🂸 🂸 🂸
That day the officers had come and taken them away. It was the last time Nia had seen her mother. She didn't know if her mother ever woke up. Of course she did. Her mother was too strong to be killed by a pill, she thought. She wondered if she still baked. If she missed them. If she ever went looking for them. Of course she did. What if she didn't? It doesn't matter. That day the carriage had taken them to Ayrith, the closest military camp to Cervaux. There, her and the boy had been trained. The boy as a Felis, Nia as an Auctor. When Nia finally graduated to Auctor, she was fifteen. Those were the best days of her life. Shards of Cervaux and her mother and her childhood still dug into her skin but they didn't draw blood. Ailen was rude but Nia loved her. She didn't grow up the way kids did and she was glad for it. She had friends to train with. People she could protect in the face of danger, people she wanted to protect And after years that felt like eternity, she became the main character of her life, and not a side character in the boy's. It stung at first to not put someone else's well-being before hers for every constant second of her life, but then they parted and Nia told herself the only way to get him back was to put on a happy face and obediently train. Everyday she hid the selfish truth that she was happy, and she wanted to train. If she'd actually wanted to she could have gotten the boy back and left, ran away. But she didn't want to. And for the first time in forever she did what she wanted. And she would as long as fate would tolerate it.
Nia loved Ailen. And Ailen loved Nia. They were the two stars in the cosmos, orbiting around each other. It was the love that burned brighter and hotter than fire, the love that enveloped like Fis'linto, that circulated through every vein, pumping with the furiosity of a supernovei. It was love, but it was something so much more bigger than that. It was the feeling of fresh dew on grass, or her mother's dough crusted hands. It was belonging, and caring. It was every time she gave Nia the words she'd spent hours looking for. Nia was ready to burn with that love, to die in her arms with that love, for her breath to catch and never leave when she saw the stars in her eyes. Ailen. Her Ailen.
She remembered her sixteenth birthday. The day that held the moment she'd lived.
They'd been in Nia's tent. A steady candle burning in a corner. The carpet beneath their feet was soft and outside the world was quiet.
"Nia?" Ailen had asked.
"Hmm?" she had hummed.
Ailen's eyes had been soft but so angry. So, so angry. But Nia wasn't scared, she was hardly concerned. Ailen was a monster but she would never, ever hurt Nia.
Nia looked up and raised an eyebrow in question. Ailen shook her head.
"You are beautiful," Ailen had said.
"Acne and scars and all?" asked Nia.
"Acne and scars and all," confirmed Ailen.
Nia grinned. She wouldn't tease her because this wasn't the moment to tease. It wasn't friendship, it was something deeper. They both knew that. They'd known it for a while.
The grin vanished as Nia herself took in Ailen's face. Her long red hair that looked like fire cascading down a cliff. Her thin arched eyebrows. Her almond eyes glinted, their breathing black the shiniest, darkest, wealthiest jewel in all of Caraca. Flushed cheeks and high cheekbones. And lips. Pretty, pretty lips. The color of wildflowers and sea wind and dreams. Thick, coarse paper and frozen ink that was once flowing.
"Wake up, you mop handle."
"Nia. Nia. Nia. Nia. Nia. Nia. Nia," said someone, mercilessly repeating the syllable over and over again.
"Nia. Nia. Nia. Nia. Nia." Now there was a finger prodding her shoulder with each word.
Anger bubbled in her, rising and waking in ways she refused to. She absently mindedly reached out, her fingers grappling across skin to hold what felt like an ear, and twisted hard.
A shriek followed with the sounds of rapid rubbing of palm against skin.
"Nia."
"Go jump out of a window," she mumbled into her pillow.
"Nia."
"You aren't allowed to call me that anymore. Your rights to my name have been revoked until further notice."
She would rather lay here and drowsily argue, stealing pockets of sleep between words than bother to wake up and see why her brother clucked about her head like the chicken that he was. Of course, she would never say that to his face. Once she'd called him a coward when they were kids and gotten a glimpse of some of the tortures of hell.
"Why not? I'm the one sliding," Nia had protested. It had been a warm summer's day and she'd felt like swinging and playing but she'd been exiled from the playground at school because of something about biting and pushing and cheating in a game of carfo. She'd accepted her fate and decided to work with what she had.
"Because, Nia, it isn't safe. And mama's going to hit me," he had said, spitting out words he'd learned in school, trying them out in his mouth, tasting and testing them like Ma tasting her jam.
"Who's going to tell her? Cause you aren't," she'd retorted, cocking her head to the side, luring him.
"I will. I'm a good boy," he said, clutching his hand to his heart and puffing out his chest.
"Dogs are good boys. Are you a dog?" she'd asked, leaning into his face, examining his features. "No," she said to herself. She'd felt so riled with this boy wasting her time when she could be happily sliding down the chimney. He never cared about her. She could never play the games she wanted to because of him.
"I think you're a coward. Even dogs bite when they're told to. You'd probably just lick yourself and whimper."
🂸 🂸 🂸
Author's Note: i'm not crying, you are. i loved writing the argument between Nia and the boy because that's it was basically like typing up a conversation between me and my sister. :')
thank you for reading. come back soon for the next part. vote and comment.
love,
Cora. ✮
YOU ARE READING
unraveled
Fantasy"I've seen rats with better attention spans than you," she said onto his face. And then the boy was there pulling her onto her feet and off of him. "But have you seen them with such beautiful faces?" he asked, standing up, brushing off th...
