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!
His father has come back to Stormbreak so he can show off his little garden and the shop and the skyboat and all the rest of it. And now Mateo is visiting the Greatwood again - and this time it's even better, because this time he has a friend with him. Riding a manticore is absolutely the best thing in the boy's opinion, and by the time they land in the woods his curls are an absolute mess and his cheeks hurt from smiling.
"Here we are," he breathes, spreading his arms and spinning about as if Ever should be able to take in everything about the Wildwood then and there. Mateo will crash eventually, he's sure, but for now he wants nothing more than to explore with the other boy "What do you think? è bellissimo, vero?"
What Mateo considers the best thing, Everest Hart, abstainer from danger and avoider of risks, considers the worst moment of his life.
With knuckles that are sore from clutching onto Remi's fur and a body that has used all of its energy from the tense flight, Ever slides off of the manticore, stumbles a few feet, and does his best not to throw up, pass out, or cry. Just as he thinks he might pee his pants, he looks over at his friend, all wild curls and blue eyes, realizing he can't understand a word of what he's saying. Or at least not all of it. "I..I think I'm having a stroke. F-A-S-T is how you remember..and...and speech is normally meant to be your speech, so..maybe it isn't a stroke. Maybe I've had too much oxygen to my brain. Or not enough?" Rambling, Ever starts to breathe in and out quickly—too quickly—as he tries to think of what disease has the symptom of sudden loss of ability to understand speech.
"What?" Mateo tilts his head, waving at his father as he goes loping away through the trees, leaving the boys to it. Only when he realises Ever is, y'know, freaking out does he decide to do something about it. Of course, Mateo's version of doing something is to plop down and sit in the wildflowers around them, reaching out to pat the grass that Ever might sit with him. "F-A-S-T? What does that stand for?" he asks, not having the advantage of a doctor for a mother.
Maybe he needs one, though, with the amount of danger he's so regularly put in (by himself). "Oh, look at this!" He scrambles to his knees and lean down before a purple bloom, a busy bee bum poking out from the petals. "He's pollinating the flowers. This is how bees can make honey, you know."
Like a startled horse, for a moment Ever just stares down at Mateo, mesmerized by the patting of the grass. What does it mean? Oh. right. Plopping down (read: collapsing), Ever swallows hard despite how dry his mouth is. "FAST. Face. Arm. Speech. Time." Reaching his fingers up to poke out his cheeks, he gives Mateo a pleading look. "Does my face look droopy?" It hasn't occurred to him yet that he understands what Mateo is saying now, but such is the nature of panic.
Setting aside his imminent death, Ever does as he's told. Flopping forward, he puts his face quite close to the bloom, which, luckily, the bee doesn't seem to mind. "I read once that a bee only makes about a drop of honey in its entire lifetime." He says, frowning. "It makes me feel really bad every time I have honey on my toast. I always say a mental thank-you, because it would have taken so many bees their entire life to make it for me, and then I just ate it for breakfast." Something about that seemed entirely unfair to Ever, and very, very sad.
Blinking across at his friend, Mateo tilts his head slowly as he's asked to determine the droopiness of Ever's face, and he shakes his head after some honest deliberation. "Just looks like it normally does," he tells him, his tone as sunny as ever and his attention quickly stolen by the bee bum. "Oh? I swear someone told me it was like a teaspoon of honey... but you're right, that still isn't very much."
Sitting back as the bee emerges, Mateo watches it buzz away before glancing back to Ever and furrowing his brow as he considers the other boy's points. "I think I will start saying thank you as well," he decides with a gentle nod - it only seems fair, whether it's a drop or a teaspoon. It's still a bee's lifetime of work for it. "Have you ever seen a beehive up close? I bet we could find one here if we went looking."
That it looks like it normally does is not as precise an answer as Ever would like. In the days and years to come though, he'd expect nothing less from his friend, and today was no exception.
"Well, 1/12th of a teaspoon." Ever corrects, trying not to sound like a know-it-all. "Which is misleading I suppose. What if they had a very large teaspoon or a very small one?" Then again, a drop wasn't very precise, either. The buzzing sound of the bee fills Ever with a low panic. It makes him feel anxious in a way that has his fingers itching at his elbows as if he might drive out the reverberation from his bones.
"Up close?" Ever repeats, astonished. "Isn't that...well isn't that dangerous?" He wonders, which is as close to an outright no as the boy usually comes.
"Oh," Mateo says, taking the correction in stride and offering a small smile to his friend, nodding to him. "Twelve bees for one teaspoon of honey is a lot. I will definitely have to start saying thank you before I eat my breakfast," he agrees, scrambling to his feet and offering out his hand that he might draw Ever up beside him. Already he's looking at whatever direction the bee might have gone in, like it would magically lead them to a beehive.
"It can be if we aren't careful," he says, nodding and shielding his eyes from the sun that streams down between the branches. "But we aren't going to go poking at it or prodding it, right? We just want to see them." It's sound reasoning to Mateo, and he's already strolling off in any old direction. "Besides, we might not even find one! We could head towards my dads' houseboat, and if we run into a hive on the way, we can look at it?"
"I wonder if we could help them at all. Or...give back. Do you know what bees need or like? Other than flowers?" It has suddenly occurred to the Hart-boy that perhaps he ought to be planting flowers for every bit of honey he eats. It's a lot of flowers, but then, surely he owes the bees that?
Glancing at the offered hand, Ever offers Mateo a weak smile as he accepts it. Though he doesn't like the way his sweaty hand feels in Mateo's (and it is sweaty, isn't it? he thinks it is), he'd probably not be able to get to his feet without his friend's help.
"Oh...well, alright then." It hadn't occurred to ever that being careful could just keep them safe from danger, but Mateo said it so confidently the boy was helpless to think up a counterargument (for which there were many). Taking a moment to dust off his knees and the back of his pants Ever adjusts the large backpack he has with him before trotting after Mateo. "Okay, that sounds good to me." He agrees as he fishes out a notebook and pencil from over his shoulder. In it he writes arrive. maybe stroke? find out standard size of teaspoon. and then in block letters at the top of the page: be careful and it won't be dangerous.
'So...how long are you here for? Will you be in class this week?"
"Oh, they only really need and like flowers," Mateo says - and this time the tone is less of the breezily confident and more of one who understands what he's saying. "But there are some flowers that they like more than others. Lilac, foxgloves, crocus. Some herbs are good for them, too. I can get us some seeds if you want to plant any." He smiles over his shoulder.
"I shouldn't miss any classes," he says with a small shake of his head. "I was already here for a bit, and I don't want to miss any more. I just thought it would be nice to hang out before it gets too cold. I heard that things aren't so colourful at Deepfrost here in the woods." Hopping over a protruding root and reaching up to brush his fingers through low hanging leaves, he ooooohs at the sight of something in the distance.
Broad, flat, and ever so inviting, Mateo has never seen a giant mushroom before. But he's about to. "Look at that!"
While Mateo is talking, Ever is frantically writing down the names. He doesn't get the spelling quite right (croak-cuss), but it'll do for now. Especially because the boy is far too nervous to ask his friend to repeat himself, lest Mateo think he wasn't listening, or perhaps that it was a commentary on how quickly he was speaking. "I would like that. Could you tell me how to plant them too? And...where? Maybe one day after homework?" Though making plans for the future normally filled Ever with dread, this felt important enough that he was easily able to ignore his anxiety.
"Oh no? So a bit like home, then." Ever says with a nod, taking in the bright flora around him a touch wistfully. Once there's a moment for it, he'll try and do some rubbings of all the various colours around him so that he can remember them (as he isn't keen on a return trip via-manticore).
Glancing up from the pages of his notebook, Ever mmmms? precisely as his foot catches beneath the root Mateo had jumped over. Stumbling forward and flapping out his arms to catch himself, he knocks into Mateo as the other boy notes the giant fungus. "Sorry!" He exclaims brightly, taking a few steps back. "Sorry, sorry!"
Peering over Teo's shoulder, Ever's jaw drops to behold the mushrooms. "Whooaa..." He whispers, watching as a trio of squirrels descend from a tree, only to shoot into the air and catch onto a higher branch, via a huge bounce from the mushroom.
"Mm, just like at h--oof!" Mateo stumbles as well as Ever knocks into him, his arms flapping out too as he grasps a nearby tree to prevent from tumbling into the undergrowth. "It's okay!" he assures the other boy after the second apology, turning to smile at him. "My dad says the roots move sometimes, so even if you think you know where you're going, it might change," he says, though he's already slowly turning back to the mushroom.
Ever's whoaaaaa is exactly what he feels about it too, the boy's blue eyes following the squirrels. "They are bouncy," he breathes. "Ever, want to jump on a mushroom with me?" Beehives totally forgotten, he's already making his way towards said mushroom that he might give it a go.
Feeling nervous, as if Mateo might tell him to take a hike and abandon him in the woods because of his stumble (despite the fact that the other boy has given him absolutely no reason to think this), Ever glances worriedly over his shoulder at the root, as if expecting it to waggle at him. That it was lying perfectly still, completely innocent, made Ever instead wonder if Mateo was just...lying to him, to make him feel better. "Oh..okay. Well, sorry again."
Want to jump on a mushroom with me, is one of those sentences that sounds like it's code for something, only in this case, it isn't. Understandably Ever does not want to do this, but after having just knocked into Mateo (a grievous act, to be sure), he feels absolutely obligated to comply. "Yeah, sure."
Setting down his backpack and quickly scribbling in his notebook something about mushrooms and moving roots, he tightens his belt one hole, tucks in his shirt, and takes a deep breath. "Wait..." He mumbles dubiously as they approach one of the stalks? stems? of the mushroom. "How..do we get up there?"
While Everest is preparing, Mateo is doing what Mateo does best, and diving in headfirst. Indeed, by the time the other boy is asking how they might get up onto the mushroom, the tiniest Taliesin has climbed halfway up one of the trees overhanging it, grinning down at his friend. "We'll jump!" he calls brightly. Clearly, whoever divvies out things in the divine realm has given Ever Mateo's dose of common sense overthinking, because he hasn't thought even for a moment that his friend ought to take a hike.
He's quite keen to show Ever how it's done, in fact, even if he's never done it before himself. It explains why he leaps from his place halfway up the tree, anyway, and he boings right off the mushroom, squealing with delight the entire time. That is, until it comes to the descent, and something garbled (oh fuck in the travelling tongue, to be precise) leaves his lips as he tumbles off into the undergrowth and disappears entirely.
Ever begins to mouth we'll jump? even as his blue eyes track Mateo. His friend makes climbing look so easy that Ever wrongly gets the impression that maybe it isn't too hard at all. By the time he's gotten the nerve to consider touching the tree Mateo had mounted, the other boy is leaping off. It's a thing of beauty to see, really. Mateo's curls looked weightless and the way his arms pumped in the air made him seem like some featherless bird that nonetheless had still achieved flight.
Then predictably it all went to shit.
In slow motion Ever's eyes widen, his mouth parts in a silent O of terror, and as Mateo disappears, panic gets the wheels of time going again. "Mateo!" Ever calls out. Running forward a few steps, the boy stops, turns, and rushes back toward his backpack. Slinging it over his shoulders he trudges in the direction of his friend's dissent, calling his name in ever higher-pitches, all the while silently pleading for his (only) friend not to be dead.
