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!
"Listen," Ronin is saying softly, his voice roughened by more than one potent cocktail (Sugar is playing cooler in the leafy foliage a couple of metres away). "I didn't die, you didn't die. I don't have any more children with Safrin, and we can still live in the Cordillera." As far as meetings with his goddess goes, this one has been fucking brilliant in Ronin's opinion.
Still, he doesn't expect that to soothe his husband at all, which explains why Ronin is astride Remi from their lazy set up on the beach, towels spread long the soft sand, clothes entirely optional. (Mostly, anyway - it's a little more difficult to be naked all the time what with Flora living here and all). "And you," Ronin adds, as if this is the most important part - and it is, "are still the msot handsome man I have ever laid my eyes on. So how about that?"
The most difficult thing about being a demigod, if you were to ask Remi just now, was just how damned impossible it was to stay drunk. Oh, the pair could chase the buzz all they want, but even with Remi's mixtures reaching around 80% alcohol, still the effects were lazy at best. Still, it's with pink cheeks and eyes opened different amounts that Remi gazes up at Ronin, shaking his head a firm no despite how the world threatened to swim around him in response. "And you trust this? Her being nice?" The Lullaby makes a face that's entirely at odds with the way his fingers have slipped beneath the bottom of Ronin's swim shorts.
"How about you," Remi counters, before promptly forgetting what it was he was going to say. Waving away his train of thought, he shrugs a shoulder up at Ronin to indicate the clean slice through his bicep which was already nearly healed. "Flora needed blood. My blood. For a quest." This is all said rather dramatically on Remi's part.
"For-" dun dun dunnn "-Safrin."
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Already Ronin's duplicate is collecting two more drinks from Sugar's cooling area, dunking two straws in them and returning to hand them to the real deal sitting comfortably atop his husband. "You know," he says softly, pausing to take an obnoxious slurp of his drink and simultaneously offering Remi his own, "I really do. It felt like a new start. And if being more present will help Flora and Mateo..." He shrugs his shoulders; it's a no brainer.
Speaking of Flora (not an ideal subject when Remi's hands are sneaking into his shorts, but here we are), the sparkly new Supernova raises his brows to hear that his adopted daughter has been questing for Safrin as well. "Well, obviously she has good taste." He doesn't even know if he's talking about the goddess or the girl, but either way he topples leans over to smooch a kiss against Remi's bicep.
"I did hear that she had gone to see Safrin," he confesses. "Because it's why Safrin wanted to see me."
Remi exhales hard enough to sound like he's trying to mimic a horse. Rather than complain (for now), he sits up as much as Ronin's position will allow that he might drink his refreshment without choking on it. "Will it help them? Or will it just enable them?" It's both a tipsy retort as much as it's seriously asked, though the way the Lullaby's head flops back into the sound makes it seem much more the former.
Grunting slightly, if only because the way the Supernova's body is pressing against his bladder, Remi mumbles something against his husband's shoulder before falling abruptly still. "Wait, what?" Seemingly instantly sobered, Ronin might feel the way Remi's eyebrows pinch together against his skin if he doesn't feel the flutter of unease snarling out from all the places they touch.
"Why...?"
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"Whichever one it was, we both know I'd show up the instant either one of them asked," he points out, setting their drinks down in the sand (and half burying them so they don't topple over). Helping or enabling, Ronin can be there and he will be, and it's important for him that both Flora and Mateo know it.
Grumbling right back if for no other reason than because he can feel the Lullaby tense and try to sober up, Ronin resorts to attacking his husband with kisses, scattering them up his shoulder and along his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. "It's nothing like that," he soothes, sitting up a little to gaze down at his husband, and despite the bright sunlight, the glow of his dazzle is still visible.
"Flora was running for leadership here and name-dropped the two of us as reasons why she'd make a good Queen, I guess. But... well. No one in Torchline seemed to care." He's too tipsy to be annoyed about it now - but it is still annoying. "I guess she went to Safrin to tattle on us, now that I think about it." He chuckles.
Both adoring this trait of Ronin's and being impossibly annoyed by it, Remi huffs out a long breath and resigns himself to being more social if only tangentially. "I agreed to keep the bar stocked as much as I can, so.." He shrugs as if to prove that he was also trying.
Just...because... Remi's thoughts are understandably scattered as Ronin peppers him with kisses, though not even the Supernova's affections are enough to wipe away his concerns about Safrin so easily. "Don't you sparkle at me." Remi warns, waggling a finger up at his husband before immediately dropping it back to his thigh.
Raising his eyebrows and quite literally making this face, it's less that Flora went to tattle and more that she went to Safrin that bothers the Lullaby. Although..if she was trying to get Ronin in trouble, he supposed that made sense. "I wonder what she thought Safrin would do." He murmurs uncertainly, now all the more skeptical of just how pleasant the deity had been. Or had seemed to be.
"And so that is why Safrin made you choose and so on." Remi says to himself, piecing it all together before leaning forward to take another (long) drink from his glass.
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"And I am very proud of you for that," Ronin says sweetly, reaching out to brush an errant curl out of Remi's eyes. In true Taliesin fashion, the grumpier his husband, the more determined Ronin's efforts become to cheer him up, and so his sparkle naturally grows twofold (and maybe the hand on his thigh helps too, eyoooo). "I will sparkle at whomever I please," he says haughtily, snatching up Remi's hand and pressing a few obnoxious kisses to his fingertips.
"Oh, I imagine she expected Safrin to give me a thorough scolding and put me to work with a whipcrack," he says softly, though the reality - not that Flora would have known - would likely have been a great deal more unpleasant. Tipsy enough to think that it was his own charm that had saved him from that fate but sober enough not to say it, the Lullaby will undoubtedly feel Ronin's interpretation of events through their bond.
"Mmhm," he confirms, nodding. "So I've been helping Flora set up the Hanged Man. She wants to fight me tomorrow, too."
"Do not condescend when I have a full bladder." Remi says ominously, though quite what the threat is, is anyone's guess.
"Oh is that so?" The Lullaby huffs, raising his eyebrows and letting jealousy slosh around his ankles and up toward his belly. "Just a few days back in Torchline and already he's sparkling at whomever he pleases." Remi adds as if there's some crowd listening in. As his hand is grasped he lets his fingernails extend into claws, but he only makes a cursory effort toward being menacing before Ronin's glow is softly pulsing through his own emotions as well.
Not liking most conversations to do with Safrin and hating the ones that further tangled the goddess into their lives, Remi lets himself sag into the sand with all the resignation of a man expecting death to take him at any moment. "Oh good." He murmurs on the heels of a sigh. "Maybe Safrin has given Flora some stars of her own. All the better to kill you with, mmmm?" Perhaps the goddess had just shown Ronin the carrot, but had saved the rod for someone else's hand.
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Furrowing his brow and giving Remi a look that, to the Lullaby, is probably similar to the kind of expression a dog makes when its standing directly over you, Ronin isn't sure of the threat either, but he absolutely makes a show of extracting himself out of the other man's lap. He's not adding getting peed on to his list of Torchline achievements, thank you.
"That is so," he adds nonetheless, loving the chill of jealously in Remi's emotions but immediately jumping at the chance to warm them back up. "And if you've noticed, whomever I please is you and only you." Leaning back in to kiss Remi's cheek, he sprawls out with his husband - granted, his is much more relaxed and less waiting for death.
"Or maybe Flora just needs help completing that quest she made you bleed for," he says, disgustingly reasonable even to his own ears, and he reaches over Remi to snag his drink that he might inject some more alcohol into his system. "You could always come along and watch - make sure I'm properly protected."
"Mhmm." Remi grumbles grumpily. "Well, we will see how long that lasts." Mostly he's saying it to be argumentative, though there is no small part of him that is aware of just how much Ronin has had to give up in living in the Cordillera. Though he believes the Supernova likes it most of the time, no part of Remi is naive enough to think that Ronin's quick trips out into the world are all the extroverted huntsman needs. Whether or not Ronin will realize how much he's missed being the social butterfly he'd been before the war tore them all to shreds now that he was forced back into the world, compliments of Safrin, was something Remi was indeed waiting to see.
'Maybe. But if Safrin made her get my blood to spite me, do not be so sure there is not some spite left for you as well.' Remi points out with a slight tilt of his head.
Pretending to snap his teeth up at Ronin's stomach as the other man reached for his drink, Remi has to laugh in spite of himself. "Me? She already has the power to kill me without help from Safrin."
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
There's a definite smile curling across the Supernova's lips as he hears and feels his husband get progressively more grumpy and suspicious about their relationship, Flora's motivations and Safrin's ire. And so, setting down his drink after another very healthy sip, he leans over his husband in the sand (this time hopefully without pressing too hard on his feeble bladder) and tries to silence any more of Remi's snark with a soft kiss.
"Our daughter is not going to try and kill us," he whispers against his lips, and if it's the first time he's called Flora ours in this context, so be it. "She is a lot of things, but she's not like that. And Safrin is not saving any ire for me - not today, anyway, and not for Flora's sake. And I love you, I loved you yesterday and I'll love you tomorrow. We're on vacation on a beach in the hot sun, and as drunk as we're ever likely to be. Enjoy yourself, Remi."
You can't tell me what to do, I don't work in this van Remi might have said, in another time and in another universe. This iteration though simply makes his lips go hard and thin so that Ronin wouldn't have anything to kiss. Such was the balance of their relationship, and the Lullaby wouldn't have it any other way.
Whether it's the flurry of reassurance that pulses from Ronin in golden ripples or if it's hearing Flora referred to as being their daughter that does it, but quite without his permission, Remi's hands slide up his husband's thighs to try and coax the former-Huntsman lower, his bladder be damned. It never has been fair, how charming you are. The Lullaby thinks as he leans up to try and steal a kiss from his husband's lips. Though if there is a way to defend against it, I am not sure I want to know what it is.
That they have a daughter is a bittersweet counterweight to the one they lost. Flora is certainly no replacement for Aoife and never could she be, but there's a sort of harmony in it that might be lost on Remi in the moment, but that he'll realize later. For now, he's quite content to try and take his husband's advice. Or try to.
"It is a shame this is as drunk as we can get nowadays." He murmurs, releasing one of Ronin's thighs to grope for his glass in the sand.
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Unsure what to make of his husband's silence, it's only as he's drawn back over the other man that Ronin lets a smile tug at his lips, such that now it's Remi who will have a hard time kissing him. I am only this charming because I have such good inspiration. I wouldn't try this hard for just anyone, you know, he replies, melting into their kiss and bracing a hand over the Lullaby's head so he doesn't collapse on him entirely.
"Mm, it is a shame, but I'm just thankful that we can even get this buzzed," he admits, drawing away enough for Remi to keep said buzz going, even if Ronin wants nothing more than to drape himself over his husband and fall asleep, possibly whilst receiving back touches and hair pets. "And the sound of the waves takes me back. I remember so many nights spent out here with you."
The warmth of the sun seems an entirely different thing compared to the heat Remi feels rolling between his body and Ronin's such that he both wants to cannon-ball into the ocean to cool off as much as he wants to let himself be consumed by the Supernova's warmth. As if you would even have to try with anyone else. The Lullaby argues. Very nearly he begins to ask his husband if he's ever been turned down, but decides (wisely) against it.
"Next time Safrin asks you to re-pledge your loyalty, maybe you can ask for a raise." The Lullaby suggests with a lopsided smile. Holding up a hand to shade his eyes from the sun before realizing it would do no good, instead Remi shifts his hips to move the pair of them to the side where Ronin might do the work for him.
"When we were homeless, you mean?" Remi wonders with a mischievous grin. "I can still see the look on your face when you just...appeared with our wagon. Racing that poor mare up the beach." He tuts under his breath, though the dimples appearing on his cheeks give away the absolute delight the memory sparks in him.
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
