#nyxweek2018

“And what are those?” Nyx asked while securing the left side of his mother’s braid, revealing the black line tattoo running from the high back side of her ear to the back of her neck, seemingly continuing down her spine. His gaze fell down where the outline continued down her arm, reaching just above the letters hugging her forearm like a ring.

“Those are the ‘Marks of Galahd’.” Six answered with a smile. She’d seen him stare at her tattoos with a questioning look on his face. She’d seen him look for similar markings on everyone he’d come across and noticed the spark in his eyes every time he saw them on someone from his home.

“What do they represent; and why do our people alone have them?” Nyx let himself wonder out loud.

“Just like Lucis,” the older glaive begun to explain, switching places with the fourteen-year-old in order to give him his own side braid “Galahd has its own culture. These lines represent each person’s life. The choices they’ve made. Each part of the body represents one of the Seven Deadly Sins as they, themselves, are presented by the Old Books.:

Once she was finished with his braid, Nyx turned to face her as Six showed him the parts of the body she was speaking of.

“Your legs represent Gluttony and Sloth,” she explained, moving from right to left accordingly.

“Your arms are Greed,” she pointed at her left arm, showing him a line circling her wrist “and Envy on the right.”

The glaive made a small pause on that, as if she wanted him to focus on the line running down her arm, stopping just above the words ‘Tragedia Coram Amandum quae’.

The glint in Nyx’s eyes made her continue.

“The chest is Lust,” Six tickled his ribs, making him laugh “Your back is Wrath.”

Nyx stopped to stare at her, eyes wide open.

The woman who took him in when he had nothing left, the woman who’d given him a home, a life, everything he’d come to know and be. How could Wrath consume so much of her?

And then he got just how much more it was. For her, it wasn’t just the cosmetic line on her spine that symbolized the sin. It was the scars! Every single battle scar that marked her back.

He wasn’t going to push on the matter though, he knew his mother wasn’t the talking type when it came down to her past.

“So that means the head is Pride!” he finally said, raising his chin up at the word.

“Yes.” She smiled.

Nyx moved some of her long, raven hair behind her ear, looking at the black thin line he so adored. It reminded him of how proud his mother was, but at the same time how modest.

“So,” he started and Six knew what was coming “When am I gonna get mine?”