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!
A dream. Hers, not his. And invitation that doesn't leave the option for refusal.
They are no in the marble and gold bathhouse where last they met in this place, but on the coast of somewhere beautiful. It's dusk, the sky a warm purple the cover of bruises left by lovebites on pale skin.
Safrin sits with her toes in the sand staring out upon the sea. The gown she wears billows back from her body, carried by a warm breeze that smells of lavender and the warmth of midnight. This is when she appears the most mortal, in times like this. Where she's tangible and touchable, where her hair is sea-tousled and her lips nude. Where her toes wiggle in the sands and she's left footprints for Ronin to follow, that he might join her on this isolated stretch of life.
Ronin hasn't dreamed since Sunjata's death, and it's something he realises only now, as his bare feet cover Safrin's footprints on his way to the goddess. His pants are folded to the knee and his loose white shirt is open, baring scars, tattoos and sunburn from his recent work under the Torchline sun.
He doesn't want to look up, and yet he's heedless to stop himself; he sees her as a mark of beauty on the coast, the Star wending his way up towards her. "You look radiant," he murmurs, and he means it as he moves to sit in the sand beside her.
Next to each other it seems dazzlingly impossible, that this is the goddess capable of such cruelty and such love, and yet it's nonetheless true. "Are you cold?" He's already shrugging out of his shirt, offering it out for her to drape it around her shoulders.
"And you look as handsome as the first day I saw you." She replies, gazing up at him as he moves to sit beside her.
Cold? Of course she isn't. Rather than reply, she merely smiles radiantly at him, as if humbled by his chivalry. Unlike how defiant she'd been before Vi, storming off to do as she was told, she expects no less than this act of unnecessary devotion from Ronin. But she's quite happy to accept it. 'Still warm.' She says with a warm sigh, wrapping the white cloth around her bare shoulders.
"If we lose against the ascended...this past week...it will be your life. Powerless. Apart from me. Helpless to stop the suffering of those you love." Looking over her shoulder at him, her eyes look impossibly dark and sad, the way a fawn's might before slaughter. "When the war begins, I will ask you to do things you might not understand. Things you might not want to do. This was just a taste of what might happen should you defy me."
This is your fault Ronin.
This was a lesson I had to teach you.
This hurt me, more than it hurt you.
"Please," She says softly, reaching out to cup his cheek and turn his face properly towards her. "Please don't ever make me do this to you again."
"No need to flatter me." Ronin's smile is flat at best, though he appreciates her words nonetheless. And as she glances over her shoulder at him, her eyes a dark, warm pool worthy of drowning in, he's too battered and bruised to resist. His heart is raw, he has nothing - and here is Safrin, reaching to touch a hand to his cheek. Ronin closes stinging eyes, leaning into her caress, letting her message sink into his skin.
"I won't," he says, his tone reverent, and when he's sure he can meet her gaze, he opens his eyes again. "I promise." It's a whispered thing, but no less sincere from the tremor in his voice. "I have missed you. Missed walking in your light, under your stars. I won't defy you again." And I have nothing now, anyway.
"My poor Star." She coos. Her free hand tangles in his hair, pulling him to her that she might drape her arms around him. " I have missed you more than you know. I love you Ronin, and for you, I will always be found." If her words are reminiscent of Remi's recent letters...what of it?
Pressing her lips against his head, Ronin will feel power swell in his belly anew. Flooding his veins with the cosmic syrup from which Safrin has granted him his abilities, he will be restored. Waves caress the goddess's toes as the stars sparkle over head. Bright, for the darkness of the cosmos.
"Perhaps it is time for you to have a light of your own. Not your dazzle, but...a proper light. For when the world grows dark and you would ignite it with your brilliance."
It's definitely a moment of weakness that has Ronin folding so easily into Safrin's arms. But gods if he doesn't need her right now, lost as he is in what he's come to realise is grief over being so foolish as to walk away from his Lullaby. She placed him as a light in her skies, and then brought him to be a light back in Caido. And so it's to her guidance that he turns, to her warmth and caresses, his head tilting to rest against the crook of her neck.
"I love you too, and I'm sorry. Thank you," he whispers, unable to say how much he needed to hear her say those words. But Safrin always knows the right things to say - she always has. A shudder runs through him as power kindles anew in his bones, and it feels like pieces of him have been put back together in all the right places. Relaxing into her hold, his brows furrow as Safrin continues.
"A light of my own...?" he echoes; already he's dazzling the beach with his radiance, a fractured sort of light that betrays his wounded heart. But it's a dazzle nonetheless.
His words warm her more than any shirt could, but Safrin doesn't melt into his affections nor preen beneath his affirmations. Now is the time to stitch him up, binding him to her with his sutures.
"Mmhmmm." She says calming, her fingers in his hair stroking out relaxing patterns. Somewhere across the sea, a melody is playing, and it drifts in tangled refrains towards them on a warm breeze. "A light of your own. And why not?"
Sitting up, she'll shrug Ronin gently off of her that she might cup his jaw with both of her hands. With eyes as deep as the span of a thousand lightyears, and a beauty so intense as to be painful, Safrin lets her head tilt slightly to the side as she offers him a girlish smile. "You might have once fallen. Might think of yourself as dark. But you will always be the brightest light, to me."
Mended and soothed, Ronin doesn't even have the sense to return the affections lavished upon him. He merely sits and takes it all in, lets it knit together the parts of him that have been screaming themselves raw. Easily manipulated by Safrin (both physically and psychologically tonight, as the case may be), he sits back to gaze into her eyes. Lost in the span of the cosmos - happily so - his fingers come up to stroke across the back of one of her hands.
With the stars reflected in his eyes by virtue of gazing into Safrin's, Ronin lets out a trembling sort of sigh. "Then I'll have to make sure to shine for you wherever I go," he mumbles, trying for a smile that fails to be charming but settles on tired and intensely relieved. "I tried, in Stormbreak. To leave you tributes. I didn't get far before I ended up back in Torchline," he apologises.
"I would like that." Safrin agrees, and though her lips are mere inches from him, all she does is smile. As he mentions his tributes in Stormbreak, the deity nods. Her thumbs stroke the corners of his mouth as her eyes sparkle with happy remembrance.
"I saw." She acknowledges. "And I heard the things you said about me." Sighing softly, the goddess leans forward as if to kiss her Star, but instead merely uses the momentum to rise off of the sand. With her hands still on Ronin's cheeks, she tugs him softly up with her.
'Do you trust me, Ronin?' She asks, suddenly seeming smaller than she was moments ago. Small enough that her head might only come up to his lips or his nose. 'Do you believe me when I tell you that I only want the best for you?'
He'd like it too, he realises, rising up on the sand at the merest pulse of Safrin's fingers. Caught in her wake, he finds himself relaxing into her touch even further. His arms want to slip around her, to hold her warmth against his chest until her light is too hot for him to keep close. And even then, if he can blaze forever around the lady of the stars, perhaps she will continue to stitch together the holes in his heart.
Do you trust me, she asks, and he feels as though there's something tapping at the windows of his brain; a buzzing, annoying sort of warning. But he ignores it, because why the fuck would he pay attention right now? "Yes," he whispers. "I trust you. And I believe you." At last his fingers find the courage to whisper through the soft tresses of her hair, letting them twist through his hands like silk.
With a smile as saccharine as it is sorrowful, Safrin leans into Ronin's fingers. She does love him, in her own twisted way. But twisted or no, the love of a goddess is a powerful thing. And a dangerous one, as Ronin has learned many times now.
"I wish I could make you happy." She sighs softly, her teeth worrying at her lower lip, before she shakes her head slightly—though hopefully not enough to untangle his fingers from it—and continues before he might argue. "But for now at least, I can make you shine."
Closing her eyes, Ronin's dazzle is suddenly engulfed by the light of something much warmer. Fire has licked up and down his arms, falling down his spine and rising up into his hair. Feathers of fiery plumage drape magnificently from him, and though both he and Safrin are immune to this blaze, it should be quite clear that others won't be.
For Ronin's leveling, he's been given a Phoenix shift!
His lips part to say the inevitable - you do make me happy - because right here and right now, it's true. He is more at peace than he's been for over a week now, his turmoil soothed by the cosmos of his goddess's radiance. Twisted or no, Ronin craves that love; and as far as he's aware, it's the only love in reach right now. But Safrin continues before he can give all of this a voice, and then heat and light explode along his arms, in his veins and in his throat.
With a gasp Ronin ignites, fire and feathers shrouding him in soft and dangerous light. When he raises his hand it's to find a cloak of flight feathers spanning from his forearm; a partial shift that, although the Star doesn't understand it yet, will soon become another of his calling cards. "What..." Am I, he wants to say, but he can feel it deep within him. A noble, golden soul that wants to soar as high as the stag in him wants to run.
"Safrin, I... how can I repay you?" he asks, before something suddenly dawns in his eyes. "I need to get back to Stormbreak," he says. "I need... the Order, I should..." He shakes his head. It's a mess, what he's left behind. A labyrinth that even Ronin struggles to navigate.
Safrin doesn't answer of course, waiting for him to feel the shift in his bones. Smiling once she sees the recognition of fire and flight, the goddess reaches up to softly stroke the backs of her fingers against his cheek once more. "Keep me in your light, always." A simple enough request surely, though one which is laced with a wellspring of implications. Never turn your back on me, being prime among them. But he would betray her again. She knew this implicitly; so long as the Lullaby was in Ronin's life, Safrin would never come first. And so there was only one thing to be done.
He mentions the Order, and a small and unhappy hum slips from her lips before she pulls in a breath. "War is brewing, and it will be here before we are ready for it, no matter how much we plan. We were caught unawares last time and I fear much the same will occur this go around...but perhaps it needn't be so...Whatever your thoughts about the Order and its Eye, they are poised and blessed by Mort, Vi, and Rae. But...perhaps some changes are in order..." To this she doesn't give further context, merely shrugging her shoulders as she gazes up at him.
"I have seen you work wonders in this world, and in others. Make the Order strong, that you might one day be able to live out a life of your own making."
His eyes slip close, leaning into the touch against his cheek; it's easy, right now, to promise Safrin everything. Because as far as Ronin knows, his future is one without Remi, and so that leaves him in freefall to soar in Safrin's wake. "Always," he repeats, his blue eyes opening again so he might gaze down at her and listen as talk turns to Stormbreak and the Order. While he still dislikes the Eye - and the way his gaze darkens at the mention of him is evidence enough of that - he can certainly appreciate what his goddess has to say.
Changes. Make the Order strong. Live out a life of your own making. Put like that it sound easy, simple and wonderful, even if that life feels very far out of reach right now. Ronin nods to Safrin, and the starlight that fractures out of him softens somewhat as his resolve settles in his bones. "Then I had better get this done. And I ought to get going, too." He imagines he will need to fly back to the cliffs of Stormbreak; it isn't something he has done before, but that's never stopped him.
