love peace and truth incorporated (for all who seek)

Ether. For the people of Keves, it is a thing once having somewhat ritualistically, sacredly, constituted the very earth and water and air and fire itself. For the people of Agnus, it is and has always been a thing channeled, observed, connected upon and within, like lifeblood and so thusly flown. Why, then, does Melia feel herself so much more...clinical, as she gauges the metaphorical ether - aether, even, a fifth element - of the situation?

There is her opponent - her partner, rather - to begin with. Warm. Solid. Girlish, even. She is younger than Melia ever was, and perhaps always will be. She didn't (Melia knows, she has been told, she has etched in stone tablets within her mind, it is vital, it is frivolous, it is infuriating, it is utterly neutral) have eighty-eight full and properly adolescent years to her nimble non-noble name before...the...everything...happened.

And thank goodness it happened...right? Thank goodness they've each fought a war before. Before bringing about this third (add fourth and fifth and that's really where they're at, now), this...final.

One was humanity, as it can now be called in this fuller, broader context of merged worlds, on God and god and gods. The other was humanity on humanity, both groupings again quite broad, as pertained to one vaguely undefinable side being also against god and gods but with both sides being planted firmly against that third emergence which supplanted itself as both mightiest authority and purest distillation of decree down from something and someone to be called, in essence, God.

In other words, one could be deemed slightly more of a holy war than the other, but that other was the one which saw battle against creator incarnate and (un)intentionally immemorial. Nia knows of fighting people and their structures, and Melia knows of fighting those whom and which go beyond to bound and box. And this, right now? This moment is about people; perhaps Melia finds herself at a bitter disadvantage.

So it all means that their relative maturities are a dirty wash, and that Melia has felt her own tongue slipping away from the prim diction she once so cherished in herself - that it could be risen to the plateau above childish platitude, but be harmless and true nonetheless, she had always been quite pleased. Now she feels depth and drawl to her speech, as Nia's has just as more than likely become thinner and more refined. Without drawing the lines any darker, the muddle of it all becomes quite clear.

They're at a dance, whichever dance, some formal function they shouldn't be having because it's not like Alcamoth being bypassed or even beset in the struggles of the Homs colonies below but like the Praetorium if Amalthus could be pretended a little more to blameless madness, and they shouldn't be enjoying themselves. That, of all things, is (ether) crystal's like to Melia; she should not enjoy herself, and she won't.

But her bow is less than stiff. But her feathers are more than ruffled. She doesn't want to be the cruel-keen observer, the witch in the black dress and broad cape with the shoulders showing merely a pretension of the organic freedom the other side seems to display. She wants, for the moment, something realer than the ever-undue station to and into which she has sequestered herself.

They turn, briefly, like an inside-out box step that puts a dreadful arch into her back. She feels very old, all of a sudden. Very ancient, indeed. It's a new age. The old relics should not be here. High Entia though she may be, in that crucial part, this is not her place. This is not her world.

"You're very light on your feet, Queen Melia."

Melia knows Nia hasn't leant into her with any sort of physical stress to match the aural emphasis placed on that damned title, worse than Princess Melia but not much worse than Empress Melia, to be sure, but the effect is there, somehow, and it puts her quite off balance.

Is she flattered, perhaps? That someone should have noticed? She's heavier than she used to be, due to firmament and armament (and ornament, too) both, but if she has managed to maintain some of that youthful grace, than should she not be thankful? Should she not be...pleased?

"Yes, well." Not pleased. Not in the least. "You'll have to keep up with me, then, won't you?"

Nia blanches, briefly, but nods. It's a classic and classically nigh-imperceptible slip, one that makes it clear that it's only the moment, and not its meaning, that's thrown her off by any observable measure.

Observation. That's all it is. Surveillance. That's all it is. Close-range, certainly, but an op of the tactical variety. That is absolutely all that it is.

She should not enjoy herself. And she won't. She will not! Because it's war, and because she's seen war from a veritable myriad of angles, by now, and she's read the room and she's tapped her heels and she's kicked them up and she's put her foot down and she hates Nia, it's the first time she's seen her without the mask on top of it all and she hates her, she hates her, she hates her for being so horribly good at this.

Oh, yes. Thank goodness for that.

So Melia is angry - quite angry, yes indeed! - that she has been propositioned, by someone or other if not by Nia herself, to dance, to twirl about, to flirt directly with the danger that is the everpresent opposition, because as that strange not-quite-offshoot of the Agnian kitsune seems to love to parrot always at top speed, the soldiers are fighting because there are enemies to kill, and after all this time why shouldn't the very same hold for their leaders?

Why shouldn't they have the very same simple utter loathing that comes without any real hatred (not without some vicious malice, however)?

In the ether, as a most natural life stream, that hatred and loathing can subsist, can persist. In core coding, there is this base opposition. It is the easiest difficult answer to the most difficult easy question that Melia has ever had to answer. She almost wants to laugh - but she doesn't, because that would be enjoyment.

She despises Nia, so that she cannot possibly admire her. She steels her heart against any of the other woman's wayward sympathies, so that she can never be swayed by any possible shred of goodwill.

She hates Nia, so that she cannot possibly love her. But as the bare hand of a girl who once represented purity and order, healing via regeneration to restore everything to its original and prime state, grips desperately at her own, Melia itches beneath the glove.

It is not her way to hate. It is not her way to hold grudges. That was her sister's feint, and she still does not need it.

"Enjoying yourself, Nia?" she bears herself to grind out, mince slippage between unfanged teeth.

Oh, horrid, horrid, horrid - and the way she feels her heart, pumping with blood and surely not ether, clench so dramatically, so swooningly, so...lovingly at the merest crook of Nia's cautiously grateful yet gratuitously cocky smile is, gods, even worse!