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, so like, I know I haven't completed my quest yet, but I'm totally on it." Said with all the familiarity of one talking to an old friend from whom Flora expected complete understanding rather than a diety she'd actually only met once, the girl rolls her shoulders in an apologetic shrug and continues. "I'm waiting on this courier to bring the feathers, and...well you know how unreliable deliveries can be." In Flora's mind, this is where a laugh-track would be inserted, but in reality her words were met with nothing more than the cry of a few hels overhead.
Easily able to carry this one-sided conversation, Flora begins to arrange the randomly selected spray of flowers she'd brought with her, before adding in various seasonal fruits to the mix. "...and that's when the shrine like...fought back." Fanning out her skirt so that she could sit more comfortably on one of the colourful stones, Flora rolls her eyes dramatically. "We tried, because honestly I'm done with this cold." She adds with a huff, leaning over her knees to flick off a bug who was beginning a slow trek across her toes.
Amanda trekked along the Rainbow Road, leaning over and scanning the multi-colored ground. The land was hard and rocky, and her boots splashed in the puddles formed by the mist strewn into the air from the nearby geysers. She strayed closer to the geysers, not caring if she got wet. She spent half of her days in the ocean anyway. Though the unusual cold of late certainly made it uncomfortable with the dampness.
She crouched down near one of the geysers, digging through some of the loose rocks that surrounded it. Each stone was a color of the rainbow, spread out as far as she could see in an endless spectrum of color. The colored stones were common enough that they had little value to her. She could perhaps make some simply jewelry out of them, but such things wouldn't get her much in trade. There were some stones, however, that were more rare, and thus more valuable.
She turned a few stones over in her hands before tossing them aside, continuing her search. Eventually, she found what she was looking for. A smooth, flat stone about as wide as her hand. Unlike most of the other stones that were of a single color, this one came from a part of the Rainbow Road where the colors swirled together much closer, resulting in a stone covered in stripes of many colors. Such stones were harder to come by, and this one was a good size to make into a piece of jewelry or a knick knack that would fetch a nice price in trade.
She tucked it into her backpack, then continued along the way, searching for more treasures to trade. Eventually, following the paths made by the more vivid and vibrant colors, she reached an unexpected destination: one of the shrines to the useless gods. She sighed as she looked down upon it, shaking her head. She'd never had any use for the gods; they'd abandoned her kind, after all. She was about to turn and walk away when she noticed someone else at the shrine. Curious, she stepped forward, always ready to find someone who might be willing to make a trade.
"Hey there," she said, not realizing the 'conversation' she was interrupting. "Looking to make an offering? I've got some things that might make a good gift for the gods."
She pulled off her backpack and opened it, revealing a wide assortment of goods, some wrapped in leather or sealed in wooden boxes. Stones, feathers, small bits of jewelry, pouches of berries and nuts, and more filled the pack. It had been a good day of scavenging. She didn't care one bit for the gods herself, but that didn't mean she didn't know what kinds of offerings they might like.
Flora, utterly engrossed by her own conversation, didn't hear Amanda until the other woman spoke. Quickly jerking her chin over her shoulder, the younger girl's aqua eyes surveyed the abandoned quickly before she flashed her an instant smile. "Hey yourself." Twisting around and then opting to stand (her figure was better seen standing than sitting anyways), Flora peered into the other woman's backpack with polite curiosity.
'Mmm, not so much an offering, as like...a so sorry to keep you waiting?" Flora explains as she begins to twine a strand of her hair around her finger. "I'm doing this quest for Frey and it's sort of taking longer than I expected because this courier was supposed to deliver me some feathers and he hasn't yet, and..well you know how it goes." The rambling melody of Flora's words once again implied a sort of familiarity that simply wasn't there, but such was how the girl interacted with the world.
"None of these are gore crow feathers are they? Or ningo?"
"Feathers?" Amanda asked. "I've got feathers for trade. Just picked them up the other day."
She reached into her backpack and dug around a bit until she found a small leather box. She opened it to reveal a collection of Zhenniao feathers she'd collected recently. She'd kept them in pristine condition, waiting for the right opportunity to make a trade.
"This is the good stuff," she said, holding up one of the feathers for the stranger to inspect. "Hard to come by. Those birds are poisonous, so not a lot of traders can collect the feathers. Got to be a worthy tribute to...whoever you're here to see." Amanda wasn't too familiar with most of the gods, not being one to care one whit about what the gods thought of her. But she didn't have to know the gods to know how to make a sale to the people who did bother with them.
It starts as one. Then another. And then another. And soon a whole herd, keeled over as if asleep, but of course you know that can't be the case. These ramphire do not move; their chests do not rise and fall, and all appear to have been killed recently, all at once. How? You don't know. But there's no blood. Not a single drop to be found.
"Ooooh." Flora gushed, feigning enthusiasm at what Amanda had on offer. "And honestly, if Frey hadn't been super specific about what kind of feathers they wanted, I would totally take you up on that." The girl explained, nodding as if she was just as disappointed as Amanda was likely to be.
Not noticing the dead herd of nearby Ramphire, Flora gives her head a little shake. "How rude of me! My name is Flora." Extending a hand delicately-ringed hand for the other woman to shake (or kiss? would she be into that?), Flora offers up a mega-watt smile that for all of it's white teeth and perfectly coloured lips, was somehow shockingly genuine.
"Frey," Amanda said. "That's the sex one, right? I remember this one guy used to call out her name all the time when we...well, nevermind."
She looked back in her pack, digging around to see if there were any more feathers she could offer in trade. She muttered half to herself as she searched. "I don't think I have any ningo on hand, but I know a clothier in Torchline who is always getting shipments in, especially with how the weather's been lately. They're in high demand. I'd be happy to help set up a trade with him." Working as an intermediary would mean she'd get a commission from her associate, not to mention the favor he'd owe her. Networking was an important aspect of her line of work.
Amanda distractedly shook the woman's hand. "Amanda," she replied. But her attention was already fixed on the dead herd she'd just noticed. Feathers and horns galore, and ripe for the plucking. Without moving from where she stood, she reached out a telekinetic hand and started plucking feathers from the fallen beasts, laying them in neat little piles on the ground to be collected. Her contacts in the city would pay handsomely for such a find.
'The sex one and the nature one. They were in one body and then they split?" Flora crinkles one side of her face and shrugs. "I'm not exactly sure about how it all works with them, but they've been super helpful to me so far, so.." As an accepted, such was par for the course.
Disappointed that she wouldn't be able to just tie up all the loose ends of her quest here and now, Flora forced a smile. "No need to worry about it. I already have a courier who is supposed to be delivering the feathers. I guess I didn't really specify a timeline, but like...why wouldn't you get things done quickly, you know?" Was Flora absolutely just using Tal to complete her quest for her? Yes. Did that mean her expectations weren't still ridiculously high?
"Ohmygods, so nice to meet yo-EWWW!" The ewww came out exaggerated with Flora adding on an uhhh at the end. Flinching back a step or two, she frowned and tucked her hand beneath her nose. "Not this again. This is the second time I've seen them just turn up like this. Wait, what are you even doing?" Amanda's work might have been meticulous, but gods if it wasn't also super gross.
"What's wrong?" Amanda asked, looking around. Everything seemed fine to her. Just a shrine to the gods with a big pile of corpses, nothing unusual here.
She continued plucking the feathers without a second thought. She could keep it up for as long as it took. She might not have been that strong with her magic yet, but she had the stamina to keep working until the job was done. She made sure to sort the feathers by color, so they would be easier to manage later.
She pulled out her belt knife and knelt next to one of the beasts. "Doesn't matter if they're diseased," she said. "I'm not planning on eating the meat. Besides, where do you think the food on your dinner plate comes from? People hunt game to sell in the market. You telling me you've never eaten ramphire before?"
While she continued plucking the feathers with her telekinetic hand, her two flesh and blood hands went to work with her knife, cutting the horns away from the beasts' heads. She knew an alchemist who would trade for the horns for brewing medicines and remedies. She was surprised when no blood flowed from the cuts. That much was strange...
"Well which is it? Are you not eating the meat or am I thinking of where my food comes from?" Flora's rather well-off upbringing might mean that she wasn't particularly streetsmart, but that didn't mean she couldn't tell when someone was talking down to her. Or, when she thought they were, anyhow. "My dad and nona used to take me hunting when I was little. I'm pretty sure I understand how food comes to be on my plate, which is why I'm saying that all of those--" Flora gestures to the dead ramphire, "-would be shit to eat. And who would want feathers plucked from diseased animals?"
Continuing to scrunch her nose, Flora folds her arms across her chest and takes another step back from Amanda. It had only just occurred to her that this might have been the sort of thing she actually should mention to her dad.
Amanda rolled her eyes. This girl seemed entirely too high-strung. But she brushed it off.
"Well, they don't look diseased to me. They didn't die that long ago. I'm sure it's fine." She pulled out a few small boxes and leather wraps from her backpack and started gathering up the feathers and horns. She tucked them all neatly away, making sure the feathers wouldn't get crushed. She would probably end up selling them to an alchemist to be ground up and made into potions, but some of the feathers, if they were in good condition, could be used to make jewelry or decorative items. She was always careful not to let any of her goods get damaged on the way back to the city.
"Here," she said, standing up and slinging her backpack across her back. "If it makes you feel better, we can ask your sex god to make sure none of it is diseased." She smirked, taking the last of the severed horns over to the shrine.
"Here you go, Frey." She nonchalantly dropped the horn in front of the shrine alongside the other offerings. "You do nature stuff. Make sure none of these goods are diseased, all right?" She chuckled. She seriously doubted any god would bother answering the prayer of the ones they had abandoned, but maybe the offering would calm the rich girl down a bit.
"See?" Amanda said, turning back to Flora. "All good. Maybe your god will get up off their ass and come bless these poor ramphires. And maybe they'll bring me a mountain of gems while they're at it." She turned back to the shrine. "Hear that, Frey? I could use a mountain of gems. As many as you can conjure up with a wave of your godly hands." She mockingly waved her hands in front of the shrine, mimicking a spell being cast. Then she turned back to Flora, brushing her hands on her pants.
'Okay, so like, I'm not an expert here, but animals don't usually just have all of their blood drained out." Flora points out, raising her eyebrows and more or less parroting the things Jack had told her when they'd stumbled upon a similarly bloodless herd. "Mmmkay, well that's not how that works, and-" Making an urgg! sound under her breath, Flora in Amanda's wake to ensure that none of the Ramphire bits mingled with her flowers and fruits. No one was she going to get cursed just because this rando had a penchant for carving up dead animals.
Kneeling down, Flora reaches for a stone to nudge a few peaches she'd brought away from the ramphire horn. "Again, not really how that works." She replies a touch more tersely. "Maybe next time ask for like...infinite orgasms, or a green thumb." Shrugging her shoulders and finding herself less and less enthused about continuing this particular conversation, Flora sighed and itched at the coral flush running across her cheeks with one of her shoulders.
"Okay well, it was super nice to meet you and everything, but I think I'm going to get back to this if you don't mind."
"Well, clearly you're from a bloodline that the gods give a shit about," Amanda said. "They don't care about me as it is, so I don't really care 'how it works.' And I don't need a god's help getting orgasms." She smirked, thinking about the sailor from a few weeks ago.
"Besides, aren't gems part of nature? They come from mountains, and mountains are natural. Thus, the god of nature should be able to conjure some up." She gave a firm nod, confident in her reasoning. "I'd rather have the gems than the orgasms anyway." She nudged the severed horn with her foot, figuring it was just as good as flowers and fruit. Fruit came from trees, the horn came from an animal, both came from nature. She didn't see why the other girl was so worked up over it.
"I'll leave you to your sex god, if that's what you want," Amanda said. "I'm sure you don't want me in the way while you have your infinite orgasms. But hit me up in Torchline if you need any feathers or anything else. I've got connections. And I'll make sure they're not diseased." She rolled her eyes.
"Just ask around the marketplace. Amanda. People know me." Even more people would know her soon, once she got her business up and running properly. With a real store, instead of a small market stall. Shelves of goods out front, and a nice secluded back room for making those lovely less-than-legal deals. She just needed the capital to make it all happen.
She smirked at the shrine again. "Seriously, Frey. Gems. I'll bring you more horns and feathers if you want." She laughed. She knew the god wouldn't bother to bring her anything. Not for an abandoned. But it didn't hurt to ask.
"Or I'm just not rude about it." Flora mutters under her breath, raising her eyebrows sarcastically as she continued to rearrange her offering away from Amanda's. 'Okay well, if you actually knew anything about Frey, you'd know that isn't true." She added, about orgasms. Maybe the other girl didn't need help, but having the god of sex in your corner when it came to that sort of thing was nothing to be sneezed at, and she should know: it was literally the reason she was born. "Okay well, if it's all just a big joke to you, why are you even here then?" Flora asked, sounding exasperated before sighing sharply and instantly regretting saying anything that might continue this conversation.
Turning to scowl over her shoulder, Flora offered the other woman an insincere smile. "Yeah, thanks. You seem totally trustworthy." She'd have to ask Jack about this AmAnDa next time she bumped into him (hopefully that would be soon, especially with all this talk of orgasms).
