#also demetria is doing a peace sign from the depths of beyond

[noa-de-cajou]

Day 23 : A mystery / Being old together / Take a drink / judgement

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“... So.”

“... Yep.”

“Here we are.”

“We sure are here.”

“It wasn’t easy, to try and find some time to talk face-to-face. You’re always surrounded by other people.”

I smile and pick up the piping hot cup of tea on the table.

“So it's gonna be my fault?”

“I'm merely stating facts, Ether, that's all.”

Ha! Reminds me of someone I knew.

“So. You're married to an empress now. An a half angel, half demon queen. And a werewolf. That’s certainly something.”

“Sure is! I got really lucky. But what about you, miss Director? How’d you even manage all of this?”

“I got some help. From Dal and Demetria, mainly.”

“Demetria… Like Demetria Camarra-Pharos? Oh shit, talk about a trip down memory lane. I was getting weird ass vibes from her back when we were classmates.”

“And you were right. When she learned she was going to become blind eventually, she decided to just lose her sight as soon as she could and managed to get artificial aura vision somehow.”

“What the hell.”

“I know. But she was an excellent diplomat. And I mean excellent. So I got her help despite the “weird vibes” as you’d call it.”

“Was it, uh, worth it?”

“Honestly, I'm not sure. She never specified how she got the intel she gave me, kept bumping into every furniture despite her cane, I always got complaints from everyone in the School about her behavior, she was loud, wouldn't respect my privacy, asked the most intrusive questions, and I had to clean up after her all the time. To the very end. This idiot died attempting a lichification ritual. She gave us so much trouble with all the blood, it was horrendous.”

Hm. I smile, a little.

“... Is that all?”

Nenia averts her eyes away from mine. We’re both more than a century old but her mannerisms are still the same.

“... Well. Something’s different now.”

“What is?”

“I don’t know, exactly. It’s just, sometimes I hold out my hand expecting her to slap papers into it. Or I catch myself wondering why she’s talking so long to come back from her mission. And it feels… wrong, to not hear her voice shout my name anymore. It's strange. She’s been gone more than forty years and I'm still not used to it. She reminded me of some kind of snake and I got Horus some time after, without thinking about it.”

She looks at the vivarium where her snake is sleeping, curled onto itself.

“Do you miss her?” I ask.

“I… don’t know. Dal does, I think. Sometimes he just looks at her old office door with a lost face. He knows better than me what missing people feels like.”

Yeah. I bet he does.

“It doesn’t really matter now, does it? I could never understand her. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, but I had other things on my mind, and… I don’t know. The ritual was sudden. I don't know what was going through her head, to do such a thing.”

“She liked you, didn’t she?”

“I… suppose, yes.”

“Then maybe she wanted to witness the results of what you were building. Or to spend more time with you.”

Nenia looks thrown off guard. Like, fully. She grips her cup tighter and I can actually see her face twist into a weird expression. A childish anger. Maybe some kind of sadness.

“That's the stupidest reason for a ritual I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah, to you, maybe. But humans experience it differently.”

My eyes land on my wedding ring. The one on my artificial hand.

“This isn’t my first time marrying a human woman, you know. The first one died at fifty. Before her time.”

“Then why marry another? Even if the Empress lives to the maximum of a human lifespan, she'll probably die before you. You just set yourself up for more pain. Why would you go through this again?”

“Because it's worth it.”

I didn't hesitate. Not even for a second. Nenia stares at me intently, then smiles a little.

“You’ve changed, Lani.”

I wince a little. Haven’t heard that nickname in a while.

“Obviously? So did you. Like, you're taller than me now and your hair has gotten longer…”

“‘No, that's not what I mean. You look… well. If not for the ears and your age, I could swear that I have a human in front of me.”

She says that like it’s something to be sad about.

I understand, somehow.

I’ve lived too many years and too many things to be a human. Yet I tend to forget that I'm an elf, and not, like, three humans stacked upon each other.

“But I'm not human.”

“No. But you understand them.”

She chuckles and takes a sip of her tea.

“I envy you.”

… Is it really something to be envious about?

Maybe it is. Maybe Nenia would have liked to understand Demetria before she died.

But the way she says it… it’s like she doesn't even know how I do it. How to even apprehend me at all. Maybe we’ve been apart for too long.

Maybe we can't understand each other.

…

“This is the worst tea I've ever drank, Nia.”

“Well, you’ll brew it yourself next time, Lani, I have priorities.”

“Like what, ruling a country?”

“You're the worst consort I've ever met. Worse than my tea.”

“My wife does most of the ruling for a reason!"

Eh. I guess we’re okay like this.