Niferia Papaver

[brandy]

What makes us become the thing that we hate? How do we turn into our
demons? I don't have that answer. But I know what caused me to
stop being my own nightmare creature. Does history truly repeat? I'm
certain it did for me that night.

A faint inhalation of startled breath caused me to glance up and into the
eyes of the terrified little girl in the doorway. It made that broken place
inside of me twist and pulse, hungry still. I thought I had finished, but
there was one more, and I was delighted. I let loose the grip I had on her
father's hair, and his body slumped over. Limp, empty now, half hanging  
over the side of the bed. The same hot blood that stained the front of
his nightclothes, now the linens as well, had begun to pool on the floor
beside the bed.

The man's blood -- I don't know his name. I never knew any of their names.
I didn't care. -- mixed with the blood of the dead woman beside him on the  
bed, slicked my fist and the stiletto it gripped. The same stiletto I
watched open a smile across the throat then plunge into the chest of my
father all those years ago.

I might have smiled. I probably smiled. I know I smiled as I started toward
the doorway. It was a cold and ugly smile. I hadn't been told about this
one, but I had been told, over and over, to never leave witnesses.

I saw the shift in the child's eyes from fear to realization to defiance
and the broken place writhed in agony.. and remembrance. I dropped to a
knee in front of the girl, took her hand, and slapped the blade that dripped
with the lives of her mother and father into her palm. I squeezed my fist
tightly around hers as I met her eyes.

"Never let anyone hurt you."

I stood and sprinted across to the window I had entered. I paused for a
last glance of the girl I left with a broken place of her own and she was
gone from the doorway. She was right behind me, and I felt the bite of the
stiletto slash through my breeches and bite into the flesh of my
hip as I jumped out into the darkened street and disappeared into the
shadows.

I smiled again. A true smile this time. The pride I felt for that little
girl I didn't know made the broken place inside me begin to shrink, and
that felt good. So off I went in search of other ways and means of
shrinking that place until I couldn't feel it anymore.


Tall, sturdy, and alluringly proportioned, Niferia Papaver is a strange
mixture of breathtaking beauty and nightmare creature. She has richly
glowing bronzed skin and intensely amber eyes which can shine like topaz if
caught in juuust the right light. Lustrous black hair threaded with shades
of purple ranging from soft lilac to deep violet tumbles in thick, chaotic
waves well past her shoulders. It is adorned with various metal beads,
charms, coins, and gems which, strangely, will sometimes clatter and tinkle
as one might expect, and at other times will remain perfectly silent. She
wears it in several styles; loose and natural, twisted into a knot at the
nape of her neck, pulled back from her face with a headscarf, in a thick
braid tied off with a length of leather cord, or tucked neatly away in a head wrap.

She rings her eyes in thick smudges of kohl and, at times, may also mark
her face with a distinctive tribal pattern. She is tattooed in a similar
fashion down both arms and across her clavicle mostly in black, but some of
the markings are a deep indigo. She wears her fingernails long, filed to
sharp points, and stained a near-black shade of purple.

She has several piercings in each ear in which she wears a variety of
jewelry; studs, rings, plugs, chains, whatever looks interesting and like
it might fit. Her nose is also pierced and adorned with only a simple gold
stud.

She dons the garb of an explorer and favors dark colored clothing. Black,
charcoal, deeper shades of blue, purple, and green. She wears a fine, deep
green shirt beneath a well-fitted charcoal vest, breeches, and boots
ensemble that was clearly tailor made for her. She may also, on occasion,
ensconce herself in the folds of an aubergine woolen cloak.