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!
"I am just saying that if you are not sure if what you saw was sex, then it was not sex," Mateo is telling Everest, trying not to slant a crooked smile his friend's way because it will ruin the makeup that's being studiously applied to his cheeks.
He's been meandering around the Silk Houses for the past season-ish - for about the same amount of time as he has started to smell faintly like tobacco, actually - and, having found Molly's, it turns out that there's a lot of mischief that the Commander's son can get up to.
Right now it mostly involves talking with the pretty girls (and sometimes boys) who step outside for a break, bumming cigarettes and, like today, sitting on a barrel while someone practices their makeup skills on him. And given that he's growing up to have a pretty face too, and he has music on his tongue to boot... listen. He had to do something while Ever was in Halo.
Ever's expression is one of someone who wants very badly to argue, but who knows just enough to realize how ignorant he is. Even so, his frown is bordering on being painful. "Okay...so...what would I have had to see in order for it to be sex?" The boy presses.
Seated on a milk crate with his notebook folded across his lap, Ever has written down just about everything that Mateo and the makeup artist have had to say on the subject. He even added smiley-faces in the margins where his explanations or descriptions garnered a response, that he might later revisit them to try and figure out what was funny. There might not be any silly questions when it came to speaking with his father, but the same couldn't be said for many other people.
'Would your dads let you watch them have sex?' Ever wonders curiously, his head tilting slightly to the side. Knowing that your dads meant two demigods, the makeup artist seemed keen to know the answer to this as well.
"Depends," says Mateo, only for the make-up artist to tut him into silence so she can keep his face still. She does pick up where he left off with a titter, though. "There are a lot of different positions," she trills. Mateo swings his legs on the barrel, and although he does find some of what Ever says amusing, he is not nearly as tittery as the whore doing his mascara.
Blinking as he's allowed to move again, he glances back at his friend and wrinkles his nose. "No," he says, "they are my dads." But then, reconsidering, he tilts his head. "Not on purpose, anyway. I have walked in on them lots of times. They aren't very subtle, and they tend to be all over each other a lot anyway." Smiling at the whore as she proclaims he's done! and one of her friends calls her back in from her break, Mateo waves as she clicks back into Molly's out of sight.
"I know a window where you can spy, if you want to see," he suggests.
'Oh?' Ever poises his pen over the page and waits enthusiastically for more information. When it doesn't come, he huffs a touch to himself, wondering if this was the 'teasing' thing he'd heard about when it came to Molly's.
"Oh. What about me, then?" They weren't his dads, so if that was the only objection..? "My parents said it was natural, like drinking hot chocolate, so I don't understand what family has to do with it." Giving the whore a polite nod and feeling a bit dissatisfied she hadn't shared more (he wouldn't be the first boy to think this), Ever turns his attention back to Mateo, studying his friend's face.
"Your eyes look...bigger." It's the only way he can think to describe the doe-eyed shape. "It looks itchy. Is it itchy?"
As for spying? "Spying seems rude...but...if it's natural and nothing to be ashamed of..?" That's what everyone had been telling him over and over, wasn't it?
"Mm, I get the impression that they're not really into people watching them. Like... they don't care either way, but I don't think they'd want to invite you in to take notes or anything on purpose," Mateo says. "And I... I don't know. Probably something to do with science. I have the anatomy notes if you want to borrow them," he says, caring more about spying on whores than getting into how hormones and other things work and how it stops inbreeding.
"It doesn't feel itchy, just a bit... heavier?" He flutters his eyelashes at Ever and smiles, a dimple appearing in one of his contoured cheeks. "You should try it next time." Hopping down off the barrel, he beckons Ever to follow him along the side of Molly's and around to the back.
"It isn't rude, it's just stealing," he says. "And I think I have paid for it by beiing a makeup model, right?"
Ever sighs and shrugs. "I guess that's okay." He couldn't understand not wanting to be watched he supposed, but it was for science? Why did everyone seem so inflexible about it, if it was something everyone did? 'Yes please!' Ever chirps brightly. "I'll remind you when we're back at your house." He adds, making a note on one of the pages to do just that.
"Your face looks narrower too. Or..maybe your cheeks are rounder?" Ever leans forward, face scrunched with concentration to get a better look. "You look like an optical illusion." He concludes like it's a compliment, before shrugging non-committally.
'Stealing?' Ever balks at that, eyes wide despite following obediently behind his friend. "Oh, well...if only you've paid for it, maybe you can watch and describe to me what you're seeing?"
Smiling and nodding, Mateo dutifully stands still and lets Ever inspect his face and the illusions going on. "Right?" He smiles brightly, before taking off again until they reach a couple of shutters, behind which the lights are ruddy but bright enough to see by. "Oh, no no. It's fine - you can just have an IOU. You can sit and have makeup done next time and we won't look afterwards." It works for him, at least.
Carefully moving the shutter (and making the chorus of gasps and moans sound a bit clearer by doing so), Mateo ushers Ever to peep through the gap he's made. "See?" he whispers. "That is sex. You'd know if you saw it."
Though this sounds like a horrific idea, Ever nods. If makeup is the price for knowledge, so be it. Flinching a touch as the sound within is amplified, Ever raises his chin and grasps at the window to try and see inside more clearly.
At first what he's seeing is a bit confusing, if only because there are three people in the room and so the tangle of limbs is disorienting to his naive mind. Eventually, he pieces out the bodies, only to see parts disappearing into mouths and things around necks and hips he'd never seen before. "Mateo—" Ever whispers shakily. "Is that...what....how...how is she doing that?" He mouths, pointing at the tangle of limbs.
Everest is confused and disoriented - Mateo is fascinated. Usually when he peeks (and it's only been like twice, though his ego wants to say it's more) there are just two people, so this is a change in and of itself. "I have no idea," he hisses gleefully. But whatever she's doing and how, she's apparently very good at it because there's suddenly a very loud moan and whatever's happening begins to happen a good deal faster.
Biting his lip hard and ducking back out from the shutter, Mateo straightens up and pretends his pants aren't tight at all. "So there you have it," he says, carefully guiding the shutters closed. "Granted, that's the first threesome I've seen. Come on," He starts to creep away down the backstreets before someone catches on to them.
"I think he's going to—" have a heartattack is what Ever is going to say as his knees collapse so that he can disappear down alongside Mateo. His stomach suddenly feels very warm and the urge to look again is overwhelming in a way he doesn't understand. "Oh, but—" With his notebook over his pants, Ever nervously twists one of his feet. "—is he going to be okay?" He wonders of the man who looked to be in extreme pain and cardiac distress.
Slinking after Mateo in a shuffling sort of step, that they've left the window open hardly occurs to Everest despite the moans that trickle after them down the alleyway.
"Oh he'll be just fine," Mateo says with a smile over his shoulder to his friend, leading them through a zigzag of skinny side streets before they spill out onto the main stretch along the Silk Houses once more. "She was probably just about to make him have an orgasm. That's what happens at the end of sex - apparently it's the best bit." He shrugs his shoulders in a way that suggests apparently is a lie and that he knows this for a fact, but it's more because of things he does while he's alone. Again, hormones.
"So are you okay, after what happened with you and your parents this morning?" he asks conversationally, back to his regular broadcasting now that he's not getting his makeup done by a whore and spying on a threesome. "Do you need to go somewhere quiet and write it all down? My parents are out, so we can use my place if you want. And then I can give you those notes."
Just as he's about to ask what an orgasm is, Mateo...sort of explains. "Oh. So once he orgasms, that's it? Sex is over?" (Why yes Everest, for a lot of men, that's exactly how it goes). It doesn't answer what an orgasm is, but it's still a precious new bit of information. "Oh. So the orgasm is the pleasurable bit?" That tracked with what his dad had said.
With his pants still uncomfortably tight, Ever shrugs awkwardly as he keeps his notebook resting across his middle. "I don't know. It felt like...you know when someone says something like, Hey we have this new food with apples, but don't worry it's really good, and how when they say it like that it sort of implies that maybe you would think it isn't good?" Ever pauses. "Well what they said was sort of like that. How sex was natural and that basically everyone said it felt good but don't worry if you don't. Almost like they expect it not to feel good for me. But then they wouldn't let me watch and wouldn't tell me where to find more information, so..?" He sighs and nods.
"Yeah, your place would be nice. I think I'd like something cold to drink." Maybe that would help with the heat that wouldn't go away. Maybe he has acid reflux.
"That's what the whores at Molly's say," Mateo tells his friend with a nod, because being more knowledgeable about this does not equate to knowing much at all. And when the youngest Taliesin figures sex out a bit more, and figures himself out a bit more, maybe he'll revisit this topic with a giant, glaring caveat for Ever. "Oh, it all feels good, I think. But the orgasm is the bit that feels the best. I guess it's why they keep going until it happens."
Nodding easily enough and picking his way up some steps back up towards the Pacifist Plaza, Mateo pauses to wait for his friend. "Oh," he says, furrowing his brow for a moment and then smiling to Ever. "Why wouldn't they expect it to not feel good for you? Other than maybe they don't know that you're old enough to want to be thinking about that sort of thing? I mean... do you want to do that stuff you saw at Molly's? If not right now then one day?"
Picking up the pace again, of course Mateo latches onto something random that Ever has said, and he pauses them next to the bakery below the Hart boy's apartment. "I do like apples," he says, approaching the open serving window to ask for an apple turnover. "Do you want anything?"
Today Ever has learned that threesomes looked complicated and that orgasms, when had by men, signalled the end of sex. 'Oh. And you have to do...all of that to make it happen?" Vaguely Ever flaps an arm jerkily back and forth, having absolutely no idea how to mimic what he'd glimpsed.
Twisting his lips and shrugging, Ever shakes his head. "I don't know. But I found it very interesting that that went from what was normal for everyone, to it not being bad for me. Normal and not normal aren't the same as good and bad, but they kept switching up the words which makes me think that actually when it comes to sex they are related, you know?" Glancing over his shoulder at his friend, he tilts his head. "They said something about that too, but I guess I don't know what age has to do with it. I like learning new things." Mateo's next question chokes Ever just as neatly as one of the whores had been choking the man at Molly's, and his face goes just as red. "I...well...I don't ...know what you're supposed to do with any of it, or where it goes, or who you're supposed to do it with. That's why I wanted to learn about it." He admits with another sigh. "Do...you?" Ever asks shyly.
Imagining himself in that room makes the world spin and the heat in his belly expand. 'N..no...I don't feel so good. I think I just want water.'
