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!
10-09-2020, 09:01 PM (This post was last modified: 10-09-2020, 09:38 PM by Edwyn.)
Edwyn
the goal isn't to live forever
Is there anything so wonderful as the sea?
Edwyn doesn't think so, and the way he tries to capture her beauty with ink and the small palette of watercolours mirrors his thoughts on the matter. Beneath the shade of a palm tree dressed in a white button-up shirt and tan pants, the ascended sits with a notebook resting against one bent knee. He steals glances out at the sea before looking back to the paper, tilting his head this way and that, wanting every stroke and messy smear of his brush to be absolutely perfect. He's far from being the artist that others are, but his pours his soul into his work (not that he really has a soul anymore, but sometimes you can't get away from a good expression), and that, he thinks, makes all the difference.
Though he hasn't realized it, he's started to hum under his breath as he flecks the ocean on his page with sprays of white foam and seabirds that glide over the waves below.
His clothes cling to his body; a wiry, scarred thing, even more bedraggled for the seawater weighing it down.
And he doesn’t move, this man, as if the waves have crushed him into the sand, as if he’s a bit of driftwood run aground. But his fingers, wrinkled from their time in the sea, claw at the shoreline, and as he gets his knees beneath him he expels a great deal of water out of his lungs.
Coughing and retching, Jack leans his forearms into the sand and groans out something like a curse. He’s not dressed as if he’s gone for a swim, still in his boots, and if a thundercloud, black and heavy and furious, could settle over him in that moment, it fucking would.
10-09-2020, 09:34 PM (This post was last modified: 10-09-2020, 09:38 PM by Edwyn.)
Edwyn
the goal isn't to live forever
Don't get things twisted, Edwyn is absolutely the sort to rush across the sand, falling at Jack's side to help the man. He really is that sort of kindhearted idiot. He is also an ascended, which makes the distance between he and Jack a bit of an issue. Mayhap he would even have let someone else come to the captain's aid, but...well. There it is.
Don't you see? Jack is the captain, and though the writer's mind is nowhere near as criminally sharp as the captain's is, Edwyn is more than clever enough to know that assisting the captain is surely a good idea. Or perhaps more aptly, not assisting him is certainly a bad one.
So it is that the ascended is up onto his feet without a thought for his notebook or the paints spilling onto the sand. Dashing out as quickly as he can without looking like a total idiot, he does collapse at Jack's side as he'd originally envisioned, already feeling the all-too warm pulse of the sun on his back. "Not a great place for a nap, not even for you." He says in a voice that doesn't belong near this near-murder scene. So saying, he tries to grip Jack's shoulders that he might wrestle the man to his feet and hopefully, toward some shade.
Anyone could be expected to flinch at the sound and touch of a stranger on the beach after coming to in the manner that Jack just has. But the captain has a sixth sense that’s going fucking haywire in its intensity to survive, and he recognises no danger in the man’s approach. So he commits further effort into breathing and not throwing up, Jack allowing him to grip him by the shoulders and get him to his feet.
It takes a few attempts, the captain staggering more than once, but eventually he manages it, heading towards the shade with the stranger at his side. ”Better a nap than death,” he croaks, waiting until the cool comfort of the trees hits them before he collapses into the dry sand. Then Jack something all too rare for a man with his heart and mind. He pulls a knee to his chest and buries his head in his hands. ”Fuck.”
kiss you like a whiskey fire, turn around, leave your heart in a riot
There's that old saying, about wanting to be late for your own death, showing up drunk with a smile. Eloise thought that's how she'd go. She thought there'd be some glamour in it, something beautiful.
But in the end all there was were blue eyes and the sea.
It takes her in, as it does all things. The water is cold the farther down she drifts and though there won't be any time later to ponder such things, Eloise is certain that time has slowed down. It must have done, because she's had an eternity to ponder those eyes. How blue they were. How knowing. And he'll hear her thoughts to the very last, until, like her lungs, they're crushed by the weight of the ocean.
lipstick in a cigarette pack on the dash, i'm a lady like that
Edwyn's thoughts are like so many post-it notes flung into a suitcase and shaken up. Though he is intent on helping the captain, he's also capturing details about the encounter. Not because he's skeptical, but because he's a writer. It's simply how his mind works. He notes subtle bruises and the way Jack's lips are puffy from the salt. The way his eyelashes have been pressed together and the sound his vomit makes as it hits the sand.
"That..." Edwyn smiles, charmed by the brutish elegance of Jack's comment, and nods. "..is a really great point."
Knowing only a small amount about Jack (primarily that other than the captain of the Ark, he's a fairly murderous son of a bitch), nevertheless, as a writer, Edwyn is able to extrapolate a few things. Or at least, he thinks he can, based on how he'd write this scene were it in one of his stories. "A woman?" He ventures. Because isn't it always? Though Jack will be able to tease from his mind that this is nothing more than a common hunch.
A common hunch or not, the thought fires too quickly for Jack to be able to recognise as much right away, and the glare he flashes in the other man’s direction is enough to confirm that yes, the captain is quite the murderous bastard. But he softens, by degrees, shoulders hunching a bit, and turns eyes stinging from the salt out to the sucking tide. ”Aye,” he rumbles. ”She’s dead. Tried to save her, but she drowned.” And so did I.
He passes a hand over the wet scruff of his chin, then pulls in a long breath and glances up and down the beach as if surprised to see it so empty on a LongHeat afternoon. Empty but for the man beside him, who - on the basis of nothing more than the paleness of his skin - must be a neck biter. ”Who are you?”
Having no idea that his thoughts are being plucked from his mind as he thinks them (what a great idea for a character though, Edwyn would have thought had he known), he chalks Jack's glare up to ... well, him being a cantankerous bastard, of course. "I'm so sorry to hear that." Despite the fact the two men don't know each other, Edwyn sounds genuinely apologetic, to the point that it's a bit nauseating. How could anyone possibly have such a gooey centre? Especially as an ascended, who presumably only had wires and circuits and whatnot at their core?
"Ah! Apologies." The man says, his charming smile unsurprisingly reaching his eyes and contorting his features in warm cheer. "Edwyn Digby." He nearly offers his hand for Jack to shake, before thinking better of it. "And you're Captain Jack, of course."
Jack wrinkles his nose, and if Edwyn wants to put it down to leftover nausea then that’s probably for the best, because he’s currently trying to peel mental taffy off his teeth and wondering if he really makes that great a character. ”Shit, you even sound sincere,” he grumbles, passing a hand across his forehead now and taking another few deep breaths to get centred. Squinting back out into the ocean, he gazes back only at the sound of both of their names.
”Jus’ Jack is fine,” he corrects. ”What’re you doin’ out here, Ed?” Two syllables are one too many for the smuggler’s current mood, evidently. ”You a ship watcher or somethin’?” This writer believes they’re likely the trainspotters of the beach. It’s an unsettling thought.
"Well of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?" And good gods if he doesn't sound entirely genuine about that too. Even the unevenness of his teeth seems to scream sincerity somehow as he offers the captain a warm smile.
"Just Jack it is." Edwyn chuckles, though he doesn't do a good job of vocalizing Just Jack as now being the man's name. Oh well, it was a poor joke anyway. "Oh! In a way, yes. I was just sketching some of my thoughts actually..." Edwyn pulls up his notebooks, the pages bloated by watercolours and use, with all the excitement of a man who has never had his dreams dashed before. He's got a sort of glow about him that suggests his optimism is a thing which refuses to tarnish.
"I'm here to rebuild the ascended shrine that was destroyed during the monsoons. But of course, we don't have anything like this in the Grounds, so I thought..maybe I'd watch the sea for a while and see if I might learn a thing or two." Gods, he made it sound as if it really was just that simple.
”Can you really be sincere about a person you’ve never met and never will?” Jack raises his eyebrows across at the other man, as if trying to decide whether or not he’s putting on an act or if he really does exist to make his teeth hurt. His magic tells him he’s in for it, unfortunately, and so the captain lets out a long sigh and pats his pockets, before remembering his cigarettes and matches will be ruined.
Glancing sidelong at the sketchbook, Jack gets a distinct impression about this man. Enthusiastic and bumbling, the type to be walked over without ever realising he’s being someone’s doormat. He’s the type of man easy to take advantage of. He also just helped to haul his ass out of the ocean, so...
”Oh, you’re an Ascended,” he says offhand. ”An’ here I thought you were all broodin’ and dark.” And violent. ”Hate to break it to you, but I don’t reckon you’ve got a shrine here. Never heard of one anyways.”
"Why not? It seems selfish just to care about the deaths of those I'm personally acquainted with, doesn't it?" Indeed Edwyn is in for it. Especially without the burdens of certain emotions that being an ascended has removed, if anything the writer has found his capacity to care has increased, rather than diminishing as so many probably expect it to.
"I am!" Though his overly-pointed canines do seem to fit well with his smile, they are more aggressive than the average dental-pattern. But on certain days and in certain light the ascended can pass for one of the other races. It's harder here in Torchline where everyone's skin looks like molten bronze, but his writerly brain supposes if it ever came down to it, he could always just say he's very concerned about skin cancer. He can't imagine a situation where it would come down to it, for him at least, given that he's not the least bit embarrassed about being an ascended. He quite likes it.
"Oh, I can brood." So saying Edwyn offers Jack his best blue-steel face, all slightly puckered lips, hollowed cheekbones, and smouldering green-blue stare. At the mention of the lack of shrine, Edwyn gnaws on the inside of his cheeks, obviously not wanting to discount the captain's knowledge, but also being fairly sure that there is a shrine. "It's near one of the sea-entrances to...the Fingers? I think you call them. Tucked away in a little cove." Pausing to see if this stirs any sort of recognition in the captain, Edwyn smiles politely and shrugs. "I'd be happy to show it to you if you need proof. Though...I'd also probably rope you into helping me with it, if that's the case." He adds with an easy laugh, as if Jack is the type to simply offer up his assistance out of the goodness of his heart.
”Or normal,” Jack offers instead. Given that the captain rarely cares about the deaths of those he is personal acquainted with - and given that Eloise is now lost at sea forever as of five minutes ago - it’s hardly a surprise that he doesn’t particularly want to visit that box of feelings just now. So he changes the subject, subtle as a brick, and considers the Ascended brooding at him.
Jack stares, eyebrows slightly raised, as if trying to burn the image into his mind. Whether that’s because it’s effective or hilarious is up to Edwyn to decide. ”Anyway,” he drawls, carefully trying to get to his feet again, ”I’ll take your word for it. I need a drink’n some dry clothes. Fetch that notepad, I got somethin’ better you can draw. Unless you’re gonna burn up out here?”
As for the shrine, he snorts. ”Try it,” he says of roping him in. ”Then again, you did me a favour out here. I could spare an afternoon for you, I suppose.”
Edwyn doesn't decide, not bothered about what Jack thinks of him either way. Not because he's so confident in himself that it doesn't matter, but simply because he more than accepts that others can formulate their own opinions. Or at least, so the whispered-narration in his mind says.
"Have you?" Edwyn brightens immediately. "Unless what you want to show me are your tips for sunbathing, I should be alright." He'll blister if he's out too long of course, but it's late enough in the day that shadows have started to stretch long enough for him to walk comfortably beneath them.
"I am quite strong, being an ascended. Stronger than I look, anyway." True though this might be, Edwyn certainly doesn't seem the type to go about forcing his will onto the world around him, and certainly not onto captains who've apparently just lost someone. "An evening of it, more like." The ascended corrects, helping Jack up before retrieving his supplies from the sand.
