she

Pyra was warm. Of course she was, dimwit, she's a Fire Blade, but still...Pyra was warm. In her face, in her voice, in her manner. Not like Sister had been, because Sister had only been kind and sweet. Too frail to be warm, unfortunately.

It wasn't hard to see that Mythra was everything Pyra was not. Sharp, and abrasive, without all those rounded-out corners polished so carefully - not that Pyra was perfect, no, and not that Mythra was...cold, exactly.

More bristly. Like Dromarch got when it was cold. All stiffened-up and spiky because it's better to do it to them before they'll do it to you. Sentiments Nia knew all too well.

And it wasn't like Nia wanted to be Pyra either. She could see herself in Mythra, but...she could never be like Pyra. When she'd first realized she'd liked girls, there'd been the accompanying doubt that do I want to hold her hand, or do I want to, like, be her? The answer was both, in a silly enough way, but Nia knew she'd never be the kind of girl that Pyra was.

Not about Aegis, or Flesh Eater, or Driver or Blade, not about what Dromarch or Azurda would advise, not about what Cole would try to tell her. First of all, they were all guys. They'd never understand.

What it was like to...to see a girl, and know how much kindness she held, how cheery she'd be just offering to share a hair tie, how she smelled like all the prettiest things, sugar and spice and everything nice, how you just always wanted to be around her.

Nia would never be like that.

Little did she know, however, that to Pyra, all too conscious of her own tenuous identity, Nia was truly an even more beautiful reflection of her sister. Headstrong, and confident, even when it faltered and fronted, and never hesitating to say what she thought. So fun to talk with, so fun to laugh with, so pretty to watch even when she was just tying up the silly little bows in her hair.

(Pyra thought she could tell, especially later, just how much Nia loved those little bows. Just how important they really were.)

Nia, Pyra thought, was so much like Mythra. So very much like Mythra. And where Mythra was so hard to love, because she was still working through so much of her crucial centuries-long struggle to love her own self, Nia was someone Pyra could latch on to as...her own, really.

Someone new to know, someone Mythra hadn't - not Brighid, or Fan (Fan? Haze), or even Jin, or the memory of Addam. Cole again...a different story.

But you need someone like you, don't you, Nia? Someone quick and feisty and shining brilliant firey gold. Someone who wouldn't bend what she wanted to fit someone else's whims. Someone who could understand exactly all the pain, and the sorrow, and the secrets.

Pyra would never be like that.