The Washing of The Water

Love this gal...

Water is clean. Water has always been clean. Nia knows this, like she knows the feel of her own fur when she reaches up to grasp her ears.

When she touches other fur, whiter, purer hair, it is of course she who feels unclean, and not that which runs over her hand.

A Core Crystal is touched, a resonation is caused, a Blade comes to be in the world. Dromarch, the Blade she awakened, the Blade of her late father, was made unclean by her.

This is not how it should be. She is a healer. She is the one who cleanses, purifies. As he is, he is weaker than she, even the she of before.

Maybe her water was clean before it was tainted with blood. But she is already gray, has always been gray. Dromarch is white. Born white. Would always arrive white. Wouldn't depart that way. Not unless he had the type of Driver he deserved.

Dromarch is warm. Water is not. When water is cold it is pointy, when water is hot it is round. She thinks hot, because hot is the opposite of cold, but sometimes boiling hot is so hot that it's cold all over again. Numbing. Maybe warm is the way things are supposed to be. Yes, round.

When it is cold, and it's not often cold on Gormott, certainly not Mor Ardain, or even Indol, Dromarch's fur goes stiff. Spiky. The only sharp edge he's ever had, besides the bite of his fangs. He is always warm with her. If she were ice, she could not stay blocked up for long.

But she is not ice. Ice freezes up and remains always the same. Water flows. When did she stop flowing? Blood flows, too. And ether flows. Which came first? Last? Maybe she'd like it to stop, sometime. But she can't, it can't. Not forever.

She didn't need those monks calling her a cannibal to let her know what she was. Obviously. Obviously she's a monster. Obviously she's not a monster. Obviously Dromarch is like an angel compared to her. Obviously she's like an angel the way her fox ears fold and her sleeves bell.

Less an angel, more a priestess. A priestess is allowed to be a little dirty. A priestess is allowed to be human, to be a woman of the cloth and the flesh even as she wants to be a woman of the heavens and the holies.

Is a priestess allowed to be coarse and brash, brazen yellow of a jumpsuit that hugs her up like a smooth-knit casing? The bodysuit of her old form can't but belong to her, the way it slips so evenly over every place dirty men shouldn't be able to see. You can dye water. But eventually the color always falls away. Truth is lighter than lies. Once it's told, that is.

When Vandham dies, she feels dirty again, of course she does. The stone of the ruined stadium is scrabbled in cracked grout and old footsteps. For all his giantous might and common-man ways, Vandham was not dirty. His arms, huge muscley things, pulling her protectively away from Akhos did not make her feel dirty. They were not soft, fluffy like Dromarch's paws, and they were not blithe, onerous like her father's.

Arms? Paws? Which did he have? It didn't matter. These belonged to someone she didn't know, someone everyone else from that moment on lost the chance to know, because water runs clear over that which it touches. Water reveals all.

Cole didn't need water to reveal him. He didn't need much to do that, it seemed. If she had appeared as originally born in that battle, she would have been the first, yes, but he'd have followed close behind, of that much she was sure. And yet, water does not bring surety. It is not solid like earth, it is not enlightening like, well, lightning, it is not steelily transparent like wind, it is not even starkly purifying in the way of fire.

Cole's darkness is not dirty. But he had been dark before the scourge. He is old but he is strong, Iona clings to him and his soul is clean in the only way that matters, for he has love. And Nia...Nia has love too. Not just from Rex, because Rex loves everyone, but from Dromarch, from and for always.

Dromarch gives his dignity for her, in little ways and in big ways. When she screws up all her determination and decides that she's going to save Niall, damn it, he makes distraction with bowed, obedient mane. He is not a servant, not a butler. He is a companion. As she steers their ship, and sometimes (most times) steers it wrong, his tail rudders them both.

There is Aegaeon's water, too. He is the power and the protector, the sword and the shield, his water is the staunchness of bravery because of course she's supposed to be brave, but she isn't, truly, yet. Maybe never has been. His death is not her fault, really in the least. It was Niall's good heart that cast his Blade, his steadfast guardian, away to the unborn nothingness from whence he had come. Still...she doesn't want to think about it.

In the crypt of the crucible it is not life-or-death, it is not breath ceasing and blood clotting, it is just time slipping by. She decides not to let it. And Dromarch is there, nuzzling her hand as if to say that he always believed in his lady, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Water is constant. It always, always rushes on.

Dromarch was the washing of her water, and is so much more. She swears never to let him go on any other stream than that of her cool, clean, reciprocating love.

...love that kitty.