My sniffling comes to an end and I wipe my face off on the towel, standing there. Alone. In the bathroom I had slipped into in order to clean myself up. I just stand, the tips of my points attempting to dig into the flooring as I do so. I stay quiet. I stare back at myself in the mirror.
My head shakes away, and I straighten myself out, moving on out of the bathroom and back towards the stairs. With some caution to my steps, I linger, not hoping to find myself standing before Nin or the woman with the sapphire aura again. Thankfully, a far nicer, far more appealing and lovely sight comes before me. The front door of our dorm building opens up, a petal who shines with golden light stepping on through. Her heels clicking away against the wooden flooring.
A weak smile forms on my otherwise bothered face, and I walk closer to the main door as I wait for her attention. My hand comes up, returning her large, excited wave with a far more modest one of my own making as she comes closer. One of my brows arches upwards as I take in the subtle differences of what is new about her this time. Her clothing has changed but also hasn't.
It still disrupts her external-magic flow in the same way her old outfit did, but, now there's a stability and a strength to it. She's outlined in carefully forged and created metal that accentuates her figure as much as it protects and nurtures her strength. I can't help but genuinely approve of it all. She's taken clothing fit for her position as a petal-quality woman and has adapted it more thoroughly to what she needs to grow as a witch. I reach out slightly, tracing the metal as it takes in her magic, focusing it along specific routes.
From the tips of her fingers, up and around the curves and rims of her breasts. Along her arms, and her legs and all the way down to the soles of her feet. There's a stern, harsh route to it, but something that is needed. The magic within the metal otherwise sprinkling her typically golden aura with hints of pale blue as the work of the Ancient Jhermonikra makes itself clear. Is it worth asking her what she has implemented to her new outfit? Though, I suppose she will tell me, regardless.
"Do you like my new outfit, Rianta-chira?" Einervaene asks me with nothing but excitement to her voice and posture. My smile grows larger as I watch her move her body about with a confidence that I don't think I've ever seen from her before. It is so wonderful seeing her sashay about, swaying her hips with the sultry allure befitting of a petal, rather than the stiffer, root-like behaviour she tends to have. Even if my aelenvari eyes can't truly appreciate what is so truly different about the outfit from her perspective, I like what it does to her magic.
"I do, I do very much." I say, nodding away as I move to take one of her hands and I run a finger along the concentrated magic. A shiver goes on down my spine as I feel the impression it gives off. She seems so much stronger than she actually is with how dense and focused it makes her external-magic flow now.
A curious thing, I have to admit, quite interesting. I'm sure it's a detail that could've easily tricked a stem desperate for a male if she actually was one, a male. Though I have to admit, I think I would have preferred it if she were a he and not a she. It would have made her one less competitor for my own desires. And she's not so grand as to make Nin seem inconsequential if she were a man and...
I shake my head.
Perhaps now, I am just lucky to have her? My interest in the osibindah has died off- Is steadily vanishing. It won't be an issue anymore to see her with him... Yet, as a friend of hers, could I truly just let it happen? To let an osibindah taint her petal-like quality?
No... No, that makes no sense at all, nothing I have been taught implies that. Nin's not like most osibindah at all. He has a soul, he is not a corruption and a violation of one. The fact his eyes are human and not insectoid proves that enough. Nin is... The parasite is strong in body and arcane reserves, even if he is weaker than Seigunfrei. He is still stronger than any man of the Ahnelges flower and the garden-mont as a whole. He'd only ever grant potent sons and daughters with the potential for grander strength.
Daughters are misfortunate for him to have, compared to sons, but Einervaene is a human. Their kind don't have the problems mine do. A child is just a child to them. They have suffered no devastating loss to their male population. Daughters are equal to sons, not lesser.
"Is something bothering you?" Einervaene asks me, one of her fingers prodding my upper cheek, squashing something about that place on my face. No, a tear. She squashed a tear, and its wetness is now coating her gloved finger as she withdraws it. Tears yet again... Indeed they are. I have been crying again as I stew in my invisible-to-the-world thoughts.
"No, I am fine, Einervaene. I am fine. Go and enjoy yourself, I just have to do something." I tell her, ushering her along with a weak, pitiful smile that does nothing but lie. Her joyful mood doesn't burn as bright, but she heads on off either or. The sharp tap of her high-heels signalling her departure from my presence in much the same way my points do the same for her.
Yet, instead of heading out towards Exceptional House as I intended to... I linger some more, noting the trailing, approaching sounds of chitters just as much. I move back against the door, clinging closely to it as the meeting I can't not be curious about happens. Her seeing Nin- That parasite again.
"Nin-kischu! Look! You like?" Einervaene asks in that same, uprising, joyous voice she used with me, it all accented by the sound of her moving and spinning about as her words fill my ears. And it's all drowned out by the sudden shattering of wood, vicious teeth gnashing and growls.
"You haven't spoken to me for weeks... You and that damn point-legged shit have acted like I don't exist... And the first thing you say to me... IS HOW YOU LOOK!? HOW YOU!? YOU MAKE IT ABOUT YOU!" the parasite- Nin roars with growing rage as it becomes clear the sounds echoing to me are him moving closer to intimidate her as his magic flares and ripples violently. Yet, even as I hear my friend threatened by the... By the... By the parasite, I don't move. I just keep to pathetically sneering at and insulting him in my head, even as my face wears my true, heartbroken expression.
I can't do it... I can't make excuses for myself or ignore him.
Einervaene's voice shakes and stammers, her joy completely gone, "I... I haven't..."
Her stutters fill the air, and I can all but feel her bending to the pressure his raw, untamed presence puts upon her. Upon us both. The whole dorm building and even the outside world in which I stand. A power that allowed him to stand by a Valkinvar in the depths of an osibindah hive.
"Look at you... You can't even give me an answer... YOU CAN'T EVEN GIVE ME AN ANSWER, LET ALONE A GOOD ONE!" Nin roars, his claws thrusting ahead, and the sound of a body hitting the floor makes me flinch cold. He struck her. He shoved Einervaene to the ground, not holding back at all with his power.
"WHAT WAS THAT FOR!?" Einervaene cries back with her own anger, a clear sense of hurt and burgeoning tears in her voice as Nin's heavier footsteps become distant, "Wh-What... What did I do...?"
Her choked whimpers reach me, and as she cries, I cry too. I do not go and comfort her. I just sneer at myself, at her, at Nin, at the whole situation we have made for ourselves, and I move to leave. Making quick work of my pace and stride to create the distance.
My head keeps shaking, my frustration not going anywhere as one phrase lingers in my mind, 'Of course, that is what was going to happen!'
He's an osibindah, a parasite. An untrained weakling, a spineless, cowardly weakling. Just like a root, and perhaps worse with how roots at least understand that they are weak. Too weak to even consider raising or harbouring a child in their womb. They never try to act beyond their station, and they are punished for it if they try, unlike him! Especially unlike him.
His... This entitlement would bring him nothing but problems!
"Nothing but problems." I repeat to myself, almost making a mantra of it as I walk along the path of the academy. A twitch forms near my right eye, and I find myself suddenly upset again.
So upset that I instantly change course for the nearest bench, table, anything. I find it and sit down, not caring for the fact that my choice of seat is coating me with moss stains and other dust. And, the longer I sit there, the more my face finds comfort in my palms as I restlessly keep crossing my legs over, my tail otherwise limp. Its largely boneless mass just flowing in the wind as my head turns off towards a sight I could never be angry or upset about.
Jhroungijherammujhernosumonaterikra.
"Why did such a sight have to make me think of him...?" I stupidly moan, as I know precisely why this is the case. He brought me up the mountain, it was his heroics, his masculinity and power the ensured I was alive to see it. I'm only here because of Nin... Because of my love.
My head shakes some more and collapses gently. The means that I use to speak with my true-voice rub along my head as they droop lower than they should. My arm brings them back up a little, and I try to cling to something else. If I am no longer spending time with a magically untrained parasite, then why am I still using words?
I've a far more beautiful means to speak, and I can even maintain some degree of privacy with it! Yet, for some reason, they just refuse to light up no matter how much I want them to. It's like there's a coup going on on inside of them... A coup that desires me to stop speaking with my true-voice, so that my love might hear me speak and fill his ears with such sweet honey for his soul... That's the only thing that makes sense.
After all, outside of the amputation of the means... I have never heard of an aelenvari losing the ability to speak with their true-voice before... My heart and my soul are winning a battle my mind simply cannot do anything about. The heart always wins, no matter what we try as people.