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!
Amalia doesn't want to leave Phoebe stranded in King's End; nor does she want to be part of the conversation between the Midwife and Hotaru, a woman who has every reason to loathe the Archangel. So when they land in King's End Amalia tells Phoebe to find her when she's ready, and sets off on her own path toward a reunion long in the making, yet difficult nonetheless.
She's heard about what happened in Halo. A hundred letters were started, sending consolations, asking if he was okay; a hundred letters were thrown away, their contents left unsent. Amalia has so much she wants to say to him, and yet no capacity to begin. Nothing seems enough, and everything seems too much, and even now with Jyoti beside her the girl feels anxiety chewing through her tongue, turning it into so much lead and sawdust in her mouth.
Still, she presses on.
And when she finds him? It's like walking into a dream: familiar and unsteady, with all the pieces that should make sense just slightly off the mark. He's there, same as he ever was, and at the same time changed; she's there, rebuilt and reborn, the girl he met in a library all those years ago. She stands there, frozen, dark eyes wild and wide, and looks upon the man who was her husband, her rock, her shelter in the storm, who is here, who is whole, who is safe---
She cannot help it: Amalia smiles, relief and simple happiness to see him running through the Attuned bond, across her angled face. "Hi, Dei."
become more committed to your dreams than you are to your comfort zone
Unaware of any more turns, his life had become one seemingly endless segment of twists lately, the Sword had carried on as he’d done the past several weeks – surviving. With watchful and confused glances towards Hotaru, until she had other business to attend to, with hunting, with gathering, with meeting others like-minded in their pursuits (though the numbers had felt like they were dwindling), striving to forge onward instead of crumpling, crumbling, and falling to all those angled pieces. Holding himself together, bit by bit.
Freshly bathed from a nearby river, wet hair pulled back into its typical messy bun, the man crouched over his latest fire pit, the incantations drawn upwards, until the roar was adequate, and the spit from the morning’s hunt established with the blink hares upon the metal proportions, intending to rotate them once everything had settled. Enough to satisfy him and Belial, and maybe Ru when she returned.
The aforementioned peryton, quick and wily and more of a guardian than ever, picked up on the movement and motion of others while Deimos worked. With a high, shrill, piercing screech, he’d sounded his alarm – though the Sword was half-inclined towards a lecture again (because lately everything had become cause for the shriek), the words died behind his teeth, when he lifted his head and saw her.
Felt her first, perhaps, difficult to discern in the wave of emotions brimming and blinding over the surface. With no masks or pretenses, for he’d had no time to prepare them, the confusion was paramount first – widened eyes, a slackened jaw, a tilt of his head to express the bewilderment – before his vocals did the same. “Amalia?” Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe the sickness was back. And all the bombardments curled without any place to go but his mind, expanding outwards into Attuned measures, wandering in the assortment of relief, despair, sorrow, regards for those beloved, unfurling wildly in the midst of these bizarre circumstances.
And like so many times before, without thinking, without the semblance of his walls, he reached out a hand to her frozen proportions. “What are you doing here?” Voice threading only to a whisper, as if she might be a mirage; not real.
under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed
She feels him too: how could she not, the deluge of his emotions a familiar chord in her mental space, even this long absent from the song? Here is a man, tending to a fire, a large man, a strong man - and yet beneath the flat colors of the visual, another story is told. He feels like fragments, her behemoth, her rock: tattered and weather-worn, pieces strewn in the wind.
Or maybe, as always, she is feeling herself, projected into him.
It doesn't matter. The moment is broken, and she is again herself, reaching for his outstretched hand, pulling into a hug, tucking herself against him as she so often had before. "I brought Phoebe to see Hotaru," the Angel murmurs into the embrace, happy to hide in it as long as he'll allow, to find brief and selfish respite in the rhythm of his heart. "And I... I wanted to see you. If that's okay."
She pulls back at the last sentence, realizing at last that where she is finding comfort he might see cruelty. Dark, earnest eyes gaze up at him as they have a thousand times before, anxious and ardent, mournful and hopeful, sincere as they glisten with apology and, yes, love.
become more committed to your dreams than you are to your comfort zone
For a moment, he wondered – if he was reaching, reaching, reaching for something discarnate, formed in between hazes of dreams and despair; trapped and caught in snares. Because, so very rarely, did the ones who’d left him behind ever turn back around.
And the pieces that had fallen apart, cobbled together with frayed strands, felt all the more shocked, bewildered, when she was real and whole, pulling, closing around him. Eyes rounded and widened, boyish, young, desperate, where she couldn’t see, but likely feel through the bonds and connections. No behemoth, no rock now, just a man striving to stand above his failures.
He returned the embrace, tight but not smothering, enfolding over until she was simply in his arms, tucked against his chest. A breath held, and then only loosened when she spoke, something about Phoebe to Hotaru, which might’ve made sense if any modicum of thought entered his mind. Instead, there were other overwhelming measures, and no walls to hide the clutter of confusion, melancholy, and love. Unaware his gaze said the same as he looked down, into familiarity and change all at once.
“Yes.” It is okay, a low rumble, a nod to follow through. Deimos couldn’t figure out why, not now, not after all the pain. Maybe it didn’t matter in the moment. “How are you?” Another gesture of his head indicated the food nearby, hares waiting to be cooked over the open fire. “Are you hungry?”
under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed
