deercountry | [OPEN] ARRIVAL

Who: Gilia St. Loe (

seaboard ) & You!
What: Arrival!
When: May 5th-7th
Where: The Beach, The Trench, etc!

out of the sea
It is a mournful thing, to leave the sea, and its quiet peace, that happy drifting nothingness. She is not cold, as she leaves it, the thin robe clinging to her body, damp as she looks back over the water, feeling its tides in her blood and yet now, no longer the peace of it. This body she has been given comes with pain, and scars, and she was bare to them all in leaving. Holding her face in her hands as she looks over the sea she had washed up from, transformed back to living, back to this dreadful coil of breath and limbs.

And this grief-stricken wallowing that grips up her throat.

She buries her face in her hands and weeps. Why ever had she come back to this life? Had she not done enough? It was not fair?

So standing on the shore, wet robes clinging to her, hair moving to float above her head in a great fan of curls, she cries her fill at this agony of being born once more. But it seemed fitting she should have no peace, no respite, she had not lived a kind life, and there would be no mercy for her.

walking the streets
Exhausted as the crying leaves her, she knows that the sea will not take her back, not yet. Instead, she finds her own garments, which she hastily pulls over her body, the bag that washed up with her. Hanging the bag from her belt, she straightens up and heads to the lights she sees of the Trench.

It's done with the pride of a woman who was used to wielding a great deal of authority. Head up, shoulders back, each step purposeful even if she is quite unsure about what it is exactly she is meant to do. Looking about, she tries to find some indication of a local ruler, someone she can talk to, to be received properly and not err on behalf of local customs.

But nothing seems to direct her to one, so she has to eventually just stomp any passerby, looking for guidance.

"Pardon my boldness, but I would ask - where is the local Lord or Magistrate? I should wish to make my introductions to the rulers of the city?"

Her voice is level, with little to no inflection one way or another, a tall woman who kept herself to her full height, made taller with her hair just keeps floating above her head like it was suspended in water, despite being on land and otherwise perfectly dry.

And the scar that cuts up the side of her throat. From clavicle to her jaw, jutting into her cheek. A strange thing, for it seems old, and yet... not healed. Not in the traditional sense. The skin is healthy around it, sure enough, but not joined, like a crack broken open, and inside of it, just on the edge of the light, something churns and swims. Absently, a starfish arm creeps out, as if it were holding the skin together. Latching on like strange adornment.

setting up house
When she finds out that she is simply contributing to the world and the good of the city here, and take an empty house of choosing, there is an... ease, she hasn't felt in years. The lack of expectations, that comfort settles around her. She has no interest in the supposed power in her blood, or power at all.

Settling in a house in Darcmouth, close to the water, no matter how dreadful and dingey the docks are, that it's all men or all the warnings about the sea. She opens up every window and door as she begins to sweep out the empty house, wipe down tables, clear out the chests and cupboards. It's not long until there is the smell of food cooking, a stew broiling over the fireplace, bread baking.

The doors and windows are still open, and inside there can be heard soft singing. The words lamenting a swan who was too slow at the strike of an eagle, and something about lovers being struck down.

It seems that she is not so worried about someone knocking on the door.

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His voice draws her from the depths of her sorrow. If she should have such sense as to be afraid of his red and black markings, it does not occur to her.

Perhaps, because there like black waves, darkness begins to seep in the edges of her eyes, washing in to turn the whites of her eyes to darkness, and her eyes some impossible shade with the tears she sheds.

That sense, for a moment, that something else watches through her.

"I was at peace. Why have they made me come back to this form?"

When Gilia's eyes change color, Maul almost takes a step back before he recovers himself. He initially thought this woman was a human but now he's thinking perhaps not with what he just witnessed. He doesn't mind too much. As his brother pointed out to him not too long ago, Maul seems to gravitate towards those that aren't entirely human when he interacts with other sentient beings.

"Because you have come to a place ruled by cruel beings. They delight in making us miserable," he says, not sparing her the truth. Pthumerians seem to see the Sleepers as little ants that skitter around their feet, something to amuse them when they want entertainment.

It makes sense, though he does not know it, that she knows she deserves such a fate, not the peace she had felt in the cool of the ocean. Not the calming waves that carried her in mindlessness.

"Then their greatest punishment is that they should leave me with such memories of endless depths."

It makes her mourn only deeper, catching her hand against her mouth to stop the deeper wracking sob from creeping out.

"How can one ever find hope again on land, torn apart this way?"

Maul begins to assume she's rather like a Nautolan or Gungan, a member of a species which primarily lives under the water but which can also still survive when on land. It would make sense for one so used to living in the depths of the sea to be unhappy to be brought back to the land.

He considers that. Had this been a couple of years ago, Maul would have had a cold answer. Now, what he can offer is something a little softer in nature, even if it isn't the most hopeful. "It helps to find people here, those who can commiserate with the miseries you have experienced."

She looks at him in brief confusion.

"To say what? I am a Queen and a Mother and full of the screams of all those I have drowned? I am a loving tyrant and an empty creature?"

The laughter that follows is unhinged. Hysterical tears to laughter to tears again.

He hears of what she says and doesn't flinch. So she has wielded great power before, and if her words are any indication, perhaps has grown to regret it. "If you think yourself to be a monster, you will not be alone here. There are many fellow monsters to be found. One stands before you."

Though she is not Force-sensitive, when Maul lets down the shielding around his presence in the Force, something dark and terrible can still be felt around him. It's a miasma of the Dark Side that penetrates him, which has been with him ever since he was born. The Dark Side may not be evil unto itself but Maul very much is.

There is comfort perhaps in what he says, if not entirely what he intends, that yes, yes they are monsters here, then truly, it must be a place of punishment, of purging of the rottenness in their souls.

That his feeling of hatred, evil, the sheer wrongness that she had never felt except the echoes of the stories of their ancestors - it washes over like a final confirmation. Shaking, she begins to drag herself up, curling her legs underneath her as she lurched back to her feet.

"How wretched for us. How lucky for us."

Once she has gotten back to her feet, Maul comes a little closer to the strange humanoid. "Come. This place will not let you return to the ocean save in death and even then only for short periods of time before they bring you back to life. Best to look forward rather than back."

His prosthetic feet sink deep into the sand on the beach, making it a bit of a struggle to keep lifting them up as they make their way up towards the boardwalk. "What is your name?"

She moves like someone drunk, her body still so foreign. Not quick, stumbling one leg after the other after, her body remembering too well how to drift and churn with currents better than she did her own limbs at this moment.

But she does have to pause to answer him. Between remembering that, using her own limbs, and processing to give it all in a way that makes sense.

Granted, it probably doesn't very much. "Daughter-Sea, of pure voice - " She blinks, trips on something, the next she tries to catch herself. Swallowing down briefly. "... Gilia. Gilia St. Loe, of the Isle St. Loe."

He stays close to Gilia as she moves, ready to offer a hand should she start to fall, but he allows her to stumble along as best she can. He doesn't coddle the weak and she'll need to get her footing both metaphorically and literally soon enough.

It sounds very much like titles given and then a name in the middle there. Perhaps that is how things are done among her people. It would not be the first culture Maul has encountered like that. So he gives his own name the same way. "Darth Maul, Dark Lord of the Sith." Such a name certainly does fit his appearance to a T.

His presence at least gives her something to latch onto, then the confusion and grief that hums in her body. A fitting name, certainly, powerful as he surely is in each step. Yes, yes long ago she would have been scared of him. Cowered like a lamb at his words.

But she is too tired for it anymore.

"Where is it we go?"

"To the boardwalk," Maul explains. He gestures with his hand towards where all the buildings stand far above the shoreline on the wooden pier built to accommodate them.

"You shall need food and drink to revive your body. The change back can often leave one feeling a bit weak physically."

[OPEN] ARRIVAL

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