father-daughter dance

Rex has gone a lifetime being underestimated; being misjudged, misapprehended, mishandled and misunderstood. That's the lifetime, of course, that a fifteen-year-old has, and then some.

He's light, for a teenage boy, because he's short and scrawny, but he's heavy, because he walks (jogs!) around in a deep-sea diving suit all the livelong day. He's immature, because, well, he's fifteen, but he's beyond normal maturity because every month, day, week he sends ninety or three-hundred percent of his earnings home to his island village full of fellow orphans, and has been doing so for five years, which is a full third of his life thus far.

Rex didn't get here easy. He's not going down that way, either. He actually doesn't know what it means to give up - can you believe that?

Meanwhile, Nia, chief among the critics, is shockingly the same. She's secret on purpose, though; she tells herself she doesn't want to be understood, and it's both true and not, because the danger is all too real. Long sleeves, for Nia, and no hearts for the queen at all.

So she sneers at Rex. So she scoffs at any other individual who looks like just such an ineffectual child daring to do what she's done, cross the bounds that she has. She knows when and how and why to give up, and it's been doing it for some years, now. Call her a pessimist, a pragmatist, a born citizen of Organization Torna, but she can be a right proper doomer.

That's what Cole's observed, ruefully, and found it quaint that these two should pair with each other across history in a way not so dissimilar to he himself and a certain...people's prince. He's got nothing especial to say on age gaps and whether or not it's right for Rex to come along with three women, and be dandied; he's just marveling at the poetry of it all.

The thing about Rex being so deceptively, deceivingly small is that he's ridiculously nimble. Were he to be handed twin rings 'stead of the supernaturally heavy Aegis swords (there's something to be said for swinging around the spirit of Pyra herself on one wrist), he'd be slicing and dicing and carving 'em up as vivid as anyone ever could or did. And that's not to mention Roc, into the bargain.

So when Rex gets big, just like Vandham, and the Aegis swords get ghostly...well, now, we come to see it, don't we? Put some double trouble into that spinning edge, come on now!

And then there's Mio. Obviously, the carbon clone copy of her mother. So much the same that some in Aionios nearly thought she was the Lifesage, at first. And maybe that's how Blade babies with transgender parents have to be made, anyway - a happy sort of test tube, today. Really, imagine Mio looking anything but just exactly like that.

Mio, the tank, exceptionally weighty but lighter than the feathers that Eunie incessantly sheds. Immature, because how can she be anything else, when she's only had nine-and-most years of her own lived experience, but the natural beacon of wise counsel even if Noah has to be the chosen leader. Because she's the oldest? Well, sure, and maybe the soldiers do think of it that way for ranks, but it's little matter, really, in the end.

Mio's a thinker. Mio's a dreamer. Mio's a critic.

Mio's a giver, just like Rex was. She's not your peppiest stepper, sure, but she got that insistent little shard of agony from her mam, along with those twin rings that Dromarch made sure to howl his finest blessing over. What lemon-yellow suns; what perfect slices of the moon.

So now Mio spins just like her father did, a thousand years before. If any child in Alrest were to learn the wild ways of combat, after all...

Sync your breathing, she says. Sure, Rex did that. And Mio's more than got the lungs to scream.

She's not afraid to dodge and roll, get down and dirty, watch for an opening and stab right through it. Nia had been more about a scrappy kind of tactics, twitchy movements that she'd coax and caution, build up quietly to a tidal wave finale. Secrets, remember? Touchy, touchy secrets. Not Rex, and not Mio; she just goes, and goes, and goes, and goes.

It's got nothing to do with Minoth, he knows that, but he's the only one awake to know about it, so he finds himself an enchanted spectator. Rex never saw his closest daughter outside of Origin, and won't see her again until they're on the other side of the Intersection once more. Nia's asleep, or biding her time, pawing through the mist at a gentle, desolate M (and it's M who bares all the long-buried righteous anger). Pyra and Mythra, Glimmer and Shimmer...

Well, let's just say it's a strange kind of a blessing to be alive and kicking, ticking, clicking, right now.

The Mio of Aionios is a beautiful impossibility, a child so intrinsically cleaved to her parents that just so happened to grow up, here, without the both of them (and that's nothing doing on what she thinks). But she's carrying a soul-load of silent vestiges like her life's depending on it. One might even say it is, it does.

Minoth makes it his oath to fight so proudly alongside her. Of course, he tries not to let slip who he was, what he did, who he knew and what he thinks. But it's tough, when the lovelight's shining right out there.

Mio doesn't make you feel like you're light on your feet - if anything, she makes you feel like a clod, no matter how much of a dancer you fancy yourself. Like she's got eyes in the back of her head, and she ain't afraid to use 'em. She won't be breaking her bony wrists, charged with all those eons of lithe strength. You couldn't hope to break her relentless spirit if you tried.

Teeth grit, fangs bared, jaw set and skirt flared. Each turn like an ancient prophecy, a fossilized birthright ballet come back to life.

No regalia, just a uniform. Just doin' a job, and doing it well.

No more running. No more hiding. Come on, Mio, out you come.