This recent rendition is my favorite, though I wouldn't be surprised if she's got a bit too much of a sharp tongue and hostile attitude for most people's preference.
Also a WARNING: There is a bit of blood and gore in the first five hundred words and then there are mentions of it throughout the entire section, just in case you have a squeamish stomach about that sort of stuff. Nuada lives on Earth in the modern day, but the world she lives in is a violent one, as made evident by her opening moments.
Other notes: Argyros is Nuada's older brother, who left her and their father five to seven years prior to these events to strike out on his own. Maggie is Nuada's closest (and only) friend who used to live nearby but moved around when Argyros left. Most other characters are very minor and can probably be figured out without a memo from me.
So, watch the violence and maybe enjoy the read.
His corpse laid in his strewn paperwork, staining those things which he’d been so protective of red with blood.
She felt her stomach churn as she took a step into the room, then heard the skitter of claws upon glass. Nuada turned, heart pounding in her chest because this was it, this was what she’d been waiting to see proof of for years, and then wished she hadn’t seen anything at all.
It was small, but its teeth glinted dully beneath the crimson coating its mouth. Clutched between its two front paws was—
Nuada grabbed at the door frame and threw up all she’d eaten for dinner, that image burned into her mind forever. Her father’s head in the hands of a dragon.
She leaned against the car, resting her free arm across the top of it. “Dad’s dead, Argyros.”
“What?”
“He’s dead.”
There was a long silence and then her brother asked in a strained voice, “How?”
Nuada hadn’t stopped after that. She’d had that bag ready to go for months now but had never imagined she’d be grabbing a second one to carry things of her father’s.
She forced back the tears, the agony, the pain and worked fast. His most prized of possessions she put into the extra duffel, that small, leather-bound scrapbook their mom had left behind. The drawers of his desk proved to hold some items of interest; another black book filled with names and numbers. Several knives.
Nuada grabbed things at random and stuffed them into her bag, trying to ignore the body she’d draped with a sheet. The dragon had long since left with its prize, seeming to have no interest in her.
Two runs would be necessary; she realized that as she heaved her backpack over her shoulder and gripped the extra one in her hand. She needed food, and enough to get her far away from here. Money, as well. She had some, but she’d need more.
Argyros’ baby, his renovated Mustang from a hundred years ago, still sat in the garage because she hadn’t wanted to waste money on gas up to this point. He’d said multiple times that he’d fixed it so that it didn’t guzzle gas, but Nuada had learned to discredit many things her brother had said over the years.
Most of them were lies, anyways.
Now though, she yanked the brown cloth draped over the black body of the Mustang, almost stabbing the key into the trunk. It clicked open easily, and Nuada pulled it up, ready to drop her bags in there, but something stopped her.
It... didn’t look right. Her younger self would never have noticed, but now she did. The inside of the trunk was smaller than the outside. It took her less than a minute to notice the small handhold at one corner of the dark interior fabric.
Dust seemed to explode from inside of it, and the hinges creaked loud enough to wake the dead, but Nuada knew now why her brother had been so protective of his car.
Weapons lay in gleaming rows in the trunk compartment, mostly knives and swords of various shapes, sizes, and most likely uses. There were a few handguns, one shot gun, ammo, and what seemed to be a sharpening tool for the blades.
Her jaw tightened. How many interesting things were being confirmed this night. It was really bad timing, but she wasn’t going to protest.
Nuada closed the space again and shoved her bags into the back. Her next trip into the house was to raid the pantry, which she kept stocked with various preserves that now turned out quite handy. She filled several bottles with water out of the tap, putting those in the back seat of the car.
Her dad had never been a believer in credit cards, which meant he had plenty of cash on hand at all times. Nuada took advantage of this; years of studying this solitary man had taught her many things. The money sat within two hollowed out books on the top shelf in his room, all of which she rolled up and stuffed into her back pocket.
She hurried back down the stairs and out into the garage, picking up her cell charger and extra battery from the kitchen counter as she passed by.
The vehicle roared to life so loudly that it made her cringe as she studied the controls then put it into gear without further hesitation.
“Basilisk attack, a week ago. I got home in time to see it scamper off with his head.” Nuada informed him without flinching, long having memorized this conversation in her mind.
“Wait, you know—“ Argyros stopped himself, then continued. “Did Dad tell you?”
“No.” She felt no inclination to expand.
He sounded frustrated and distressed. “Nuada, I need you to talk to me. What do you know? How do you know it? And where are you anyways?”
“I know everything, I learned it myself by observation and snooping, and I’m at Maggie’s house because I left your ‘contact information’ with her.” She could feel her temper wearing dangerously thin, the past seven days having done nothing for her mental state.
Sometimes, a brilliant mind was a curse because it meant she remembered every detail of every moment starting from when she was almost five. She remembered Argyros leaving and her father’s headless body most vividly at the moment.
“Dad and I agreed that you wouldn’t be told.” He said, and Nuada was tempted to just hang up on him.
“You’re not the only genius in this family, Argryos,” the young woman reminded coldly, shifting around to put her back to the warm metal of her car. “I put things together.”
There was silence from her brother for a time and Nuada could hear the rustle of papers in the background.
Then, “Stay at Maggie’s. I’ll be there in a few days.”
“No. I’m coming to you and then we’re meeting Mr. Stafford in Indiana in a week.”
“Nuada, seriously, how much do you know?”
“I stopped to tell him I needed my severance pay and he told me he was one of you. Dad’s book had his name in it. I got a call a day after I left home from him saying to find you and to get to Indiana.”
The first day was the hardest; rather, the first night. She didn’t stop besides at a roadside outhouse, and drove through the darkness right on into the morning. It was noon the following day before she’d pulled into an outer-lying parking spot in front of a grocery store to crash for a couple of hours.
When she’d woken up, Nuada had called Maggie to tell her that she was coming. It took her six days to span the rest of the distance from her home to her friend’s home, eating little and sleeping less. She felt like a wraith when she finally arrived and knew she looked like one as well.
But sleep was getting harder and harder to come by. Blood splattered and bodies crunched inside the theater of her mind when she drifted into unconsciousness. Caffeinated drinks had been her salvation.
The car held up well, though. Her genius brother; master car mechanic at sixteen. And, as he’d said, the mileage she got per gallon was almost impressive.
She never would have admitted it, but his apartment impressed her. The whole block looked expensive, the complex itself was well-kept and there was even a gate guard who stopped her from entering. He wanted to know what her business in Burke Towers was, all in that suspicious tone that quickly put her on edge.
“I’m here to visit my brother, Argyros Sylvester, apartment number 311? He was supposed to have told you I was coming.” It took work for her to keep her voice normal, to not show how uneasy she was.
It had been another long, two day drive to reach upstate New York where her brother had found work doing heavens knew what. They hadn’t quite gotten to that part in their reunion over the phone while she’d been at Maggie’s.
The guard told her to wait, returning to his little shack to check her words with his paperwork and returned a couple of minutes later.
“All right, miss. Your information is correct. Larry did leave a stick note that Mr. Sylvester said his sister would be dropping by today. If you’ll follow that green sign there, it’ll lead you to visitor’s parking. Just keep in mind you can’t keep your car in those spots over night.”
Nuada nodded her agreement and pulled slowly into the parking area of the apartment buildings, finding the guest area in short time and shutting off the engine after pulling in.
Exhaustion set in quickly after she no longer needed her mental capabilities to drive, but she grabbed her phone from one of the cup-holders installed between the two front seats and dialed her brother’s number.
Argyros picked up within the first two rings, his words uncharacteristically rushed as he answered, “Nuada?”
“Who else?” She said with a dulled edge to her voice. “I’m downstairs in the guest parking. Don’t take too long combing your hair. The guard says I can’t stay all night.”
“I’ll be down in five minutes.” He replied, and she could’ve sworn there was a hint of anticipation in his words.
Well, of course he could be excited. He wasn’t the one who’d been left behind and abandoned.
Nuada slumped back in her seat and slid down in it, fixing her eyes on the toes of her shoes in an attempt to keep herself awake for the next few minutes.
She jerked back into awareness when a rap sounded on the window, dragging her from her dreams which were filled with darkness and pain and—
Argyros knocked again, brows lowered in concern. Nuada shook herself, running her fingers through her hair to remove it from her eyes.
“Let me in?” He asked, voice muffled through the window.
His form was backlit by the gray cloud-covered sky and there was a bag over his shoulder and nothing about her brother had changed in the years apart.
She leaned over to the passenger door to pull up the door lock manually, since the old beast didn’t have automatic buttons.
The drive to Indiana was long and quiet. Argyros tried to engage her in conversation, but Nuada was having none of it. She filled him in on the missing details of their father’s death then spoke no more than she needed to.
And that's all I've got of Nuada for now-- at least, all that would make sense. I have other little scribbles, but they would take a lot of explaining for there to be any coherency to the events described within.
I hope you thought this was interesting, and feel free to leave feedback if something strikes you as needing a comment.
Ad astra per aspera.I hope you thought this was interesting, and feel free to leave feedback if something strikes you as needing a comment.
To the stars, through difficulties.
