To Seek Answers [Arcadia, Ninsianna]

It had been quite some time since she had interacted with Ninsianna and maybe the feeling that she was indebted to the other danava which felt like if she saw her again then she would be obligated to reciprocate in some extreme manner. The reality of it was that Ninsianna had returned to her that purity and removed the sullying nature of what Ahura Mazda had forced onto her.

There was another matter though that had lingered in her mind and it was the earring that Ninsianna had begun wearing which was reminscient of her own. Yet she had both of them, didn't she? So where exactly did that third one come from? Had the creature that wore her body done something and she had mistakenly missed it in her memories? Questions which begged for answers and they could only be acquired from the speaker herself.

"NInsianna."

She chimed from afar while leaning lazily on the doorframe to her office. The red eyes were a bit softer than her normal intense gaze but they were not exactly soft either. They were just unsure which was far more telling of how she felt about this visit.

Ninsianna had fully expected this conversation for a long while now, but there had always been a part of her which hoped it might never come. That was foolish, of course. To deny something both important and inevitable was only asking for difficulty, and that was antithetical to her nature.

"Yes, Arcadia?"

The two of them did not particularly speak often, so she suspected that to suddenly come and visit her, with a serious tone of voice and an uncertain look in her eye, could only indicate one topic of conversation. Perhaps Ninsianna was wrong, though. Perhaps Arcadia simply wished for some far simpler advice. That might have been preferable, if nothing else.

"I've come to inquire about a matter."

Arcadia got off the doorframe and let herself in, giving the door the slightest bit of force to close it with her foot without missing a stride to approach the secretary turned admin. The gold approaching the silver before stopping in front of her desk.

"Where did you acquire one of my earrings? Why do you wear it?"

If this were a lesser individual she might've added something along the lines of why was it worn so shamelessly but it wasn't, Ninsianna was merited respect and gratitude so Arcadia reciprocated those feelings.

Perhaps that wasn't exactly the way that Ninsianna would have anticipated the question being asked, but the fundamental root of the matter was the same. With a sigh, Ninsianna set her paperwork down, giving her utmost and undivided attention to this particular conversation.

"It was a gift, from a love of mine that has not walked this Earth in many centuries."

She supposed that she could have said she had not seen her, had not heard her, but those would only have been half true statements, and Ninsianna did not wish to make those.

"It was given to me on the night she and I knew each other, and I wear it in her memory."

But that wasn't really what Arcadia was asking, and Ninsianna knew that. Bringing a hand up to the earring she wore, removing it before holding it carefully in her fingers, her eyes moved between the single ancient earring and those worn by her company.

"Have you always had those earrings, Arcadia?"

"Hmm."

Love of her's? A night? Arcadia looked out of the window behind Ninsianna while she thought. She had no recollection of Ninsianna despite the fact that she'd walked the Earth long enough that a few centuries could apply. It didn't clear anything up for her and she was willing to remain baffled in her thoughts while she pondered until Ninsianna asked about her earrings.

"Of course, since my palingenesis I have always had the gold you see adorning me. Each one with purpose and an event attached to it from my past. The earrings you see are symbolic, after the world settled demons which had begun to harness magics became more common. I ventured into the depths of the earth and acquired some ore to weave my own enchantments into. Words and incantations are powerful things Ninsianna and the locks were designed to seal away the evil that others could create with them. These are hollow and empty replicas however."

She could go on more of the history which a more reasonable person might call delusional and twisted or maybe they could be interpreted as some distorted version from the individual she was based off which had been warped by the legends created by the masses.

"Are you implying that you've met me before and that we were lovers?"

Before she had been explaining the history of the earrings - at least from her perspective - but the air became thick with tension when she poised the more pressing question on her mind. It sounded almost baffling to her but more importantly in her mind was that if this occured after she was summoned by the dying civilisation to deliver them salvation then the real Arcadia was alive and well. But that sounded proposterous and infuriating to her.

She was not a fake or some secondhand counterfeit. She was summoned back after her death at the behest of worshippers.

For a brief moment, Ninsianna had thought she might have a misunderstanding of the situation. But it was when Arcadia conceded that her own earrings were replicas that Ninsianna knew she was still entirely correct.

"No, for I do not believe that you and she are the same person. Different in temperament, without her memories. Shall I show you?"

Ninsianna knew that the earring she held carried the memories of that night within it. While she held them close, as one of her most treasured possessions, she also understood that it would likely be the only way of ever convincing Arcadia of the truth.

There wasn't quite the words to describe Arcadia's expression after hearing Ninsianna's words. Anger, confusion, scorn. She was so shamelessly saying that someone had the audacity to wear her identity and parade around as her. On the other hand, there was anguish and fear at the reality that she might be the one who wasn't real. The mixing emotions all coalascing into what was unreadable by merit of how conflicted they all were.

When she finally regained her own composure Arcadia leaned forward with a wry smile. The kind that conveyed how displeased she'd be if Ninsianna was making a mockery of her.

"If you would."

The blonde's words were laced with venom. This was all absurd to her, she wanted Ninsianna to be wrong. She needed her to be wrong and to make a fool out of herself right now. She could endure one humiliation at the hands of Mazda but she could not tolerate a second one.

While in most cases Ninsianna would have been all too willing to crush this sort of attitude undefoot, she understood all too well that the situation in question was a grave one indeed for Arcadia. To have one's entire being simply upended like this was not something Ninsianna enjoyed being a part of, and she carefully took Arcadia's hand before pressing the earring into it, speaking in a language she'd not used outside her prayers in thousands of years.

"Do forgive me."

She had never shared this with anyone, and there was a part of her that would have quite liked to keep it that way. But Ninsianna would not leave Arcadia in this state of half-existence, forever not knowing the truth even as it was dangled in front of her. She held no malice toward Arcadia, after all, and she hoped that seeing this vision of millennia past did not create even more grave pain than was already a certainty.

How to describe the plethora of emotions that simmered within her. The most apt way could be that she had ran through the five stages of grief as she experienced the situation which she could only describe as surreal.

She refused to accept it, were she even capable of smashing the object in her hand she would've and declared it a fabricated lie. Anger burned in her chest at this situation when she acknowledged that this couldn't be simply replicated, it was on par with a genuine miracle to create something like this and she cleared Ninsianna's desk of its contents in frustration.

Maybe. She tried to rationalise to herself, this was just a copy. Even if this individual was a copy then this other woman was the counterfeit and she was the real one. Misery set in when she couldn't come to a satisfying conclusio and she silently stood there with tears threatening to spill out.

She was just the poor quality counterfeit of this other woman.

While it certainly did pain Ninsianna a faint bit watching her desktop be tossed to the side, she could hardly say that she was surprised by such an overwhelmingly visceral reaction. With an internal sigh, she stood up and looked to Arcadia with conviction in her eyes.

"Do not dare to think less of yourself simply because of this. Your worth has not changed one iota."

That much, at least, was entirely certain in Ninsianna's eyes. For all of the things that could be said about this situation, she had never once thought less of Arcadia simply for sharing the same face as Enkika. She knew perfectly well that it was not nearly so easy as simply choosing not to fall into despair, but even so.