[Major fic spoilers, idk what this is I just kinda started writing]
And what if you were Nimh? What if the only people you've ever known were your parents, they were the only ones you could be close to, because anyone else was either their enemies or could lead their enemies to them and by extension you. What if you didn't care about this, because most people you met that weren't your parents would be dead before you got home, and anyone that didn't was an issue, but you don't care, because they aren't people. People were you, your parents, and maybe the occasional merchant you would see the rare occasion you get to go into town with one of your parents. Never alone. There are girls your age in town, some days you wonder if they're people too, if they would be nice if you were brave enough to speak to them, if they had names like you and your parents did. Most days you keep a hand on the hilt of one of your daggers, wondering if they had concealed weapons like you did. Wondering if they thought of you as something terrible because of the horns that you can no longer hide beneath your hair. You wonder if they are people. The sight of blood no longer bothers you, death does not bother you. None of that matters when it isn't happening to people. You think opponents are dramatic and annoying when they become emotional when their ally falls. They aren't people, what point was getting emotional. It was only death.
The only people you truly know are your parents. You love your parents. One of them is sick and not getting better. Your parents tell you that everything is fine, and he will get better soon. Your parents are acting like emotional opponents on a battlefield. You are scared, but you try not to be for his sake. You have never been scared of dying, or of death.
The only people you have ever truly know are your parents and you only have one.
Death scares you, blood bothers you. Your horns are too long to be hidden at all, so you lie. You lie when someone asks about them, you say you are something you are not. You say you are something it is not.
The only people you have ever truly known are your parents. It is not a person to you anymore. It won't be anything if you see it again.
Years pass. You do everything you can. You find someone willing to help. You get to see him again, not alive, but he can speak to you.... And you are a little girl again, afraid of storms and shadows outside your window, afraid they will leave and not come back, needing to sleep in their bed to feel safe. Its the first emotion you have felt other than anger in years.
It has been a lie. A lie that had been an accident, a misinterpretation. A lie that you had preferred to the truth. A lie that meant there was something you could do. The truth was worse. The truth meant that you could have had something left, you were supposed to. But you misunderstood. You were wrong. You hated. You have nothing when you were supposed to have something left, and it is your own doing. And it has been years.
You have something left, but it spent years being not a person. And you don't feel like one either.
amandla
