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!
06-23-2023, 04:18 PM (This post was last modified: 06-23-2023, 04:25 PM by Everest.)
Everest
Having an office seemed both terrifying (offices were places you went to find people, and therefore was now a place Everest had to be) and exciting (a place he could organize as much as he wanted). Though he'd failed the social/communication component of his skyboat exam, the governing body had been kind enough to give him an office to work out of while he prepared to retake the exam. This was likely so that he didn't follow them around constantly, though the official reason had been to reward his exemplary efforts in Skyboat Safety and Awareness.
Opening the door, Everest backed up a step to check the number on the wall with a small frown. He hadn't many expectations, thinking perhaps he'd be given a glorified broom closet, but the room onto which the door opened was large. Overwhelmed by the spaciousness of it, for a moment the aviator merely gapes.
06-23-2023, 04:39 PM (This post was last modified: 06-23-2023, 04:40 PM by Sohalia.)
When Soh had received Everest's request, she'd accepted in a heartbeat. In her little world, which felt an awful lot like it had gone mad, helping to set up her friend's office seemed like something that she could deal with. Something small, perhaps, but something that was within her control. Besides, she'd never turn down an excuse to spend more time with her friends.
She arrived with cleaning supplies in tow, dressed simply in a short-sleeved shirt and pants that hung to her calves; her hair was piled unceremoniously atop her head, to keep it out of the way while cleaning and organizing and whatever else Everest may need. "Hi, Everest!" she said cheerfully as she walked up behind her friend, who stood gaping at the office he'd been assigned. Peering around him, Soh made a noise of approval. "Oh, this is nice!" Then, backing out of his personal space, she smiled at him. "Just let me know where to start."
Mateo doesn't know how he feels about his friends being all governmenty, or having offices or whatnot, but he's too much of a free spirit to let it weigh him down for longer than a few minutes at a time anyway. Arriving shortly after Soh with his curled similarly piled unceremoniously atop his head, the botanist is armed not with cleaning supplies, but with a Ceropegia woodii, informally known as a string-of-hearts plant.
"To brighten the place up," he exclaims with a dimpled grin, pausing to lean in and press a couple of kisses to Sohalia's cheeks - and barely resisting doing the same to Everest. "Where would you like to start? You could probably live in here, it is so big." Mateo should know - he's slept in his lab, the shop, and on the floor of his ship enough times.
i've told you time and time again i'm not as think as you drunk i am
Still rather shell-shocked, as his friends arrive Everest barely has the mental resources to acknowledge them properly. "It's...much bigger than I expected." He murmurs his mind not of the sort to add that's what she said (but mine is).
"Er-" Turning, his eyes drinking in the cleaning supplies Sohalia had brought with her and the more than expected botanical offering from Mateo, Everest swallows as if they're about to embark on some noble and dangerous dungeon crawl rather than setting up an office. Stepping into the space with clear unease, he looks around, all plans about how and where to start dashed by the size of the space.
A rectangular room, the opposing wall to the door was all windows so that the Skyport was easily visible behind. The other two walls were entirely bare, though there were boxes holding the bookshelves and desk that Everest had ordered.
'Shall we start by cleaning before we...' Trailing off, he shrugs a touch hopelessly.
Cleaning!
Windows need to be cleaned (2 people) and the room needs to be swept!
I wish that I could find the words, to tell you how much that it hurts
That I'm not who you wanted me to be
"That just means you will be able to designate spaces for specific work," Mateo points out to his friend with a sunny smile, and he carefully places his string-of-hearts down somewhere it won't get trodden on or swept away before he can find a suitable place for it to live. For Ever he imagines there will be study space, and dog napping space, and existential dread space. Mateo would have thrown a yoga mat in one corner, in comparison.
"That is a good idea," he says of cleaning, patting the aviator on the shoulder and inviting Sohalia with him towards the windows. "Shall we clean these?" he asks her. "If you do not mind my using your supplies."
Mateo volunteers to clean the windows and invites Sohalia along!
i've told you time and time again i'm not as think as you drunk i am
As Mateo arrived, Soh grinned at him, returning his kisses before turning her attention back to the task at hand. Poor Everest seemed a little overwhelmed by the tasks ahead of them, and Soh offered him an encouraging smile as she followed him into the rather large office space - though, given how uncomfortable he seemed to be with eye contact, he might not have seen it. Either way, as she looked around the space, she was impressed with the office that he'd been given. It was open and airy, with large windows across the far wall, and was a blank canvas to be prepared to Ever's liking.
"Of course," Soh said cheerfully in response to Mateo, following him further into the office and setting her supplies on the ground. She pulled out a bottle of cleaning solution and sprayed it on one of the windows before handing it over to Mateo; then she pulled out a clean rag and began to wipe away the dirt and grime. The process didn't take much time, and when they'd finished the windows, she turned back to Everest expectantly, waiting to hear what was next.
Mateo's suggestion soothes something in the aviator's mind, and rather than panicking about the vastness of the room, instead, he began to mentally designate certain areas for certain tasks. 'Okay,' He murmurs, more to himself than to the other two, pleased to see Mateo taking charge and tugging Sohalia along with him.
Picking up a broom, Ever began to fastidiously sweep from corner to corner, end to end, leaving very precise piles of dust in his wake. Returning with a dustpan and sweeping them up in their entirety, by the time he'd finished he was decidedly calmer and more relaxed for having completed his task.
"Next we have bookshelves and the desk to set up. I think if we start with the desk we can put it together quite quickly with the three of us." So saying he nods toward a grouped stack of boxes. Making his way toward them and picking up the instructions, he glances at Mateo and Sohalia. 'I can read the instructions and you two can follow?' It wasn't that he wanted to get out of the assembly process, and simply that he didn't trust anyone other than himself to dictate their tasks.
Lets put together a desk!
I wish that I could find the words, to tell you how much that it hurts
That I'm not who you wanted me to be
Together, they make short work of the windows, though Mateo does slightly prolong the process by drawing smiley faces and other shapes in the cleaning solution he sprays. Still, by the time they're done and the windows are gleaming, Ever has swept the space to perfection as well, and they are left with a beautifully blank canvas to work with. Terrible as he is at manual labour, Mateo has nonetheless managed to install street lamps lately, and so he feels surprisingly confident about Ever's desk.
"Sure," he trills, moving to unbox the desk and divide out the pieces, holding them up so Ever can match them with the assembly instructions. "I can hold the pieces in place if you do not mind screwing them together?" he suggests to Soh, offering her a grin that doesn't try to hide the innuendo he knows is there.
Mateo starts unboxing so Ever can make sure all the pieces are there, and invites Sohalia to wield a screwdriver!
i've told you time and time again i'm not as think as you drunk i am
At least the desk came with instructions, unlike the street lamps that they had recently put together, and Soh was reasonably confident that, between the three of them, they could get the job done. She had no problem with Ever reading the instructions while she and Mateo did the work of putting the desk together, so she nodded along with Mateo before drifting over to the desk and helping to sort the pieces.
Mateo made a suggestion for how to proceed, and though Soh was not as confident as she could have been about her ability to screw the pieces in place proficiently - she wasn't very strong, after all, and she might not be able to get the screws in tight enough - she agreed readily. Mateo's innuendo was not lost on her, and though she was certain there was a suitably sarcastic response to return to him, she was unable to think of one, so she merely made a face before fetching a screwdriver and preparing to do her job as Mateo held the pieces in place.
------
Soh wields the screwdriver and helps beginning to put the desk together!
Unlike Sohalia, Everest misses the innuendo completely if only because Mateo's suggestion sounds very reasonable to him. Nodding, pleased that things were going off without a hitch so far, the aviator raises the instructions and quickly scans through them before communicating to the other two what needed to be done.
"We'll build the structure first before adding in things like drawers and whatnot." Everest explains, wanting to give Soh and Mateo an overall understanding of how they were going to proceed before getting into the (literal) nuts and bolts of it.
"First the two side pieces...yes, those ones, and the top.." He nods as Mateo picks up the appropriate pieces, waiting for the botanist to hold them still so that Sohalia could screw them together. It's the Caido version of Ikea furniture, though time would tell if anyone ended up in tears at the end.
"Okay now this next part is tricky. I think if you hold those pieces together like that Mateo, and if Sohalia leans on her back and reaches up she might be able to get her hands in the right place?" That desk-construction might put the botanist and new Heart of Stormbreak into slightly compromising positions wasn't the aviator's intention, but here we all are.
I wish that I could find the words, to tell you how much that it hurts
That I'm not who you wanted me to be
And here Mateo thought he was the one biting the bullet, given that some of the desk pieces are heavy and he isn't particularly strong either. No matter, though - between the two of them they should at least be able to create a serviceable desk. (And he doesn't want to say it, but he knows Everest will likely re-tighten every single screw once they're safely out of sight, so he doesn't doubt the end result will be sturdy).
For now, though, there's the matter of whatever the fuck the aviator is trying to have them do. Like a game of Twister you don't know you're a part of until you get there, Mateo finds himself on his knees holding a piece of the desk, with Soh's head quite comfortably between them so she can screw the two parts together.
Unable to help himself, of course he begins to snicker. "I bet you never thought you'd end up here," he remarks to the Luminary.
i've told you time and time again i'm not as think as you drunk i am
Sohalia was willing to do a great deal for her friends, but she'd thought that there was somewhere she would draw the line. And she'd rather thought that that 'somewhere' would be on the 'no thank you' side of sticking her head between Mateo's legs, but she was apparently wrong, because here she was, doing just that, her face aflame and a rather strange expression on her face as she struggled with whether to laugh at the absurdity of it all or cry at how uncomfortable it made her feel.
At least Mateo seemed to be having a good time, snickering as he held the pieces together. "It was not on my list of locations to visit, no," she said wryly. There was probably some kind of joke to be made, but it eluded her just now. Soh had to wonder how she'd ended up here - the Heart of Stormbreak, the leader of a great region, reduced to lying on the floor trying to screw pieces of a desk together while simultaneously trying to rein in her furious blush. She just had to hope that nobody walked by to see them like this. She was sure that such a sight would cause all kinds of confusion, and the last thing she needed to start her reign was the rumors that would likely result.
What was funny about being in the Skyport, Everest had no idea. "The Skyport is one of the most important places in all of Stormbreak I would think." He interjects, his voice soft and aiming to be free of judgment despite the furrowing of his eyebrows. "Given that you can no longer come into the city by anything but flighted means, I would have thought this would have been high on your list of places to be."
Opting to forgo politics in lieu of the desk, Everest peers down with the instructions still in his hand before frowning at one of the pieces Sohalia was holding. "Is that the right piece?" He wonders, glancing from the paper back down to Soh. "Oh. I think it's an optical illusion." Chuckling to himself, Ever shakes his head. "Her small hands made the wood look bigger. Okay, so that piece goes-" Describing the next round of instructions, this would see both Sohalia and Mateo off their knees, though unless they could think of a more clever way to do it, the Heart would have to fit herself between the botanist's arms as he held the two outside edges of the desk together while she screwed the pieces into one another.
I wish that I could find the words, to tell you how much that it hurts
That I'm not who you wanted me to be
There's nothing funnier than a joke someone doesn't get, and while he absolutely knows this about Everest Hart, it doesn't stop Mateo from having to practically suffocate himself not to descend into a fit of giggles. "I mean, I have lost count of the number of times I have come in the city," he says, his own cheeks aflame but from stifled laughter rather than embarrassment.
Thank goodness Soh can get herself out from between his legs, but things are only made marginally better when he finds her snugly in his arms instead. "I am beginning to think you are doing this on purpose," he tells her, barely able to hold the pieces of the desk from how he wants to fall about laughing.
i've told you time and time again i'm not as think as you drunk i am
