devotion marigold

somehow it took watching through xc2 cutscenes with my wife to make me realize how stupid it's always been to ever assert that nia's father was her driver? like. so obvious. but i'm all okay as long as i make a note of it now. and of course it spices the grooming/coercion theme. upgraded niasis name because it's too easy. i still like brett's carys but this feels like easier pickings i suppose

Recommended Listening: Elysium in the Dream

when da speaks of when mio was born, nia knows she wasn't there; knows mio has been out and on and being for longer than she has. a baby, then a toddler, then a child with far too much fear. mio has this faraway look in her eyes like she's always somewhere else, always seeing through mist and milky cracks, always smiling weakly at the concept of time.

mio has a strength, an adultness (a refinement, perhaps), but she also has an inherent weakness, frailty - maybe somethin' to do with her ma dyin' at the same time as she'd come alive?

one supposes that'd take it out of anyone. right quick.

it's in that strange superposition, between mother and sister, that nia stands ever-attentive to mio's pain. her pleasure, as well, but mostly her pain, because she's got so much of it. couched in lace and plush velvet cushions. wrapped in a snowflake scarf.

(sun-dappled curtains of silky gray hair hang across her forehead, hiding the patchy skin and discoloration. her hair's thinning, too, but nia brushes it with the same care, the same reality. don't let them take that away from her - don't let her take that away from them.)

nia's younger, but she's older. silent, but she's bolder. in some ways.

she only laughs when mio's laughing, only grins at da if mio shows the okay to do it first. and she doesn't laugh at everything that catches mio's twinkling eye, maybe because she's not that sure and maybe because she feels like mio should have somethin' of her own to prize, still.

even if it's just an imaginary leftherian life, that single-toothed smile growing less rueful and more wistful every time nia spins the dice wheel and makes another advance. maybe she needs leftherian sunshine. maybe no weather could ever be good enough.

nia suffuses mio with all the strength she's got, but it's never enough to just plain regenerate, to heal over amd cast out those corrupted cells.

has it really been all the way back since mio was born? nia's got no way of knowing, no way of telling. no way of doing a bloody thing about it.

mio deserves to have a new body, a new life washed in new color, but she'll have to settle for snatches of childlike joy.

let her have her own jokes, her own mind. she shares her father, shares her face. ain't that okay?

da's been grooming her forever, to be the lady he doesn't think (hopes, doesn't know) mio'll grow old enough to be. because they need one, a lady of echell. proper fork, my arse. but it does get the job done, doesn't it?

nia's always been graceful, sure, but not like this. not with elocution. always a little jerkier than mio, even when mio gets jerky and hacks, coughs.

(she used to bend down to pick up things mio dropped, pens and pins, by squatting, knees jutting out over shins, but now she stoops, bent in half, following the lines of her robes. and when she stands erect again, mio coughs into her hand, lacking the strength to expel the germs and the exhaustion up into nia's own face.)

and how could anyone ever describe dromarch, so silent and obedient, draped in regalia of a leaf-weave cape, so unlike da, as lithe?

they are so surely a mismatched set of staff for house echell, for the unbalanced pair of father and daughter with mother excepted, excerpted, away.

what would mio's ma have said, about all this? there's nothing to be criticized about a father spending his fortune to save his daughter, but it seems ill-considered somehow anyway.

dromarch bears the decline well; never complains, never looks unsure. if this is how it must be, my lord.

(why couldn't dromarch have been mio's, and she da's? wouldn't that have been--)

she's always known that she's taking mio's place, somehow or other, some way or why, but she'd never put together how...literal. how much she herself would have to put into it.

but this way he'd only be losin' one daughter, 'stead o' two.

devoted marigold, tolerant to droughts.

primula vulgaris, susceptible and sly.

spiky shoes, uncovered thighs, wide and wider everblinking eyes.

shrinking ears. shrinking violet. and company had always loved mio.

it's not even the eating itself that gets her. she can eat meat (mio's stomach could never handle it). it's the damn proper impropriety of it all.

nia feels malignant. da swears it's benign.

she can't be mio, can't carry any of it half so well, but if it makes da happy, in this dirty little house (no maid to sweep it and he's even abandoned asking, telling, nia to clean up), to know that he could bury his daughter in beauty and flower, 'stead of an outsize puzzletree pouch, nia's not going to complain.

eyes lidded, all, now.

better that she's the one left alone. better that she's the one who can't laugh, has to cry.

(she could laugh. she's got the stomach. had done, once, anyway.)

better she than mio.

she's a blade, and blades don't have to be asked twice to sustain their drivers.

nothing to complain about it, but it seems ill-considered, somehow, anyway.

so the blade will sustain itself, the driver. the blade will carry on.