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!
"Okay, you just have to remember where you leave your shoes, otherwise we'll get in trouble." Mateo is instructing his little sister very precisely in the art of not being told off by wading through the Whispershore, and he has left his own shoes with his bag of holding. Safely back in the Greatwood, without Ever to join him and with the distinct impression that his little siblings are in need of his incredible company, Mateo has dragged Flora out to join him here.
The boy is tanned already from his various adventures in the Longheat sunshine, his shoulders bare and his pants rolled up to the knee as he wades around the twinkling shallows. "Come on - you have no idea how many cool things you can find in here," he trills to Flora, splashing a bit of water at her as if to get her to hurry up.
'I don't see why I couldn't just put mine with yours," Flora is quick to point out, but she does so in as breezy of a voice as she can, followed up with an innocent shrug. Slipping out of her dainty sandals, Flora places them first beside a log, before reconsidering and placing them ontop instead. Gathering a few brightly coloured flowers to place nearby to draw her attention, she tries to create a quite mnemonic to help her remember this particular fallen log, before trotting barefoot after her big brother.
In a pale yellow sundress with her hair in a long plait down her back, Flora splashes confidently into the water, before shying away as Mateo flicks water at her. If she gets herself wet that's one thing, but he can keep his grubby hands to himself.
"I wonder if we'll find anything really valuable. You know, like a diamond ring or something."
"Because, what if someone comes along to steal shoes? You wouldn't want yours in the same place as mine because then they'd both get stolen," Mateo explains reasonably, already wading deeper to investigate something very shiny indeed. "Maybe! I've heard there's loads of things to find here, treasures and all sorts. What would you do with a diamond ring?" he asks, bending to pick up what actually turns out to be a bit of glass that's turned smooth and opalescent.
Lobbing it deeper into the Whispershore, Mateo turns to wade back to his sister. "I've heard you need to bring a sieve or something to look properly for treasure. But I think we'll do okay by hand," he murmurs, settling into a crouch in the shallower parts of the bank so he can dig his fingers into the silt and find out for himself.
"How does that matter? If just my shoes get stolen, I'm not going to be better off just because yours haven't." Flora quips in reply, resisting the urge to fold her arms dramatically across her chest.
"I hope so! Maybe someone got engaged, but..said no, and they threw the ring into the water!" Flora theorizes. "Or maybe it fell off during a scurmish, or—" Turning towards Mateo, she waggles her fingers. "Maybe it got bitten off my some monster, just like what happened to Dad's fingers."
Giving her brother a duh, what do you think I would do with it? look, Flora pushes a bit of hair from her forehead. "Wear it of course. And if it was too big I could have it on a necklace."
Crinkling her nose at Mateo's methods, Flora turns to the water consideringly. Seeing a patch of sparkle, she wades forward, only...it seems to move as she goes. Frowning, she continues to try and clod her way after it.
"Yes, but if my shoes get stolen, won't you feel good that you still have yours? It's better than both of us having to walk barefoot. One of us could at least run ahead and get help." Help for what, exactly? Mateo doesn't know, but he'll absolutely be dramatic about it if that's what the situation calls for.
Flora's ideas about the fated diamond ring are enough to have Mateo grinning as he digs through the sand, which predictably only muddies the water (thus proving why one needs a sieve to do this sort of thing). "If it was a monster like that then it would have to be a little one for it to hang out here," he points out, looking up and down the small branch of the Stonesong.
But then Flora's off, Mateo rising to his feet automatically to splash after her. ""Stai attento!" he calls, though he's also caught the twinkle of a moving treasure as well. "Oh, Flora! It's a goldfish," he says brightly. "That's strange, though - usually they move in big groups. Did this one get lost?"
Flora isn't convinced, but nor does she want to talk about shoes anymore. They've both put them in different places, so it's up to the fates now.
"Not necessarily." Flora counters, always needing to argue. "It could have just been passing through. Maybe it slept here long enough to..you know..poop and then went on." So there, Mateo. At her brother's bright call, Flora just calls back over her shoulder: "I don't know what that meeeaaannss." Even though it was abundantly obvious from his tone.
As her brother's shadow darkens the water, Flora is about to frown at him before he names the sparkling bit of yellow moving slowly over the rocks. "Awwww." Leaning down such that the hem of her dress dips into the water, Flora tries to corral the creature between her hands. It looks injured, maybe, but it's still fast enough to slip through her small fingers. "Hey!"
"Yeah? Maybe it pooped all this treasure in the first place, hm?" Mateo raises his eyebrows, trying to wade more quickly through the water (though of course he fails, by virtue of being in the water). "It means be careful - I don't know what the water's like further out, and if you get swept out to sea I'm gonna have to make up a really good story about it." And he's having a lazy day if you hadn't noticed, Flora.
Drawing up beside her as she bends to inspect the fish, Mateo's brow furrows. "I think it's hurt," he says to his sister. "Hold on - I think I've got something in my bag we can use." Plodding back to the bank so he can dart away to his shoes (the system works and he doesn't care what she says), Mateo does some digging around. And when he returns, it's with a small net and a large wooden bowl.
"Here," he says, offering her the net, bending to fill up the bowl at the same time. "If you can catch it, maybe we can put it in here and carry it out to deeper water."
'Just so long as you give me a dramatic death!' Flora trills. She will haunt Mateo until the day he dies if she drowned and he told the world that she couldn't swim and died in a puddle of water or something equally embarrassing.
'Hurt?' Frowning and sipping in a sympathetic breath, Flora twists her head as if a different perspective might let her see the goldfish's wound. Mateo leaves (does Flora hope that his bag has been taken, if only so he loses his shoes? A little. But nevermind), and when he returns, he'll find his sister has been using a few flat rocks to try and corral the golden creature in place. 'But if it's hurt maybe it came here to try and rest?' She counters, though it's without much enthusiasm. Like Mateo, Flora is more interested in..well, flora. Doing as he has instructed though, she carefully tries to scoop up the fish into the net while leaving it all submerged.
"I would never think of giving you a boring death," Mateo informs his sister - neither of them are particularly boring to begin with, and the boy's tales veer towards the far-fetched on a good day. Smiling to see that Flora has helped pen the fish into one spot, he stands at the ready with the bowl full of cool water. "I don't know if fish know how to rest all that much. I thought they needed to keep swimming around," he says, bending down so she can encourage their little friend into the bowl from the net.
"Besides, I think these fish live in big schools." Is that what they were called? Schools? Whatever - the goldfish soon finds itself safely(?) in Mateo's bowl, the boy straightening up again. "Channel...? I... I don't know. I only ever did it once, when Ever and me were being chased by wolves. I didn't try to though, it just happened. Can you?"
