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!
Since Devrum had stolen her from her bed in the Domiciles and brought her here, to the cabin he'd built from scratch, it was safe to say that Vervain had fallen in love with the place. It seemed to blend seamlessly in with the woodlands, and as of late Vai had even been cultivating a small herb garden at the front of it, where a break in the canopy of trees brought plenty of dappled sunlight. It was a quiet morning in Flowerbirth, full of birdsong and the warm whisper of a breeze, and Vai had decided to start planting.
She had settled on her knees in the patches of tilled earth in front of the cabin, a few seedlings in pots beside her. They'd been happily sprouting on the windowsill for a week or so now, and it was time for them to brave the outdoors. As well as herbs used in cooking (sage, thyme and mint), Vai had also been cultivating a few medicinal herbs. She was still a fledgling at this whole infirmary business, but her heart was in the right place.
Humming under her breath and shifting to get comfortable (an increasingly difficult task with the child within her growing all the time), she began to take the first seedling out of its pot.
Ashe padded through the trees, paws pressing softly into the earth still damp with morning dew. Golden eyes were turned intently ahead, ears flicking and following the sounds of birdsong, of rustling in branches. The air was fresh, clean, dappled sunlight warming a black coat. Deepfrost was done, the world thawed, and it seemed that the wolf had begun to thaw too.
Free time was a bizarrely new concept for the assassin, especially the amount it, but there were things beginning to slip into place. New routines, new habits, new feelings that didn’t include her ever-present fear. Fear had ruled her every step for fourteen years, and now? While one had not been willing or able to see her through the aftermath, another had until she was strong enough to do more than run from it all.
Today she breathed a bit easier as she followed the familiar scent trail that lead to her mother’s cabin. Kalt had Theea for the day, and they could reach each other at all times no matter where they were, she knew they were safe.. And so Ashe found herself nearly relaxed as she broke through the treeline, shifting to walk on two feet as she set electric eyes on the familiar shape of her mother - though it was perhaps beginning to change now.
That was a fact that she hadn’t quite processed yet: she was going to have a little sister or brother. She was elated, of course, but what that meant for her she wasn’t entirely sure of. Two years of putting together her family until it had become what it is now, and she was still getting used to that - she wasn’t sure what kind of older sibling she would make.
At the moment she wasn’t processing that however. Ashe approached her mother on silent feet, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "What are you planting?" the raven-haired girl said as she came to a stop a few feet from Vai, tilting her head down. She recognized a few from her lessons in the Guild, but she wasn’t exactly stellar when it came to anything to be used in cooking. "Do you want help?"
Whilst Vervain's senses were nowhere near supernatural, and nor did she have an Attuned's advantage, she still instinctively glanced up as her daughter emerged from the trees on four legs, and then on two. Everything about her seemed to brighten tenfold, a smile blooming across her face, her hands abandoning the little seedling in its pot for now. Carefully, she got to her feet and waited for Ashetta to draw close enough for her to wrap her arms around her.
"Of course you just waltz out here like it's nothing," she muttered, giving her a gentle squeeze and holding her close, kissing her dark hair. "I'm glad you're alright, Ashe. You're in one piece? Kalt too?" After LongNight it was difficult to be sure. And whilst Vai really did not like the other assassin, it wasn't her choice. It was her daughter's. (It was the wrong one, but she kept that bitten under her tongue). Still, it was polite to ask about Kalt if nothing else.
"Hmm? Oh, I'm trying to start a little herb garden. I've had to take over the Infirmary, sort of. And I figured I may as well plant some cooking herbs while I was at it. I'd love it, if you wanted to help."
Ashe let out a soft breath with her smile as her mother hugged her, her arms wrapping around the woman. The relief that hit her was stronger than she expected it to be, the smell and warmth that enveloped her reminding her of the aching fear that had had held her firmly over longnight, not knowing who was okay and who wasn’t.
She held her mother tightly and shut her eyes briefly, reminding herself that she was okay and that she was right here. She pulled back enough to look up at Vai, her eyes glinting. "I’m fine, so is Kalt and his daughter, everyone and the house is in one piece," she assured, though she was mildly surprised that she had even asked after Kalt. Her mother’s hatred for him was no secret, but she was grateful for the lack of hostility nonetheless.
The wolf girl glanced to the little herb garden her mother had begun, looking back to Vai with a quirked brow. "The infirmary? What happened to the doctor?" Had she been lost to the longnight too? Ashe had been starkly reminded once more of the fragility of life with all the losses suffered. She wondered for a moment if Kalt was still going to be helping around there, and she tried not to imagine the shitstorm that would hit if her mother and her lover were to actually work together.
The assassin turned her eyes to the garden once more, and it occurred her that she had never gardened before. She had seen plenty of gardening obviously, but there had never been any time for things like that in her life. That’s the one thing she seemed to have too much of now, so much of it that it overwhelmed her. She crouched down by the soft soil, arms resting over her knees. It was a simple enough concept right? Dig a hole and stick the plant in and pile some more dirt in the hole. Easy."How have you been feeling?" Ashe asked as she reached for one of the potted herbs. She glanced up and gestured vaguely to her mother’s abdomen where life grew within. "Everything is going okay?"
"Good," Vai murmured, smoothing Ashe's raven locks out of her face and pressing another kiss to her forehead. She was reluctant to let her daughter go, looking her over carefully before shifting to kneel down with her, back amongst the seedlings that needed to be planted.
"The doctor died," she said softly, frowning to herself. "Sort of. It's a very long story - you might want to ask Remi, if you're interested. Either way, a few of us have banded together - healers, scholars, medics and such - to run the place now that Isla isn't around any more."
Carefully planting the seedling in the hole she'd already dug before Ashe's arrival, Vai expertly scooped the soil in and around it and pressed it down gently. Surreptitiously she watched her daughter, as if to see whether or not she knew what she was doing - not that Vai cared, she was just happy to teach if Ashe needed or wanted it.
Her gaze followed the assassin's down to her stomach, her smile growing warmer. "I'm feeling good," she assured her. "The nausea has faded and the midwife in town has confirmed everything is normal so far. You'll be expecting a sibling out of the oven in a little while." She winked.
Ashe glanced up at the explanation of the infirmary, frowning slightly. Remi must have been close to Isla then, and even aside from the pang of worry for the alchemist, there was a sense of regret in the loss. She had never even met the medic, she'd been one of those to come with a miniwave into Northaven, but there was something that resonated a little bit deeper when it was a Northavener. She hadn't exactly allowed connections with anyone new to form.. If she had been bad at making friends before, she had gotten much worse since her breakdown.
The assassin frowned back down to the tilled soil. She didn't see any digging tools in her immediate vision, and so she dug her hands into the soil, moving it aside to make room for a seedling. She smells that reached her were fresh and earthy, anchoring her down.
She looked up again at the former huntress with a small, closed-lipped smile. Sibling. The word was so strange to hear. She had those she considered her brothers, but.. She took a deep breath and reached for one of the potted herbs - yarrow, she believed - and frowned down at as she considered how to get it out of the pot without ripping it up entirely. At first she grabbed at the base of it's stem, close to the soil, but looking up at her mother and watching her had her thinking better. "Do you think it'll be a boy or a girl?" she asked quietly, skirting around the topic of her being a sister. It was a strange and uncomfortable concept to grasp, perhaps not bad but... as much as she was working to heal, to grow, she was a far cry from big sister material.
Vervain worked quickly and gently, having planted two or three herbs by the time she realised Ashe was trying to figure it out. She had no digging tools, no - Vai liked to get her hands dirty (to no one's surprise) and, just like her daughter, the earthy scents and the texture of the soil against her fingers seemed to ground her. "Like this," she said with a smile, cupping her hand around the pot that Ashetta held and showing her how to loosen the soil around its edges, allowing her to scoop the seedling and its roots out without disturbing it too much.
"I don't much care what it is, as long as it's healthy," she said simply. "I was the same with you. As long as you came out with ten fingers and ten toes and were okay, I was happy. Those big blues of yours were a bonus." She winked. "I do think it would be nice, though, for Dev to have a son. He speaks of his father fondly, and to give him the chance to give that back..." She shrugged.
Glancing to her daughter again, Vai watched her curiously. "How have you been, Ashe?"
Ashe looked up with a soft hm? when Vai reached forward to show her how to remove the seedling. She watched attentively, echoing her mother's instruction to plant the herb. She'd pulled up plenty of herbs from the root before, but never gently, and never for replanting.
She turned her eyes back up to Vai and half smiled, warming slightly. Even with Ashe's impeccable memory, recalling anything from before she and her mother had been separated was vague at best. She recalled wind chimes and the sounds of the ocean and the shadows of mountains, she remembered hands over her face or a murky image of her mother (now easy to fill in). It was always... something else.. to hear of before she was gone. Her father had filled in the holes in Ashe's memory as best he could, but it wasn't as if they had ever been allowed much time together.
Ashe gently pressed soil down around the seedling she'd just successfully planted and reached for the next, enjoying the task more than she had thought she would. The girl looked up at Vai again with her question, and she briefly paused. Her lips shut, and she looked down in thought as she dug into the earth once more.
"I'm... doing better," she answered honestly as she planted another of the herbs. Not as neat as her mother's, but effective. "Healing. Learning." Ashe took a deep breath and looked back down to the garden soil, busying her scarred hands with digging and planting. "I've been sleeping more.. filling my time with less destructive habits. Theea takes up a lot of time at least, she's -"
Ashe broke off and looked up at nothing in particular, brow furrowing before she turned her gaze to her mother. "You haven't actually met her yet, have you?" She might have seen the little girl in Kalt's arms at that festival with the unfortunate encounter with Ludo, but Ashe couldn't remember her mother ever actually meeting Theea. "Kalt and I took care of her when she was an infant, until I.. was separated from her." She frowned then and turned back to her task with planting the garden, gingerly uprooting another of the seedlings. "It's a long story. But I'd like you to meet her, and... I could tell you about it." Her chest tightened anxiously, but she looked hopefully up at Vai.
"There, perfect." Vai nodded to her daughter encouragingly as she pressed the first seedling into the soil, nudging her shoulder warmly against Ashe's since both their hands were all dirty. Together they began to make a neat line of herbs, which Vai was hopeful would flourish into an effective little garden. She was patient with her daughter in a way that she wasn't, generally, with anyone else, and a soft smile flickered across her face when she finally got an answer. An answer which sounded honest, to boot.
"I'm glad to hear it, Ashe," she said, dusting her hands off and sittng back so she could give the younger woman her full attention. "It'll probably be a lifetime of healing, of learning... but I know you can do it. And the door is always open, okay? Always."
The name that left Ashe's lips was something foreign to Vai, the witch arching an eyebrow and tilting her head curiously as she heard her out. "No, I don't think I have..." she said slowly. "But I'd love to meet her, of course. Bring her by, if you like." She paused, chewing on her bottom lip. "And Kalt, I suppose. As long as he promises to bring his filthy ego at the door." Not that she thought his big head would even fit.
03-14-2019, 05:15 PM (This post was last modified: 03-14-2019, 05:17 PM by Ashetta.)
ASHE
some people survive chaos,
and that is how they grow,
Ashe pat down the dirt around another thin stalk, and she glanced up with a smile at her mother's praise with warmth. It was easy to tell who planted which ones, of course, and hers were far from perfect.. But they would do. Hopefully, they would grow.
She nodded and adjusted where she sat, moving to where there was more space for the rest of the planting. The assassin always knew her mother was there for her, ever since Vervain had found her again and hadn’t shied away from what her daughter had become in their separation.. It was never a willingness for support she had been worried about, had it? It was exposing what was underneath. What she allowed the world to see was raw and bad enough as it was, but to let anyone else really see…
Quietly, she smiled at Vai as she dusted her hands on her knees. She was willing to have Kalt… here? A white flag then? ”Yeah, okay,” she said, her smile flickering a little wider before she reached down into the earth again, making space for another seedling. She was quiet for a time, focusing on the task and listening to the birdsong. She was noticeably less tense than she usually was, almost always on edge at every hour of the day.
Ashe glanced up again as she gently pat down the soil around the freshly planted herb. ”He’s not what you think he is,” she said with a soft breath. She bit the inside of her lip and sat back at a crouch, resting her hands on her knees. She didn’t know how to explain it ”I know he’s… hard to get along with.” It was amusement the one who shared her soul would feel if he happened to be snooping.”But he was all I had in the Guild. Papa was there, but only allowed time with him twice a month at best.. Kalt is the only reason I knew any real trust and kindness at all.” She sighed, realizing that she’d never even explained to her mother the situation between her and her father.
Ashe glanced away from her mother and down to the newly budding garden under the dappled sun. There was so much Vervain didn’t understand, and not by any fault of her own. Her daughter had never told her, never really explained what she endured and survived and left her only with the vague retelling of when they’d first reunited. ”Mom, I don’t even know where to begin,” she said, looking back up to eyes so nearly identical to her own.
Vai nodded quietly in return as Ashe confirmed she might bring Theea and Kalt along to the cabin, suddenly focused on the seedling she was currently planting. It wasn't that she regretted extending that olive branch, but... it still wasn't the easiest thing to do. She hummed quietly in almost-agreement at hearing that Kalt wasn't what she thought he was. Ever the outspoken one, though, Vai wasn't about to keep her thoughts to herself. "My concern isn't that he is what I think he is, Ashe. I'm worried that he's worse," she admitted.
She heard her daughter out, sitting back to rest her dirty hands on her knees, regarding the younger woman with honesty and openness shining in her expression. "That is what worries me. Ashe, you have told me about the guild. You are the product of it. For someone to be there, just like you, and to find ways to smile, to make light of it... that's a dark heart," she said slowly. "I'm not saying that we all don't hold some darkness in our hearts, but Kalt... his arrogance speaks of a man used to getting what he wants."
And Vai was concerned about what he wanted from her daughter. Sighing, she shrugged her shoulders. "Begin at the beginning, as they say," she suggested, her gaze flickering down to her daughter's hand briefly. "I admit, I was thrown, too, by how quickly you exchanged one soul bond for another."
Ashe, too, heard her mother out in silence. Her lips were set into a grim line, but she heard her out. She had to remind herself again and again that she hadn’t given her mother a chance to understand, all she had to go on was assumptions and guesses on what little Ashe had given her to work with. Of course, she was right that Kalt was arrogant.. but he wore that arrogance like armor. She knew better than anyone the man underneath it. She didn’t look away from Vai, kept her gaze steady and in silence until she glanced down to the ring once again upon her finger.
She remained silent for breath before she looked back up at her mother. "It's like you want him to be evil. I have known and trusted Kalt since I was five years old," she replied, words hard. "Quite the leap from the single month I knew Alistair before I handed my soul off to him and agreed to marry him." Had her mother even known that Ashe had impulsively agreed to marry a man she barely knew? Because she was so desperate to mend the cracks in her soul, as if anyone but herself could fill in the missing pieces. She hadn't understood back then why she still felt so alone when she had been trying to fill up the empty space with all the wrong things. She shook her head and looked out into the trees. "I had tried to give it to him once in the Guild, and he refused. He'd said not unless we were free. So yes, I bonded myself to him." Until they could freely walk hand in hand, he'd said.
She sighed deeply and looked back at her mother with her brows pulled upwards and together. "Mom I haven't told you about the Guild," she pressed quietly. "The story I gave you was... mild. You say it takes a dark heart to find things to smile about in the life we lived but... Gods, should we have never found reason to smile at all? The kind of monster I'd be without what little good we made for ourselves..."
Her chest burned as she tried to consider what life could have been without those flares of light in the endless dark. "When I was seven, after I made my first kill, it was Kalt that got to my rooms for my night terrors before Master did. He helped me handle them so Master wouldn't have me beaten for such weakness." Her voice stayed quiet, and steady, but it was.. strange.. to say these things out loud, to encompass these things into actual words and not memories. "He and I used to sneak all over the Keep and play pranks on the other senior assassins, on each other just for a chance to laugh at something that wasn't bloody. There were nights when we were older and we'd sit by the fireplace in my room, and I'd read stupid poems out loud to him, or he'd play his guitar. Sometimes after one of us had a night terror, we'd sneak down into the kitchens in the middle of the night and he'd cook something for me. When I fell in love with music from a new play at the theater, he stole the sheet music for me. He was the one to help me put all my pieces back every time I broke."
The assassin finally glanced away from her mother, her throat tight. Gods, how could she possibly, truly explain? "We were made to do such terrible things... terrible things to each other. Beyond just assassinating our targets, you couldn't understand what life was like in the guild. Our lives were dark, full of pain and training and abuse and more training and more abuse, manipulated every moment of every day by our Master, all of us were. We became what we had to become to survive, to stay sane. We found ways to enjoy what we did or we would have never come out on the other side." Her lip trembled for a second before she bit the inside of her lip, throttled down the emotion. Talking about this out loud.. "The things Master did to me, to us.. Our hearts are dark, but are we so terrible for finding ways to smile at.. innocent things through all of that?"
Ashe had to look down, and she fell silent. She felt quite out of breath after speaking so much. When had she started talking like that, opening up like this? She gathered herself enough to look back up at Vai with searching eyes. "Ask me what you want to know, and I'll tell you," she said quietly. "But he is not the kind of monster you have painted him so badly to be."
"Ashe..." Vai sighed gently, frowning across at her daughter but at least doing her the courtesy of listening, really listening to what she was trying to say. And she was right - of course she was. In the darkest of times, finding light and keeping it was the only way to stay sane. If the huntress was able to take that back, she would have done.
And whilst it was true that the assassin had not made a good impression on her, Ashe said they had kept each other safe. Had taken care of each other. And regardless of how her heart still ached for Alistair, in some ways, and the bad hand he had been dealt for doing nothing more than what he thought was right... this was how things were. It didn't make that part of her daughter's past any less true. Any less real.
"I'm sorry," she said softly, reaching out a muddy hand to hold Ashe's. "It isn't that I want him to be evil. I... I just don't want you to fall back on old habits. When we found each other in Northaven, you were so... there. Whether closed or open, you and I spent time together. You came to the farmhouse, you trained every day with your friends, all of them. And now Kalt is here, you've withdrawn into his safety net, where you two only rely on each other. And that is a bad habit, Ashe. For both of you. You at least know that, right? You are more than the Guild. You have more."
Ashe shook her head when her mother finished, slowly and deliberately expelling the air from her lungs. Old habits.. Like drinking and starting fights with anyone who looked at her the right way? Never sleeping and electrocuting herself to stay awake for weeks at a time? Getting arrested? Never eating and over-training? "My withdrawing.. Vanishing and leaving everyone behind? That started well before I even knew Kalt was here. It started before Alistair even left me, mom, none of it had anything to do with him - it was me."
Yes, in Northaven she had been so much more connected. She had been with her family and friends all the time.. but she had also been more reckless. Unhealthy. Obsessive. Full of nothing but self destruction and desperation. It had gotten so much worse... after.. "It was killing my Master that triggered it," she admit quietly. Each word seemed to sink like a stone in her as she looked back up to Vai, and she sat back in the dirt and let her hands fall limp in her lap. "I had won. I killed him, finally it was over. No more wondering when I would look up and see that mask tilted down at me or wonder which one of my friends he would kill next or if he'd give me an ultimatum. There was... no more war to fight."
Her throat tightened with these words that burned from her chest, and she had to look away, to the trees to breathe. "I should have felt free.. and I didn't. I was hollowed out. Numb. I wasn't supposed to survive that fight, mom. I never expected to live long enough to see the other side of it, I... I hadn't wanted to. So I just... let everything go. The night terrors got worse, I stopped seeing anyone, even my husband. He woke up alone night after night because I just kept... running. He never did grasp how deep my demons were, and he couldn't have known how to handle any of it. His way of handling it was sooth it away until I could ignore it again, and that just... it was eating me alive and I didn't even know it." Ashe knew better now. She knew Alistair had not done anything maliciously or selfishly, he had done the best he could, and he'd been hurt as a result. She had hurt a lot of people while she was hurting. But she would not be demonized any longer. Alistair took her pain that neither of them knew how to handle and threw it in her face, told her she was incapable of love, that her poor, wretched soul couldn't be saved. Fuck that.
She looked back at her mother with a tight-lipped, grim sort of smile. "When he left me.. that was it, I guess. I had made enough mistakes, hurt enough people, ruined enough lives, and my fight was over. You know how long I disappeared and.... I wasn't going to come back. I wasn't.. But Kalt is an assassin that knows how to find an assassin. He revealed himself to me before I could do something... permanent. He had nothing to do with me leaving everyone behind, he was just.. making sure someone was around. Righting a serious wrong that had happened between us and helping me figure some shit out." She knew part of the issue had been that Kalt didn't reach out to any of her family himself... but he had his own issues, didn't trust anyone.. anyone but her, really. As irritated as she'd been at him first approaching her mother, she'd been surprised. Appreciative now, for extending a hand he had never extended to anyone before. "I.. I know that I can be more.” She thought back to that enchanted mirror she had peered into in Northaven over two years ago, how she had promised herself just that: that she would be more. And how she had said much the same thing to Kalt at the beginning of deepfrost, for both of them. She gave her mom a small smile. ”Kalt and I are both growing into whatever we are beneath the Guild.” They would forever be monsters, true, but they could be more.
