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!
Sam had never been especially skilled in drawing, but he had worked on learning how to draw certain things; flowers and bevelled corners, small figures of knights and wizards and monks, the kinds of things you needed when you were the creator of storybooks. With the project to document the myths of Caido underway, he was practising his craft. Drawing what was meant to be a castle, radiant and elegant with spires and flowing flags, he was disappointed to discover it looked more like a series of shaky lines, almost childlike.
Still, that was the point of practice, he reminded himself. He was allowed to be bad here, so that he could do it well when it came to the real thing.
Besides, having something to work on usually allowed him to forget his problems for a little while, so it was to his benefit to make busy work. He swapped to a new, blank piece of paper and began to draw the castle tower again, trying to copy from an illustration in a book he had open before him, the drawing skilled and clearly by someone with a steadier hand. Sticking his tongue out just slightly as he concentrated, he found himself entirely involved in the work.
03-19-2019, 03:28 AM (This post was last modified: 03-19-2019, 02:49 PM by Evie.)
EVIE
like love is a bad word
"If you keep your face like that it'll stay that way you know." Came his twin's obnoxiously bright and resonant voice from over his shoulder. If he didn't pop his tongue back in his mouth, he'd find Evie's finger flicking it playfully as she took a seat across from him.
"Awww, what's that? A love letter for prince charming?" She purred, then paused. "Oh. It isn't very good." Evie added objectively with a shrug of her shoulders, sitting down and crossing one long leg over the other. Like Sam, though Evie was not tall, she appeared willowy and slender. Though on a feminine frame it read as attractive, rather than weak and almost sickly.
As soon as Sam heard Evie's voice he pulled his tongue back in and turned to see her. The sight of his sister didn't invoke quite the same negative reaction it once had, but he still didn't trust her. Didn't really want to see her, if he was being honest.
But she seemed determined to stay, sitting by him and commenting on his drawing, which he covered with his hands too late.
"I'm practising some art for the work I'm doing for the Loreseeker's guild." He explained, adding an extra haughty importance to the name of the organisation. Despite his dislike of Evie he had an innate need to impress her, to let her know he was doing well (even though nothing could be further from the truth). "It doesn't have to be good. It's just the first draft."
Hoping she wouldn't ask anymore about his now-non-existent 'Prince Charming', he looked about the Atheneum then back to her. "I've never seen you in here before. I didn't know you...read books."
"Oooh, somebody sounds quite confident." Evie said with a flash of white teeth, noticing the lack of Sam's stutter instantly. Crossing her arms though, Evie looked across the table with a bored and unimpressed expression. "Loreseekers?" She repeated raising a brow. "And what's the point of that? There aren't many castles around Sam, I'm not sure if you've noticed or not. "
His quip about her reading only made Evie laugh and shake her head in a way which made her hair fall in pretty waves against her shoulder. "Oh Sam. The things you don't know could quite literally fill a place like this." She replied with a condescending smile.
Sam ignored the comment on his newfound confidence, sure that Evie's intentions were not truly complimentary. Of course, she wasn't interested in the guild, and the patronising way she said it made him tense, indignant frustration making him grit his teeth. This was something he had once been used to, every achievement belittled, but...in the years on his own, he had become sensitive again.
"I'm collecting stories and myths to put them into one volume. There are plenty of castles in our stories, Evie. And in the ones from Outlanders, too. Besides, you don't know what's outside the barrier." While his words in of themselves may have been confident arguments delivered from a different person, Sam spoke down to the book and did not look her in the eyes.
Her laughter grated against him. "I could...say the same to you, you know. So why are you here?" Sam felt almost oddly protective of the Atheneum. It was his space, a place he'd always gone to escape from his life.
"Wow. Sounds super important Sam. While we're all here just trying to survive, you're drawing pictures of things that have never happened. Well done." That he didn't meet her eyes made something inside of Evie both sparkle, and simultaneously cringe. It was so easy to tear Sam down, and honestly, a large part of her thought that he deserved it. But ... he was her twin which implicitly meant something. Still, it wasn't so easy for Evie to let her guard down, and honestly, writing down myths sounded stupid. They had much bigger problems to worry about after all.
Rolling her eyes, Evie laughed. "Oh I'm here to go swimming." She said with a sarcastic grin. "Obviously for a book. That's why you come to the Atheneum.
"...You know, I helped you in your shop. And you never said thank you. You are...very rude." Sam pointed out, pointedly focusing on adding tiles to the roof of his castle, pleased with the way the pattern looked once he had done enough of the little lines. It was amateurish, but...almost effective, if you wanted to look at it with a certain artistic eye.
She wanted a book, a goal he could help with, but Sam kept a mask of passive indifference and did not offer. "Then get your book and stop bothering me, please. I'm trying to work. I don't know why you keep...coming to talk to me like this. You've ignored me for enough years beforehand."
"Oh I'm so sorry about that. I was bleeding everywhere. Some of us do that, you know. But thank you Sam. I am so very sorry to have forgotten to say so while I was dealing with my minor medical emergency." She huffed in response.
At her twin's rebuke, Evie merely rolled her eyes and sat all the more firmly in her chair. "Gods Sam, can you just." She said with a flourish of her fingers. "Why can't you ever just chill. It's always so dramatic with you all the time. Oh my gods, Evie didn't say thank you, my sister is so mean. Oh my gods Evie told me my terrible drawings were terrible." She had dropped her voice a register or so, even though Sam's voice was actually not that deep at all. Still, it went with the charade.
"Ah that's right. Because if we keep talking, you can't keep playing the wounded little boy card, is that it? We're 26 Sam. Feel free to act like it at any time."
"...Alright." Sam simply said, shaking his head with wide eyes. There was never any winning this game, and he was annoyed at himself for taking part at all. There was little point in trying to beat Evie in bitter words, because she always had more than him.
Perhaps if he ignored her, that would work. He leaned forward, began to work with a slightly engineered earnest on the bricks in the wall of the castle. Making them slot together neatly, one on top of the other. He was painfully aware of Evie's eyes on him but tried to act as if he was simply going to continue on working no matter how long she sat there.
Only she wasn't going to go anywhere, was she? Because leaving, without any quip as to why, would be admitting defeat. And though Sam was probably as below her as it was possible to get, for some reason she needed to keep him there. She needed to keep him there because if he wasn't the broken twin, the magnifying glass would be put back on her, and all the flaws that she'd tried to hide so well over the years would be revealed.
Everyone knew Sam was the fuck-up Wordsworth, and apparently in this new little guild he had going, no one cared. Sympathy, Evie was sure, was not in short supply.
But you know who never got sympathy? The one who had to be perfect. The one who shone from the outside, but was twisted and gnarled inside. Her cries for help matched Sam in tenacity, but they spoke different language. Maybe now that he was a Loreseeker he would learn to understand her.
"So...how do you even know where the put the lines?" Evie asked, her curiosity veiled behind a thin layer of judgement. "Looks pretty random from here." And though it did indeed look random, and still looked a bit shit in her opinion, it was better than she could do.
For a while there was silence and Sam worked, managing to almost convince himself that Evie wasn't there. Not entirely, but almost. Whenever she was near it was impossible to completely rid himself of the sickly panic that had run under his skin for most of his childhood, the knowledge that he was not good enough, second best, that anyone who walked in would look at the both of them and assume she was better.
Her question made him flinch just the slightest, the sudden break from silence surprising him. Sam could hear, could feel the intent behind it....but it was the most neutral thing she'd said to him in years, so he decided to answer it.
"Well...I know if I tried to copy all the roof tiles like that, it wouldn't look good. So I'm trying to...I guess, create the um...feeling of the tiles. With the simpler lines." This sounded lame even to him, but it was the best explanation he could give. "Usually I only do writings and illuminated letters, so I'm still learning how to do this at all. Why, would you do it differently?"
"The feeling of the tiles?" Evie repeated, sounding snotty. What a perfectly stupid thing to say, and yet...when she looked at any one tile, it didn't look like much. But overall it did actually look like a roof. Maybe that was what he meant?
Standing, arms crossed and looking somehow both bored and also like she was about to give a lecture, Evie moved from her position to stand behind Sam, leaning over him. The siblings weren't close by any stretch of the imagination, and so there was no reassuring hand on his shoulder, no posture of comfort and familiarity.
"I mean .. you don't normally just see the lines. You see the shadows and the light. This is all like...well..the same."
"Yes. Maybe you just don't understand because you're not creative." Sam sneered back, feeling almost protective of his shabby drawing. Because of who she was, her talents at getting to the core of his anxieties...when Evie insulted the one drawing or phrase it felt like an attack on his whole being. It was difficult to not raise his hackles, to immediately become brittle.
Her critique was not welcome. He turned, holding an arm over his drawing. "Fine. You don't like it. Someone else might. Do mother and father send you out to do this? Just...pick at me? Do you want to see me upset? I thought you might have seen that enough."
It was clear from the slightly misty anger in his eyes and the pressed-together line of his lip that he was not far from it now, the tears and pathetic panic always just below the surface.
"Wow. Way to be a dick Sam." Evie snarled back. She'd actually been trying to be...well, if not polite, at least not downright nasty. What a mistake.
"I was just saying. But I guess since you're the expert and I know nothing you'll be just fine. And totally not be smearing the charcoal with your sleeve while you pout." She retorted much more coldly now, narrowing her eyes which were the same piercing shade of blue as Sam's.
Once again, as she had in the rathskeller during LongNight, Evie felt frustrated that interactions with her twin always ended up like this. She knew she was being a bit bristly, but couldn't he just...just...not?!
"Whatever." She concluded after a moment, huffing, and stalking off towards the books that she'd actually come to find.
