🕯️ Emotional Themes Notice – This chapter explores Nyxara's internal struggle with trauma-linked perfectionism, her fear of being a disappointment, and the weight of inherited duty within the Ajei Enclave. While the scene is rooted in healing, co-regulation, and familial support, it includes:
•Reflections on emotional neglect and disconnection
•Guilt tied to perceived failure and self-worth
•Indirect pressure surrounding legacy and expectations
If you are sensitive to themes of familial pressure, conditional love, or internalized guilt, please proceed with care.
The tone is ultimately restorative, with emphasis on reconnection, breath, and emotional safety.
Aspen
My own perception of reality tried to crack under the weight of those questions, but I pushed that shit back into alignment. Time to pivot. I took off my glasses, tossed them over my shoulder into my space, then cracked my neck from side to side. Nyxara has some stubborn weeds that need uprooting. We'll use a mix of brutal and gentle methods to pull them loose.She needs a push she can handle, and I need to release some tension, so my idea should be what we both need.
Unhindered by my glasses, I meet her silver gaze with my ruby one. I let her see that I'm not her therapist right now. I'm her big brother, before any other ties, and I'm going to help her help herself. It's what I do. And if we end up uprooting those poisonous weeds along the way, that is less work to do later. I stood up to go into the closet, retrieving a new and unused yoga mat.
Her confused expression returns—and it pleases me more than it should. "Are you familiar with yoga?" I ask her as I set out her new mat out in the open space, then go get my personal one to set up next to it. She silently nods her head. "Feet on the mat, then. We will work while we talk. This will be your personal mat. You can carry it with you or leave it here. Let's begin."
Apparently, my abruptness doesn't give her mind time to argue. Her body moves her onto the mat before her mind catches up to the action. She glares. I meet it without flinching. Life and plans are frenemies on the best of days. The more I interact with her these days, the more it feels like she is waking up parts of myself I either didn't know I possessed or had left behind. To be determined if she is an agent of chaos or clarity. I let the strange bubbling joy rising in me push a chuckle out. I'd welcome either if this is the effect.
I guide, and she follows. We start off in Sukhasana, just intentionally breathing for a moment. Her mind has caught up. She opens her mouth to bring noise into the quiet. I beat her to it.
"Why the fuck do you think we would sacrifice you for an ideal we don't even try to achieve for ourselves? You are not now and will never be just a tool we use to accomplish goals and ambitions! Yes, we hold ourselves to a high standard because we are public figures.
Yes, there will be times decisions must be made for the good of the whole vs. the one. Yes—as First Lady of the Ajei Enclave, you have responsibilities and oaths you are expected to uphold." I force myself and her to keep our breaths even, gentle, and in sync. A warm impression slipped through our link then—quiet and tender. A whispered echo of a younger sister remembering, even for a breath, that this life isn't her alone against the world.
"But never doubt for a single moment that we would expect you to be anyone else but who you are. If what is assigned to you doesn't fit, we will try something else. We have multiple businesses for you to try your hand at. If none of them suit you, we will support you in starting something new. Something completely your own."
We flowed into the Cat-Cow stretch. Inhale to Cow, exhale to Cat. "Lux did that. When he felt the pressure of being the heir was too much, our parents sent him as an exchange student to another college, and while he was there, he was just Lux. When he came back after that one semester, he had made friends in unexpected places and was going into business with one of those new friends. He had found his purpose as our scion and his path to the future he wanted. He now privately co-owns a line of clubs and retreats. Do you know why our parents sent him away even when it meant the rest of us had to pick up his duties?" Inhale to Cow, exhale to Cat. Flow into the Thread the Needle position.
"To allow him the opportunity to be free before he is locked into duty?" Her response rubs me so wrong that I stay quiet and just breathe for the rest of this position. We move onto Downward Dog. "I hate this position," comes her whining tone. I respond with indifference, "Then we will stay in this position for a while longer. Your mind and body are arguing. I want your body to win this round." My irritation is tempered by discipline. Discipline hard won over 27 years of life. I can't change the past, but I can shape the future. I repeat the mantra until my mood is tempered once again.
Shifting into low lunge to half split, I go back to her response to my question. "No, they did it to show him he is free to walk a different path if being heir isn't the one he wants. Keir and I are fully trained to be the scion, the head of enclave successor, if he chooses to step down. You, on the other hand, have not completed your lessons so are not prepared to step up." Guilt shadowed her face before I finished speaking. "Do not worry, you will be restarting your heir lessons in your sessions with Korran." The guilt faded with the coloring of ambition rising in its place upon hearing she would be completing her training.
"Remember this: to our parents, their focus is the enclave first and the outside world second. Somewhere along the way, you became disconnected from us, and now we must all work to repair the broken connection." The tinkling of wind chimes. The feeling of us breathing and moving in sync. The warmth of the room. Grounded us in this moment. A connection we're restoring—one breath, one moment at a time. We flowed into Warrior II for a minute, then into Tree Pose for 30 seconds.
"This is a fresh start for us all. So please give us a chance to be the support you need and want. Give yourself space to not be perfect but elite. That is the standard we of the Ajei Enclave hold. Perfect isn't flexible. It is stagnant. Elite is flexible. Because if one way doesn't work you put in the work to find another way. That standard shows all that look that you are the best because you put in that work. Be elite. Be the best. Be authentically you in such a way that they see it as effortless." Paschimottanasana for 30 seconds, then Supine Twist for another 30. We finish with Savasana.
Flat on our backs, eyes closed, I am renewed, no longer frustrated. I sense she is renewed as well. With her body distracting wayward thoughts, my words slipped past as rain upon the ground of her mind. It sinks in deep, watering the seeds of a new reality—one she'll shape into a life of her own. Fingers barely touching, I whisper my truth. "It hurts me, you know. Not just to feel it—but to see how well you've hidden all the twists and turns of what was happening to you from us." She doesn't say anything, but she also doesn't pull away.
"I'm so sorry, Moonbeam. I am so very sorry. You must have felt so alone, and yet still you pushed yourself to move forward. We caused you pain when that was never our intention." The words pour from my soul. My whispered truth seemed to unlock them. I don't process the words. She needs to hear these words. In this twilight moment, the impossible has become possible.
"You have been through so much, and now you must begin again in a place that is both familiar and alien. Silence their voices; they have no place here. They betrayed your trust and made a mockery of it. You are finally where you belong. You are capable of changing the world one person at a time. Start with you. We believe in you. Dream so big that the stars answer when you call. We love you and miss you. Be a happy clam." With those last words, quiet returned, and we just let the moment be.
I did not question the message. I did not analyze the psychic signature of the other mind I felt during the message. I simply embraced the passing of responsibility to treasure and protect our little sister so that she can be free to travel galaxies if that is what she chooses to do. Even in death and across universes, you are loved.