Nia Side Story – Faeding 1 – Where Nia Went

Nia Side Story – Faeding 1 – Where Nia Went

-A little over 2 months earlier, 24th of June, 2018-

Nia Fae slowly backed away from Eliza. ‘Perhaps Thana?’ she thought, taking another step backwards. Following the pariah’s meditation advice, the scary little girl had proceeded to sit down and then, in a cacophonic interchanging between screaming in a mindless rage and an equally insane laughter, started to tear into herself. Teeth getting ripped out, flying kidneys, tearing open her own skull, the complete program of self-mutilation.

Just barely managing to dodge a leg that flew her way, Nia turned around and just walked away. Calmly, she got into the water, crossed through and picked up the white bag John had gifted her in Amsterdam. In an effort to protect the material and the paper cards within, she had left it on the lakeshore, before swimming over to speak to Eliza.

Now that she had told Eliza that she was fine and what she was doing, she had a clear conscience. Albeit with some delay, the news would doubtlessly reach John. ‘John,’ the name echoed in her mind and she looked over to the Palace in the distance. It was just a stroll away. She could visit him right now. ‘John...’ she thought the name again, probing at the emotions that created inside her. Longing, certainly; admiration, in some ways; uncertainty, because of what she did.

Love?

Yes.

‘I can see him whenever I want,’ Nia decided and turned away, leaving the barrier entirely. It wouldn’t be effective to go see him now. Maybe it would please her heart, but she would only delay that she would need to go again. What she had to do, what she had to find, nobody but another blank could help her with. John would have only insisted on tagging along but his current state didn’t allow that.

It was best if she removed herself from the scene. This was not a stretch in time during which she could make memories. She had found people that were her friends, that were even more than that. After all of her life spent without someone to call her friend, it had taken her a while to realize what the difference between those and lovers was. Now that she was separated from John, however, from Lydia and Rave and that pattable Sylph, she realized that she was in love with being part of that harem, in love with the Gamer and those that also were.

Because there was this swirling in her heart, mind and stomach. It was as if blue butterflies of magic swirled all throughout her. They urged her towards the Palace she had left behind, back into the barrier and into the arms of that man. At the same time, they fuelled her desire to go elsewhere, and seek the power she needed to protect that what she had finally found. That thing for which she had fought for Lydia.

Friends. Lovers. Family.

It was time to leave New York again.

____________________________________________________________________________

It took her several hours to get to the right spot and several more to adjust herself towards the next one. Nia had first noticed them in Washington DC, those little spots where the fabric of reality bore something similar to a scar. It wouldn’t bother anyone else, it was doubtful they could even notice it, but Nia felt the presence of the Nirvana stronger there than anywhere else.

The anti-magical force was too gentle for that.

There were a lot of them, scattered across the landscape. They were spaced too regularly and reliably to be a random occurrence. Someone must have placed them there, another pariah. Unless something unknown suddenly manifested, her fellow blanks were the only ones that could wield the power of the other side in such a manner. To use it so deliberately, leaving a lasting mark on the world, it would take a particularly strong one.

A pariah stronger than her, a teacher. Potentially.

First, she had followed the marks north. This had turned out to be a mistake. The space between the thinned areas grew towards the north. Whatever her target was, must have been further south. Once she had figured that out, she had turned southwest and, eventually, corrected towards the southeast again. It was like following breadcrumbs across an entire continent.

It was hard not to get distracted and, whenever she felt like she had made good progress, Nia let herself be pulled off the road by the sight of something cute. A cat, most of the time. A very large one at one point, the kind that lives in mountains and occasionally attacked humans. To Nia, just another cat, once she started rubbing her behind the ears.

Eventually, unavoidably, she ended up in Florida. The path she had to follow narrowed there. Insofar that there was only a single route of the little reality scars she could sense. As for the route itself, it was a winding path that sent her through swamps, cities, backyards and beaches. Environment and weather mattered slightly little to a pariah, so Nia just marched and ran, unbothered by anything, only stopping to pat cute alligators or other such things.

Nia tilted her head. She didn’t think of herself as overly odd, but if even a fellow pariah said that, there had to be something to it. “Yes,” she therefore admitted.

“I’ve waited for around ten years for someone to figure out to come here,” the dark-haired blank continued. “I’ve waited for over a hundred to meet someone like you. I thought it would take even longer. I left those tears whenever I travelled. Some more intense, some less, so they would be denser the closer you got to me. And here you are, Nia Fae.”

“I am, indeed, here,” the blonde pariah confirmed, as she had nothing else to say in the silence. “I need to become stronger.”

“I could help you with that,” the woman said and got off the bench. For a moment, Nia thought she would walk away, but then it turned out that she was just prowling around the bench. The two Nevr’est respectfully stepped away, to give her the space needed to walk her circles. Her presence on both sides was stronger than Nia’s was on either one, a ludicrous display. “What power do you seek, Nia Fae?”

“The power not to fade.” She could answer that quickly because she had thought about it a lot already. That moment, that terrible moment in front of the White House, when a single magical strike had made her as see-through as a jellyfish, it had made her more afraid than anything else in her life. Not because she didn’t want to go to the other side, but because this one had so many more memories to make.

“Why?”

Another question she had found answers for in the last few days. “I want to keep living with those I love and I want to be a mother,” she said without hesitation, without gestures and without any expression. All she did was shuffle through her deck until she hit the ‘earnest’ card. “There are many reasons I need to keep being here.”

The unnamed pariah stopped behind Nia and the bench and plucked the card from her hands. “Give them to me,” she said, making a demanding gesture towards the remaining deck.

Several moments passed, during which Nia just stared up at the other woman. “Why?” she wanted to know, when she failed to find an answer.

“Because I refuse to talk through cards when words are so wonderful,” the woman responded and smiled a smile that felt warm. “My condition to teach you is that deck. Give it to me.” After a couple more seconds of thinking and staring, the tanned blank continued. “You are a woman with an intense stare.”

Nia only answered after she handed over the cards. “People get nervous around me.”

“Maybe you should smile more.”

“This did not work in the past.”

“Show me, smile,” the woman demanded.

There were several moments of nothing, as Nia reminded herself which muscles she needed to pull in order to create the wanted expression. Her upper lips pulled up, the corners of her mouth stretched to the sides, and eventually she grinned from ear to ear in a wholly overdone fashion, revealing her teeth and a fair bit of her gums.

The distorted copy of an expression ended when the woman chopped her on the head, right into the golden, backwards oriented cascade at the top. “That hurts,” Nia complained, raising both of her hands to her head, to protect the now aching spot against further attacks. Blankly, she stared up. The protest in her mood was only visible in the way she pulled back her shoulders and there was nobody around that knew her well enough to read that.

“The crutch of these cards leaves you untested. Crutches are bad,” the woman declared. “I will teach you what I feel like, and by the end of it, you will be able to get what you want.”

“Is chopping me necessary for that?” Nia asked, still rubbing her head. The woman wasn’t just a more skillful pariah than her, but also quicker and stronger.

“For testing and for motivation,” she responded, as she put the entire deck into the box made for it. “I cannot teach you how to keep from fading,” she said and threw the box into the air. “There is no such knowledge. There are many other things I can teach you that should make it less of a risk, however, and not a final one way trip, if you slay your Queen.” She caught the box on the tip of one finger, then bowed elegantly. “To make the two of us a little less strange, let’s stop being strangers. I am Alice Pleasance Liddell, the name-sharing twin that the world forgot, but one man remembered when I came back from the rabbit hole.” She straightened back up. “Let’s start by working on your smile.”