off one another. Quickly the expressed slipped away to hear that Ronin had entered the Flood's dreams. It wasn't jealousy that threatened to take over...but something closer to a hybrid of sadness and in the face of some new bit of information and naivety. Remi had thought that dream-sharing was...something unique to them. A bond allowed by their love, perhaps. To hear that the Star could dream with others tainted this somehow. Or so Remi's gut suggested. That didn't mean he had to listen to it. "Was it a nightmare? I mean, of course it was, but was it based on the truth, do you think? Sunjata has only ever had awful things to say about his father..?"
Pawing the snowball out of the air with a hand suddenly gloved with thick mittens, the alchemist gives the huntsman a dry scowl for his wordplay. "It is a little known fact about me Ronin, that normally racks are not the sort of features I go in for." Grinning widely and sidling up to his husband that he might grab Ronin's collar and drag him close, Remi smiles boyishly. "But for you? I'll give it a go."
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.
”You would make quite a fetching shield,” Ronin informs his husband with a grin, leaning up on is elbows to gaze across at him in the snow. It’s cold, but not uncomfortably so - yet another perk of dreamworld. There’s a definite crooked slant to his smile at the suggestion that he can finally be the one to play doctor, though the Star can’t help but chuckle. ”I’ll have you know that you’ve been my patient for the past few days, and you’re a bloody menace,” he tells the other man.
Humming thoughtfully at Remi’s question, it pains Ronin to admit it, but he think the alchemist might be right. ”In the dream he got his foot stuck. It cut up his leg, and he started to drown,” he says slowly. ”Jata has a scar where it would have happened, so... maybe it’s more real than I’ve been giving it credit.”
A thoroughly unpleasant thought, and he’s happy to fall into the distraction that Remi provides. Dragged closer, his arms work their way around his waist, his breath caught in the whisper of distance between them. ”I appreciate that,” he rumbles. ”I promise you won’t be disappointed.” Then - almost inevitably, really - Ronin is kissing the Lullaby again, capitalising on the sweetness of the moment and in having Remi in his right mind to enjoy it.
"Maybe that says more about your doctoring skills. Or, it just proves my point: I need more practice as the patient." Remi argues, ignoring the sting of guilt he feels hearing what a menace he's been. He doesn't remember anything of his waking hours. Not the way he tears himself from sleep, not how he chews on his wrist restraints until his skin is raw, nor the endless threats he offers the headboard and the mirror for their scheming ways.
"Did he remember any of it, when you woke up?" The alchemist wonders, thinking that perhaps Ronin's dream-infiltration might serve as a useful coping mechanism. Unless perhaps it was better for the friendship between the two men, for Sunjata not to know what personal lines had been crossed?
"I do remember being particularly...entranced by them last year." More precisely it had been the flighty heart beating within a prey-animals body that had caught his attention, and even now the memory makes something uncoil inside of his belly. Ronin's lips against his own don't necessarily help with the heat, though it does remind the Lullaby's mind that this luxere at least, is not for eating. Not that kind, anyway. "I'm going to have frostbite soon if you keep this up." Remi whispers wickedly, idly wondering if Ronin has ever had to clean him up at all in the real world after moments like this.
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.
”Listen, when I can have you awake and lucid again, you’ll have so much practice as the patient that you’ll be begging to play doctor,” Ronin says, grinning and letting his fingers tighten playfully in the back of Remi’s curls. Only talk of their dreams makes him take pause, and even then it’s only for a second. ”I think he did. Parts of it anyway. He was delirious though, so it wasn’t really the best time to ask him about it.”
Dragging his husband closer still, he lets his free hand play along Remi’s lower back, sneaking into his coat so he can at least pretend to feel the warmth of the other man’s skin against his fingers. ”Frostbite? I will have to take this seriously, then, and make sure you don’t get cold.” He grins; if he has had to clean him up, it certainly isn’t something he’s liable to complain about, not when it’s the only intimacy he can get right now.
Snarling cheerfully in response to the pressure against his curls, Remi lets his expression slide into something more appropriate as his thoughts turn to a wounded boy-Sunjata. "It's good that you could be there for him. Both in his dreams and when he was awake." Smirking slightly, Remi's smile grows crooked again. "I can't imagine he's a much better patient than I am, if we're both the same sort of sick."
Though he could have changed the scenery any time he liked to something more accepting of the clothesless-state he wanted to be in, he didn't. He liked the cool pine-scented breeze that floated to them over the frozen lake as much as he did the crackling fire with its pops of sap. "The second I drink this healing water of yours, you're in trouble." The alchemist whispers menacingly, his back arching away from Ronin's wandering fingers as if inviting some sort of pursuit. "So very much trouble." He adds through slightly clenched teeth.
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 offers a similarly lopsided smile back to Remi, though his fingers only loosen perhaps a fraction in the other man’s curls. Enough for the Star to shift and pull Remi astride him, anyway. ”Mm. If nothing else, I could give him a chance to get some rest without nightmares. I prefer your dreams, though. And you are both awful patients.” His laughter rumbles up in his chest, fingers pressing further against the Lullaby’s lower back, happily giving chase.
Arching off the snow ever so slightly, Ronin tries to tilt his hips enough to topple Remi so he’s properly sprawled over him, leaning up to kiss the side of his neck. ”You promise?” he purrs. ”I love being in trouble with you. You’re always a very fair and level-headed judge.” Ronin’s filthy chuckle absolutely suggests otherwise, but there’s a first time for everything, right?
The Lullaby luxuriates in the feeling of his legs around Ronin's waist. His husband smells of pine and woodsmoke, and though in their lives together Ronin has never once been the woodsy mountain-man that he appears as now, it fits him like a glove. One which Remi both wants to slip off as much as he wants to fold himself inside of. "I wonder if there's a place like this in Caido." It wouldn't be found in Halo, ice-like wasteland that it was. Not that Remi had ever really given it a fair appraisal, but he still didn't think this sort of quiet beauty could be found there. Not enough Ursurs.
Lost in thought of axes and Ronin wearing plaid, Remi is toppled quite easily, pitched forward with a helpless laugh. "Gods if that isn't the truth." He smugly agrees as he shifts his knees onto either side of the hunter's hips that he might have a bit of control as he lowers himself down to steal a kiss from the Star's lips. "I think I'm done, Ronin." He whispers, tongue sliding along the huntsman's bottom lip. "Done being anything but yours."
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.
”Mm, closest place I can think of is the Greatwood in DeepFrost,” Ronin says softly, trying and failing to hide the way his breath stutters in his chest at the feel of Remi wrapped snugly around him. His hands, of course, are already starting to wander, sliding up the other man’s thighs and beneath his coat again, so he can squeeze a generous handful of his ass. Honestly, he’s not interested in the chill or the peace of the world around him - he’s entirely focused on his husband, scarred and handsome and blanketed in a backdrop of stars.
Moaning appreciatively into the kiss, Ronin lets his eyes slip shut so that he can listen more closely to the words the Lullaby whispers. A smile curls across his lips, Ronin humming out his agreement. ”What does that entail?” he asks. ”You want a cabin in the woods? A houseboat on a lake? Just to run from Torchline and never look back? Say the word and I’ll make it happen for you. That’s what being mine means.”
"Does the Stonesong freeze?" Remi wonders, though he doesn't really. He doesn't care at all, not with Ronin's wandering hands and his impossibly blue eyes so close. Torn between wanting all of this to be real and being distracted by the closeness of the Star, the Lullaby just shakes his head slightly, entranced by the dark flutter of his husband's eyelashes and the colour of his cheeks.
Staring down at Ronin as if meaning to memorize every contour of his expression, Remi just smiles for a moment. "Do I have to decide?" It all sounds amazing. "Maybe we just flit about. Or who knows, perhaps Stormbreak will be worth staying in." They'd not heard much about it, other than that they were softly-obligated to go at some point. "But I think I am done being the governor...I don't have it in me, anymore." Whether or not he ever did was up for question as well. What had he truly done, other than enlisting Safrin and the town to build some canals? He hadn't even really seen them used for much. With a weary sort of sigh Remi brushes his nose against Ronin's before placing a soft kiss on the end of it.
'After the whole adventure into the jungle...I sort of think I might like to do more of that."
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 runs too fast for it to freeze, I think,” Ronin says of the river, though similarly to his husband, he’s not all that interested. They are close enough that, dream or no dream, the Star is consumed by Remi, his hands gliding down the backs of his thighs, tempted to press him closer still. He resists though, however difficult it might be, mainly because what the other man has to say next feels important. Grinning, Ronin tilts his head, considering his point about Stormbreak. ”Only one way to find out, I suppose,” he whispers.
He’s expecting him to say as much about being Governor; they have spoken about it previously, and things are rapidly becoming more complicated. ”More exploring? Or more being chewed on by tigers?” he asks, leaning up to steal a gentle kiss from his lips. ”Then you are done being governor. Who will you put in charge?”
