it takes a fool to remain sane
Harper!
Maea Valair
Hollowed Grounds Ambassador / Loreseeker

Age: 29 | Height: 156 cm / 5'1 ft | Race: Ancient | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 2 - Strg: 22 - Dext: 22 - Endr: 25 - Luck: 20 - Int:
Played by: Chan Offline
Change author:
Posts: 3,023 | Total: 5,765
MP: 1897
#29
Don't paint wonderful lies on me that wash away
He who stares to long into the abbyss, will find the abbyss looking back. This pale winter child, born of darkness on the longest of nights, had always been drawn to the shadow world. Death had never frightened her - only the notion of living blind and useless in a world where empty hands meant suffering and starvation.

War... it was still an alien concept to her, and it reflected in the curious cock of her head. Searching and failing to find any point of reference to this terrible, haunting word so often on people's lips.
"I see. Is there any change, then? Or are people still biding their time, thinking it has not already started? I always imagined it never quite ended... It was only breathed to new life with the fall of the Barrier."

As for what she would do?. Maea shrugged again, but rather weary this time. "The Voice has no cause to do anything as long as I only skirt around her and her purposes. She warned me once, against interfering with her plans. I have not... so far. And if she did, it would only prove that there is such a thing as dissention among her 'followers'."

Fingering absently a fold of Harper's shirt, ignoring the dampness for the novelty of a different texture, she looked pensive. "And even if she did take over... I intend to stay very far away from anything I might care to lose."

The list was very short. It would not be difficult.
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
Harper Quinn
the Stalwart
Teacher

Age: 33 | Height: 5'10 | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Nomadic
Level: 5 - Strg: 15 - Dext: 15 - Endr: 27 - Luck: 19 - Int:
Played by: Brit Offline
Change author:
Posts: 1,036 | Total: 6,168
MP: 9427
#30
tell me Atlas what is heavier?
the world or its peoples hearts?
He hadn’t arrived until after the barrier had already fallen, but the sentiment isn’t one far from mental reach. It’s not the first time he has seen this behavior unfold, like a tapestry doomed to repeat itself, threads woven in different colors but alway, always the same pattern. “Those who haven’t seen war before are doomed to try and hide from any notion of it. The experienced see the ripples long before the waves - but they will become experienced enough in eight seasons or less, hm?” And Harper doubts this will be the only war in Caido. Perhaps The Voice is defeated - but there are still many lands, resources, races. In their lifetime perhaps they’d only see the one, but wherever humans existed, so too did war. Harper was all too aware of that particular curse.

There’s a sharpness normally concealed and blunted that she has revealed by pulling away the cloth that hides the blade, and it shines in his smirk. “So you come back, only to be a ghost with no Ludo to guide you. What was the point then? You have lost everything once and only now are too afraid to stir the waters?” Needles and barbs that seek to hook into flesh that cannot feel. His eyes fall to where her pale fingers fiddle with his shirt, and the man gives some mix of a scoff and a laugh. “I never took you for the cowardly type, but what would I know about the effects of returning from the dead?” As a pawn no less. Maybe this wasn’t the Maea he knew at all - gutted and replaced with machinery that could never emulate the spirit he’d once seen in her.
Harper
Maea Valair
Hollowed Grounds Ambassador / Loreseeker

Age: 29 | Height: 156 cm / 5'1 ft | Race: Ancient | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 2 - Strg: 22 - Dext: 22 - Endr: 25 - Luck: 20 - Int:
Played by: Chan Offline
Change author:
Posts: 3,023 | Total: 5,765
MP: 1897
#31
Don't paint wonderful lies on me that wash away
Was that a question? Pale eyes, colorless as the rain reflected only distant thoughtfulness as she beheld the monster she had uncovered. Sharp and cutting, Harper's words did more damage to her than the placid expression suggested - but there was no inclination to rise and rile into his provocations.

Maea only nodded, considering. "There was never much of a point to anything I did," she told him, with a faint trace of a smile. "This me is probably closer to the truth than anything you saw in the past. I have always been a coward. Afraid of being alone, afraid of dying. Afraid of everything... and yes, I am quite afraid now too. Living like this..." She made a vague gesture to herself, and shook her head in faint disgust. "I might have been tempted to have you end things here and now, if I wasn't so afraid of what would happen to my soul." She would not return to Mort. Which meant she would have to face the Voice - another thing she feared.

"To be brave in the face of so much fear, you really need something to fight for," she went on. Going off on tangents, talking too much - she doubted he was very interested but it hardly mattered. They could continue this game of pretending to care for a while longer. "I told you I don't recall drowning, yes? Well. That was a lie. It is a painful, horrible way to die." Letting go of his shirt, Maea reached into a pocket and pulled out a ring. Plain and unadorned, it was unassuming as she made a grab for his hand, to press it into his palm. "You've still got that, don't you? Things to lose. Things to be brave for. So. You know. Don't drown, yeah?"

Nodding at the ring, she let go and backed away. One step, two. It became easier with each one. It seemed she really did have something to stay away from here.



Maea has given Harper a gift.

Type: Light
Ring of Water Walking | Allows the holder to walk on water
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
Harper Quinn
the Stalwart
Teacher

Age: 33 | Height: 5'10 | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Nomadic
Level: 5 - Strg: 15 - Dext: 15 - Endr: 27 - Luck: 19 - Int:
Played by: Brit Offline
Change author:
Posts: 1,036 | Total: 6,168
MP: 9427
#32
tell me Atlas what is heavier?
the world or its peoples hearts?
The lack of returned bite makes him subside, the animal within - or perhaps the darkness, whatever it is she has summoned forth - tilting its head and regarding her anew. Regret slowly simmers up from gullet to become gorge in his throat. For all she had courted it, he had been the one to relent, to loosen the reigns. To hurt her. Now, there is only regret. "This is why we wear the masks we do," he whispers, and it's the only apology he's capable of making.

Though something she says does resonate with him, causing him to frown, considering. "Ludo is Mort's herald - maybe it can interrupt your soul returning to the Voice? Or poison it, or even just examine where it goes, to find her weakness?" He's not unaware that what he's implying would lead to her death, but considering she'd mentioned it first, Harper hopes she'll forgive him such a grave topic.

Interest is not something she need fear. He hangs on every word, sharp and attentive. Frowning, empathy at an all time high as she speaks of drowning. "They would hold our heads underwater until we passed out to teach us how to control our panic if we were being tortured with drowning for information," he shares quietly. Why, he doesn't know. To let her know she's not alone, even if his own drownings had not killed him?

As her hand parts from his shirt his eyes snap down to it, uncertain why it feels so urgent. Harper lets her take his hand all the same, and wrinkles his brows at the sight of the ring as it's pressed into his palm, right over the faint scar from where he'd saved Seren and torn it open. "Thank you, Maea," he murmurs, feeling humbled and ashamed for how he'd hurt her, for losing control over the mask even when she'd forced her fingertips below the seam to pull it away. His fingers curl around the ring, and his other hand reaches to encircle her small wrist before it pulls entirely away. Blue eyes rise to meet opalescent partners. "If I know anything, it's this - change, even the kind you've been through? It doesn't have to stick entirely. Save the parts you want to save. The rest is sand; let it go, and leave it in the waters where you died. Build upon the roots you choose."
Harper
Maea Valair
Hollowed Grounds Ambassador / Loreseeker

Age: 29 | Height: 156 cm / 5'1 ft | Race: Ancient | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 2 - Strg: 22 - Dext: 22 - Endr: 25 - Luck: 20 - Int:
Played by: Chan Offline
Change author:
Posts: 3,023 | Total: 5,765
MP: 1897
#33
Don't paint wonderful lies on me that wash away
Maea could forgive many things. This thorny bramble of an attitude took nothing to overcome. She had poked and prodded the cat until it showed its claws; what right did she have to blame it when the scratches stung? There was a mildness to her faint smile that contrasted sharply against her initial coldness, putting the question out as to which face was the true one. Perhaps, much like Harper, she was both of these things. Warm and caring to those who cared about her. Cold and disconnected from everything that did not make an effort to approach.

"Your mask is a pretty one, true," she murmured quietly. "But I don't dislike what's beneath it. Thank you for showing me... I feel as though I know you a bit better now." How strangely soothing it was to not be alone with bloodstains on her hands.

The hand around her wrist stopped her from withdrawing further. Much too easily. Maea glanced down at his hand with a distant sort of curiosity, and cocked her head aside while listening. Harper made it sound so simple. Like it was only a matter of choice, like her every decision was not forged based on past experience. Much like every dank and moist clump of peat in the swamp was a remnant of something else, dead and buried... but could anything take root in this fabrication of life that she had become?

"I can try," she conceded, more to console him than because she believed it would work. "I don't think Ludo would care to help me, even if it could... but I can try approaching a shrine. The worst outcome... is either nothing happens, or I die. Which will happen soon anyway, if I don't approach the Voice." Blood could only stave off the inevitable, after all.
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)


RPG-D