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!
maybe that's enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity perhaps wisdom is realizing how small I am, and unwise
Aurelia frowned in thought at Melita's own agreement, of moving on to this next life and shedding the old ones. But Melita's step quickened and Aurelia hurried up to stay near, not wanting to risk losing the person who was helping her find her way out. And then they were out, the sun peering down upon them as it hovered over the ocean. She'd remember carefully the things Melita had told her about these tunnels. That she should not return without a good reason... or without someone who knew them well.
A deity of the sun was an interesting concept. Aurelia cast her gaze towards their own sun, thinking about that for a moment. Was it that they believed the sun was a god, or did the sun have a god? Or maybe it was a mixture of the two, a symbiotic relationship between god and sun. But the longing in Melita's words made Aurelia's expression soften in empathy, brows and hands lowering as she looked back towards the other woman, towards her red, blazing hair.
A sun god suited Melita, not this weird spirit that tormented people with lost loved ones... or told someone to murder another. But Aurelia wouldn't speak on personal choices, having made plenty of her own that didn't exactly suit her.
Aurelia's eyes flashed with surprise. "What happened? Why did he want to do that?" she asked, confused but nonetheless interested with Melita's experience.
Eating fire is your ambition to swallow the flame down
Maybe Ludo did suit her. Because there was something tempestuous and mercurial, vengeful and loathing, in her actions, in her movements, in the way she held onto grudges for a little too long. Maybe she was a heathen, a monster, a bludgeoning, disastrous thing, biding her time until reality clasped and clutched and broke. As much as she would’ve soared beneath the sun, hastened and bristled with fire, emerging with glory in her heels and the heat upon her back, it wasn’t an option here and now. Instead, she had ghosts and figments and mischief, parallels of another world where death had been so rampant that for months it was all she’d known and understood. Graves of friends, of family, of her body shielding her sibling and it not mattering in the slightest – had Aurelia even asked, Melita wasn’t certain she’d have the right answer for anything. So some days she still turned her features, her face, to the sun, and dreamed that he was there, in the midst, not destroyed, not ruined, not marred, not sacrificed, and she could recall days stretched beneath the Dragon’s Throat pillars, along the sands, immersed in the oasis.
But there they were at the entrance of Rae’s Fingers instead, pondering over the rightes and rites of deities and heralds. Fingers clutching at her staff, drumming them along its wooden surface, prospered nothing but the restless coil of her energy. Her gaze glinted, flinted, back to Aurelia, narrowing her eyes briefly, mostly in speculation, in memory, in sparks of days long gone. “It doesn’t like Ascended. The Old Gods hate them.”
to be lit up from within, vein by vein to be the sun
maybe that's enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity perhaps wisdom is realizing how small I am, and unwise
Aurelia stepped out past Melita, feet digging into the sand on the beach around them. She breathed deep, letting in that smooth ocean air. She hadn't realized how fond she'd grown of it, of that salty smell and taste, of the feeling of its cool mist along her skin. It relaxed her tension, and she let out that deep breath quietly. Her green gaze turned back toward Melita, to show she was still listening.
"'It', sorry," she murmured softly, correcting her mistake.
The information wasn't entirely new. Aurelia had heard snippets of the same rhetoric before, from others like Gideon and Sunjata. Hatred for the Voice and for her creations. Perhaps, though, it hadn't been so directly addressed. It was always glossed over, a simple fact. Normal. Aurelia, too, hated the Voice but, that was where her malice stopped in terms of Caido. She had nothing against the Ascendeds themselves. In fact, there was no in this place that she held anything against. Her being here, taken from her home, was not their fault. For what it was worth, everyone had done their best to help her make a home here so far.
"I hate the Voice," Aurelia said suddenly, turning her face towards the beckoning waves as they rolled in and then receded out again. "At first, I hated her for ripping me away from my world and just putting me here. No answers, no guidance, nothing. I had to figure it all out myself, but..." she looked at Melita through her peripheral, "the people here have done nothing but help me. I'm grateful for that. So, I don't have anything against the Ascended in spite of it all. Now that I'm fine with calling this place my home," she closed her eyes for a moment, letting go of the anger and self-hatred that reared its ugly head as those words actually left her mouth. Opening them, she stared down at the tiny hollows all across the sand, "I hate the Voice for not bringing my family here, for leaving them there in that cesspool."
Her green eyes flashed back up at Melita after a few moments' pause. "I'm guessing you don't share Ludo's hatred for the Ascended," she turned back slightly to face the other woman, wind stirring her clothes and hair as she did, "What did you do, then? What could you do, if it goes against the will of the Old Gods and their Heralds?"
Eating fire is your ambition to swallow the flame down
She stepped out into the light too, a breadth and breath of its own glory. Once a child created and contorted beneath its infernal wings, and now something else altogether; alive and whole still, persevering in the depths of heartache and demolition. Melita lowered Fangorn to the ground, where the gourd happily bumbled across the sand, and her gaze softened to glance upon the pumpkin, to be out of the reaches of the cave, amongst and amidst other memories. Only when Aurelia started speaking again did the gilded stare snap back to attention, listening to the other woman’s opinion on the deity that had brought the Outlanders here.
And she could have her hatred, her contempt, her wrath; Melita wouldn’t begrudge her that. The honeybee hadn’t been snagged from any place less treacherous – the world she craved had been long gone, and she’d merely been sent from one hellish realm to another. Her family had already been destroyed, mutilated, and gone. She’d already become a feral, wicked little thing, the blurs between compassion and wild, untamed savagery blurring, bending, blending until that was all she’d known. But it made sense that those who had something, who’d been immersed into their peace, their repose, and everything they’d ever known, would be embittered, rancorous.
So no judgment careened from the sprite, stare glinting back over the horizon, the roll of the waves, the undulation of the coast. “We survive because of the people around us, and we give help in return. She might have brought us here to try and further her agenda, but I have no intention of doing so.” Not intentionally, anyway – her arms crossing over her chest, instinctively pulling back to the thought of knives and daggers.
“I have nothing against the Ascended. It’s the Voice I don’t care for.” She thought of Nate; favored over Sunjata. She thought of the Wraith, the woman who’d strived to train her and how things had crumbled, crumpled, in the siege of Fae whims and blight masquerades. “I’m capable of making my own decisions. I don’t have to follow everything the Gods say.” Perhaps an emboldened, seditious statement – but that was Melita to the core.
to be lit up from within, vein by vein to be the sun
12-14-2020, 03:02 AM (This post was last modified: 12-14-2020, 03:04 AM by Aurelia.)
Aurelia
maybe that's enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity perhaps wisdom is realizing how small I am, and unwise
Aurelia nodded, feeling that flame of anger sizzle and lash inside of her. "Me neither," she agreed quietly, a bitter spit in her words. Even if Melita wasn't quite looking, Aurelia looked at her with a new understanding. They could agree, then. It was relieving to know there was someone else who suffered her same flavor of pain, if it could be described as such. That their animosity for the Voice was wholly shared.
Still, admiration cut through Aurelia's fuming, flaring thoughts. Melita's answer was simple enough, yet it was just the thing Aurelia needed to hear from someone far more experienced with this world. She followed the girl's honey gaze out, across the sea, to the far-off line of the horizon. And whatever lay, lost, beyond it. The rest of her burning, twisting anger was settled by the scene before them. As the sun tipped down on the water, its lasting rays danced across their features.
"I'd do what I think is right, too," she said finally, sauntering over to Melita's side and continuing to look out across the ocean, "even if it defies a god - or all of them."
Her gloved hand gently settled on Melita's shoulder, "Come on, I know you said I don't owe you anything but, we could both use a drink and some good food. It's on me tonight." She glanced over to search the other girl's gaze, expression softening into a smile.
