sun and moon (soon, reflections)

Nia was born a lady, a delicate thing in a noble's house. The way her sleeves flowed and her ears arced made her appear so duly composed. She was clean, she was clear, she flowed like water. Her constance would never stop.

But it did, of course. Once turned to something common, cannibalized, any connotation of demureness fell bluntly away. She was no such pretty little thing. Perhaps she never had been. Her stateliness would always persist in such indifference.

Melia, meanwhile, was always half-breed. She became socialized and civilized in shortest possible order almost solely to combat that primal mixture, even though it had been just so intentional, so necessary.

She got to live because others, so many others before her, had died. It wasn't her own life she clung to, all in all. She was always, always, always attending to others, and then again others'.

You are a weapon. You are a scion. You are alive for one purpose and one purpose alone. Those who made you are sometimes never even sure they're glad, they're proud, they're conscious that they did it.

Nia bites arrogance at Melia, all scars and teeth. Her sword, the Catalyst, is composed in a fine, graceful line, flowers wrapped about all just such quiet desperation, while Melia's World Ender is jagged, barbed in its rest in her calmly gloved palm.

Horns ring subtle ornaments atop Melia's wings, and Nia's robes make her an angel. Here the sun, there the moon. There are many ways to defer to, to distract from, your own significance.

I make statements. I draw conclusions. But what do they think?

"You're not as coy as you think, you know," growled Nia, trying to train the colloquial quality out of her voice more fiercely in this moment than any she'd experienced before. "You're a killer. We all are, now."

All of us? And who might those be? Who is even left? It's not as if Dromarch has become so bloodthirsty - not that you know of, anyway. And you've always known him.

"I never claimed to have such pride," answered Melia. "I am simply making the choices that one must make, in matters of state."

In matters of war, that is, but that's not how Melia grew up. She had been ever so much more sheltered, cloistered like the priestess that Nia wasn't.

"And would your friends have wanted that? Didn't you ever love anybody?"

"Perhaps I did. But didn't you?"

Nia gulped. "I..." I said I did.

"So then. Would yours?"