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!
To the Oerwoud, Frey had requested of him and Tal had happily agreed, proud to be doing a service for a god.
At the time he hadn't been thinking about the logistics of it, but a courier always made his deliveries intact and on time and after some thought he realized that he had all the tools he needed courtesy of Frey themselves.
The Frostbite Cuff had gone on the walking palm before it had been loaded on the sled and pulled to the edge of the Fangs. From there Tal had reclaimed his item and Boreal had pulled the wheeled cart they had received their charge in down the treacherous Climb, making sure their cargo was well-padded with snow moss as they hurried to the river and crossed into the Oerwoud at the first ford they could find.
Now Tal walked through the jungle uneasily, peering around at all the colors and cacophony as he tried to spot a likely place to plant his charge. The cart seemed to keep it contained for now, but it tugged insistently at the leash when he wasn't looking at it as if it, too, sensed that it was where it was meant to be. Boreal watched it with bright, eager eyes and Tal had to split his attention between their surroundings and reminding his companion that Frey's creation was not a new and exciting chew toy. "You'll get turned into an iguana," he warned her, voice filled with fond exasperation as he looked back at the dragon who followed the cart with intent focus on the little tree within. "C'mon, Boreal, leave it alone an' help me look for a place to plant it!"
"Oh WOW!" The voice that rings out through the jungle sounds like it can't decide whether to take on a child's cadence or something deeper - such is the way of hormones and adolescents. The owner of the voice, though, while a bit gangly of limb and reckless of mind, has all the makings of a Taliesin in his dark curls, blue eyes and dimples.
And thus as Mateo scrambles out of the undergrowth to approach the leashed and unhappy plant, he's filled with the curiosity of any young botanist. "What is it? It looks like it's trying to walk about on its roots?" Smiling brightly at Boreal and barely giving Tal a glance, Mateo is already trying to inspect the bark and the foliage on the walking palm.
The first thing that Tal thought of when the call rang out was the lying calls of the speaking squirrels who had led him so astray in the Celestine. His dark head whipped up and he looked around - high in the branches first - before his eyes settled on the approaching...
...child?
Well. The kid wasn't likely to do more damage to the plant than Boreal was already contemplating, so Tal just shrugged and watched him fussing about the palm while the dragon rumbled a distracted greeting to him, eyes never leaving the Forbidden Toy.
There was something weirdly familiar about the kid, but Tal would swear he'd never seen him before in his life...
"It's uh. Somethin' new from Frey. An' yeah, I'm takin' for a walk to find a good spot to plant it." He realized how stupid that sounded a moment later and scowled. "Well. At least til it gets up and wanders off again."
Giving Boreal a gentle pat as if he comes across dragons every day (and in a place like Stormbreak that isn't entirely wrong), Mateo has crouched down before the wheeled crate to ensure that the young sapling is healthy. And it certainly seems to be, much to his delight, the boy finally glancing up at Tal as if seeing him for the first time.
"Something new?" he blurts, his voice cracking a bit on the tail end of the word. "That's amazing. You should let it go somewhere near the riverbank," he decides. "The look of its root system means it will probably like to be somewhere it can get its feet wet without having to wander too far."
Sticking out his hand around the walking palm, he offers a dimpled smile. "I'm Mateo, by the way."
Hesitant though Tal was to take advice from a kid, the courier didn't have any better ideas of his own so he reluctantly nodded and took the offered hand. "Tal," he gave back. "An' Boreal." With a nod towards the dragon who turned her head to whuffle the boy's pockets in search of treats. "Hey! Cut that out!" he chided her - much to Boreal's amusement. "How about you go find us a river first?" Rewards came after good behavior, and the dragon huffed a smoke ring to let Tal know how she felt about that but raised her muzzle and begin sniffing the air, questing ahead and a little to the side as she began to search.
He started walking after her, pulling the cart on its bumpy journey over roots and lush undergrowth. Dark brows knitted together in deep thought as he tried to figure out where that familiarity was coming from...
Nope.
"Should you uh. Be out here without your parents...?" Not quite sure how to put it less bluntly, Tal eyed Mateo with a sudden wariness. Maybe it was something that just looked like a kid?
"Lieto di conoscerti," Mateo says, the words rolling off his tongue like music before he can stop them. "Er - nice to meet you," he clarifies, shaking Tal's hand and straightening up, chuckling as Boreal comes snuffling about his pockets. "I got some jerky from Torchline?" he says with a toothy grin. "We can have some once we find the river."
Hopping over a protruding root as he follows Tal, Boreal, and the curious little tree through the jungle, Mateo seems more than at home in the jungle. "Mm? Oh, they don't mind so much, I don't think. They never have before anyways. I came to Torchline for a school project and got a bit distracted," he explains, thoroughly unhelpful without meaning to be.
Tal wrinkled his nose at the weird words and looked like he might have been regretting that handshake, but it was too late and at least the kid translated afterwards. "Uh... sure." He was even more wary now that he'd heard what was probably some sort of language of the spirits, but Boreal was blithely unbothered by the boy and visibly perked up at the mention of that most magical of words - jerky.
The walking palm leaned towards the side of the cart, rootlets shifting languidly over the edge, and Tal paused to reposition it. He lifted it like a lanky toddler and settled it back into the center of the cart with a gruff pat of: "Soon, okay?" before looking back to Mateo with both dark brows raised. "Kinda far from Torchline, aren'tcha?" Though he guessed that's what the kid meant by 'distracted.' "Aren't your parents afraid you'll get, I dunno, bitten by a poisonous spider or eaten by a molten tiger or somethin'?"
Mateo can't help but smile hard enough to produce dimples as he watches Tal tend to the sapling like it's an impatient child, instantly warming to him (and he wasn't exactly cool to begin with - take that how you will, sorry Tal). Anyone who is friendly to foliage is worth knowing, in the youngest Taliesin's opinion.
"Am I?" he asks, looking over his shoulder as if Torchline might be peeping through the trees like it was the last time he'd checked. "Oh. Oh, I suppose I am. If I get into trouble though, I can just channel I suppose. I did that before." He turns back to Tal. "My parents are in the Greatwood and Stormbreak anyways. They aren't close by to worry," he adds with an exaggerated wink.
"So do you often get things from Frey to go and plant?" he asks. "That's really cool."
08-26-2022, 02:06 AM (This post was last modified: 08-26-2022, 02:06 AM by Talyson.)
Tal might have grown a little attached to the young tree (was it a tree? An enthusiastic bush of some kind? He was a courier, not a botanist) during the long journey they'd taken together. And even if it was a little embarrassing to have the kid see him talking to the palm Tal wasn't about to stop now that it was almost time to say goodbye.
He did squint back at how casually the word 'channel' was thrown out, looking more than a little skeptical but he was taken aback by the wink and the complete misunderstanding of his words. "I... that's not... aren't there school projects in Stormbreak?" he tried, feeling like he was rapidly losing control of the conversation.
Turning back around to so he could keep pulling the cart and scowling at a vine that looked like it might get too friendly, he shook his head at the question that came back at him. "Nah, this is the first one. I've only met Them a couple times now." The walking palm started to wander towards the other side of the cart as he spoke, shifting a little further than one might expect with every bump over the rocks and roots of their path.
It is a sapling, Tal, is what Mateo would have explained if the courier had asked. That is a type of young tree, and this one should grow up to be big and strong in the right conditions. "Oh sure," he trills of projects in Stormbreak, "and I guess I could have just used the Celestine to find different flora and fauna from Torchline and here. But I like to go different places," he explains airily.
The too-friendly vine actualy turns out to be a hanging snake, and Mateo happily welcomes it onto his shoulders for a ride and grins to the Walking Palm as it tries to spider its way to the other side of its little wheeled prison. "You have? I have never met Them at all. What are they like?" Maybe he could get an unbiased opinion, given that the others he's asked are all family.
Given that Tal had also liked to go to different places as a kid, he could only grumble under his breath while he continued to haul on the cart. Maybe it was possible that Mateo was exactly what he said he was...
Or maybe he was just really good at pretending to be what he said he was!
...But Boreal didn't seem worried and Tal just heaved a resigned sigh. Helpful as ever, she glanced over her shoulder and then ambled back to the side of the cart and staaared at the walking palm, which paused in its subtle trek for freedom and seemed to think better of it, at least for the moment.
"Uh... I mean. Really fuckin' hot." Would a kid get that? Ehh... this is why Tal avoided children. "Pretty laid back, too. I liked 'em a lot. They're intense but not like... scary about it." Pretty down to earth, one might even say. "Why'd y'have to channel before?"
Ahead, the sound of flowing water gurgled faintly and Tal perked up, heading towards it with his precious cargo.
Mateo, who has no idea that he's doing such a good job at pretending to be exactly what he is, spends his time thoroughly amused at Boreal's antics while tickling the hanging snake under its scaly chin. Indeed, he raises his eyebrows at the sapling as if to ward it against any new mischief until they can get it safely delivered.
Tuning back in just as Tal gives his description of Frey, he won't be disappointed to learn that Mateo does, indeed, understand the concept of really fuckin' hot. Tilting his head and smirking such that it only creates a dimple on one cheek, he nods to the courier. "That sounds like a relief," he says, further warming to the deity even if he does still hold his father's opinion in high regard.
"Oh, the last time I channelled, my friend and I were watching some luxere, but they ran away because some wolves showed up. The wolves would have had us as a snack, so I channelled something to spook them away," he explains, cheerful as you like.
08-28-2022, 08:12 PM (This post was last modified: 08-28-2022, 08:12 PM by Talyson.)
Tal glanced over his shoulder to squint suspiciously at the kid, hearing a note in his voice that finally rang a bell of reminder that oh right, this is just a kid... probably. He opened his mouth to start another round of 'aren't you a bit young to-' but his jaw snapped shut as his brain managed to catch up in time for once and yeah, okay, maybe if the kid was just short for his age...
The courier turned his scowl back to the deer track in front and just gave an uncomfortable shrug, keeping an eye on the ground for snakes as Mateo related his tale and Boreal licked scaly lips and looked between the two humans, waiting for a moment of distraction from them both.
The walking palm had gone still under the dragon's close-up regard, as if it were just a normal, nonmoving plant just blending in with all the other trees in the jungle, doo dee doo.
Mateo's story, in that cheerful voice, caused Tal to reach up with his free hand and rub his face, feeling old in a way he never had before. "Where are everyone's parents?" he muttered mournfully to himself, as if he hadn't run around just as wild in his own misspent antisocial youth. And then to Mateo: "What kinda project are you supposed t'be doin', anyways?"
"I dunno," Mateo says about everyone's parents, as if Tal hasn't been brooding to himself about it all. "Dead, maybe? A lot of people are orphans, right? I guess I'm kind of lucky to still have two parents..." But then again, he's also knowledgeable enough now to know that having Remi and Ronin as fathers puts death simultaneously very high and very low on the list of possibilities.
The river babbles up ahead and Mateo's smile brightens; he releases the hanging snake back up into the trees and sets off to look at the twinkling waters. "Mm? Oh, we had to do studies of flora and fauna native to regions different to Stormbreak. Do you mind if I use your walking plant thing?" he asks. "I think we can probably put it down here."
