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!
Melita had forgotten her task entirely the moment she spotted the water.
She’d meant to go find some pieces of wood for the impending LongNight, maybe some smaller portions she’d be able to carry back and forth to her shelter, use for fire when the darkness encroached and she felt monsters come near. Fangorn had even taken the time to spot some branches worth saving, gesturing at them with his eerie stare, and the youth had been designated to the efforts for several instances, gathering them in her arms and then placing them into a pile. She’d load them into her bag later.
But she’d twisted just enough so she could see the glimpse of the oasis, rushing and running along twin stone faces, and the sensation of delight, of yesteryears, was too strong, too grand, to be ignored. She shucked off her shoes without hesitation, racing for the collection of babbling, cold water, exposing her toes to the elements as she took intervals to play, splashing and shouting, laughing and giggling with nothing, no one, around.
“C’mon then!” She called out to Fangorn, who shook his head in dismay, hissing his displeasure, hopping across snow-laden grass, intending to find more tools for impending days. She shrugged, ignored his disapproval, and lowered her hands to the cool, chilling water, watching as the babbling elements washed away the dirt and soil stuck to her fingers. It wasn’t the same waves and crusades from Helovia; when she and her friends had ventured down a hundred beaches, searching for shells and adventures, whales and promises, but it was a little like home, a taste, a nuance, of what used to be. Maybe it was foolish; the creek was cold and coiled at her feet like a threatening noose, and after a few moments she scampered out of it, pondering the depths of warm sand and endless desert. But she was savage and untamed, restless and wild, and this world wouldn’t dissuade her, not yet, even as she heaved a breath and rummaged around in the grass, trying to find the shoes she’d parted with minutes before.
Sam did not often come to the Oasis. Not for any particular reason other than that he never went anywhere outside his daily routine unless forced to. New places meant new problems, meant new people for him to stumble into and embarrass himself with. But he had had an idea. It was likely foolish, but he had read about all kinds of fish in books...perhaps there could be some fish in the water? A way for him to gather food without having to bother anyone (well, except the victims).
He had set off to the Oasis with a sharpened stick and a hope. While he did not often put them to use, he had quickened reflexes as an Ascended which would hopefully make it easier for him to spear fish. His new ability to feel had made him take some tea in a flask just to have the easy joy of taste always near, as well as gloves on his hands and thick socks on his feet to protect from the newfound cold.
But...as was just his luck recently, he was not alone. Walking up to the Oasis, he saw a girl at the edge of the water, seemingly dancing in it with her shoes discarded and some kind of...gourd? Following her about. It was an image full of so much whimsy it felt absolutely alien to him.
There was going to be no avoiding her. He had to at least try and achieve his goal, and she was definitely the kind of person who would insist on saying hello. He could just tell. It would be better if he did it first, he thought, so he could at least have some control over the encounter.
Softly, he stepped up behind her. With a nervous glance towards her pet, he cleared his throat. "U-um. Hello. It's not...very warm for swimming."
Fangorn had taken the initiative in finding Melita’s shoes; he’d known her for only a short period, but had learned well enough at the girl’s mercurial, impulsive, whimsical tendencies that the sooner they discovered the whereabouts of the soles, the better. She could’ve been concocted straight from the fae, laced and woven with too many otherworldly qualities, less ethereal, more resonant, less elegant, more inclined to battle and melees. She wouldn’t have lasted in their quiet, subdued lands, the detailed, sketched lines in frost and ice, driven into their ramparts, their fire, their blood, their bones. The gourd gave a feral hiss, a roll of its eerie eyes, pinpointing and locating the articles before she wandered far beyond the realm of possibility, and the girl laughed, following her pumpkin companion without hesitation. As her hands swept over the shoes, frayed and in need of mending, she heard a voice nervously piercing through the oasis’ marsh.
Were the stranger’s tones not full of apprehension and trepidation, the honeybee child would’ve been a cluster of movement, motion, and impetuous guard; drawn right back into the folds and thick of demonic walls and savage corridors. It was mostly her own fault for even thinking ill in the first place: she’d been distracted, completely deterred from any task by the mere notion of sparkling water, no matter the temperature. He couldn’t be marred or judged harshly because of her own ridiculous antics, and so instead of blistering, seething, and coiling into a bundle of ferocity and vehemence, the girl’s twinkling smile broke out across her face all over again. It was radiance and the sun-kissed channels of the glade; tipped towards the unfamiliar figure as she slipped her shoes back on her cold, chilled feet. There was shrug in her body too, ricocheted throughout her form as if she were fully aware of the dangers, the treachery, the infidels behind each and every season, but indifferent, ready to conquer them without hesitation. “Well, I like to tempt fate.” The statement summed her every action, motive, and method neatly; a horizon without limits until she found the wrong interval, specious fiend, or seditious comrade.
Without aplomb, the girl maneuvered forward, the grin still billowing along her lips, pulling her furs tighter around her shoulders, extending a hand towards the man. Her head tilted the slightest, eyes narrowing briefly, trying to discern if she’d seen him from afar, hushed in the background, but couldn’t determine anything of note. “I’m Melita. Who are you?” The girl’s gaze caught the sharpened stick in his grasp, and if possible, the smile became broader, more divine, more impish, more glorified in the triumph of impending hunts and weaponry. “Are you going to fish?”
"...I..I guess, but you might get a cold." He shrugged. There wasn't much romance in a snotty nose, he thought, so the risk was rather silly. While she was not at all exposed indecently, Sam still averted his eyes from her bare feet and appeared to be rather embarrassed.
"Samuel. My..my n-name is Samuel. And um...I'm going to try. I've never done it before. So...I-it might not work out." He didn't want her to expect any kind of expertise from him, because he was likely going to embarrass himself. He wasn't even sure if there were any fish in the lake. Before his upgrade he would have just put his head in and looked, not feeling the cold of the water or the sting on his eyes, but now it was a concern.
Slowly he turned back to the water and knelt by the edge, trying to watch for any movement. "...It doesn't...c-come naturally to me. To hurt things." He mumbled, more to himself than to Melita, trying to comfort his own guilty conscience as he saw a flicker of a scale. Sam raised up the stick in his hand but did not move, frozen with his arm up.
Risk had been a part of her since the moment she came onto the earth: pleasant, exuberant, and utterly wild. She hadn’t inherited it from her mother or her sister – both calm, serene beings, more apt to healing, soothing measures, to beatific lullabies luring others to repose and slumber. She’d been reckless and impetuous, drawn to layers of fire and brimstone without a second thought, tossing her heart and mind over cliffs and sails, pretending to be a monster well before she was required to become one. Her curiosity had been insatiable and untamed, her movements had been an echo of her desires, and her compassion had molded itself well into her savage ministrations; nefarious acts reserved for protection, for upheaval, for friends, families, and the occasional stranger. She was audacious and reckless for those who couldn’t be – a flame in the wind, a barb in the fields, a demon in skirts and furs. “I might,” she shrugged again and winked towards him, as if there were worse things in the world than suffering from a cold (and there were; she’d seen scores of them, had battled against them, had sobbed, begged, and pleaded for it all to cease, and when it didn’t, raised her arms in such a vicious, vehement cycle; damned to be repeated). But she didn’t tease or taunt him further; the interaction felt stilted, as if her boisterousness was too much, an overwhelming thing – her eyes flicked to the oasis and its babbling curls against rocks and grass.
“Pleased to meet you, Samuel,” Melita whispered, quieter, twinkling gaze flicking back to him once or twice, taking to following him towards the edge, kneeling and crouching over the water she’d played in moments before. She glanced deeper at it now, attempted to spy those aforementioned fish, the trace of a shining scale in the sun, the promised bounty of a well-cooked meal, roasting and pleasant over an open flame.
His last statement though caused her to widen her eyes by a minute fraction; then turn away, gaze floating towards Fangorn nearby, to the drifting alms and palms, to the distance between her innocence and barbarity. She’d lost the sensation of morality and virtue long ago; when it’d been amidst life or death, when ghosts and wraiths strangled her whole, when she became witness to friends’ terrors and horrors, when survival was the only thing she could ever hope to achieve. Presently, she had no after-thought to claiming another’s life, and it made the smile vanish from her lips, shift away, back into scattered hours before the Rift, when heaven was a certainty and no one had hurt, no one had ached, no one had split apart in anguish, in misery, when the world hadn’t been utter chaos and she hadn’t consigned anything to oblivion. Her stare lingered back on the pool, then the man who didn’t want to hurt anything, and she proffered to protect his decency, offered her already corrupted services, her iniquitous ambitions. “I can do it for you.” The utterance was hushed, meant to blend into his; watching the raised spear freeze in midair.
Sam's hand shook in the second of silence; the inability to do even this simple task eating at him. Pathetic, his father's voice rang in his ears. Unable to even get a couple of fish. Being so soft, so empathetic, so sensitive...it was all accumulated into the moment where he couldn't quite plunge the spear down...then Melita offered to take on the responsibility for him.
Could he really ask someone he didn't know to do this? Was it as big of a thing as he imagined it to be? Both questions went unanswered as his body took control and handed her the stick almost without thought. "...If...if you wouldn't mind m-maybe just um...showing me how to do it?" He managed to mumble, speaking before his thoughts had entirely caught up.
Sam shifted back from the water to watch Melita do it, hoping that perhaps witnessing her courage would help him to make some of his own. Even that maybe it would shame him into action, that he had to get a stranger to do this dirty work for him. "I'm...so-sorry. To um...impose."
What would have happened if she preserved her innocence, her guiltlessness? The inquiry shuffled its way through her mind, meandering there in the stillness, in the shaking, quivering palm of Samuel’s hand. She might’ve been the same, a little lost, guarded, trying desperately to be good and kind, to salvage each and every thing, to hold peace in her arms instead of a shield, instead of a sword. She might’ve been more like Clementine, beholden to a higher power, dancing on the edge of fairy lights and humming sweet nothings, a gallant, compassionate soul with nothing scandalous, nothing sinister, folding into her soul. But Melita hadn’t – because reality had thrown them into dungeons and corridors, into oblivion and condemnation, and she’d given no thought to protecting those she cherished, extinguishing those who threatened her own. She hadn’t mourned any demons. She hadn’t cried when the blood soaked her hands, her clothes, her skin. She’d always done what she had to do; commitment through sedition, through revolution, through mutiny against a false god, insurrection from all those beatific moments from before. She wasn’t gone, she wasn’t destroyed – she was just altered, morphed, and sculpted differently.
But if he craved the sanctity of his beliefs for a little longer, the girl would oblige, would grant, would give him those instances. She made no comment about the quivering fingers as the stick was passed into her grasp, didn’t throw him any insults, didn’t contort her quiet platitude into a feral wake. “Absolutely,” passed along her lips, and she held the spear as if she’d done it a hundred times before. Her commitment had always been an illuminating thing, vows and pledges, assurances and convictions, made brighter by the spark in her eyes, by the dominion of her obstinance. “You’re not imposing,” the youth promised, the grin working its way back across her mouth. “Hold it like this, and very still.” The direction was a bit scandalous in that she told someone else to remain motionless, a girl who never ceased to maneuver, but she cast the notion aside, took a breath. “Then you have to be quick, so they can’t detect your movements.”
In a flash, for she was swift, she was keen, she was quick and sharp, the spear descended into the water. “Make sure you angle it accordingly; looks can be deceiving.” The light often played tricks on a hunter’s eyes; she had to approach it from the glittering of scales, along to the side, so she wasn’t deceived by the sun’s leisurely measures. When she raised the spear once more, there was a fish, caught in the middle, flailing in its final moments, before it became immobile, deceased.
Thankfully, Melita easily took the spear and the job along with it. All Sam had to do was watch and nod as she demonstrated the proper way to kill fish. He did not expect her to be successful as quickly as she was, flinching as the point entered the water and came back out holding a flapping, suddenly very real fish.
He watched with a horrified fascination as it breathed it's last breaths. It was dead, he thought that meant, but he'd long ago forgotten quite the significance of breathing. He could survive without it, after all, so he didn't want to assume anything else required it. But it was so still on the spear there was little else it could be, so he nodded and nervously reached to take the handle of it back.
"Thank you. I...I did not. Th-think it would b-be so easy. Are you...are you a fisher? Or...p-perhaps you live in the w-wild?" He had heard of people who chose to live in the Outskirts, far in the woods, under the trees. Honestly, it sounded like a nightmare to him, but he supposed some might find comfort in surviving in the simplest way possible.
Experimentally, he poked the fish. It was wet and cold on his finger, and smelt terrible. But it was still food, so he leaned back to place it in a towel in his bag.
It was only easy because she’d done it a hundred times before. It was by rote, completed without a second thought, like the spears she’d tossed, like the knives she’d thrown, like the swords and shields she’d carried. It’d been kill or be killed in that savage, nefarious land, and in part she’d had to grow, had to morph, had to change along with it, craft the ruthless iniquities through her blood, through her mind, through her soul. It had taken begging, pleading, and sobbing before she finally embarked down those lines and conquered instead of curling into a ball, instead of hiding. “Oh, no.” Here she grinned, but it lacked the great, ebullient luster from before, and her eyes ghosted back towards the waterline, the woods, the snow capturing the rest of the scenery. Her mind rambled to her sister, gone in her gentle haze, when she’d searched and searched and searched for her, her mother’s soft traces and scents of concoctions and herbs, her last glimpses of the woman shoving them forward, away, to safety. But it hadn’t been. It’d been the devil’s haven, and they’d all been the false gods’ play toys, until sedition and revolution spread, until they’d had enough.
“Survival required I learn how to hunt.” And how to destroy, how to maul, how to become something barbarous instead of innocent and ignorant. “I live in the settlement.” She tilted her head back to Samuel, watched as he picked at the fish. “It tastes much better when it’s cooked.” The smell would still be potent, but such was the way of sea life. “Do you need anymore?”
"..Hmm. I...I see." Sam said, trying to think about what kind of survival would require him to learn such things. He had always known a life of relative material luxury, comfy chairs and warm meals put on a table before him (and by the time he'd lived by himself, no meals required).
The fish wasn't for him, after all, so he didn't mind too much how it would smell. As long as Jigano was able to eat it that was all that mattered. If Jigano couldn't come he supposed he would just have to throw it away, or maybe store it somewhere where it couldn't be smelled. The downside of his new upgrade was that unpleasant sensations were that much more too, so he couldn't sit with a house full of fish for ages.
"Thank y-you. For doing it. Ma...maybe one more? It's f-for my friend. For L..longnight. Because I d-don't eat." He hoped she might be familiar with the Ascended so he didn't have to explain further.
There didn’t seem to be any further explanation required on her part, and she simply adhered to his next request of one more. She gently took the sharpened stick back from his grasp, and took to finding another fish to prey upon. It seemed a majority of them had been scared off by their companion’s sudden disappearance, so she was forced to shift quietly, stealthily, further down the embankment. Fangorn strove to help her too, glancing down into the water with his bizarre, all-seeing gaze, and uttered a low, guttural hiss when he thought he saw the glimmer of scales again in the bright sunlight, below the swirling, gentle waves.
Melita didn’t take long with this acquiring of food either. She repeated the same motions as before, leaning, crouching, trying not to cast a shadow over the water, raising her arm, and then swinging it down at an angle in one, wild, vicious motion. The fish impaled on the end twisted back and forth, desperate to be free, to be liberated, but its fate had already been decided, and even if it had managed to thwart its way off of the spear, it wouldn’t survive the hole punctured in its gut. All the while though, the girl’s mind wasn’t even on the hunt itself, but the bizarre statement Samuel had uttered. It’s for my friend…because I don’t eat. The whole notion confused and muddled her, because what kind of individual didn’t consume food? How did he get any energy, any sustenance? What did he do in order to acquire these things, since it was clear he didn’t hunt?
She roamed back over to him, the fish stilled and presented like a trophy to the man. “Here you go.” The questions and inquiries kept pulsing through her mind, begging to be asked, screaming to be unleashed…but a greater part of her worried what kind of tribulations and trials it would open up, as if she was very ignorant and unaware of some bigger part of the picture.
