#and shiana is an unnecessarily buff nerd

[reliquiaenfr]

What is Aphid and Shiana's relationship like?

so shiana and aphid are based on ocs of mine! i looooove talking about my ocs ahaha

shiana is an oracle (in their original story, she's the second in charge of a church of oracles, but in fr she's just an oracle), she's a bit cheeky and doesn't take things as seriously as she ought to - though at least SOME of that is an act, she actually had a pretty traumatic event happen to her when she was younger so underneath the snark, she's very grounded. (the story is that since she can "pull" on the threads of fate to change the future, she thought she could help people and when she was younger she tried to expose someone for their misdeeds by meddling with their future, but it got her mentor killed instead, and since then she's been very VERY careful about what she does with her power). since shiana still wants to help folks, she has to find other ways to do it.

aphid (her real name is tao li, but she goes by aphid, mostly, and also other psuedonyms) is a spy academic. she's from a monastery village, worked in a library, and loves learning things. the only thing she loves more than reading things in a book is learning them in person. she's a bit of a stickler for rules and can come across as having a stick up her butt because she's a bit inflexible and snobbish lol.

all of which is to say that they have the sort of relationship that others look at and go 'but... why tho?' because shiana comes across as way too chill for aphid, and aphid is the kind of person who would unironically wear a no fun allowed shirt. but aphid is the only person shiana ever told the story about her dead mentor and aphid like... gets it. a lot of their initial friendship was built on the possibilities that teaming up would afford them: shiana can see when something unsavoury is going to happen, and aphid has the soft-spoken tenacity to do something about it.

as part of a governing group, shiana had access to a lot of resources, and aphid has the unassuming demeanour to use them without making others suspicious. so they started trying to help people and change the bleak futures that shiana saw without directly rewriting the future. now, they're both different kinds of hopelessly gay, and in exact opposite directions: shiana didn't want to mess things up with aphid bc aphid was like... her best friend, you know? someone who understood her fears and her powers. aphid didn't want to ruin what they had going either, but UNLIKE shiana, she's scarily observant and figured shiana out in ten minutes lmao.

these days, they're the annoying sort of in-synch couple that can have entire conversations in a single glance. aphid is very uncomfortable with public affection, so she often seems quite cold to shiana when others are around, but she absolutely adores that silly woman and she does a lot of things shiana will like (gifts, special date things, massaging shiana's scalp, etc). and although shiana likes to tease her (even in public), she always respects aphid's no pda preferences. it's extremely common for someone meeting them for the first time to have no idea at all that they're together, but once you know it's obvious.

their communication is fucking top notch also. it has to be because aphid can't see into shiana's head to visualise the futures she's seeing and how best to change them, so even before they got together, they were super good at talking things out. aphid's comfort boundaries are so excuriatingly well defined that it's like... shiana knows when it's okay to touch aphid's hand or back or something more intimate and when it's not. and althought shiana wasn't the most comfortable expressing her own boundaries to begin with, aphid is just very blunt about it all, she's like "well see, shiana, i happen to love you and i don't want you to do something that will fuck that up so here is my rulebook" and after that shiana was pretty cool with talking her feelings and desires out.