#because of this nerissa had to relearn how to cast magic after her dad died because it was so traumatic

[kohakhearts]

things you said too quietly, nerissa (and wild card - whoever pops into your mind first)

3: things you said too quietly

wc: 990

Nerissa is eight years old the first time her brother does magic.

She is happy, like their mother, until the implications of it begin to set in. He is only three years old—very young to cast for the first time—and already has proven to them his innate ability to heal.

Nerissa is eight years old, and she can’t cast magic at all.

Quickly, joy morphs into bitter envy. She does not like watching him practice. She likes even less when her mother tries to make her practice, knowing that it does not matter what she does or does not do, when Poseidon has already done it all.

She never says anything, though. Their mother is already so overworked. She is happy to see Poseidon doing magic, when it is so clear that he loves it. Nerissa thinks she was like that too, before their father died. But magic doesn’t feel fun anymore. When she tells her mother she wants to learn from her father, not from her, it makes her feel like crying, but she does not know why.

She misses him. She misses magic.

She watches the snow blanket the city that winter, and tries to mimic it. Ice and snow—they are just different forms of water. Her dad told her that, years ago. She always remembered, especially once they moved to Derayn. This is the first year she has ever seen snow before. It is new. Different. She likes it, likes to watch it, likes to touch it.

Her magic comes back like this: new, different. She watches the snow fall from her fingertips, her toddler brother trying to catch the flakes while their mother looks on with a wide smile, and does not tell them she hopes her father will forgive her for it, this betrayal.

-

After snow and ice, water comes more easily, but she still prefers it frozen. When he is a little older, seven or so, Poseidon asks her why.

“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s prettier, I guess.”

He nods in agreement, and that is the end. She does not tell him that sometimes water feels more like blood when she draws it to her fingertips. She does not tell him that ice just hurts less.

-

Every year on their father’s birthdays, their mother tells them about him. Stories from their early childhoods, usually. This year, what would have been his thirty-seventh, she recounts one of the first lessons of magic he gave to Nerissa. She doesn’t remember it herself, but her heart aches as if she does.

Poseidon is eight. He asks, “Did he teach you to freeze it?”

Nerissa looks away from him. She shakes her head.

“Oh. Then, who did?”

“She figured it out herself,” their mother informs him, and for once the swell of pride in her tone makes Nerissa’s chest heavy and her throat tight, like she is going to cry in all the misery it inspires.

“Really? Can I learn how to do stuff like that?”

Their mother laughs. “I don’t think you can freeze fire, kiddo. Maybe steam? Not sure what good that would be, though…”

Nerissa excuses herself shortly after. She cannot bear to sit there any longer, with this poison under her tongue. It tastes like saltwater. It is too heavy to speak through.

She goes to sleep that night, drowning in it.

-

Nerissa is not shocked by her mother’s confession. She doesn’t know why.

They don’t blame her, so she won’t blame herself, either. They don’t talk about it.

It is better this way.

-

Nerissa is sixteen years old when she realizes that the blood in her water is not her own, but her father’s. She kills him, and she kills him, and she kills him, and she does not tell any of them.

-

Until Emerson, that is.

Her father’s sister, her brother’s beloved aunt. She wants to love her. She wants to hate her. She wishes she would not look so closely as she does.

She tells her the truth, but she does not believe it.

She is shouting, she is screaming, This is me! This is who I am! I killed him! I killed them all!

She is shouting, she is screaming, and nobody hears her.

What she means is, Please just make it stop. Nobody hears that part, either. It sits beneath her tongue, unmoved.

-

Did Ely feel anything when he died? Did it hurt? Did he suffer?

Nerissa hopes he didn’t. She has felt the pain of it now, and she knows he will not forgive her for forcing it on him all those years ago.

-

She tells Ada, too.

All she says in response is, “It’s not your fault.”

People have been saying that a lot lately. She does not know how to tell them they are wrong, when they look at her so sadly, like she will break in two.

Instead, she says nothing at all, and Ada does not ask her to, but she pulls her hands away from her throat and she tells her “You can breathe now, you’re okay,” and somehow that means so much more.

-

Walking away from the coast of Gias, Nerissa sends a flurry of snow over her brother’s head against the sweltering summer heat. He smiles and laughs, so she does too. From behind him, Ada remarks, “You look happy.”

Nerissa glances over at her. The snow vanishes, melts and warms to steam and reaches for the Heavens. Poseidon looks up in surprise, and then he grins.

Nerissa says, simply, “I missed magic.” And then, quieter: “I missed my magic.”

If either of them hears it, they don’t say so, but she thinks they would understand even if they didn’t. After all, they have never really needed words to know how she feels. Knowing they are here, and she is breathing, is more than enough. It always has been.