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!
For once, the youth calmly walked from the trail by her house and down towards the sea – and only because she was laden with lanterns. They were precious from multiple standpoints and memories, and caution, care, had gone into them where, in most aspects of her life, it usually didn’t exist. With her hands full, Fangorn graciously carried paints and brushes, and Sila oversaw from overhead, until they’d made it towards warm sands and a rock to refurnish and clean the beacons.
Placing them down gently, she surveyed her surroundings – outcroppings of people milling closer to docks, some toying about in the waves, others drinking nearby – Hels screeching overhead. Nothing threatening or damning.
Then she settled herself along the fine grains too, content with their chosen spot, before grabbing hold of Nate’s. Remembering her promise to Sunjata, she figured she’d start there, and work her way over to the others waiting nearby.
This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight
It's a slow reconciliation for Isla, to think she'll be settling in Torchline soon. So long being nomadic has left her somewhat flighty, especially given her swift departure from the House of Midnight. But she's always enjoyed the islands, and so it's onto the beach she goes today. She and Melita have a similar mindset, it appears - indeed, with the upcoming festivities, they're far from the only ones lovingly crafting lanterns or purchasing supplies.
Isla has carefully brought Varus's lantern from King's End, stowing it at The Hanged Man until now, and she plans to give it a fresh coat of paint and perhaps a few new additions, too. One of these involves small and carefully cut strips of fabric; alas, as she heads across the beach, an errant Leafchange breeze blows a couple of them from her grasp, sending them tumbling away over the sand.
"Oh, no-" Isla sets off on bare feet to chase them, where they're conveniently snagged against one of the Honeybee's lanterns. "I'm so sorry - could I have those back?"
Snagging at one of Fangorn’s offered paintbrushes, the gourd grumbled and waved his vines contentedly, hinting at something soon to come, which Melita either ignored or didn’t pay much credence to. “Hm, I think this color,” she hummed to herself, admiring the lighter blue tangents in a vial nearby, plucking it neatly with her fingers and intending to twist the cap off, figuring it could amount to the streaks of lightning she intended to put upon the lantern.
Then there was an outcry from Sila, spotting something coming overhead, and the pumpkin’s warning suddenly made a lot more sense.
Grimacing in apology to him, the youth watched with furrowed brows as fabric (and luckily not any of those damned spiders) began to roll in, settling against her sister’s container. Placing the paint down, top still on, she reached forward to clutch it and save the tassels from any upcoming breeze, until another came hurrying.
Glancing upwards from her settled position along the sand, Melita came face to face with Isla. Now, she knew who she was from gatherings amidst the Grounds, afar and beyond, but no other finer details. Sensing nothing untoward, she nodded, holding it aloft for the Ancient to take. “Sure. Here you go.”
This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight
Melita isn't the only one with some instant recognition - even without her connections to Sunjata, Isla and the Honeybee have walked circles around each other for literal years without coming into direct contact. Until now. A little breathless and with a grateful smile, Isla accepts the fabric back and checks that Varus's lantern hasn't been damaged by the chase. She's used a hollowed out fiddle as the basis for the lantern, planning to braid the fabric into a small tassel for it to blow in the breeze.
"Thank you," she murmurs. "You're Melita, right? I'm Isla - I don't think we've ever officially met." And that would have been it were it not for the scattered lanterns around the red-headed woman, not to mention the other materials. "Do you mind if I sit nearby? Hopefully I'll be out of the way of the wind from here."
Melita had never been one for calculations – not when derived sometimes on mere impulses. But she was a scrutinizing, observant creature, given how she’d survived for so long, and her eyes immediately went to the hollowed-out fiddle, the recognition of lanterns being brought to some forefront and all the losses intermingled in between. From what she knew of the woman before her, Isla had lost a lot. Something they both shared, even if it was only in passing.
Save for now.
Isla screeched something overheard and stayed so, flapping her leathery wings and taking on another warm thermal. Fangorn waved his vines again, rumbling and rolling back towards the Honeybee to make space, while Melita nodded. “Right. I’ve heard some about you,” and her smile wasn’t an unkind thing, but perhaps a bit teasing, mildly feral. “Go ahead. Plenty of room.”
This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight
Glancing up fleetingly to note the dragon soaring overhead, Isla can't help but smile - an expression that grows a touch knowing and wry to hear Melita's response. "Oh, I have no doubt," she agrees with a soft laugh, though it's with a nod of gratitude that the Remedy finds some space on the sand a few feet away from the other woman, settling her lantern on her lap and taking a moment to catch her breath.
"I'm sorry for your losses," she murmurs, having noticed the number of lanterns positioned around the Honeybee. Whilst pretty, Isla is caught by the realisation that most people would rather come to the Festival of Lights without a single lantern to carry. She knows she certainly would.
Rumors were funny things; like myths and caricatures all at once. The Honeybee only knew bits and pieces of sentiments and sediments of Isla – way back from Hollowed Grounds where death lingered, and then eventually struck again, only to be revived and renewed. What must it be like, she wondered, to come back time after time? Or what kind of person could, when they’d likely already suffered in a thousand other intervals?
She knew her mother, her sister, and all the other lanterns arranged around her couldn’t – but she’d also never quite understand Caido and all its facets. Just learning, one step at a time.
She hadn’t expected the apology either, glancing up from where her paintbrush had started over her uncle’s, electric blue and vibrant against the dark background. “Yours too,” she murmured, chin barely gesturing to the hollowed-out fiddle. Turning back and beginning the brushstrokes once more, she nodded vaguely. “This one is for Nate.”
This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight
Sitting in fairly comfortable silence - though it can barely be called that, with the wind, the call of hels overhead and the voices of other beachgoers surrounding them - Isla busies herself with her strips of fabric. Careful fingers bind them into a braid, and she continues to weave them together even as her pebble blue gaze lifts to glance across at Melita. "Ah, thank you. This one is for Varus. Not many people knew him, though I do hope to change that."
Nate's name is unexpected but not unwelcome, and the Remedy finds a soft, sad smile on her face as she considers the vibrant blues coming to life along Melita's lantern. "Did you know him well?" she asks softly. She'd been there for his final moments, after all, though it isn't something she particularly likes to dwell upon.
She permitted bits and pieces of concentration to ensure strokes of blue lit up the dark background along the lantern. Streaks, clashing down, down, down into the visceral landscape, like Nate and his tempestuous edges, when he felt the world was doing them an injustice. Only occasionally, when she was dipping her brush back into the vial, did she glance over and watch Isla’s careful, nimble movements, the bindings turning into a neat braid, plaiting along in a weaving structure.
Glancing back at her work, she was almost surprised when the Ancient spoke again. She didn’t know Varus either, but given the structure of the last statement, she bit her lip back into study, and continued along the lines of curiosity. “I didn’t know him – what was he like?”
The hues persisted as she turned her lantern lightly, twisting it around so she could continue along the opposing sides. Given her own inquiry, the next one seemed to steady her. “Yeah. He was my uncle.” Through Sunjata and their marriage, of course, but absolutely the favored one of the two.
This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight
Smiling almost sadly down at the lantern and the fabric braid she's weaving out with her fingertips, Isla tries to sum up Varus in a few sentences. "He used to be an assassin, believe it or not. But you wouldn't think it to know him - he was funny, and sociable, and he enjoyed reading murder mystery novels." Her fingers still for a second, Isla glancing down at the braid. "These are from one of the shirts I kept of his. He died fighting the Sparkbird in the war."
While she'd been up on the Cordillera and Nate had died to save them; not for the first time, she's struck by the scale of loss they've endured. To hear that the Ranger was Melita's uncle has Isla's growing warmer if no less sad, the Ancient trying to force away the tension that has started creeping up her shoulders. "He was a good man," she murmurs. "Both of them were."
Discussion of lost loved ones eternally brought out a brand of sorrow Melita never quite knew how to navigate; her own, or anyone else’s. Apologies only went so far, and empathy that much farther, so that it forced the restless energy to become calm and vacant, quiet and subdued; no humming in her chest, no looming chaos in her veins. Instead, she painted and listened, outlining a feral little dragon amidst the lightning strikes while Isla spoke of her assassin, humorous and outgoing, reading novels because the Ascended had been people just as much as the rest of them. Biting down something, she gave a streak into the lizard’s wings, before shifting her eyes towards the braid and Ancient.
Sparkbirds and wars, shirts plaited into the periphery, and probably nothing else to remember the man by. The youth thought of the little remains she’d seen amidst the Grounds, how she longed to topple that fucking tower, and how, even after years thereafter, there’d still been scorch marks in the earth. “I’m sorry,” she murmured again, as it joined the legions of others uttered throughout the past. It didn’t change anything, and they were still gone.
Nate was another figure lost and turned over in complexity. He’s been good to her and Sunjata, but she wasn’t certain about all the others he’d harmed along the way. Stormbreak’s notions settled in her gut and she didn’t give them the voice to shudder over the wake, not when Isla already seemed to be altering. “Yeah,” came on a token agreement, and she began to add more color to the companion in the sky, trying desperately to find alternate routes and paths. “Do you live around here now?”
This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight
"Mm. Me too," Isla murmurs, finishing the little fabric braid and tying it off using a bit of coloured string, before reaching out to fasten it to the bottom of the lantern. "He played the fiddle, too - hence..." She gestures at her creation, as if trying to explain that she hasn't chosen to gut an instrument for no apparent reason. She might get lost in memories all day if allowed to wallow - which she supposes is something Ludo would approve of, but it doesn't make it pleasant - and so Melita's question has her swallowing hard and refocusing; a boon, whether the Honeybee knows it or not.
"Yes and no?" she says, furrowing her brow. "I've been really considering it, but I haven't been able to commit yet. I'm still a medic, whether I was an Ascended or an Ancient, so I was thinking of putting together a new clinic here. I know Torchline has the healing fountain, but maybe it could be a gathering place for other healers or herbalists?" She doesn't know, honestly. "You live here though, right? What do you think?"
Not musically adept by any stretch of the imagination, Melita had simply presumed the instrument a part of the man – perhaps his own – but the information lended to more of the story, the chosen pieces. She nodded, taking in the notes and details, the fabric plaited at the ends. Her eyes narrowed back in her own speculation – knowing she likely didn’t have to explain the lightning marked and scorched across her lantern, nor the finishing touches on the dragon, or the little, mechanical star whale she’d begun to create, after rotating the lantern some more. “Was he very good?”
Topics of locations and living arrangements seemed to be far more fitting, and her eyes widened slightly as the breadth of notations began to unfurl from the healer; but then again, sorrow had never been a grand or great topic to wax poetical upon. “What makes you hesitant?” Considering her plans, and outlines of healing provisions. Pausing in her painting for a moment, the Honeybee’s head tilted; for rarely did anyone seek her advice, unless it was violence related. “We do have the fountains, but citizens here aren’t really uh…medically inclined.” Tended to be of the injury-prone, mostly because they were drunk. “It’d probably be good to have someone who knew what they were doing, and could help others learn and understand.” Her mother had been the same, after all, mending, tending, to the world of the Dragon’s Throat. Melita wished she’d had anything recorded in those memories, besides the long stems of drying herbs in their kitchens.
This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight
"Yes, I think so," Isla says with a fond, sad smile, glancing between their lanterns as they change and develop in readiness for the next Festival of Lights. "I only heard him play once. I was chosen at last year's festival, and he played for me then." It's a bittersweet memory, but the sound of the ghostly strings is burned into her mind forever, and she'd not change it for the world.
As for her hesitance in settling in Torchline, the Remedy takes a second to try and articulate it, her brows furrowing. The reasons are dwindling, honestly, and it's with a soft laugh that she shrugs her shoulders to Melita. "Honestly, I think I'm just afraid of officially starting again somewhere," she admits. "We're both Outlanders, so we know what it's like to have to rebuild from scratch after coming here. And then everything with the Grounds, and then King's End..."
Letting out a long, deep sigh, Isla forces her shoulders to relax. "I guess I better take the plunge though, right?"
