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!
05-05-2022, 06:14 AM (This post was last modified: 05-06-2022, 10:13 PM by Hadama.)
He accepted her name in return, tucking it away against later necessity much as he drew the piece of coral back into the water for safekeeping until it could be returned to its place by skilled hands. The explanation that followed had the mermanta listening with his more usual quiet curiosity, returning Chaele's courtesy with his own now that the point of contention had been settled.
He tilted his head slightly at the mention of 'ritual magic,' uncertain but unwilling to interrupt until she had finished speaking her piece and even then he was quiet for a short time, considering all that had been said. "I am unfamiliar with this magic," he admitted after searching his memory. "What types of purpose do you need?"
As to the absurdity of her actions he said nothing, but he continued to watch the pale skull that reflected the moonlight like a beacon; easy to find in the starglow dark of the Torchline twilight.
“I intend to have plenty of pieces to work with so that the proper intention can be formed when the time comes,” she answers vaguely at first, for clearly her motivations are open to judgment from this merman. Her honesty is clouded with a sort of protectiveness for the sanctity of her traditions. “I use them for luck, for divination, for binding and breaking energies, for protection of myself and the places I go. It is said that everything, living and inert, has a spirit to be spoken with.”
And yet it is tempting to say more, for she has learned much about the latent powers of the land and he would not be the first to be incredulous. What could it harm, to see if he is not? She settles onto the wet bank, kneeling in her sand-speckled skirts so that their eyelines are even. “The gods are known for taking mundane pieces of the world and crafting them into powerful items and abilities. My magic is also divine, at its source. Who is to say that I cannot crack the recipe and harness a similar power?”
If she is aware of the precedent consequences of such hubris, she does not seem to care.
Vague notions were met with quiet patience but as with fishing: good things came to those who waited. Details began to drop like rain upon the waves, tiny clues that added up one by one to form a greater picture of Chaele's intentions. Luck and protection were things that Hadama could understand, and he tilted his head in neutral acknowledgment on the ubiquity of spirits.
She sank down upon the sand and Hadama arranged himself more comfortably in the quiet tide, listening to the words she shared and giving each its thoughtful due. Now that the cathedral would soon be repaired he held no grudge against what had been take in ignorance rather than malice, and he could afford to be curious.
"I have heard of humans who can do this," he agreed, nodding slowly. "The making of magical items. It is not an ability my people have ever possessed." A hint of regret, perhaps, in his bass tone. But it wasn't something that could be changed yet, and so he met her eyes calmly, curiously. "What will you do with this power, if you gain it?"
The burlap bag at her side rustles around her hand as she retrieves a handful of items from within. They splash into the soggy sand: a piece of flaking driftwood, a husk of a dead crab, a few flat shells, a tangle of spindly seagrass. She picks up the crab carcass and begins plucking off its legs.
“I do not protect that which is created,” she explains, pinching the little orange stalks between her knuckles as she goes. “But rather that which has always been. The land-- its life, its soil, its water, its magic. As it protects me.” She is looking between her little project and the man before her, examining the stoic calm in his eyes with quiet passion in her own. Her hands are not moving idly, but rather with a haste that suggests she is trying to show him something.
When the dismantling is finished, she turns to the sea grass and begins to tear it into pieces about the length of her fingers. “Magic is more than enchantments and elements and supernatural abilities. It is the power of intention, harnessed into something greater than the sum of its parts.” She gestures to the pieces of miscellany that are scattered before her, as if they held some deeper symbolism, and then to the cathedral itself. “There is no doubt that your people have created such magic.”
He examined the items as they were revealed; a curious collection of flotsam and jetsam washed from sea to shore. Once-living things and those made by them were noted, and he watched dispassionately as she began disassembling the dead crab.
He tilted his head in acknowledgment of her words without argument, tucking away the unfamiliar religious theory for future contemplation.
The seagrass soon followed the crab's fate along, but when Chaele gestured to the cathedral Hadama finally shook his head in quiet negation. "The Hale Ka'aila has been here for longer than memory. Longer than records below or above the water. We - mer and human - are its inheritors and caretakers. But not its creators." He turned his head finally to look at the small, mysterious structure as it sang a twilight lullaby. The last of the fading light stroked the seaglass with warm fingers of red and gold that sparked false fire from the topmost spires while the dark waters swirling below and began to glow with the Arclight's nightly display.
He looked back at her, green eyes gleaming from his dark face. "Can you swim?"
She has begun to assemble the pieces into something resembling a flower. The seashells are petals, overlapping in a concentric pattern; the sea grass are leaves, looped gently beneath; the little crab legs are the inner filaments, limp without attachment. When the arrangement is complete, she reaches into her pack to retrieve a stubby candle and flintsteel. The wick is lit, its little flame no match for the fiery beauty in the fading heavens, and the wax begins to melt.
“You credit Safrin, I suppose,” she conjectures in response to his description of the reef. Her eyes remain on the candle, waiting for something. “I wonder if it is a natural occurrence after all, just like these shells and weeds-- waiting to be crafted into a new intention.”
A glimpse upward finds her eyes met with his, a brow furrowing in contemplation of the unspoken. Her own gaze grows momentarily distant, struck with recollections of wet weightlessness, of treading arms and the taste of salt water. “I can swim,” she replies curiously, tearing her attention from his mysterious question to regard her little construction. She disassembles it, beginning on a new shape as she adds with a less than hidden grin, “I am afraid I cannot drown for my crimes.”
Flowers were often admired at a distance, where they bloomed upon the shore, out of reach of the sea. Those that fell into the waves, dropped by wind or birds, were quickly washed to pieces by the action of wave and current. Chaele's constructed flower was a curious piece of art, though just as ephemeral in its own way. Still, it was the fire that drew his curiosity moreso than the patterns in the sand.
He raised his eyes to meet hers through the skull's openings as she spoke, unperturbed by her assumptions. "It is likely older than her," he said in response, and his tail lashed lazily through the shallows as he held the cathedral in his mind's eye. "But it is not natural." The words were spoken with a simple assurance of decades in its presence. It was too perfect, too symmetrical, for it to have been anything other than intentional.
The flower came apart more quickly than it had been crafted, and Hadama's green eyes gleamed with quiet amusement behind his stoic expression at her answer. "That will not be necessary. But the tide will turn soon. It matters less, if you can still swim to shore once it does." So long as the night-dark waters hid nothing worse than a thoughtful mermanta ray.
"Are these patterns part of your magic?" A curious nod of his chin towards the new shape now growing beneath the candle's wavering light.
A little pool of wax has begun to shine beneath the candle’s flame, rippling precariously as Chaele plucks it from the sand. She tips it over the space between two overlapping shells, pouring the wax such that when it quickly dries, it has attached them together. “Water and life,” she mutters in a somber ritual. Then she twists the candle back into its place in the sand and waits for more wax to melt.
“The flower is a symbol of generosity and growth. It might have been a good gift for the ocean, or the Hale Ka'aila, in honor of my new knowledge.” There is no regret in her tone, but still she gives a knowing look to Hadama, acknowledging her own ignorance. “The shells symbolize home and a sailor’s return to it. The crab symbolizes tenacity and survival. These things are not true because I say they are, but because they have been willed to be, by the associations and thoughts of so many people over so much time. All items are given power by the collective intention of those who witness them.”
Already the water has begun to rise, lapping at her skirts and soaking into the sand around her. But the candle has another thin layer of wax, so she busies her hands by dripping it over two more shells to make them one. Again she mutters the little prayer, barely audible, before continuing. “That is the root of magic, as I have come to understand it. My people have the ability to harness it more easily than most, but we do not create something from nothing. We pull on the intentions of the world, which are revealed in its patterns and symbols.”
He listened without interruption or judgment, watching the eyes beneath the mask or the unwebbed hands that deftly handled fire and wax and shells. Her knowing look was met with a small tilt of his head in acknowledgment of her gift to the waves and cathedral; appreciating the intention if nothing else.
It was always fascinating to hear what drylanders thought of the ocean's bounty. Their interpretations were always fresh and sometimes exotic, and Hadama considered the crab and the shells in particular. "What happens to the magic when there are conflicting associations?" he asked curiously.
He could not hold back the water for her, but he positioned himself to break the force of the small waves rising with the slow cycles of eternity back towards their nadir so that the water merely tickled the edges of the pattern for now. "Your people...?" Another questioning lilt to the deep voice as he held his guesses locked inside until she could shed light on her own meaning.
She hesitates to answer his final question, realizing that she could not predict how he might feel about her answer. Hadama has been open in speaking about mundane magic, but his attachment to Stormbreak gives her pause. “Water and life,” she repeats in the meantime, dripping hot wax over the crab legs to attach them to the shells. Only when that task is complete does she set the candle back in place and meet his eye.
“I am what they call Abandoned.” Chaele holds Hadama’s gaze for a moment, searching it for some nuance of opinion in the edges of his expression. When her eyes avert, she notes the little generosity that he offers by holding what he can of the encroaching waters. Her gratitude goes unsaid, if only because she is not accustomed to giving it.
Still her voice warms as she continues, “My mentor said conflicting associations combat each other, weakening the symbolic meaning-- and therefore the power-- of the item. She said that our different cultures, our… dissonance, of understanding has diminished the magic in the world.” She has begun to tie the torn seagrass stems back together, forming two long ropes about the length of her forearm. “But I like to think it simply gives the items nuance. So that when they are combined with others, the most harmonious intention is harnessed.”
The candle flame flickers in futile defiance of its continued handling, as the shaman uses melted wax to seal each knot in the line of seagrass. The antlers on her mask sway as she looks between her project and her latest acquaintance. “What are your associations with the shell, and the crab?”
Abandoned, they said, and Hadama nodded polite acknowledgment, waiting for something... more, with a faintly quizzical lift to his brows. It explained why they were avoiding asking Safrin for answers, though, and he didn't press them further on what seemed a sensitive topic.
The shift in mood was almost palpable at the theoretical explorations of magic and intention, and Hadama listened to her explanation intently again, from her mentor's interpretation to her own, and his eyes flicked only briefly to the seagrass - but mostly to the wax; a substance he had little experience with.
Her question brought a flicker of warm amusement to her eyes as he nodded to the crab first. "Defiance. Transition. The three-phased moon." He looked to the shell and paused more thoughtfully. "Different shells have different interpretations. Shape, color, and what lives in each may change the meaning. For these... solitude is often one. Perseverance. But also inflexibility."
He looked at her other items curiously. "What are the meanings of the seagrass and the driftwood to the shorefolk?"
She holds a crab leg up to her eye line, twisting it between two fingers so that it spins delicately beneath her scrutiny. It is easy to wonder how many moltings might have made it, how many might have yet happened if the animal did not meet its demise. “Our understandings of the items share certain themes,” she observes wistfully, pausing as her mind turns over the possibilities. “The crab shell, endurance. The cockle shell, patience. And so we divine the true meanings of each, and come closer to harnessing their power.”
Then she rests the leg on a shell, retrieving the candle again to fasten the two together with wax. There are two sets of two shells, with four legs attached to each, somewhat resembling the whiskers of a sea lion. She then sets the length of sea grass over them, like the bridge of the pinniped’s nose.
Meanwhile she answers, “Much as the shells welcome the sailors to land, the kelp welcomes swimmers to water. But they obscure the ocean’s depths, protecting it from that which would peer in. Seagrass is... the boundary.” She speaks at a distance, as one reciting a memory. And perhaps not an entirely pleasant one. “The driftwood represents new beginnings, as the husk of an old self wanders the shore in search of a new one.”
The latter is tucked away in her burlap pouch, along with the crab’s legless carapace. It seems whatever she is making is nearly complete, waiting only for the wax to dry. As it does, she looks toward Hadama with her head tilted in the angle of a question, a wordless expectation for his insights on the other items.
Her words fell into silence as Hadama considered them; perhaps agreeing with some and disagreeing with others, but not interrupting her either way. She shared her beliefs and he listened, learning, and watched her patterns grow and change upon the wet sand.
He could see what appeared to be the face of a seal taking shape from the petals of flowers, a fascinating transformation and worthy performance for the ingenuity of the art alone. He nodded slow acknowledgment of the meanings of the other objects that he had seen, looking up to meet her questioning glance when she put some of them away.
"I do not know a deeper meaning of driftwood," he admitted. "But it is often used as decoration, either carved or left natural. It is not..." The mermanta sought for the word for a moment. "...considered elegant. But it is popular." He looked to the braid of seagrass, quiet amusement turning thoughtful again. "Kelp and seagrass are different things with different meanings. Kelp is more like... the trees of your jungles. Seagrass roots. It is stability. Steadfastness. Nurturing. Kelp floats. It is striving towards a goal. Hope. But also losing sight of your past. For good or for ill."
Chaele draws a hunting knife, its patina glinting in the distant arclight, then presses its edge into the base of the shell. She twists it there until she has carved a crude hole in the calcite, busying her hands as she listens attentively to Hadama’s descriptions. She will do this to each shell until they can be threaded onto the double length of knotted seagrass, dabbing the construct with wax to better hold it together.
“Then may steadfastness join endurance and patience, so that this be a talisman of promises kept, and mettle tested, and dedications met.” She lifts it delicately out of the sand then, like a sort of necklace, and continues upward until she has risen to her feet. Turning her back to him for a few moments’ fuss, she ties the seagrass at the back of her head and dons the sea lion’s whiskers in a freshly made mask.
With her large dark eyes exposed to the moonlight, the little runic scars are apparent on her forehead and chin. Her hands fuss with the laces of her skirts, stripping them down to the lightest underlayer. “Now what was this you were saying about a swim?”
