#princess actaea

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SPOILERS FOR ELEANORS FINAL SIDE QUEST

AHEEM…AAHHAGH…GHHGGHH…

I LOVE YOU ELEANOR…

OOOOGGGHHH….OHHHHH MY GOG….

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Ok so. Gay little thing. Simon and Actaea have a notebook that they’d pass between themselves. Everyone always assumed it was field notes or something.

NO. It’s full of them being ambiguously romantic. It’s full of them drawing eachother. It’s full of them talking about their day when they can’t see eachother. I mean the first few pages ARE monster notes but the rest of it is just them being fuckin queers(affectionate)

Some pages are just “midnight tonight” and other suggested meeting times

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Lute gave me brainworms again. Everybody say thank you Lute. Monster selkies. Horrifying and beautiful creatures thought to only be in Azurian legends.

Riders stumbling upon “perfectly preserved”, completely empty monster hides. Stripped clean of bone and meat but with completely intact skin. Coming back later to find the skin alive, no longer deflated and still but full of muscle and blood and being an actual living monster with the eeriest eyes they’ve ever seen. Eyes that look human if you look at them too long.

People of unnatural beauty visiting the outermost parts of towns, mingling with the locals for a while and slipping away, slipping away under the cover of darkness, disappearing without a word.

Strange pairings of monsters sighted—a Rathian and a Ludroth, an Astalos and a Lagiacrus, etc etc—being friendly with eachother, even if they’d naturally be aggressive.

Monsters not native to Azuria showing up briefly and disappearing before anyone can investigate properly…

Hands coming from the mouth of a “sleeping” monster as a human form slides out and the monster deflates…a visually horrifying ordeal and somehow the human form is so so beautiful.

Actaea and Amara being monster selkies…

There’s a single, perfect Espinas hide in a spire of the Azurian palace, curled up nice and pretty, provided with comfortable bedding, never to be touched or acknowledged. A display piece to never be seen, is all that it is for almost anyone who knows about it. But to the king and his daughter? A truth that neither have come to accept yet. A tie to a queen who fled, a mother who flew.

Actaea has seldom worn her scales—she was hatched in them, sure, but shed them soon after to become something that could be presented to physicians, to the court.

Simon got to be one of few who get to know that the monster-people are real, and one of even fewer to know the location of one’s skin. Because Actaea trusts him that much. It’s one of the few secrets he wouldn’t tell a soul, no matter what happened.

I think she’d let him sit under her wing if she ever got to wear her scales again. He’d put a thick blanket over her spikes and snuggle up. She’d be all nice and warm too.

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Ok whatever. Mhs3 spoilers. Actaea has a REALLY strong sense of smell. She’s like a bloodhound. She has monster scents memorized. And also Simon’s.

After he “dies”, I like to think that there’s at least a day or two between because Actaea is DESTROYED. She’s inconsolable. Shes curling up with whatever she has left of him(clothes, blankets, anything) and just trying to soak in as much of his scent as she can. She wears his clothes under her armor once the rangers cross the Meridian.

And once they reunite, she spends as often as she can with her nose buried in his neck or shoulder or chest. He still smells like himself, but now with a permanent undertone of smoke. She cries about it and apologizes but really, what is she apologizing for? It wasn’t her fault.

She gets really overwhelmed one time when she’s doing it and bites him. He’s not fazed

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Little Actaea finding little Simon/Kris. Storming off on Ratha after a talk gone wrong with her father and stumbling upon a stray boy at her usual sulking spot and taking him home initially as an act of rebellion. Now there’s a no-longer-stray boy in the palace and nobody has any idea where he came from. The princess throws a fit whe anyone suggests that he leaves. He’s staying now

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In honor of mhs3 coming out soon. A tiny bit of info on my protag Actaea

Actaea has a habit of sneaking out of the palace at night. Just her and Ratha, usually. She gets Simon(who sometimes comes along with her) or one of her ladies maids(of which she has two, and they’re some of the only people she really trusts) to stay in her room until she comes back so nobody else comes in.

She’s been doing it since she was a little girl, though only after Queen Amara fled. At first it was her climbing off her balcony or calling a Legiana from the stables, and she’s still not entirely sure how she did it nowadays considering she wasn’t bonded to any of them, she seems to have lost the ability(she hasn’t. She just forgot it. She’ll remember eventually. Anyway)

After getting out of her room, the little escape artist would find somewhere isolated and quiet and space the hell out or cry or pet the monstie that brought her there as thanks. Or, if she brought Simon, she’d usually play with him or talk or just watch the stars

She tried to stay where she could see her room because she and Simon/her maids had devised a little code—a mirror reflecting candle light. Two flashes means she has to come back in a few minutes, three flashes means she needs to get back RIGHT NOW, and there’s more to the code but it’s all really just Morse code.

Related to this, Actaea’s inner thighs/legs are covered in scars. Particularly, from a night ride gone wrong.

It was when she and Ratha were still young, and Ratha was just barely big enough to support her weight while they were flying. She’d had a rough day, and Simon offered to cover for her so she could sneak out.

She’d called Ratha to the balcony and mounted up and flown off, and everything went well, except that she wasn’t riding with a saddle. But that’s fine! She doesn’t usually ride with a saddle, and she’s always been alright.

And she’s alright for the most part. She knows she has to be careful, especially because she’s just in her nightgown and Ratha’s back plates are pretty sharp since he’s so young(hc that they sorta smooth out with age and wear, and get sharper once he molts again)

Everything’s fine, she goes out, finds a spot with Ratha, curls up beneath his wing, and sobs to her heart’s content.

Of course, everything’s gone well so far, so something bad has to happen. She and Ratha are ambushed and flee back to the palace, but Ratha’s panicking and his flight, usually so careful, gets turbulent.

And because he’s so sharp, it cuts the hell out of Actaea’s legs from thigh to foot. So now they’re both covered in her blood, which is an incredibly terrifying scene to Simon, who has to alert her trusted maids while trying to help her sit down because oh my god the princess is bleeding really badly, the skirt of her nightgown is torn to shreds, and she’s still actively sobbing her eyes out while clamping her hands over her mouth and trying not to scream

So her maids come and she’s begging them not to tell her father, to keep this a secret, to not let him know that she sneaks out because she knows she’d likely be forbidden to if he were to find out or get into huge trouble.

So of course they cover for her. Her maids help her bathe and Simon helps patch her up and dress her and get her back into bed. Ratha’s cleaned himself off and he has to be shooed back to the stables because he’s so incredibly worried about his rider he doesn’t want to leave.

They tell the king she’s sick and get one of the royal physicians in on it to help treat her legs and keep it secret.

King Arken still doesn’t know about the sneaking out, nor does he know about the expansive scars. She’s careful to keep herself covered around people who ARENT the rangers.

Kora knows about the scars because she had to help a young Actaea patch herself up after the idiot managed to reopen some of them.

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Actaea and Ratha have an almost sibling-like relationship. They bother eachother. They look out for and protect eachother. They play fight. Ratha has been with her longer than anyone else including Simon.

They can sort of communicate silently. Sense things about eachother. Ratha knows when Taea’s feeling down or in danger and vice versa.

Anyway Ratha’s favorite way to bother Actaea is to pick her up by the back of her armor and carry her around. Actaea’s favorite way to bother Ratha is to lunge at his neck and hang on for as long as she can.

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When they were younger, actaea would always put her head in Simon’s lap, lay on him, everything. I mean she was always nervous about it but she always wanted to be close to him and he had no issues with it. But she never really let him lay on her lap/he never let himself lay on her lap because “improper” or whatever

Whenever he’s in Azuria after the main story, however, he lays his head on her lap or shoulder or anything at any given opportunity. Taking revenge for the years he couldn’t because now she’s just so happy to have him back she dgaf about it being improper, she just wants to be near him