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!
Aisha was in the grounds for the week, returned from Halo to spread the word about the guild, as well as to help rebuild and salvage. Reparations, dealing with constant destruction and charred remains, it was taxing. But after what she'd been through with Henry she had no plans to back down and give in. She was done running from the things that didn't work out, she would face head on anything that came.
She'd just finished tacking up her notice, and wandered the temple. Hands worn from helping clear rubble, boots blackened from stepping through soot. Somehow she found herself outside the infirmary, wondering if there were any familiar faces inside, upon cots being healed or already gone. She hovered at the entrance, stoic, uncertain, resolute. A humming near the window caught her attention, pulled her from the morbid draw of the infirmary.
She moved to the glass pane of the temple, staring out at a skeletal tree and the budding green around it's roots. There was a swarm of something small and quick, they sung a beautiful chord in a minor key, buzzing at a frequency that seemed to vibrate at her core. They too were rebuilding, a hive or nest or something like that, landing on the bark of the tree and adding to the small waxy structure.
Something about them made her smile, broke her from her solemn thoughts and the weariness of her hard worked bones.
and there's a hole in my chest like there's a hole in the sun
After his hunt with Henry that will remain ambiguous as it is not finished, Noah stuck around the Hollowed Grounds to do some exploring. Well, exploring may not be the right term -- orienting, really, was what the hunter was doing. When he had been here before he had only visited a few places with Phoebe, but he had been so overstimulated by everything that he had not got a good bearing on the land. He wanted to change that before he headed back to Halo.
As the hunter moved about and made notes in the small notebook he always carried, he took in everything that was about the place he wandered in. He knew Longnight was difficult for this place, but he hadn't the faintest idea at the moment of the details of what had transpired. He took note of the charred earth and the scorched trees, houses burned to ash and stone standing only as a memory of what once was. It tore at his chest, tugging his heart down as he sympathized for the people. He found himself eventually in the temple, wandering about the halls. As he rounded a corner, he saw a woman move to the window. Curiously, he stepped towards her. "What are you looking at?"
The last time Noah had seen the woman, she was a leopard. He had no idea it was that same woman before him, now, outside of Halo.
Aisha didn't recognize the polar bear in this body, but perhaps she noticed his familiar aura, a gentle blue that seeped through their attuned bond. She couldn't place the feeling, but she committed it to his face, his blonde hair, his blue eyes, his weathered hands. The woman faced him, for a moment before glancing back out the window at the chorus bees when they changed up their melody. This note was sweeter.
"Do you hear the humming? It's these bees out here," she offered, stepping back from the glass and pointing at the congregation around the tree. She wondered how he might react, entranced by their song as she was, or indifferent to them. To her it was amazing how so many creatures could be so in sync with no one too conduct them. They just knew instinctively, this was how they lived; together, as one, and she could admire that.
and there's a hole in my chest like there's a hole in the sun
It wasn't until she spoke that realization came over the hunter. It was unmistakable, that voice. The leopard and the woman were one in the same. Noah was accustomed to picking out attuned in their various forms, and this was no exception. "Oh, Aisha." He greeted her with the sparked familiarity.
As she stepped aside and gestured for him to look out the window, he did. He watched the bees flitting around the tree, constructing something new and great. As they worked, the hummed and made music. Noah's eyebrows knit together some, but he watched anyway. He had never been one for music. When he was young, and learning all of the things young men learn to become functioning members of society, he had attempted to play a few instruments under the instruction of his mother. He was never successful at them. From then on, the hunter had felt an indifference toward music. While he could understand that some found it beautiful and alluring, he could not connect with it.
She was certain she knew him when he said her name, and as she racked her brain in hopes of not ending up in an awkward second introduction, she finally settled on the grumbling tones of the polar bear. "Noah! You're hair's a different color," she decided, grinning and teasing as her usual whims suggested.
They marveled over the bees for a moment, in their saccharine song. Aisha shook her head, "Me neither, it's pretty," she replied, giving the chorus bees one last glance before leaning against the stone wall and crossing her arms. "What are you doing in the grounds, polar bear?" she asked, curious and eager for another friendly distraction from the turmoil that surrounded them.
and there's a hole in my chest like there's a hole in the sun
He did not watch the bees for much longer than Aisha did. She leaned back against the stone of the temple and crossed her arms. Noah followed her relaxed posture, letting his shoulder rest against the window frame and his arm to prop him up on the sill. He smiled, bright and broad and winkling. "It would be something if my hair was all white. I'd look rather distinguished, I think." When was the last time he joked? He couldn't remember.
"I was hunting here, with a man named Henry." Noah did not expect Aisha to know him, but thought it good manners to offer the name of his comrade in case she did. He was not sure where she was from -- other than it not being Halo -- so it was a fair guess for him to assume she may be from here, the Grounds. "And you? Recruiting more spars?" He asked with a careful playfulness to his voice, though mostly kindness and true curiosity.
"I think it could suit you," she replied with a grin, the leopard tingling under her skin and passing a speckled patch of fur across her forearm, rippling for a moment before returning to skin. Being attuned came with so many tricks, more than she'd had on her home world. Partial shift was one of them, she wondered if he could do the same.
Henry, the name brought a crease to her forehead, her lips slightly pinched. She wasn't sure if she'd met with him before or after the two men had hunted, "How was he?" she asked, hopeful and sincere. She wouldn't get into the details about her and Henry, but it would be nice to know anything Noah had to say. When the farmer had began taking such precedent in her mind, she didn't know.
Recruiting more spars, her smile returned again, she tilted her head, "Sort of, I'm starting a monster hunter's guild in Halo and I'm out spreading the word."
and there's a hole in my chest like there's a hole in the sun
The tease of leopard skin across her arm did not go unnoticed. He thought about reciprocating with his own partial shift, but decided to hold it in. For nothing else, other than mystery. For her to know him as a polar bear for now left room for surprises, and as he stood before her, soaking in whatever aura she presented, seemed to be making him feel more like teasing. It was how he felt most of the time when he was around Weaver -- she had a way of bringing out the jesting in him, and somehow this woman did too.
"Henry was....troubled." The statement was to say the least. "He had a really hard Longnight." Noah said with confidence. While he didn't know all the details because the thread is still going, he knew it was hard. The way that Aisha's face moved when he mentioned Henry gave the hunter the impression that the leopardess had some semblance of relationship with the man -- the wrinkle in her forehead was unmistakable for care.
"Oh, interesting." Noah perked up a little at the mention of the guild. "I was a member of Kiada's guild, before....she died." It was a strange feeling that washed over him with those words -- before Kiada, he had never known anyone to come back from the dead. A few months ago those words would have been laced with a sense of mourning (mostly because of his compassion for Chulane), but now they were oddly hopeful. It felt strange inside of him. "I wouldn't mind helping out, if you'd have me."
The reply about Henry was less than the reassurance she'd hoped for. Not that she'd expected him to turn around from this so quickly, it would require a lot of time and compassion and his own personal ventures. Aisha would be there for him, all he needed to do was ask. She nodded in response, "That much I know," she said, a mundane cynicism as she reached up to brush a curl behind her ear. "He's a great man, I just wish I could do more for him now."
And it wasn't directly correlated, but the Monster Hunter's Guild did feel like something she could do. Protect people who were haunted by ghouls and beasts, learn more about them and find ways to utilize the world around. She tried to put Henry's troubles out of mind for now as Noah seemed interested in the guild notion. "I would love to have you! Kiada has been helping me with the formation of it, she'll be involved too."
Noah was a formidable attuned, she'd heard of his hunts with Deimos, ending in similarly successful bounty. Anyone capable was welcome, and even those less than capable would be welcome to learn. "I've found an old inn near the market areas, it'll be perfect if we fix it up for a guild hall. Stockpile weapons, books and other useful info, and we should be able to start operating soon."
and there's a hole in my chest like there's a hole in the sun
Noah left her comments of Henry as they were, for as she spoke of the guild there was a bolster in her mood. Noah nodded and let his toothy grin plaster his face unabashedly. "That sounds excellent." He knew of the inn she spoke of. It had been a popular inn when his grandfather was a child, but as the tundra grew icier and colder and more dangerous through the hands of the Eirachi, travel and trade slowed. The inn keeper died, and it went abandoned. When the portal came about, and with it new people, Weaver worked to make the Kraai the best place to stay.
"What is your vision for this guild?" He knew what Kiada's had been, and wondered if Aisha was on the same page as the once-attuned, or if she had different ideas. "For Kiada I was working on gathering information on fauna I encountered at different places." He shifted his body and pulled his bag around, digging in a pocket until he pulled out his journal. The worn, used leather was soft and the pages filled with notes to -- very little of the soft yellowed paper was left unmarked. He flipped until he got to a page where he documented about the cloud mantas, and angled it to show Aisha while keeping it open with one hand. "It's a little smudged because I got ambushed by a wave." He chuckled some, the feeling of the salty, warm water--a reminder of that day--resurfacing on his tongue.
The grin Noah offered was enough to draw her back from dwelling on Henry, back into her present and future plans. From what she knew of Kiada's version of the guild, her plans were similar. The name monster hunter's didn't entirely encompass what it was she set out to create, it was more of a guild dedicated to the study of supernatural creatures and protections against them. Of course, the bounty hunting bit would be an important facet, the active fighters involved able to take up contract to aid anyone who required help, but she didn't want to just hunt. She wanted to learn, and maybe find solutions.
That aligned well with what Noah told her, she took the journal carefully, looking at the cloud mantas and scanning over all the notes written there. Her eyes were wide, excitement at the prospects, and simply at seeing how her plans might come to fruition. "This is incredible Noah, this is exactly what I'm thinking." She started to turn the page, glancing back to him to make sure that was alright.
"I want to start a guild that is just as much about learning to fight monsters and protecting people from them as it is learning about them, you know. I want to have a room for weapons and a room full of notes and artifacts and stuff. Everything dealing with supernatural creatures, I want our guild to be able to help deal with it," her eyes remained on Noah's writings and art, but her tone was bright and driven. Our guild, Noah might not know it but Aisha was already trying to fit him in to the ranks.
and there's a hole in my chest like there's a hole in the sun
He did not mind as she took the journal from him. It did not have much private information inside -- mostly gatherings and notes and thoughts from hunts, plans for future hunts, or information about flora and fauna he knew or had heard about. His smile did not fade on his face and he nodded in a way that gave the woman permission to peruse the information he handed her. "I've been studying wildlife for as long as I can remember, and my father and his father and all that. Hunting has been a generational career in the Olson line. My father, and now I, have done more than hunt, though. We want to understand how these creatures work and live and think. It helps being attuned -- my father was not, and I think that hindered him." Noah knew that the more the gods blessed him, the more closely his life would be tied to the nature around them. Frey had, after all, already given him all of his shifts to use. At least, Noah thought it was Frey. When he attuned, he had been so excited and so overwhelmed at the young age he chose it, that he could hardly remeber anything but flashes and the form of the reindeer taking over him.
He took in a breath, though, afterwards, eyes turning down some. "Then there are creatures that the guild would want to eradicate. For me, I've got a vendetta against dragons." Particularly, the dragons that killed Weaver and teleported Delphine away from him, causing their relationship to self-destruct.
03-26-2021, 10:06 PM (This post was last modified: 03-26-2021, 10:06 PM by Aisha.)
AISHA
Aisha listened to his story as she flipped through the pages, turning them carefully knowing that they held precious memories. She'd never been good at journaling, it'd always been easier to just memorize things than put in the effort to write it down. She'd gotten better recently, taking notes on plans and blueprints for the guild, but it was nice to know there were others with experience. And experience he had, the pages were full and rich full of knowledge. Noah would be valuable indeed.
"That's exactly what I want to incorporate into the guild, there's no good way to fight or exist alongside anything if you don't understand it," she replied in agreeance, glad to see he was on the same page. And then again, at the mention of attunement. There was no nonhuman animal that she understood better than the leopard, the bat coming in close second. Walking in their skin was the best equalizer, and where their experiences could relate to other wild beasts, she could use that to comprehend, indulge in the lives of more feral things.
Aisha hmphed when he mentioned his vendetta; everyone was gunning for them these days. "You're not the only one," her brows pinched just slightly, "It's on my mind, once the guild is functioning we'll discuss what we might do." Dragon hunting, a dangerous venture, but one possibly worth the risk. The things they could learn would be crucial, the idea of the citadel not fearing the wrath of the white dragons was tempting.
and it's all in the way that you talk starts with a whisper
Noah was not sure that the people of Halo would never live in a world where dragons did not haunt their lives. While ursurs were dangerous, they were defeatable. Dragons, on the other hand, were formidable. There was not a dragon hunter alive, though his childhood was full of their stories. Men and women with fabled strength and bravery, even greater than any of the stories he heard of the demigods walking in Caido now.
"You're welcome to anything I've got. We can make copies of the pages I have in my journal." He gestured to the book she still held. "I have some stuff from my father and grandfather as well." Hunters, the Olsons always were, gathered information. While his grandfather and father kept their secrets a little tighter than Noah had, he did not think the men would roll over in their graves at his sharing what they had gathered. The world looked different now than it did when those two men walked and hunted. It was bigger than them, now.
