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!
Agitated was not normally a word one might use to describe Everest Hart. Anxious? Yes. Apprehensive? Certainly. Awkward? Every day of his life. But agitated? Believe it or not, today the boy absolutely was.
Feathering his jaw would become a regular trait of his when under great stress, but as this expression was a new one for Ever, the boy only realized he'd been pressing his teeth together again and again when the muscles of his jaw began to ache. He'd been pressing so hard in his notebook as to have broken a number of pencils so far, and his normally compulsively neat penmanship had all but gone to hell; Tobi would have noticed something immediately was off with her son, and very likely Finn would have as well.
Ever, however, was not so introspective today to have picked up on any of this. Instead, he merely sat, hunched over, glowering at the rest of the world from beneath a rather large willow.
"You have broken another pencil." Mateo has been leaving his friend to it, mostly, because... well, that's what they do on the days when Everest is jotting down things in his notebook. Mateo is more than content to simply orbit around him, and is almost literally doing it right now; dangling from one leg out of the willow tree, his curls are just about long enough to be able to brush along Ever's forehead.
"Do you want me to get another one for you?" Despite the fact that this would involve falling out of the tree, rummaging through Ever's (undoubtedly) carefully organised pencil case and handing him another writing utensil, clearly this isn't something that bothers the Taliesin boy. "I think that page is probably beyond saving though, for what it is worth."
Blinking as if having come back to himself from a trance, drawn out by his friend's voice, Ever looks down at his notebook where a bit of pencil is rolling in towards the center. Looking at the jagged tears in the page from pressing too hard, the slopping writing that has crossed several lines, and the complete lack of organization of his thoughts, Mateo is absolutely correct that the page is beyond saving. But if one page was ruined, so was the entire book in Ever's mind.
"No." He sighs, tossing (gasp!) his notebook away into the grass and letting his head hang. "I thought I would like it here. I should like it here, but I don't." Ever admits sullenly. "We're safe. My parents are here. There are loads of books and things to do, but..." Tilting his head up and looking at his upside-down friend, the boy shrugs. "It feels...very artificial. You know?"
Mateo won't be upside-down for long, because as the notebook gets tossed away into the grass, in his shock he falls from the branch he's been dangling from, collapsing in a heap next to his friend. "Ow," he's mumbling as he rights himself, rubbing at a bump on his head and some dirt on his cheek. Listening to Ever, the Taliesin boy can't say he does know what he means, but... he thinks he has some idea.
"It isn't forever," he says slowly, letting his hand drop from his head and smiling softly. "We will be out of here as soon as things are safe. So... maybe just treat it as a vacation? Those are supposed to feel artificial, because you aren't at home. Right...?"
Frowning as Mateo tumbles to the ground, Ever immediately forgets his angst for a moment as he quickly reaches for his bag. 'Do you need a bandaid? Or an icepack? Or--" Here we'll take a brief intermission as Everest lists every single thing he has brought with him in his bag, just in case Mateo needs it. "...or a snack?" He concludes in one breath.
'Nothing is forever.' Everest protests. "But people still get upset about things all the time." Biting at the inside of the cheek, he casts a disparaging glance toward his notebook but stays where he is. 'I can try, but...I've never been on a vacation.' Unless you counted his brief stay in Halo, in which case he thought he was treating his time in the Refuge almost precisely like that. Which was to say, hating every minute of it.
"Oh, no. I think I will be..." Mateo begins, before dutifully falling silent to let Ever finish the list of items he has brought. And because he knows it's in the other boy's nature to help - and helping will make him feel better - Mateo lets him. "Could I get the ice pack, please?" he decides. "And the snack?"
Shifting to get comfortable on the grassy knoll beneath the willow, Mateo leans back on his hands. "Neither have I, not really," he confesses; living between the Greatwood and Stormbreak didn't really count. "But my parents always talked about getting to go on one, one day. I think you are meant to relax and do nothing." And have a lot of sex, but that might just be Mateo's parents.
"What if we just... had a project to do while we were here? To pass the time?"
Mateo places his order, and Everest dutifully complies. It does make him feel better to help, or perhaps more precisely, it makes him feel better to help Mateo. That, if nothing else, brings some semblance of normalcy.
'Do...nothing?' Ever frowns deeply, stopping himself (just) from asking if that included things like breathing, sleeping, or eating. "And...doing nothing is what people like?" Wincing, he turns his gaze outwards, not really looking at anything. Looking at things would be doing something, and so he tries to let his vision grow blurry. In so doing, his mind begins to race as it wonders about the nature of optics and the nature of vacations.
"That sounds..hard." He concludes, of vacations. Never let it be said he isn't Finn's son.
'Oh?' Turning back to Mateo, Ever tilts his head. "Like what? I know my mom is trying to teach my dad yoga. It looks awful."
"Apparently," Mateo says sounding just as incredulous as he accepts icepack and snack, putting one against the bump on his head and the other in his mouth. He's quiet while he chews and swallows, knowing from experience that Everest tends to squirm if he speaks with his mouth full. "It doesn't sound like fun, right? Maybe that is what happens when you get old."
Wrinkling his nose at yoga - it does look awful from what he can see - Mateo shakes his head and pats at his pockets, pulling out a carefully folded paper bag. "I wanted to make a seed catalogue," he explains. "But I don't think I can do it by myself. Or... I could, but it would not be as easy, or fun. And you are better at organisation than I am." Or rather, Everest enjoys it a lot more.
'A what?' Forgetting all about vacations, Everest turns fully towards Mateo, his attention firmly gripped by catalogue and organisation.
In the years to come, every effort by Everest to keep Mateo safe, every use of a revivify feather, every incredibly detailed documentation of the drugs in his system, and every homebrewed-stomach-pump, would all be to make up for moments like this. Moments where, despite Mateo's chaotic nature, he selflessly was able to guide and soothe his friend with ease.
'Tell me more.' Leaning forward so that he could crawl a short distance away while keeping his feet in the same position (why?), Ever retrieves his notebook and hastily flips open to a new page, forgetting entirely that this book was going to have to be re-written because of the damage he'd done to it earlier.
Having to remind himself to keep the ice pack against the bump on his head, Mateo shifts so he can sit crosslegged with his friend, clumsily opening the paper bag and offering it out for Ever to see. Within he will find a curated collection of seeds, all from Mateo's greenhouse in Stormbreak. And while they're just tossed in there for now, of course the boy can tell each and every one from sight.
"A catalogue," he repeats. "Just in case some plants are destroyed in the war, this seed catalogue will allow us to grow them back. But I would need to record all of the details about the grown plant, as well as add a sketch of it, and all sorts of other information. I can sketch good enough, but I think you would be better to make a system to record the data."
Peering into the bag as if the seeds within might sprout legs and dash up his arms to root in his eyeballs, Ever just nods nervously.
"Oh, so it's a physical catalogue? I mean, there will be seeds for each entry?" Looking a good deal more interested now, Ever begins to scratch (because his pencil is mostly broken), in his notebook. "We could take rubbings too." He mumbles as he writes down as best he can the things his friend is saying. "Where will you start? You could either start with common things that we'd miss if they were ever gone...or rare things that are more likely to disappear in the coming months." Having no idea what priority should be given to this task, Ever turns wide blue eyes to Mateo as if his friend should have all the answers in virtue of this being his idea.
"Yes, if we can," Mateo chirps, knowing that some seeds would be more easily found than others. Especially given that, as much as he has thrown himself into botany, the boy has hardly gotten his hands on every species of plant in Caido thus far. (Sad, he knows). "Rubbings would be a good idea as well, if there are grown species of the plant available."
Folding his little packet of seeds and placing them back in his pocket, Mateo peeps at what Ever is writing and nods his understanding. "There are benefits to both," he says. "I suppose we could always categorise them by their form and function, and demarcate them by rarity within those sections? That way we can keep building the catalogue no matter what kind of seed or plant we find."
Despite his ruined notebook, Ever takes diligent notes. Later he'll spend a good deal of time re-writing everything into a new notebook, but for now he's forced to make due with what he has. In fact, know that this is all going to be transposed allows him to be the teeniest tiniest bit messy, which feels dangerous and exciting.
Glancing up as Mateo says such magic words as categorize and demarcate, he grins and nods. "You," Ever begins, smile widening. "-are absolutely the best."
So it is that Everest meticulously plans out how this catalogue will work as Mateo tosses out ideas that vary from extraordinarily insightful to insane and confusing. Nevertheless Ever records them all, because that's what friend's do.
