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... yeah. Basically, I have no superpowers right now." Ronin finishes his explanation by nuzzling deeply into the scarf wound around his face, burying his hands in his pockets. A light snow falls around them as they stroll through the Celestine at early morning - one of the only times, he figures, that he and Tobi will not be called to various other issues. He hasn't minced words, appreciating that the doctor would prefer candidness, but he has chosen an area away from the clinic specifically so he can delay the time before he's poked at and prodded.
Besides, he likes the Celestine. Explanation done, Ronin removes one of his hands from his pockets and leans down to scoop some snow from the path, tossing it playfully at Tobi after he's formed it into a snowball. "Do you like Deepfrost?"
lights will guide you home, & ignite your bones & i will try to fix you
"I know I should feel badly for you, or...horrified, but it is a bit funny." If only because Ronin was...well, godly. Now that he wasn't, it was rather amusing to think of him as just a regular man. Obviously Tobi is quite keen to see if there are any medical ramifications of this change (mortality aside), but for now she accepts the delay, despite exercise and the cold being very much out of her wheelhouse.
Dressed in a long gray woolen jacket with a pale scarf around her neck, Tobi's gloved hands can't get out of her pockets quick enough as a snow ball is tossed her way. However instead of flinching away, the doctor moves to catch it with her mouth. This canine instinct does not work with her current mouth, and Tobi is left with a mouth of snow and bright red cheeks. "Hey!" She scolds playfully as she uses the sleeve of her coat to remove the snow which is melting on her lips. "Now that was just mean." But her laughter is bright as she shoves her hip against Ronin as payback.
"Not especially. I can't say I'm particularly well suited for the snow, at least not like this." She shrugs, falling back into step with the Star as they wander deeper into the Celestine. "What about you?"
Ronin wants to tell her that it is not funny and that he's not impressed (and that maybe she's actually right about it all, but he's not in the mood to admit it) only for the good doctor to try to catch his snowball. With her mouth. Then the Star is laughing far too much to either agree or disagree, and he's had to pause in reaching for another snowball to catch his breath. of course this is when Tobi decides to nudge him with her hip, and the overbalancing causes him to trip and fall right into the snow.
"Oi!" He chuckles up at her, clambering back to his feet and dusting himself off. "You seem perfectly capable of handling yourself in the snow right now," he points out with a good-natured bump against her shoulder, falling into step with her once more. "It isn't my favourite season. I think I was much better at coping with it before I went to Torchline. Once you get used to wearing hardly anything all the time, it's difficult to go back."
lights will guide you home, & ignite your bones & i will try to fix you
Do not harm extends only so far, as evidenced by the doctor's grin of satisfaction as Ronin finds himself in the snow. "You'd better be more careful Ronin. It's quite slippery." Tobi recommends as she reaches out a hand to help him stand as if she wasn't the cause of his fall.
"Speak for yourself." Tobi says with a bit of a snort, shaking her head. "Sera showed me some of the outfits she had for the beach and...I just..." Hissing out a breath between her teeth, the doctor just grins and shrugs. "Sera is stunning of course. I just don't know that I could get used to always showing that much skin. Where would I put all my things?" To demonstrate her point, Tobi's mittened hands pull out of her pockets holding a number of items, including a stethoscope, pen, notepad, carrot, small piece of candy, and a thermometer.
"Oh. That's new." Nodding her nose toward one of the cages, Tobi wanders over toward an enclosure that boasts cliff ranges and mountains covered with snow. Whether it's all an illusion or if that much actually exists, Tobi has no idea. "There!" Having been looking for whatever creature the enclosure was meant to contain, the doctor spies a flash of purple against the white snow.
"You know, you are quite right," Ronin says of how slippery it appears to be. "We had better hold onto each other. You know, in case one of us falls again." Or to pull each other down accidentally on purpose goes unsaid, the Star smiling down at their footprints in the freshly falling snow. He glances up as she speaks about Torchline and Sera and all the skin on show - given that Ronin has seen all that skin and more, he feels it better not to comment.
But he does raise his eyebrows to see all of the items that appear from Tobi's pockets. "What th-- why the carrot?" Obviously, the rest of it makes so much sense - the vegetable is the thing that stands out. Go you, Ronin. His probing line of questioning is (perhaps luckily) cut short at the sight of craggy cliffsides and snow-peaked mountains, and Ronin draws up next to Tobi to frown out into the enclosure.
"There?" he echoes, before squinting closer, only for his eyes to widen. "Oh, there," he repeats, straightening up for a better look. "A dragon... a big one..." Having raised Sugar, the reptiles are perhaps more common to Ronin than most, but the sight of such a magnificent predator has him humbled and smiling, resisting the urge to clamber into the enclosure (because he can, y'know, die). "I wonder why it's here."
02-06-2021, 10:44 PM (This post was last modified: 02-06-2021, 10:44 PM by October.)
lights will guide you home, & ignite your bones & i will try to fix you
"Powerless, and yet still so chivalrous." Tobi exclaims, though she makes no attempt to reach out for Ronin, knowing exactly the sort of trickery to expect from him.
"Loads of reasons." The doctor says with a sunny smile. And actually, there are lots of reasons. One just happens to be that as an equine, she quite likes them, and as a canine, she likes the cromch of it.
"Mmmhm." Glancing over her shoulder where Ronin has stood, appreciating that his presence cuts some of the wind and falling snow from brushing against her. "I don't know. I don't see—" Trailing off, Tobi looks around for Lena as if the caretaker might suddenly appear. The pair appear to be quite alone though, and so Tobi just shrugs her shoulders. "Injured, is my guess." It was why most of them were there, after all.
Having taken notice of the pair, the purple dragon disappears, only to suddenly reappear close. Very close. Not so large as other dragons, the Purple stared at Star and Doctor with hooded golden eyes. Her tails were gold as well and curled around a rock formation on which she sat, not more than 10 meters away.
"So chivalrous," Ronin agrees with a wise nod, though in reality with the arrival of the dragon, the Star's focus is quickly being stolen. He draws close to Tobi so they might stand abreast with each other at the enclosure, and he offers her a boyish sort of grin that tells that he's never been so close to such a creature. It's times like this when he can appreciate Stormbreak for all it might hold, for all it might teach those who live there.
"Injured," he echoes. "Would that I still had my abilities - I would have tried to do something for it." Still, for all that Ronin is and all that he is used to be capable of, he still jumps as Purple appears so close, his hand catching Tobi's upper arm, as if to guide her behind him if necessary.
"She's beautiful, isn't she?" he murmurs, wary but still interested, tilting his head at the majestic reptile. "I wonder what Sugar would think."
lights will guide you home, & ignite your bones & i will try to fix you
"Frey and Safrin will care for it." Tobi muses, her lips twitching sympathetically for his loss, as she gazes up at him. Though Ronin, accomplished at...everything jumps, the doctor does not. Laughing as the Star protectively reaches out for her, Tobi pats his fingers on her shoulder as she grins up at him. "Nothing can escape these enclosures." She tells him in a reassuring voice, despite her utterly amused grin.
'She is.' The doctor agrees. "Well, from what I've seen of her, she's likely to be quite jealous. She'll smell her on you when you get home and I expect you'll have some explaining to do."
As if to put Tobi's earlier statement to the test, the purple dragon disappears again, this time reappearing directly in front of the two. Her hot breath moves Ronin's dark hair, and her earthy and almost metallic scent is quite clear. "I can never quite remember...I think purple dragons either...steal items, or ... teleport?" Finn would know.
"You say that, but when there's nothing between you and the thing in the enclosure, it makes you a bit nervous," Ronin manages with a quiet laugh, though as she pats his fingers, he releases her. Still a newcomer in so many ways to this city and all it has to show him, it's hardly a surprise that Ronin - a seasoned soldier - expects threat at every turn. But there is none to be found here, it seems, and he can't stop his smile as the dragon's breath tousles his hair.
"Hopefully it'll be balanced out by the smell of you. Sugar likes you. She might think this is your dragon - though in truth I would be hard-pressed for anyone to claim ownership over something like her." His smile is softer now, and he doesn't take the opportunity for granted, to look upon a creature like this in such detail. "I want to say they can teleport, what with all the teleporting," he remarks, nudging Tobi a little more before he realises what she's said.
lights will guide you home, & ignite your bones & i will try to fix you
"And yet...here I am. Not even a bit nervous." Tobi chuckles, bumping Ronin with her shoulder as if to tell him that it's alright, she won't tell anyone how afraid he was.
'Ahh, well tell her I like her too.' Beaming at the thought, especially with dragons being such fickle creatures, Tobi's smile grows crooked as she shakes her head. "Mine? Hardly. Attuned, remember?" She isn't terribly surprised he's forgotten, despite having seen her shifted more than once. Almost everyone in Stormbreak was an Accepted, so it was easy to forget that there were a lingering few attuned roaming about.
"Oh, look who's so clever." Scrunching up her nose and playfully glaring up at him, Tobi turns back to the enclosure realizing that he's quite right. "Mhmm. From what I remember there are...well, the black ones are the meanest I think. Their breath is so hot it just melts everything. There's..white, and green, and blue..." Her shoulders shrug. "You usually only find the coloured ones in the Draig Cordillera, but there isn't much information on them since..well. It's so deadly."
"And yet here you are. Walking through the Celestine for the hundredth billionth time, knowing full well what to expect." Ronin sniffs haughtily behind his scarf, though the twinkle in his eyes as she nudges his shoulder tells that he takes absolutely no offence at being called nervous - and he definitely appreciates her willingness to keep it to herself. "I'll let her know," he assures her, before understanding dawns and he nods to Tobi apologetically. "Of course. Well, if you ever need a dragon to keep your office cool, you know I have one available."
Ronin straightens up, preening under the compliment no matter how sarcastic his companion might be, and he watches the dragon within the enclosure with rapt curiosity. He's listening like a kid being told an impressive fairytale as Tobi walks him through the different types of dragons, blinking only when she mentions the Cordillera. "Deadly, huh. Maybe someone should go up there and research one day. Y'know, when the impending war is over, and all that."
lights will guide you home, & ignite your bones & i will try to fix you
"I will never take you up on that, but I appreciate it just the same." Tobi, who was almost always bundled up and had little fat to her bones, was almost always colder than she'd like to be. Much as she liked Sugar, having her around constantly would require more gloves and scarves than Sera probably even owned.
Snorting, her indignation puffing away from her nostrils in a white cloud, Tobi turns incredulous eyes up toward the Star. "And all that." She agrees with a roll of her eyes. "Well, I nominate you. Once you have your mojo back of course. Wouldn't want you to come back in more pieces than I can put back together." Nudging him, Tobi reaches into her pocket and pulls the carrot out. Reaching it forward, the air shimmers slightly where the carrot breaches the magical veil of the enclosure. Instantly, the purple dragon is against the invisible wall, and in the blink of an eye, both it and the carrot are gone.
"Suit yourself," Ronin says in a sing-song voice, smiling to her and glancing back at her only fleetingly, given that the dragon is still monopolising much of his attention. He scoffs and pretends to stumble dramatically as he's nudged, shrugging his shoulders. "Hey, maybe I will. Once I've got my mojo back, of course," he agrees, making it sound easy (even though it's likely the most difficult thing he will ever do).
Watching curiously as she reaches the carrot through a barrier that is definitely there - though why Tobi still puts her hand through it is beyond him - Ronin is startled yet again by the disappearance of vegetable and dragon. "Oh," he says, somewhat lamely. "Well. That... yes. Alright then." Chuckling, he turns to offer his arm back to the doctor. "Shall we, then? Before we get accosted by more dragons or snowballs?"
lights will guide you home, & ignite your bones & i will try to fix you
So, Tobi does have a fairly level head on her shoulders, but damnit if this knight-in-shining-armour-turned-playful-idiot isn't precisely the sort of thing that makes her stomach flutter. As he staggers back as if she really were strong enough for it, she has to bite the inside of her lip and turn away to keep her smile from betraying her.
"Teleporting theory confirmed." Tobi says with a smile at the empty-looking enclosure, before her eyes dip down to his offered arm. Don't, her mind warns her as she slips a mittened-hand through the opening he's created. "Probably a good idea. No dragons or snowballs until your mojo is back."
Snow softly begins to fall as they wander away from the dragon enclosure. It's the sort of snow that muffles the world and makes everything feel still and small. "Did you finish up with your petals? That thing for Safrin?"
