Empty Past [open]

[Morgon]

Flesh and blood. That’s what he was – what everyone was, in some manifestation or another – but where it came from, and why, was an unanswered question. Perhaps it was unanswered and unanswerable for everyone, in the deepest levels. For Morgon it was a riddle in full. He’d been an orphan and a vagabond for the totality of his young life, surviving things he shouldn’t have survived, learning to watch and listen and learn about everyone except himself. He knew a thousand thousand things about the world, and so little, it seemed, about anything important. Your eyes see outward, after all...not in.

He knew where he was. He’d heard of it – there were enough of his kind in the mortal world to solve the mystery of his heritage, if not his blood. The Fate had breathed into his mind the words he’d needed, at his arrival: the Seelie court of Queen Annette. He knew that was where he was headed, whether he liked it or not. His was ambivalent on the matter. Every society was essentially the same.

His path might lead inevitably to the Seelie court, but he could regulate his steps, at least. So he lingered here for now. Lying back on the meadow floor, his body supported by patches of papery grass and pillows of wet snow, feeling the cold seep through his winter coat and jeans, Morgon watched the bird fly circles high above – turning and turning in the widening gyre. Even at this distance, the Nimbus could feel his bonded’s rush of joy. Must be nice, he thought, imagining the buoyant feeling of a creature nearly weightless, feeling the sun’s gravity more than the earth’s, like water in a tree's veins. The osprey cried out; her voice was pitchy, ecstatic. Morgon closed his eyes. He could hear sounds of arrival somewhere nearby, but ignored them for now. The sun felt warm on his face.

“Hello,” he said, finally. It was a question in disguise: he knew better than to ask them outright, when the answer was nearly always a lie. Sitting up, he opened his eyes to search for the face of his unexpected company. Were they Seelie, or no?

Though it hardly mattered, did it?

[Fia]

One sometimes got bored of the forests, Fia decided as she walked. She had not set out for the Exordium per say, but wandered towards there out of a whim. Today she was alone: Giacinta had not even bothered to lift her head when her bonded faerie had announced she was leaving. It was to be expected from her usually lethargic mantel, especially given that the winter weather was unsuited for the spitting cobra. Had she come, Giacinta would probably be coiled so tightly around Fia’s neck that the nimbus might have fainted or done something equally unseemly.

At this errant thought, Fia laughed to herself before adjusting her scarf. She enjoyed the company and had gotten so used to the constant presence of her mantel to a point it felt like she was missing part of herself without Giacinta by her side. So perhaps was the nature of the shining throng whose mantels appeared not branded to their bodies, but as a physical embodiment, the nimbus thought idly to herself.

The forests of the Seelie were mostly uninhabited during the winter as the faerie mostly retreated to the warmth of their own homes and the Royal Palace. Hers were the only footsteps she saw as she traversed through the forest of bare trees covered only in a thin layer of snow.

She was in one of her oddly pensive moods, lulled perhaps to this state by the phantasmagoric quality to the faerie forest she wandered through. It was in this mindset that continued through as she reached the clearing and spotted Morgon. With a careless shrug of her shoulders, the nimbus made her way towards him. When her presence was noted and the male uttered his greeting, the copper-haired nimbus grinned.

”Yo,”she replied lazily, looking up to see the osprey circling overhead. The bird’s cry reminded her of the ones she had been hearing lately, though the tonal quality was much different. Shaking the thought aside, she asked, ”You comfortable down there?” drawing attention to the fact that Morgon was laying on a patch of wet snow with jeans on.

[hawk]

Memories. Memories were what plagued Hawk day and night, manifesting themselves before her eyes in an unending parade that taunted her. She lost sleep over them, afraid of closing her eyes perchance she would see her evil deeds again, her awful acts of cruelty she had never imagined herself capable of. The normal, stable and clear-headed Hawk now suffered from insomnia, an inability to eat and a feeling of loss. The fact that she was so torn up over what had merely been a mission flabbergasted her. Yet the hole in her heart, the torment she experienced was real, an absolute shock to her once perfect system.

Hawk now spent the majority of her days soaring across the skies in her mantel form. She had lived this way for the past week since she had entered Alanor, conversing with no one, barely sustaining herself. Not once had she relinquished her form. Hawk had realized that losing herself as a hawk was the easy way out, but for once that was what she wanted. She didn't want to have to think, to have to deal with other faerie like herself. She needed some time to simply live.

With her entire life spent as a dog, Hawk knew nothing of her own personal desires. She had been the perfect soldier, performing assassinations without a second thought. Never once had she complained of the restrictions beset upon her, her inability to see the outside world outside of a mission, her lack of freedoms... Even the constant torture she endured to increase her pain tolerance, forever scarring her body, was tolerated. Top of the food-chain, the unit's finest soldier, Hawk had been happy as a BoP....or so she had thought. It was Jaejin who had shattered her, destroyed her world as she knew it. Now Hawk was lost inside of herself and desperately seeking a way to claw herself out.

As Hawk soared high above Alanor, her keen eyes spotted Morgon's mantel, the osprey. Immediately she knew it's lazy rotations were an indication that it was, indeed, bonded to someone. Immediately after Hawk spotted both Fia and Morgon, and, for the first time, perhaps out of an instinctual loneliness, Hawk dropped her altitude and came to land not far from where the two were located.

Her landing appeared completely natural, and she specifically chose tree not on the edge nearest them so she was somewhat shaded by the forest. Hawk dipped a head to preen her right wing as her ears and eyes zeroed in on the two faerie. She would listen, nothing more.

[Morgon]

Morgon considered the woman before him, surprised by her lack of formality and her almost flippant tone. He smiled. “No.” he answered with a shrug, “But I don’t like to be comfortable.” There were a variety of reasons for this, the dominant one being his distaste for lethargy and sleep, but he did not offer an explanation. If this woman required one, she would either ask or make one up. People had a tendency to fill in the gaps. His eyes lifted to where Amara stalled suddenly, as she might if she had spied a fish and was preparing to dive after it. She cried sharply – the hawk she had spotted was around her size, and instinct told her that territory could be threatened – then folded her wings and plummeted, only opening them some twenty feet above her bonded, to land gracefully on his outstretched arm. She stared at the distant trees, anxious. Morgon stroked her breast. His eyes followed her gaze, but he thought nothing of whatever competition his bonded had discovered there.

“You are not exactly what I was expecting to encounter, my first day here,” he remarked, not unkindly. He studied her as he whispered soothing words to the agitated bird, and carefully stood, brushing snow off his jeans with his free hand. There were dark patches where cold had dampened the rugged fabric. He didn’t seem to notice them. “Do you belong to a court, or patrol this no-man’s-land?” It wasn’t like him to ask questions so directly, but this woman piqued his curiosity.

“I’m Morgon, by the way,” he said, extending his hand in the human fashion.

Fail.

[Fia]

At Morgon’s reply, Fia laughed. ”Apparently not,” she said with a grin before running her gloved fingers through her wild copper hair. After living in Alanor as long as she had, the nimbus had learned to roll with the many quirks she came across. She herself was full of idiosyncrasies and enough conflicting impulses to fill two or three different faerie. Morgon’s preference for soggy jeans in the cold of winter would be ignored unless she could find a way to weave them into some witty retort.

When their conversation died down, she too instinctively looked up to watch Amara floating in the sky. The nimbus registered that the osprey was Morgon’s mantel, meaning the other was of the same court as her. This was a fact that she regarded with the same sort of casual indifference as to the ingression of their newest guest. Fia had spotted Hawk out of the corner of her eye when the other faerie had landed and decided that whether or not the bird was a shapeshifted darkling or simply part of Alanor’s diverse fauna would become apparent in due time. For now she’ll keep her attention on the one before her.

”I get that a lot,” Fia replied simply, taking Morgon’s comment in stride. She was aware of her appearance and personality clashed with conventional faerie aesthetics and customs. After all, she had chosen not to conform first out of ignorance and then out of an odd personal code, one fashioned and structured after years of living amongst the other faerie. With a quick adjustment of her white scarf and leather jacket, the brown-eyed nimbus then added dryly, ”But we all can’t be glittering pixies who steal babies and ride in hazelnut chariots, you know?

With an amused chuckle, the nimbus took Morgon’s free hand in her own gloved one. Her grip was strong, but not in a confrontational or challenging manner. ”I go by Fia. Judging by your bird there, we’re part of the same court. Nice to meet you and all that.”

[hawk]

Seelie. They were both Seelie. That much registered in Hawk's mind. Though she could not hear every detail of their conversation from where she was perched, her keen eyes enabled her to read their lips. While she had already assumed that the bird was the male's mantel, this was confirmed once it landed on his arm. The female's mantel was no where in sight, but her lips confirmed her alignment.

Hawk didn't care much for the courts. When she had entered Alanor she had basically appeared at the Unseelie court's front door. Desperate for someone to once again control her life, Hawk pledged allegiance to a court who's King she had only seen in passing and had yet to meet. Still, she had no reason to dislike these two faerie. Had she even known Jaejin had pursued her into Alanor and was now a member of the Seelie court, Hawk might have been more inclined to actually speak with the faerie below. Instead, she simply memorized their faces and, without any further desire to stay, opened her wings and took flight.

[Morgon]

The strength of Fia’s handshake was not lost on Morgon, nor was the fact that she had enough sense of the details to deduce his court. So, she was not ignorant, or so self-absorbed as to be oblivious to the outside world. These were promising traits. Combined with the attributes he had already noted, it seemed they had a great deal in common. Perhaps it was that they had both been humanized in some sense, and were aware that it was not just the Faerie race that hoped, breathed, lived. He laughed at her joke, nodding.

“You know, I try and try, but I can’t seem to find a hazelnut that’s big enough,” he said, and if it were not for his smirk one might judge his tone to be utterly grave. “It is good to meet you, Fia.” Morgon’s voice was gentle, as if he tested every word for its durability before saying it, and had deemed her name in particular to be of excellent quality. It was the name of a fighter, he thought. It occurred to him that she could probably kick the shit out of him, if she wanted to. He smiled at the idea, looking her over discreetly for signs to reinforce his theory.

“So what’s the word in Seelie town,” he asked at last, shoving his hands in his pockets as Amara fluttered up onto his shoulder. The bird was watching her rival’s exit like…well, like a hawk. She panted lightly, hooked beak opened enough to reveal a glimpse of tongue and permit the escape of faint puffs of breath, frozen and cloud-like. Her expression was inscrutable, as every raptor’s was – they lacked the muscular definition to reveal anything but fierce, predatory intelligence. But Morgon could feel her relief, when the red-tail left. “I haven’t been there yet, myself.”