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!
Despite the chaos, the uncertainty, warring and waging upon them, Mabel was calm. In her anger. In her defiance. In her seditious spread of hands and veins and souls. Her pursuits and missions were clear, defined in stark, deep, emboldened lines, in the words she’d placed upon the paper settled on the kitchen table. Maybe it would come sooner, rather than later. Maybe it would come far into the future. There were no other alternatives. It would happen – and that was a semblance of assurance, certainty, she could leave behind, and traverse anew.
At least with the bedlam expanse, the youth was stoic and forbearing in the belief system surrounding LongNight. She’d been amongst them seventeen other times – the Natural inclinations and instincts had already worked into her bones. Once Deepfrost settled in, the world looked out their windows for the glow of the luxure, for the gilded crowns, for the antlers said to keep the monsters at bay.
And while Mabel herself would like to be a feral demon, it would’ve serve any purpose for what they would have to endure in the near future.
She’d sent a note earlier to Azrael via the Artist’s Sanctuary, presuming the young demigod would enjoy the outing, and told Aamu of where she was going, threading her way through thickets and fields, until she could come upon the wide open expanse of long, tall grasses encumbered by snowfall, by the moonlit embrace of their hours. There, with her bucket of apples, in hand, she began to sing.
Light, airy, ethereal, not figments of Mabel, save for another time, another place in childhood, where there were merry things in her life, instead of the multitudes of death, decay, and withering figments.
Aamu is no stranger to charming Luxere, but he is a stranger to the idea of charming them with the intention of using them as guards. Times had been different then, and while the darkness of LongNight had been oppressive, it had not been quite so dangerous. As an Ascended, he had not cared at all, except he enjoyed pretty things, fluffy things, and gladly gave to the Luxere what they wanted in exchange for their presence.
All of that is still true, and he can only hope trying to employ their services as beacons will not put them in harm's way. He will not hesitate to do it, but he will hope with all of his figurative heart that they will not come to harm.
When Mabel lets him know she plans on finding some of them he's more than happy to come along, a quiet shadow following her through the fields.
He's used to finding the Luxere on the slopes around Halo, not tracking them through dense thickets and over open fields where their glowing antlers do not stand out so well. He falls into his own thoughts while keeping an eye out for danger, so absorbed by everything he nearly walks into Mabel when she stops. Blinking, he steps to the side of her instead, thinking there would be a herd of the deer on the other side of her, but—no. There's just the vast, moonlit field.
Then Mabel begins to sing—ethereal and enchanting, her voice drifting across the snow, and Aamu is spellbound.
and the sky was littered with the corpses of stars
There’s a note waiting for them at the Artist’s Sanctuary. An invitation to join Mabel and Aamu in gathering Luxere for LongNight. And it’s something they’re quite excited about. They don’t recall ever seeing Luxere aside from way off in the distances of Halo. Here, however, they have no idea where to even start. But they’re excited to at least try.
So they arrive, flashing wide fanged grins and small waves to Aamu and Mabel, falling into line with them and a bag of hay at their side. They drop a bit in an attempt to lure the creatures in, their head bouncing along with the rhythm and tones of Mabel’s voice. They don’t sing, they haven’t tried to, but they’re simply content to bound around the fields covered in snow with a bag of hay in a makeshift dance to try and lure the creatures in – even if they don’t see any.
Neither of them sang, and that was all right. She could make the sound carry over the fields, ditties and strains of worlds still present, still heard. Light and mellifluous, the melody would have been cherished by her sisters, her brothers, cultivated in unison as they spread seeds through the dirt, as they rejoiced in good, grand things to come (but they never had). Moments of peace, of hope, of fluidity that hadn’t really been present in her figure, in her soul, for so long, stretched in the canvas of singsong.
She smiled as Azrael spread hay, as Aamu stood still and she handed him a few apples, placing some down on the ground, almost as if to lead the enchanted deer along a path. Towards sanctuaries and sanctums they all might desperately need, crave, in the upcoming weeks. Then she repeated the chorus, the bridge, intending to wrap it around their own heads, lend into the tune, blend their own into the surroundings.
Her eyes continued to glance across the wide-open expanse; expectant, craving the gilded glow of antlers – but nothing yet, naught but her echoes bounding off of faltered grass. No matter. They had time.
Azrael joins them, all smiles and sharp teeth and a scent he knows is there but can't discern anymore. Hay, rich, dry, to lure out the shy deer. Aamu greets the child with a smile of his own, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and as they're all standing there together—something fragile forms inside of him, made of glass, made of ice, made of hopes and sunlight and bitter, deathless ruin.
It is love, and it is grief.
It is everything he had, and then didn't have anymore. Still doesn't have he tries to tell himself, again, again, again.
Azrael, bounding around the field and spreading hay, is not his child. It doesn't matter how much they remind him of someone else, a girl three hundred years ago, her fingers braiding his hair and not knowing it would be the last time—
He hadn't known, either.
This. This, right here: it's all he wanted. All he wants. A family outing, Mabel pressing apples into his idle, empty hands as her haunting song goes ever on. His would-be heart overflows, sorrow needling through his veins, a white-hot taint of rage licking his thoughts, and, angrily, he wipes his eyes with the back of a wrist. The smear of reanimation fluids glisten in the starlight.
Neither of them is his dead niece, but in his confusion he can't help but love them as if they are. They've merged and melded in his mind, and it tears him apart: makes him want to scream, raw and ragged, bleeding edges.
Instead he merely turns away, head bowed, shoulders trembling as the fluids splatter darkly onto the snow.
and the sky was littered with the corpses of stars
Perhaps there are times as they follow Mabel and Aamu and drop pieces of hay that they offer a quiet hum of a song alongside the tones that Mabel offers. They’re not a singer by any means, but they do their best to hum and drop hay, to dance a swirling, bounding beat alongside their companions. Mabel offers Aamu apples and Azrael bounds closer in their quiet dance, aiming to grab his hand and invite him into a dance with them – drawing no attention to the tears that he hides away.
Azrael doesn’t understand, they’re simply light and unknowing of all the sorrow and sadness that accompanies him. But if they can offer a bit of light to the darkness within Aamu, they want to. Provided Aamu accepts the offer to dance with them, they reach out to grasp Mabel’s free hand too, to tug her along into the trio as they wander down the path, an easy and bright fanged smile on their face, hoping that their innocence and purity might soften the fears, worries, and sorrow that burn through their companions.
She watched as Aamu transformed; uncertain of what layers lurked beneath, eyes widening a fraction as emotions seemed to stir, overwhelm. There were too many pockets of grief and sorrow, too many granules of writhing, wrathful constituents – and she couldn’t take it. Not right now. Her hands ghosted over his, placing another apple in between, and even if she had virtually no warmth to provide, maybe that was something. Better than nothing. Better than the walls they had built around them. Better than all the ominous, forbidding voids they had coming their way.
Mabel took Azrael’s offered hand, joined in the haphazard dance, in the display of innocence. In things, save for the demigod, they’d long since lost. To have again, for tiny fragments, for minute moments, for sparse figments before the world fell apart. And so she continued her song, and wrapped her fingers around Aamu’s too, the basket of apples under her arms, a silly, precious wake shared in hazes of brethren and kin and desperate figures.
Would it entice the luxere? Would it enhance the potential for them to come?
For them to be saved?
The youth didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t know. But the melody stirred in her soul and kept its minuet throughout the folds of darkness, where they could be sirens and wolves and kings and nymphs.
They have to see, they have to know: he's a broken ship in the night, nobody's responsibility, nobody's burden, he's adrift and he's doomed and he knows this and expects no rescue. It is, after all, why he turns away, why he closes his eyes, seeing the wraith of her in his mind's darkness—
They have no obligations to him. They don't even know she exists—existed—dammit—
It's been over three hundred years since he held her, picked her up and twirled her around in the early morning light, but to him, it's just weeks. He's had to leave her behind before, in that blighted war, but he always came back, and she was always there, and then this one time,
he didn't.
He wants to fall into it; to his knees, in the snow, scream in anguish and watch it turn dark and defiled with the fluids dripping from his eyes.
He wants to give in. To admit that she's gone, that he'll never see her again, that he never came back for her even though he promised he would—
(Of course I will, little flame)
But they don't let him. They find him. Mabel presses another apple into his hand, her fingers a cool touch on his skin, and Azrael takes his other—pulls him into their bounding dance, and Aamu can't, won't, say no. Like breaking free from ice he stumbles into motion, blind and uncertain, dragged from sleep and heavy grief, apples falling into the snow as he takes Mabel's offered hand in his. He dances with them, blind to all else but their faces, their smiles, deaf to all but Mabel's ethereal song.
And slowly his own voice joins her: rough with grief, bright with starlight, as he spins and twirls with them down that snowy field.
and the sky was littered with the corpses of stars
They still don’t have much to offer, not in the means of singing. But they can at least dance, to put the bag over the side of their shoulder, to grasp onto Mabel’s hand and Aamu’s, to try and break him free from the icy prison he’d locked himself into, to try and free Mabel of the grief of losing everything (despite them not knowing this). They were all a part of their family, after all. The Ascended family that Azrael has been born into, has been born to believe is everything.
And Mabel? Mabel had been with them since they were made, Aamu a welcome newcomer they haven’t officially met before. They wish they could help alleviate the pain in the haunting melody that stirs up, they wish they could try and help ease everything else that affected their companions. But they can’t, and so they offer the only thing they can – this dance.
Their fingers tighten in their innocent attempt to soothe Aamu, while the hand within Mabel’s tugs her a fraction closer into their little circle, hay falling out of the bag they’d brought with them as they bound. It’s beautiful – haunting, but beautiful. They wish they could do so much more.
She coaxed her song from her throat like a bird, a siren swell, a haunting, poignant eave, meant to gather and lilt the glowing tides. Her eyes wandered from beast to beast, from wolf to wolf, from divine to divine, but nothing shimmered over the edges and embankments of snow. And still, she persisted, and they twirled, completely forgotten things – some on the fringes and boundaries of their mind, some persevering and adoring, some cold and callous and measuring her arches in capabilities and wishes, hopes, dreams, and ambitions. They came together – and she didn’t want them to fall apart, not yet.
She tilted her head back and laughed as they spun, permitting the echoes of the lullaby to range upwards, into the sky, along clouds of dreamy darkness. How much longer could they last? The apples fell and she didn’t care, providing, presiding, a pathway in case the deer ever yearned, ever craved, to come closer.
“I don’t think they’re coming,” she whispered, briefly breaking the strain – but still spinning, still trying to copy the measures they’d had before.
It lifts him, even as he can't stop the tears. They keep on spilling, oil-slick stains falling among the apples and hay as he lets Azrael and Mabel spin him through the snow. The night is too quiet and empty around them, but it doesn't matter to him: there is more than enough warmth and life here, in Azrael's eyes, in Mabel's song. His fingers squeeze the child's in return, silent gratitude, his own song (archaic versions of what they know now) carrying their endeavor when Mabel breaks off to laugh.
He wants to join her, to hug her, delighted beyond words at this simple display of life and lightness and joy. There has been too much darkness, too much grief, too much death and fighting (and more will come), but he sings on as he becomes more than just driftwood bobbed by their waves: there's strength in his arms as he helps tug their haphazard dance around.
Mabel's right, but it doesn't matter. He's just sorry Azrael won't get to see them now, won't get the chance to come close and perhaps even pet their fluffy necks. Slowly Aamu's song winds down to silence, but the brightness remains in his cloudy eyes. "Maybe not," he says quietly, tugging Azrael closer by the hand before trying to wrap his arm around them. "Maybe they'll find the apples and hay when we're not looking for them anymore. How about we leave a trail back to the Sanctuary, and then go to Mabel's house for some tea?"
and the sky was littered with the corpses of stars
They’re content to spin their companions around and around again and again, for however long it takes until something happens. Even when something doesn’t, Azrael still feels light, as if they’d managed to get closer with their family, to enjoy the little things here and there, to figure out the comfort that comes with having those like you around. And so they laugh, a wrinkling of their nose that follows through with it on the heels of Mabel, before the honesty reaches them with her words.
They don’t think it a big deal, at least. “That’s okay.” They say softly, flashing a wide fanged grin in the hopes of keeping the mood light, their dark gaze ringed in sapphire drifting toward Aamu with quiet excitement as he pulls them closer into a hug, a hug that’s received tightly by the young demi-god. “That sounds great!” They chime, turning their head toward Mabel, still in the hug, unable to release Aamu just yet. “Can we, Mabel?”
They could sing and sing and sing; not feral beasts, not creatures of the night, but emblems of something else. Just what those filaments were, she couldn’t explain, couldn’t know, couldn’t process – the haze of song and dance has no clarity, just the unending nature of it all.
Maybe the luxere would find the apples. The hay. Maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe there’d be no light at all, and they could only carry these moments in their hearts and minds and souls.
She dropped the last of her apples, on their makeshift trail, on the winding paths to the Sanctuary – as if it could be called that much longer. The suggestion made her head lift, her hands now empty, her heart slightly lighter, the inquiry noted. “Of course. Let’s all go.” A smile for Azrael, a smile for Aamu, a smile for moments they won’t have again for a long time. Then they could drift and drift, down into the ramparts of the farmhouse.
