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!
“Mother fuckers sure are messy. Just look at all this shit!” was an anthem and retort towards companions as they shuffled down the long and familiar stretch of tiki torches and sand. Melita probably would’ve liked to pretend she hadn’t contributed to the multitudes of debris and refuse around – but shit, LongNight was a time of drunken buffoonery and half the time she forgot.
Regardless, the higher tides had seemingly swept up more of the glasses, paper, driftwood, bottles, and left them all behind on the dunes. Shaking her head, the smuggler snagged at a few near her feet, hissing and complaining to Fangorn and Sila the entire time. The former, for his part, managed to grab some paper with his vines, while the dragon escorted them all with a few high tunes above, puffs of smoke unfurling from her nose.
“And you’re gonna set fire to all of it,” Melita warned the bronze lizard, as if this would bother anyone in the vicinity. One by one, she started piling portions to be torched and notched ablaze, while others would probably fair better being recycled.
Pay a little more attention to the healing power of incandescent rage
Lights go out again You stroke my pain and tempt my trouble Seek how we pretend
Visiting Torchline was a welcome reprieve from the endless storms plaguing Stormbreak, and despite the potential for monsoons, so far Noe's trip had been blessedly dry and sunny. On this particular day, the girl wandered the beach alone, walking along a piece of driftwood with her arms outstretched to the sides. It was the driftwood that she noticed first: more than she'd ever seen on the usually pristine beaches. Then it was the glasses and bottles, which she vaguely acknowledged as a potential threat to her bare feet, if any of them were broken. Finally, she realized that paper and other refuse was littered throughout it all. She stopped in her tracks, blinking in the sun, and took a good look around. The beach was positively filthy.
There was a woman nearby who seemed to be cleaning up, accompanied by a dragon and a... something? that Noe couldn't quite figure out. It was definitely alive, but she'd never seen another companion like it. Strange. Still, Noe wouldn't feel right about just leaving the stranger to pick up alone - not when the beach was in such a state. So she sauntered over, snagging a few bits and pieces to throw away as she went, and, upon appearing next to the stranger, said, "Man, LongNight here must have been lit."
But we're not friends and we're not lovers We're just trouble, we're just trouble So tempt my trouble
Fangorn, dutiful and wily, gathered the paper and refuse in a nice little collective pile before beginning his usual growl and waving of vines to indicate another’s approach. Melita turned her head, not recognizing the individual, and probably would’ve kept right on going, presuming a tourist, had the younger woman not stepped almost immediately beside her. Eyeing her up and down, mostly for threats, she grabbed another top of a glass bottle, arching a crimson brow. “Oh. Yeah. It was,” came on a feral grin thereafter, presumptions of challenges and nothing more as she sauntered down the beach.
With her free hand, her fingers wrapped around a large portion of drywood, and began the process all over again, adding to the vampire gourd’s pile. Uncertain how else to broach the subject, and uncertain of this passerby, she tilted her head vaguely. “Do I know you? You from around here?”
Pay a little more attention to the healing power of incandescent rage
Lights go out again You stroke my pain and tempt my trouble Seek how we pretend
Tourist, yes, but that didn't stop Noe from inserting herself where she didn't belong. So it was that she found herself picking up trash on some beach that didn't belong to her region, chatting up a perfect stranger. "Nope," she said. "I'm from Stormbreak. My name's Noe Carpenter." She smiled at the redhead. "I'm just visiting. Stormbreak's been, well, stormy all season, and I got tired of the rain. What about you? Do you live around here?"
As she gathered debris from the sands, she kept an eye on the vampire gourd (which she still couldn't quite identify). Whatever it was, it looked wicked. She wondered if she could get a closer look, but presumably, that would be rude. So she continued on in her efforts, only glancing over curiously every once in a while.
But we're not friends and we're not lovers We're just trouble, we're just trouble So tempt my trouble
It took Melita more than a few moments of mental scanning before she could place where she’d heard that name - Carpenter anyway – and the process was over in a mild blink and a sudden shifting of her brow. “Are you related to Koa?”
But then there were other things, like visiting and rain, and she picked up another chipped bottle and chucked it into the nearby pile. “Doesn’t it storm there usually?” Hence the whole name – listen, she didn’t go very often. Mostly for dangerous shit. “I’m Melita. Live here.” Short on introductions, but she wasn’t one to list off all her multitudes anyway.
Pay a little more attention to the healing power of incandescent rage
Lights go out again You stroke my pain and tempt my trouble Seek how we pretend
"Yeah, he's my brother," Noe chirped cheerfully, reaching for another piece of driftwood and an errant bottle, gathering them in her arms before returning them to the pile. Then she was off again, a little further down the beach this time, picking up a few pieces of paper that seemed to be flyers of some kind. "Do you know him?" It wouldn't surprise her. Her brother made friends everywhere he went, it seemed - it was that Carpenter charm.
As for Stormbreak, Noe made a face. "Yeah, sure, but all the time?" she countered, raising her brows at Melita. "It's been nonstop lightning since the first of the season. I was barely able to get out; it's starting to fuck up the skyboat schedules." She'd waited for what seemed like forever on board for the skyboat to get moving, waiting an eternity for a break in the weather that never seemed to come. She wasn't keen to head home any time soon - not if it meant sailing through all that again.
But we're not friends and we're not lovers We're just trouble, we're just trouble So tempt my trouble
Oh, well, now that Noe said it, that made sense. Humming noncommittally to herself, she shrugged again, hoisting a few more pieces of dried out driftwood that would add some heat and spark to the impending fire. “Only a little. He came with me to see Ludo and ask about the shit going on,” gesturing vaguely to the high tides, and likely everything else dicking around. Plants. Giant ass craters in the middle of fucking nowhere.
She had to almost shrug once more at the concept of Stormbreak, almost in a ‘you chose to live there’ void, but left that counter behind her teeth as she tossed the timber. “Huh. Does put a damper on things.” Get it? Okay. Inclining her chin towards the rolling undulations nearby, she could only comment on what she’d seen out of whack thus far. “We’ve got some higher tides, but it’s not monsoon season yet, so…,” make of that what one will.
Pay a little more attention to the healing power of incandescent rage
Lights go out again You stroke my pain and tempt my trouble Seek how we pretend
One of these days, she'd have to do something that made her more than Koa's kid sister, endlessly tagging along. And one of these days, she would. She would do something so incredibly amazing that people wouldn't look at her and ask if she was Koa's sister - they would ask if he was her brother, and she couldn't wait for that day to come.
She loved her brother, don't get her wrong. It was just hard, sometimes, living in his shadow.
As she continued to pick up driftwood and debris, she looked out at the waves. They did seem higher than the last time she'd been to Torchline, though she hadn't given it much thought before. "Huh," she said. "Weird." Could it all be related? Caido was always weird, but this much strange shit couldn't just be coincidence, right?
But she couldn't do anything about that right now, so she shrugged and hopped up on a nearby piece of driftwood, walking along its length like a tightrope. "So, LongNight. Worth coming here next year to check it out?"
But we're not friends and we're not lovers We're just trouble, we're just trouble So tempt my trouble
Melita wouldn’t know about shadows, because she wandered directly into sunlight and never looked back. If Noe asked, the Honeybee would suggest the same, in all her blatant, defiant glory, jaw raised to the sky and no fucks to give.
Alas, they were stuck in the perpetual cycle of discussing weather, so.
Tossing a couple other bottles and cans, she studied the framework of the impending fire pit, watched as it seemed ready to topple over, shrugged, and then carried on about her work. “I don’t know if it’s all related to everything else,” she offered with a wave of her hand. “But still fucky.”
As for LongNight, she snorted, eternally amused. “Of course. Torchline is always worth checking out.”
Pay a little more attention to the healing power of incandescent rage
Lights go out again You stroke my pain and tempt my trouble Seek how we pretend
Weather may not have been the most interesting of topics usually, but there was enough oddity to it all this season that it had been worth the conversation, if only to determine that Stormbreak was not alone. It was something of a relief to Noe to know that her home region hadn't been singled out by the gods for some perceived slight - although that relief was mitigated somewhat by the knowledge that things were, as Melita said, "fucky" everywhere.
Their trash pile had grown as the two had talked, and debris now teetered at the top as though about to tumble back down to the sand below. Noe gathered up a few more bottles and rearranged the pile, fixing it so that an errant breeze wouldn't knock the entire thing over. She'd hate to have to start again.
At Melita's snorted reply, Noe resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Obviously Torchline was worth checking out, or she wouldn't be here, now, would she? But instead of saying so, Noe pressed on. "Well, I've seen some of Haulani, and the beaches, but what else would you recommend?"
But we're not friends and we're not lovers We're just trouble, we're just trouble So tempt my trouble
Fangorn continued to move along, gathering up his own remnants of debris and garbage. While Sila watched from overheard, guarded as always, Melita persisted in aiming the bottles at one another, listening to the clink of the glass even after Noe fixed the pile; for all intents and purposes, going for naught more than chaos.
“Depends on what you like,” and though she had no intention of being Torchline’s living, breathing brochure, the Honeybee had explored vast quantities of it at multiple opportunities. “We’ve got the Rainbow Road, Miana Pool if you want to throw shit in it and pray for good luck…bars, shit ton of moving islands…another one with bones…,” she waited for any of those things to sound appealing to the Stormbreaker, eyes raised to watch interest levels.
Pay a little more attention to the healing power of incandescent rage
Lights go out again You stroke my pain and tempt my trouble Seek how we pretend
Noe continued on with her work, keeping an eye on their pile as she did so to try and keep it from toppling over and spreading debris all over the place. It was all broken glass and sharp edges by now, and so Noe picked through the sands carefully to avoid cutting her bare feet. Her shoes were somewhere up the beach - cheap sandals picked up once she had arrived in Torchline - and she wasn't quite ready to go searching for them yet. Now that she'd started cleaning up, she was loathe to leave in the middle of her task. No, she would see it through to its conclusion.
So she listened to the list of places that Melita offered with her lips pursed in thought. "When you say bones, like - what kind of bones?" she asked dubiously. Of all the options, that one was the most thought-provoking of the things Melita had listed, if only because it was so vague. "Island with bones" could be, like, an island with bones on it, or, knowing Caido, an island made of bones, so it seemed a worthwhile question to ask before she went gallivanting off to see it for herself. No sense in making the trip just to be disappointed.
But we're not friends and we're not lovers We're just trouble, we're just trouble So tempt my trouble
Melita began a second, slightly smaller pile near the first, intending to make one massive inferno towards the end of their cleaning notions anyway. Tossing some more driftwood within its sanction, for quality kindling beyond Sila’s capable contortions, eventually she ceased when Noe started asking questions.
Which, fair, given the whole nature of the Metacarpal Island. “Could’ve been finger bones,” she suggested, shrugging. “They were inside the plants.” Continually weird to say out loud – for while Caido was inclined towards destructive tendencies, she didn’t know what it said about this particular isle itself; whether the flora attacked and seethed, or if something else had ensured filaments and structures were returned to the land. Albeit in a really, really creepy way.
Pay a little more attention to the healing power of incandescent rage
Lights go out again You stroke my pain and tempt my trouble Seek how we pretend
Honestly, Noe was over helping with the beach pickup, but now that she'd started, it felt wrong not to see it through to completion. So she continued to pick up garbage and debris and driftwood, following Melita's lead to create a second pile near the first. Whether or not she was aware of the pyromanic intentions of the other young woman was irrelevant; she'd be more than happy to see it all go up in flames or not, as her new companion preferred.
As for the nature of the bone island that Melita spoke of, Noe looked at the young woman with confusion. "Inside the plants?" she asked dumbly. "You have some weird shit in Torchline." To be fair, there was weird shit all over Caido - Noe just hadn't been many places, so she didn't quite understand that yet.
But we're not friends and we're not lovers We're just trouble, we're just trouble So tempt my trouble
