by Malia on October 24th, 2009, 5:22 pm
Malia noticed that Cosette was assuming a lot of things that weren’t right. Not in her opinion, at least. Why did the girl expect her to be so much more experienced? What had Malia done that the girl hadn’t done? Of course, she had wandered the forests and deserts of Mizahar, of course, she had existed for a considerably long time, but what exciting things had she done? She was even jealous because Cosette had visited Sahova.
No, she wasn’t experienced – but perhaps she should change that, try to be the Nuit people expected her to be. Try to be more than she was at that moment. That would be a new kind of sense to seek, or not?
Anyway, the older one watched the girl playing her tricks with skin color. Until then, she hadn’t realized that someone as unnatural as Nuit could really disguise themselves. At the same time, she was absolutely sure that she wouldn’t want to hide what she was. For decades and decades she had walked among the living without hiding her immortality. Glav Navik had given her face powder, but completely hiding herself with magic – no, never, that was too much.
So her features remained emotionless. When hearing about Sahova, however, a slight hint of curiosity was showing.
Every single word was absorbed and memorized. A little bit of surprise got through her façade. According to the girl’s words, the island was some sort of elite club – accepting only the best of their kind, focusing on magic, forgotten by the living world around them. And they forgot their surroundings as well. Somehow it sounded sad, but Malia could absolutely relate to it. Sometimes she felt that scary urge to just lay down and sleep … fall in trance for days, weeks, years even, because the world wasn’t worth it. Sometimes she had felt tempted, but never had she really done so. The Nuit of Sahova had apparently forgotten about their origins? A sad fact, and nobody could change it, or so it seemed.
Nevertheless her desire for visiting the city was stronger than ever. She blinked, raised a hand to smoothen strands of her long, black hair, was musing to herself. Somehow, in the future she would try to get into the undeads’ island. “Thanks for telling me that”, she told Cosette. If she hadn’t been cold to the touch, she would have … but then, even humans didn’t do that regularly, did they?
Then … a personal question? She subconsciously stiffened. Personal questions were almost always uncomfortable questions too. What should she expect? How should she carry on if too many personal questions would follow?
Oh. Of course the girl wanted to know … about her own future. What she would be like in a few decades or centuries. A faint smile covered her features, although it looked more like a grimace. Mask of despair, mask of joy … Which one did I choose?
Perhaps the answer was too easy. “If you try to find your own answer to that question through others, you’ll fail”, she warned, and was serious. “Everyone needs their own. Mine is … My search is for sense. I try to find out why I exist, why you exist, why our whole race exists.” And no, she wouldn’t tell Cosette anything about what she had found out. And she wouldn’t accept anything Cosette said, for she was sure that the answer was something different. A young lively girl, barely dead yet, wasn’t able to know what she herself could only guess.
Impossible. With interest Malia kept watching Cosette. “So what are you doing these days since you haven’t found your drive yet?”