toward the heavens

He has feeling back in his fingers, now. From root to tip, his pen can scribble and sing. He stands tall enough that his ponytail scrapes the rafters of the playhouse, almost righteous enough for Vandham's late pompadour.

And it wouldn't have meant anything, centuries across the span, any other time than the present. It wouldn't have meant a damn thing, if it didn't come from Nia. And from who or where else could it have come?

Perhaps Pneuma. Certainly, Pneuma was a part of it - perhaps even pneuma, breath and spirit, independent of the armored body.

Nia has breathed life into an aging, ailing spirit that had long thought himself done with the winding of the mortal coil. Not only that, but she'd written legislation (with her dear advisor's counsel) to formalize the rights and regulations of Flesh Eaters, versus and vis-à-vis the free Blades of the world, en totality, and she had scoured the continent those injustices that yet lingered, mirroring her own.

She'd done something worthwhile with the remnants of Indol and Judicium, washed as they were from sunken Titans onto the new pangaea's shore. She'd made recapitulation and closed the loop, not a stone left unturned in her quest to drive deliverance through.

She'd made her influence and subsequent appearances known. She'd become a queen and a governor, even though she hadn't wanted to.

(Not as bad as Lora's apprehension of authority, not by half, but Nia had some tricksy kitty-cat ways of squirreling out of big talk that she used to use a lot more often than she does now.)

One glance at her from any of her many loved ones told all: the endless era of snatching chase followed by the sudden stop-and-set of supposed safety had her way too wound up to take a seat now. So she did something about it. So she worked herself, bones to bones. So she flew through preparations with such a madness that she'd hadn't time to learn how a lady carries herself, etiquette this and comportment that. She'd laid a gloved hand flat on the white-china service and told her two cents to an arrogant senator far too many times, now, ever to take it back.

"Got a free moment for your favorite undead soldier?"

The Nia that rises and walks, smiling, to the threshold of a room decadent in décor and throws has sleek ears stood up to the heavens, slim shoulders set back to be effortlessly regal, a steady gait hurrying nowhere, and a sparkle of mischief in her Core.

Her hair's been cut short, chopped above those same shoulders, but the thick of it still rustles when she moves. It's most of the sound of her majesty, in fact.

Even the serene Water Blade sprung forth from a scimitar had been frantic, biting, sharp, astonishingly acrobatic even when it wasn't called for (but then, in that antic adventure, it had likely always been called for).

The Minoth of an age ago would have sidled himself inside the doorway and leant on the frame, arms crossed and one leg posted up, matching Nia's akimbo energy. In order to do the same in present day, he has to cross to meet her, gentled like a horse that knows and greets its master.

(Is that a little too on the nose? Perhaps not.)

"Of course I'm too busy for you," intones Nia as gracefully as she knows how.

It's probably true. Minoth has no way of arguing, and he doesn't want to. Well, maybe he does want to a little bit, and he tries her wellspring of patience with a sidelong retort: "If I had a cross-shaped Core, you wouldn't be."

Nia grins, one of those real face-splitters that comes down from the eyes.

Comes down from on high. There's no choosing between the Lifesage and her Aegises, now, is there?

Now. Now, now, now. Now, then, what even is there left to say?

Minoth turns his gaze toward the sun filtering in through a skylight, casting an elegant stripe onto the rich red rug trimmed in gold. His outside perspective (and he must always qualify it as such, or risk running over into someone else's cup of judgement) is that the princes and the paupers are all very well and good, the butlers - of which he is one - a staple and a must, the children of the oligarchy necessarily privileged by the bloodline of the gods, et cetera; but that, above it all, the world has opened itself a stage for the love of one Flesh Eater and one-unto-two Aegis.

Mythra has always been bold. Pyra, not so much. Nia has not always been so warm.

They have shared amongst each other, equilibrated and intraexcised. They have stood to the storms better in two-or-three than legions have done, given access to every resource of worldly capital.

"Tantamount to an Aegis, now, you are," Minoth utters to the ozone layer, then lowers his eyes back to where Nia waits. "You..."

Tears cloud both pairs of eyes, gold and blue, for the want of nothing and for the lack of a reason. It all could fall away in an instant, and Mythra suspects that someday soon it will. That won't have made the work any less dead-seriously worth it. That won't have made Pyra's kindness any less potent to inspire change.

When Nia embraces Minoth, magical and free, he can feel the strength and the impetus of it. He can feel cloth and leather regalia alike bending to human tendencies, deigning from the vantage of the spiritual realm to let this ancient sinner, relic of the olden war's time, be bound to the earth and its exemplary immortal wards. Not just the skylight, but a chorus shone through it. Not just a moment, but a lifetime. Among stewarding angels, their seabearing queen.

And that's just one way to spin it, one faction's nostalgic kiss. Any way you pray, it's true.

"You are a perfectly brilliant thing."