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!
The moon is shockingly brightly as it rises over the sea, bathing the boondocks in a filthy pale light that sticks to everything. It clings to your skin like oily sunscreen, lingering well after you've tried to shrug it off. It gets under your clothes and behind your ears leaving a strange powdery residue, that has no smell or texture that you can place. The roar of the sea as it splashes against the grassy docks is rather pleasant as is the temperature.
If only it wasn't for the weirdness of that damn moonlight.
You have 24 hours to post here to see the rare animal...whatever it might be.
Ronin doesn't know what it is that's disturbed the fretful sleep he's been getting out in the boondocks. He and Maeve haven't gotten all that far with their rowboat-up-the-river plan, what with having to wait for it to sufficiently dry out, and hunting rabbits and trying to make cookfires and all that. So, deciding to go ahead and try in earnest in the morning, they've settled down for a rest. Until... now, obviously.
"What is that," he mutters under his breath, peeling up from the ground to squint into the suddenly eerie texture of the moonlight. Climbing to his feet, either Maeve will sleep through this or she'll come and join him, but either way, Ronin's curiosity draws him out towards the sea. Towards where the waves clap against the grass and the moon sticks to the air.
I will stand by you forever; you can take my breath away
Shirking responsibilities has never felt so good, with every chance she gets the Wraith teleports herself back to her last ‘stopping’ point in Wilds and goes a little further. An hours walk here, two hours there, grassy knolls eaten up by the steady pace of her feet. East, is all she tells them, and the various versions of that direction.
There’s a light she’s never seen before, so like a moth to the flame, she comes - and is surprised to see Ronin there.
“Ronin?” Wessex calls quietly, for anything louder seems to be both forbidden and like it might be eaten by the strange moonlight. Her fingers rub against each other, over her hands, because it’s almost as if she can feel this light. With a gentle frown to the phenomena, Wessex ends up stopping next to the Dark Star, if room on the dock will allow.
Ronin's travel companion was having her own issues with sleep, finding it hard to get settle down with all the sounds surrounding them. Every little thing making her jerk back awake any time she starts to drift off. So when he suddenly rises from the spot beside her, Maeve is on high alert. She blinks, rubbing at her eyes as they adjust to the silvery moonlight. She trails after him, fingers reaching forward to curl into the hem of his shirt for fear of being separated. As if him walking off will cause the Wilds to hiccup again and dump them in two different areas.
"I don't know.. It's like I can feel it.." She murmurs, bottom lip between her teeth as she gazes up at the sky. It isn't until she hears another voice that she stiffens. It doesn't say her name so she doesn't dare tear her eyes away from above.
Poor little girl still waiting for her happy ending
"If I can't move the heavens above, I will move Hell"
Sah was still making his trek to the Mourns. He'd paused for a day at the Boondocks out of curiosity. The Wilds overall were unlike anything he'd ever seen. And it would certainly be a shame not to take his time traveling through them. It's as the moon is rising that he freezes. Something is wrong. The light, it's...almost alive. It practically hums against his skin. The canine glances around trying to pinpoint what is happening.
Upon spotting a gathering of other people he heads over. "What is going on?" He questions before he even processes who's present. "Is it normal for Caido's moon to do this?" Sah was bewildered and his voice came out as barely a whisper. He'd come from a world where the Goddess of the moon was present and active in his life. But even the light of that moon didn't feel like this. Tonight, it felt...he couldn't even put the sensation into words.
sah
There stood the wolf in the winter wind
Full of fearsome might
There stood the wolf in the winter wind
King of the winter night.
-Tim Vallie
Cam hadn't planned to be out in the wilds at night, but that was how things turned out -- and once the moon rose, their interest in hoofing it to shelter ASAP fell to the wayside, replaced by curiosity about the strange quality of the moonlight. This wasn't normal, right? But then they had no idea what was normal in Caido. There were other people around, though, and they seemed equally confused -- Cam gravitated towards a tall young man who seemed as confused as they were (Sah). "I was about to ask the same question."
Holding out a hand in the moonlight, Cam felt the powdery residue on their skin, their hair, their lips -- instinctively, they licked their lips to see what it would taste like. It was even clinging to their eyelashes. Their bad luck, that the person they'd chosen to talk to seemed to also be an Outlander, and thus couldn't tell them if this just happened sometimes or not.
cameron ?
"Cameras" by Ennev is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
He's always out there somewhere in King's End, isn't he?
And the strange moonlight brings with it a paradox: to him, where every day grows darker and murkier than the previous, the brightness seems normal. It's almost like a relief—things are fine, after all—except that it's an unusually sticky night, like it's humid, but it can't be, it's too cool and pleasant—
So what's that damn stickiness on his skin? It's in his mouth, his eyes, on his hands, and he can't get it off, and it's really quite distressing. He eyes the gathered group with mild confusion as he goes past them to the tranquil sea to try and wash the texture off his hands, and if the shadows seem a bit deeper, well, that's just his imagination, right? There's nothing wrong with his eyes, right? Right?
Aamu's suffering from a curse that gradually makes him blinder and blinder!
The longer you stand beneath this strange glow, the longer you'll realize that it isn't light at all that is causing your skin to feel oily, but a very very fine layer of dust. It coats everything so completely that indeed it simply makes the world appear to be bathed in moonlight.
On one of the rocks, a hoard of moths suddenly gather, their wings flexing together in a pattern that's almost hypnotizing. And in the sky? What might have been overlooked as a star begins to move. It floats lower until you realize that this isn't a graceful descent at all, but a kamikazee dive. The moth is massive, as large as a school bus not that you know what those are. "LEAVE HIM ALONE. DO NOT LOOK. DO NOT SEARCH." The moth cries in a voice that sounds like a whisper that's been distorted and amplified through a speaker. It aims directly for where the lot of you are clustered, though with its body made up mostly of its wings, as it hits the ground, there is little damage to any of you.
What there is, is a disruption to the dust. It now rises into the air, before settling upon you again..and suddenly? Suddenly you're very interested in the light.
You may all say that you've seen the rare MOTH MAN.
For the next week IC, all characters present will be drawn to any and all sources of light.
"Oh, what the fuck?" That's Cam's primary reaction to this turn of events. They jump away as the moth creature comes down, then cover their ears at that distorted voice -- and instinctively obey, looking away from the crash site, from the creature. An instant later their curiosity overcomes that automatic response and they're staring again, but they missed their chance to get the closest look at the creature.
Looking up and trying to track it, they find themselves fascinated by the night sky instead. Surely the stars weren't always so bright and numerous? They certainly were better-visible here in Caido than at home, with all its light pollution, but now Cam found themself entranced by the lights more than ever before. And the moon ... beautiful ...
cameron ?
"Cameras" by Ennev is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Moths gather and a star begins to fall, except it's not a star, it's a moth, and its voice is terrible and grating and distorted and loud and low all at the same time, a static in his ears. Aamu watches in slow-motion horror as the massive thing slams into the ground where the others are clustered, and then...
It's all peaceful, somehow. Quiet. He's not even bothered by the rising dust coating his skin in its thin, oily film again, merely raises his hands to watch how the starlight ripples across them.
It's...beautiful. He glances at the others, glances at the moon in the sky (is it darkening again?). What just happened?
( I will say this is fin unless anyone else wants to respond! :3 Feel free to archive unless you want to continue it )
03-21-2021, 11:54 PM (This post was last modified: 03-21-2021, 11:54 PM by Wessex.)
I will stand by you forever; you can take my breath away
Ronin doesn’t answer and neither does the other woman with him (a stranger - again, she doesn’t ask), so the Wraith falls silent as the trio grows and others join them. But Wessex only has eyes for the moon, the light, the ever constant bright.
Even when it moves, when it dives, her eyes are on it. Even when a screech echoes in her head, she can’t tear her gaze away. Leave him alone? Leave who? she wonders briefly, before it all seems to explode in their faces. Then it’s gone and she’s left wondering again, who the thing was talking about - and what exactly that thing was.
