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!
There's too many possible reasons to even guess, so he merely watches, waits; stillness wraps around him though he keeps on breathing. To simulate life is an old, old habit, but his stillness gives him away. There's no thrum of blood in his veins, no pulse to make his throat quiver—there's just the hush, motionlessness, as if he could wait forever.
But he doesn't need to. While his brain idles she makes up her mind, looking back up to his eyes. Behind the iris he snaps to, focusing on her, on her words, on whatever of her story he can fathom—
Evelyn. Just like her. Lithe; feral. Aamu nods, tucks the information away, safe in what's left of his old circuits.
He wonders if the rest of his life will be foggy and disjointed.
She suggests the Oasis, and the memory of cold water on warm, living skin gives rise to an involuntary shudder. Temperature, outside of Halo's extremes, doesn't bother him anymore, but he's always done his best to care for and mind the body he still inhabits. To dunk it in cold water feels quite uncharitable, after all it has done for him.
The house, though... "Do you know if there's any bathing supplies there? I'm thinking, firewood and matches, tub, buckets, some soap and ideally a small brush. Plenty of snow around to melt." His smile is wry and crooked. Towels and robes are a luxury he can do without. Age and Ascension has robbed him of most of his need for modesty (or warmth). "Warm water is better for working out the dirt," he adds after a moment, but surely she already knows that. He can't quite say why he felt the need to justify himself, only that he did.
She didn’t know, not really. The observations had been quick, efficient for the one-track minded goal. And when that hadn’t materialized, when she realized just how vacant, just how broken, just how hollowed out the farm had appeared, even more so than before, the youth flickered off into the dregs of the evening. Mabel had no explanation for it, other than some very human, very fragile, very delicate sentiments, which she kept locked up tight behind the feral regards, the disgruntled proportions, and the renewed livelihood.
Though she wasn’t making much of it, yet.
The concept of the Oasis seemed to inspire naught but refusal – she shrugged, oblivious, indifferent, to the notion of temperatures. Had she been from before, the youth would’ve frozen in the sea well before dissipating entirely – tossed out and out and out from warm embankments until the tide swept and took her into colder, chilling reaches. Her death would’ve been faster. She wouldn’t have had so much time to think. To wonder. To dream.
“There should be,” she offered, mind calculating through whatever remained of her family home. Clearly no one else had sought it as a refuge, and that worried her too (where was her sister?).
And then, she spun around on her heel, willowy, lithe, limber movements returning, the spectral expanse giving rise to the simplest arch of her brow. A challenge, perhaps, to see if he’d follow – and then her strides elongated again, winding along cobblestones on her bare feet, brushing past the crowds that once more gave her a wide berth, marking and chiseling her way through a familiar, well-known path.
And like that, their course is charted. The last pieces of his plan fall into place. He wishes it would bring with it a sense of rightness, as if it would realign his disjointed world, but it doesn't do anything except give him something to actually do instead of stare at little trees.
He's a mixture of carefully laid plans and utter, reckless wildness—he wants to know what he's doing, where he's going, what comes tomorrow, yet he loves to brave the storms and feel the winds undo his long braid, to leap off edges where he is not sure he can catch himself safely. Perhaps one is a reaction to the other.
He follows without hesitation, slipping into motion in that curious way of his: he somehow skips from one state to another without transition. He ripples in her wake, following the path she forges through crowds and houses as the last of the daylight fades and leaves the world crisp and dark.
More and more he thinks he must've been here at some point, but—
What happened to it? The rebuilt, populated quarters taper off into ruins and silence much too soon, and that dark, broken tower looms like a constant reminder of everything that is wrong. He doesn't like it. He doesn't like the twisted and parched shapes of the leafless trees, weighed down by fresh snow.
He says nothing. Grits his teeth and follows his barefoot guide, studying her prints as they go further, where no one has yet disturbed the ground.
She could’ve traversed the trail in her sleep – even though she no longer did anymore. A commitment to its denizens and distinction, of days where her family had spent long hours toiling in soil, caring for their livestock, pressing and clawing their way through the dirt. She’d witnessed her parents pray to gods that never heard them, never cared about them. She’d watched as, no matter what she and Evelyn found on their wayward hunting and gathering, her siblings fell one by one to disease, to starvation, to the concaved ribs and the jutting out angles, to the burial mounds they’d dug through the ridiculous earth. She’d pleaded, and then listened, as no amount of conversation seemed to break it to her parents, and then witnessed them follow the same damned path.
But she and her twin had been better, smarter, far more cunning. They wouldn’t have fallen apart to illness, to a lack of food. Instead, it’d been hunger to survive.
Mabel was mostly silent as she led – a siren in the snow, a wraith in the embrace of darkness. “What’s your name?,” came from her mouth on a whisper, as if anything louder would betray, would disturb, the pieces and portions of this walk. And maybe it would; otherwise she became quiet and feral again, immersed in the sacred foundations of where she’d grown up and where everything else had faded, died.
And one would be able to tell, from the farmhouse’s debilitated state. It remained still and steady against the winter winds, but was obviously hollowed and empty, save for one or two inhabitants in the past year. Barebones of a structure, with its missing windows and its worn, chipped away edges, portions of the roof’s shingles gone, a significant lean in the corners. The barn nearby was in the same state, and she seemed to pay no heed to its weakening stature as she opened the front door, listening to the creak echo across the void. She didn’t care how he felt about its existence either – only shifting her feet to make room for him to follow.
He's a ghost: pale, silent, pulled along by his guide. It is odd, how quickly the tables turn. Now she is the one whispering follow, follow, follow and he the one who heeds. The night passes them in unbroken swathes, white and pure, and it seems too quiet, somehow.
Her whispers fits right in, and he nearly doesn't catch it at first. She's just another predator lurking in the lifeless dark, a voice not yet firmly entered into his core memories. His hushed answer comes late on a white breath. "Aamu." Once more, now less. His tongue runs along the inside of his teeth. That other name pushes into his thoughts again, but he still can't place it. It was someone he was close to, though.
"And you?" For he knows only the name of the missing sister—she, who should've been in this rundown corner of the world. It is obvious she has not been here for some time, and that it is even longer since loving hands repaired these bent and bowing timbers. Aamu's hands itch for tools he had never mastered in the first place, for memories of the sun scorching his pale back as his warm hands feel their way across wood and nail. He blinks, taken aback by the unexpected reminder of his childhood.
Once less, now more.
He steps across the threshold without pause, letting his eyes adjust as he moves out of her way with grace, allowing her to shut the windswept door. He does not remark upon its desolation, and what that means for Evelyn. Why would he? Obviously she knows this, too, and part of him feels guilty for dragging her back here for something as inane as a bath.
But either Evelyn's fine somewhere else, or she's dead, and in either of those cases she can afford her sister the time of a bath. Aamu itches to explore, to map out the signs of the (considerably larger) family which once called this their home, but he is a stranger in her house. So, he waits.
If he was a ghost, then she was some eldritch abomination, meant to be tucked in between stripped boughs and haunting eaves, a thing carved out and hollow, empty, a wandering, meandering vessel. It would all come back with time, with moments not sparse and stretched out, when the sea no longer echoed in her ear drums, when the pieces finally fit once more. His name came on the wind and she didn’t know it, didn’t recognize it, for anything it might’ve been worth, considered its weight and value for an instant. Then it dissipated into her mind, to rest amongst the others. “Mabel.” No meaning intermingled there either, just a girl alive, then dead and gone, and reborn again.
She waited for something – a comment, a musing, a mulling about the state and situation of the house. Wondered if she would care, if he didn’t like it, if his shoulders shrugged, if he thought it would cave in on them at any moment. There were instances where she would’ve liked to see it burn or fall; one last monument to the tethers of her life before. But then she didn’t, because it was a shelter, and a holder of memories, of siblings who’d never been at fault for the flaws clawing at their insides.
But nothing was uttered, and the youth nodded those implications away too – gliding down the memorized halls and expecting him to follow. Some of the rooms they passed still contained their adornments from the past, neither Evelyn nor Mabel had found the need to remove the toys their brothers and sisters had left behind, the bedspreads dusty, the floors littered with fragments of yesteryears.
They wandered through the kitchen, which wouldn’t bear significance for them any longer, to the very end of the hall, which still held its old claw-footed tub, the piping and plumbing still hopefully up to standard. Her hands went for towels and clothes nestled along shelving, pausing for her own inspection – and then stopped, uncertain over what he wanted to do first. Thereafter, she glided over the hardwood floors once more, only to retrieve her sewing kit.
There's not much more to say. He likes the name, finds it fitting for her, but what he doesn't find is he way to put it into words. Besides, what does it matter? A pretty name means nothing.
So he stays silent, soon too preoccupied with watching his new surroundings. The dimness of the house doesn't bother him much, nor does its state, or Mabel's wordlessness. He follows her in much the same manner, a step behind. His footfalls are soft and his eyes are keen, peering into the rooms they pass.
It's almost as if the family disappeared overnight: most things are still in their places, just covered in a thick layer of dust. The bedcovers are matted with it, and undisturbed. Something old and familiar pricks at his heart as he watches the scattered toys. How long since they knew the touch of a child? Evoked laughter and fantasy, playing out some imaginary tale of heroism and a golden, bright future?
It's haunting, and heartbreaking. Aamu looks away.
Instead he finds himself gazing down into a tub, which looks like it could do with a bit of scrubbing itself. He traces a finger around its rim, swiping off a trail of dust, touches the taps as she pads away again. They squeak in protest and he braces, expecting a pipe to burst somewhere and shower him in icy water, but the only thing to happen is a somewhat foul jet of water spilling from the tap. How long had it been since Evelyn was here?
He lets the water work its way towards a more acceptable quality while he (gently, respectfully) rummages through shelves and cabinets for a brush and a bar of soap. When Mabel returns he's bent over the tub with his sleeves rolled up, coat folded neatly on the floor, washing the worst of the dust from its sides. He straightens up to regard her. "Do you want to go first?" he asks mildly. She looks like she needs it more, with the salt and seaweed in her hair.
She’d long since hollowed out, but there were times when she glanced around the house and remembered, recalled, bits and pieces of delight. Small, meager, and minute to be certain, but they were there, scattered around the ashes, dust, soot, and cinders, like cobwebs in her mind. An itch she couldn’t quite reach, like everything else, far and out of place, misaligned, misty, foggy, murky.
At least the water still worked – she hadn’t bothered to test it when she roamed earlier. Because that was all she’d done – wander for signs of life, and then continue on when she didn’t see them. The silence from the other Ascended said enough, and she thought about drifting once more, out into the open, out into the wild, out into the earth, where nothing bound and tied and tethered her together. A soulless void.
Her eyes went to Aamu, as he apparently cleaned clothing first, and something about the motions made her want to apologize, but she wasn’t sure what for. So her features rendered themselves back into their impassive abyss, gaze dipping down to the floor, shaking her head. She didn’t need to go first. Perhaps the seaweed would become a part of her, a visual reminder of how she’d lost, and how badly. “Do you need anything mended?” Her hands already clenched over the sewing kit, something to keep her occupied instead of the growing restlessness coiling over her rendered flesh.
He wants to get lost in the motion, swirl down the drain with the filth pooling at the bottom of the tub—dissolve, become fragments, and disappear. His fingers touch threadbare cloth, worn edges, frayed seams—
It's not that he wants to die, it's just.. so jarring, to be thrust from an all-out war, to.. this? He's used to the tension, the stress, the anxiety and the excitement, the worry and the relief, the constant, gnawing uncertainty and his own convictions. He's used to always being on the move, always expecting bad news, to have to disappear like a ghost in the night: to flee, to rescue, to search, to mourn. He licks his lips. A memory of the world flashing by beneath him surfaces, then drowns again.
He's glad for her presence, wild and untethered as it is. It chases the ghosts and questions from his mind, at least for a moment, until her head shakes and he realizes—
(fingers in his braid)
He glances down at himself, into the tub, at his pale forearms and the rolled-up white shirtsleeves. "If anything can be done for it," he says softly, picking up the coat, wringing it out where the water soaked into it too much. "It's very frayed." Brittle. Like something gently rocked by stones and gravel for three centuries. "I'll leave it outside the door?" he suggests with a mild shrug; he doesn't care if she watches as he strips. His body holds no meaning in that sense anymore.
He waits for her to stay or go, undoing his long braid with trembling fingers in the meantime. He thinks he remembers enough to know it held some significance, that he's erasing something which can never be returned, but he does it anyway, untangling snarls and pulling the strands from each other.
Then he plugs the drain, and turns on the tap again. Strips, leaving his clothes neatly outside the door (or in her hands, had she stayed), and steps into water which he as no idea what temperature it actually is. It neither freezes nor scalds him, so close enough, he guesses.
What takes the most time is his hair, working through it with deft but hesitant fingers, and when he rises again he looks like something drowned: white hair is plastered to his pale torso, a chilled, deathly sheen to his skin. Gratefully he grabs one of the dusty towels Mabel has left out, drying himself off and doing what he can for his hair, before wrapping the cloth around himself and padding out into the house to see if his host has escaped.
Silent, quiet, a living grave with the details of her death plaited, tangled, gnarled, knotted in her hair, she only waited for his permission. Something to do with her hands, something normal, something she understood, something to anchor her down into the floor. Even with his notation of the frayed ends, she bent down and took it gingerly in her fingers, gentle, unearthly, with no need for him to pick it up and place it anywhere. A nod, an understanding, even if it wasn’t clear and precise, and then she left – shutting the door behind her, leaving Aamu to his own devices, means, and requirements.
She thought about bringing a chair outside the enclosure to sit upon and talk through the wooden structure. But then that felt desperate, and Mabel would never admit to the sudden loneliness, the melancholy, flooding over her soul. Her eyes went over the ramparts, the eaves, of the house she knew and understood for her entire life, suffocating in the surrounding emptiness. Like she was down in the water again. Like she was basking on the surface with nowhere to go. Nowhere to turn.
The girl took a breath she didn’t need, and roamed forward, piecing off one of the main proportions of the hallway, and into the kitchen. She fought off her trembling hands, stiffened, stifled, the rage and wage of emotions barreling into her existence, and placed the sewing kit down, rummaging through for matching thread, a slender needle. Only thereafter did she prop herself up on a chair, head bent, the ghosts of yesteryear threatening to flicker over her. How many times had she done this? Mended socks, garments, anything with split ends and unfurling edges? With sisters gathered below her feet? With brothers running around her? With music and laughter in the air? With the weight of the unknown barreling over their shoulders?
She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, her cheeks, and found them wet. The salt touched her again, and she snarled at her own stupidity, before gently, painstakingly, mending the tears in the coat, small incisions in something that had seen too much too.
His abducted coat saved the rest of his clothes from most of the wear of centuries hiding him away, but he still washes the dust from them. Even without tears and rifts they feel fragile, too thin, broken down. Once the water clears he leaves them to hang somewhere in the cold air as he hunts for Mabel. The best way to dry them would be to wear them, but he doesn't feel like he'd much enjoy the sensation of wet cloth sticking to him.
He pads, quiet and barefoot, past the unknown rooms. He feels like an intruder.
When he finally finds her in the kitchen he almost turns back again. She's bent over her work, seemingly absorbed by it, salt and seaweed in her tangled hair. Why had she come back? For her sister? For life itself?
He feels like he brings every bad thing in the world with him: unanswered questions, memories, pain. Carefully he clears his throat to snap her from her focus, just in case she hasn't heard him already. "I'm done," he announces, which is entirely pointless: he's back, isn't he? And his skin still carries a pallid sheen (likely from him misjudging the temperature), his long, long white hair hangs unbound (and slightly tangled) across his shoulders and back, and he's only covered by the towel clinging to his narrow hips. Quietly he ghosts forward, placing one hand on the back of her chair.
"Is there anything you'd like me to mend, or get for you?" He feels like an anxious dog in some ways, desperate for her approval, her presence, and equally desperate not to let her know.
He just wants to stay. Wants her to stay. He doesn't want to be alone. Doesn't want to lose any more.
The announcement curled back over her ears, and she straightened out immediately – as if she’d been very, very lost somewhere. Gone under the current again, perhaps, to drift in and out for eternities. Into memories and webs and lines. Into weed and doldrums. She didn’t know where she wanted to be – couldn’t pick and choose, wasn’t certain, wasn’t sure. She’d come back for Evelyn, and that was all.
Without her twin, there wasn’t anything left.
Her eyes went to him, arching a brow at the towel wrapped around his hips, muffling a snort. Nothing there either – any of those teenage proclivities long since gone. Silently, she handed him the jacket, waiting to see if the mending had been rendered suitable, or if it would fall to pieces like everything else. “No,” she assured him, in the eaves and edges of restlessness, dropping down from the chair, and listlessly wandering away from the kitchen. Down the halls, traipsing closer and closer to her shared room with her twin, stopping dead in the entryway again.
When it’d been evident, clear, that Evelyn hadn’t been here earlier, she hadn’t gone any further. Now she was forced to tread into an old space, haunted perhaps, sifting through her closet, her drawers, to pull out pieces of clothing left behind from her last journey. Not sea logged. Not contorted and covered in salt. Just old pairs of workmanship quality clothing. Mabel swallowed down a lot of things in those moments, piecing them together, then taking them with her towards the bathroom.
And then staring down into the tub, releasing the levers, permitting the pipes to fill up the resin. Then her fingers began to tremble, and her arms released the clothing, dropping them to the floor; something like a sob threatened over her lungs and she couldn’t help it, hated it, detested the sudden, lonesome fear gripping over her.
He feels guilty for startling her, dismay flashing across his face before it clears again. Perhaps he should've ghosted back to the bathroom, hidden away there until she came back from wherever she had been on her own, but...
She's just returned from death to find her twin sister gone. He doesn't know what to say, how to help her—suspects he can't, anyway. Not unless he can find Evelyn. He'll just have to do what he can to keep her interested in life until she figures things out on her own.
The confusion is evident on his face (what was so funny about how he looked?) as he reaches to take the old coat from her, giving it a cursory inspection to hide what feels like the Ascended equivalent of a blush. It's not out of some sort of modesty, he just doesn't know what it was he did to elicit such a response, so he focuses on the garment instead. She's done a good job covering up the gaps and gashes ground into it by stones, but not even a master seamstress could save it for more than a few more seasons anyway. It's just too worn, too old. He gives her a small, warm smile. "Thank you."
She says she doesn't need anything and disappears. Aamu remains standing in the kitchen with a frown on his face, listening to her quiet footfalls, the occasional protesting squeak of a floorboard too used to emptiness. He's not doing anything, but turns his head to watch when she emerges again, clothing in her arms, before disappearing into the bathroom. He hears the taps turn on, pipes groaning and rattling. Then...
Nothing?
He wants to go there, ask if she's alright, if she doesn't need anything after all?
But she is not his daughter, and he does not dare to.
Instead he busies himself with mundane things: he tries to make sure the chimney's not blocked before clearing the fireplace and laying a fresh, crackling fire. When it seems he's neither about to burn the house down nor choke (well, hypothetically) them on foul smoke he disappears to retrieve his wet clothes, hanging them over the backs of chairs and drawing them closer. Licks his lips. Remembers the feeling of a heart wildly pounding when doing something he's not sure of.
He hunts through the kitchen cabinets, but finds nothing from which to make a hot drink that will actually taste something. He makes a mental note to find someone selling strong teas, conveniently skipping over the fact Mabel hasn't invited him to stay for longer.
Still. He's at an impasse again, needs something else to do—
He wanders back to the door. Scans for shelves and cabinets, before carefully searching around for boots. He would go look in the room Mabel had gone to previously, but that would be to overstep his boundaries too much. He hopes she won't mind even this smaller transgression. Finally, he finds what he's looking for.
With his own worn boots in one hand a pair of Mabel-sized in the other (why'd you think he looked at her tracks in the snow?) he returns to the kitchen to place them down, disappearing again to find some fat and a couple of clean rags. He leaves the fat where the fire's heat will make it soft and pliable and draws a little water to wet one of the rags before settling down on the chair Mabel had previously occupied, intending to clean both pairs of boots (one worn, one dusty), maybe repair any frayed seams, and work the fat into the starved leather.
Maybe of some small, infantile things in her youth. The customary notes of darkness, before she’d learn what it meant to see within them. Of starvation, that empty, raw, gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach, before she and her sister took matters into their own hands. Of her family falling apart, no matter how much they protested, trying, striving, to reason with parents whose pride held more bite than anything else.
But this gripping, clawing, irrational feeling snuck up in her throat and choked her down, down, down, until she was a small object beside the tub, hands clenching the rim until her knuckles were white. She could hear the water splashing over the resin, replenishing what had been lost, knowing she’d have to rise up before it all overflowed. Before it came back to receive her, take her, toss her out into the brink of nothing – and then that was all she’d be again. Little lost fool, waiting for the day her body gave out.
She trembled, and it was pathetic, loathsome, to be terrified of her own bathwater, struggling, striving to not knock her knees into one another, to rise off the floor. It’s not the ocean, she told herself. It’s not going to drown me. And all of that sounded rational in her head, but she couldn’t do it.
This was why the seaweed had stayed, tangled in her hair. This was why the salt had clung to her frame. This was why she’d gone no further.
Mabel reached up and turned the knobs off. A breath, more out of habit than necessity, flickered through those lungs that had once been consumed and suffocated by the sea. Then she retreated, backing away, away, away, and nothing had changed. Still in the same stifling garments. Still in the same garb.
She could hear him somewhere in the midst of that great god damned empty house, and she couldn’t go any further, sinking into the hallway again, curled and coiled, knotted and gnarled, hands drawn around her frame, head bowed over her knees.
