reinvention {calanthe}

[Nyra Charlotte Enigma]

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@ Calanthe Willowlace

388 Words

Music

outfit

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I was dancing  [break]
When the music stopped

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Nyra never really liked being back in the North Court. Her mother's mansion was right by the border between the High Court and the North, but the home of the Willowlaces was much deeper in the territory, and she had never enjoyed it there. She was not sorry that she had been raised by Juno.;


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It was always frigid here. Frigid and awful. Fires burned out, metal turned brittle, her hands dried out and the lotion she used to soothe them removed her callouses. She hated that most of all. Callouses were for protection. Callouses stopped her palms from bleeding like they did when she was a child, just starting, winding up pieces of wire to string clocks together. When she got her first set of tools she used them until her hands bled and only stopped because she was getting blood on the grips. It have never washed away. Now it looked like rust.


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She had learned to tell the difference long ago. One of was rot and the other was necessary. Both of them supposedly got their coloring from iron and air but Nyra's blood had no iron of it. Mortals did. She was jealous of them, that they got to be so linked to the thing that she wanted. They might die but they had lives that mattered. And she was stuck steps away from the one thing she truly wanted.


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And now she was here. Nyra didn't know what she would do when she was grown, when she wasn't in school and following her sister everywhere. Juno had forbade her going to the High Court until she was at least twenty-five, but it felt like an eternity. Supposedly she had an eternity. She didn't want it.


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And now she was here, meant to be playing nice with her half sister and her father. He still claimed her. Supposedly, she still mattered. Mostly, she suspected that if her mother hadn't been an Enigma, she wouldn't have mattered one bit. But these days royal blood was about as good as oil in a bonfire. She had wished many times for it to go away. She was strangely proud of it now.


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Perhaps she was spiteful or contrary. Either way, she was here, perched in a windowsill, winding wires between her fingers. Her hands didn't bleed anymore.




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[Calanthe Willowlace]

   Calanthe was never quite sure what to make of her half-sister. Perhaps it would have been easier to make a judgment if she knew the girl better, but as it stood, she was less of a sibling to Calanthe and more of a cousin-who-lives-far-away-and-you-only-see-every-now-and-then type of situation. They had hardly seen each other more than a handful of times, much less spoken to one another; their conversations were civil, even as scarce as they were, but that was all. It was... difficult to strike up conversation, Calanthe had seen Nyra's craftsmanship and acknowledged her skill, but that about covered what she knew of the girl. She doubted Nyra knew much more about her either.

   Added to their abysmal lack of conversation topics, Calanthe wasn't much of a talker herself, always preferring to listen than to talk. Her half-sister hadn't seemed to have much to say in their previous meetings either. Perhaps they did share come commonalities after all. Calanthe shook her head, clearing it of thoughts of her half-sister and their faint relationship, as she strode through the frosted stone walls of her home, footsteps light and even and confident of every step. Such thoughts could wait until after she had reached her garden.





Nyra Charlotte Enigma,

[Nyra Charlotte Enigma]

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[attr="class","Lost"]

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@ Calanthe Willowlace

302 Words

Music

outfit

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I was dancing  [break]
When the music stopped

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Nyra looked up from where she sat to see her older sister passing her, hair pulled back and determination in her face. Or perhaps that was just how she looked. Nyra was not the most skilled at reading emotions.
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Rhea slept next to her, her ears down, her breath steady. Nyra could feel every breath and every pulse of her mechanics in her bones. It was comforting. It was soothing. It was calming. It was predictable.
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Calanthe was not predictable. Most organic things were not. Calanthe did things Nyra didn’t quite understand. Calanthe was playing a game Nyra had no interest in. Calanthe was the chosen heir. Nyra was the political capital. Nyra was not sure she knew how to relate to her sister, but at least she didn’t have to be like her.
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“Calanthe,” she said, dropping her legs to the floor, setting her wire contraption on her lap. It had taken on many shapes– here a cloud, there a turtle. Now it was a twisted sword, with dull edges and a braided pattern down the middle, like the braids in Nyra’s hair. “Where are you going?”
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The Willowlace estate had no forge. The Willowlace estate had no quarry. In fact, in had very little of immediate interest to Nyra. Of course, she was allowed to bring some metals, allowed to bring Rhea, allowed to bring her tools. But there was only so much tinkering could do. It was not striking while the iron was hot. She didn’t have any iron anywhere either way, but here, there was no striking at all.
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Perhaps Calanthe was going somewhere interesting, or even if she wasn’t, perhaps she’d say something interesting. Or perhaps she would go on, like everyone else. Nyra would make her sword into new shapes. They wouldn’t make up for anything.













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