Nyra Blurb (Patreon)

This 3 pages and sort of a messy collection of thoughts. Tends to happen when I'm kind of covering the overarching bits of someones whole life as opposed to just a blurb of one singular moment in their life. So I think if I do another one for Nyra it will be focusing on a singular event which will be easier. But this was fun to dive into a little bit!

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If you go to any city in the world, if you look hard enough, you will likely find a Dupre. Their eyes bright and their smiles confident. But their powers are stronger the closer they are to each other - the closer they are to the source of their family in New Orleans. 

Every year Dupre witches, no matter where they may be, would make their journey back to New Orleans for the annual bonfire. Celebrating their stories and their freedom and dancing in the flames. Nyra lived for those parties - sometimes they could last for up to a week if they got carried away. 

But even though she was always excited for it she never considered New Orleans her “home”, she supposed if she had a ‘home’ it would be in New Mexico where she was born.

Her parents had met during some sort of festival - but not at the festival itself - but when her mother had excused herself from an after party to wander through the night until she’d ended up in a cafe to relax and decompress. That’s where she’d spotted him - an aspiring writer - struggling to get his thoughts together and scratching out thoughts on paper.  

Amara Dupre had been curious enough to join him at his table to start asking him questions about it. Dupre were typically very social by nature, most people tended to find them charming, though because they were so aloof people also tended not to trust them. But Ray fell hard and fast. And she ended up learning that he was not only an aspiring writer, but a full time line cook and a volunteer fireman. 

“You’re a fascinating and busy man.” She hummed 

“And what is it that you do, ma’am?” He wondered. 

“I’m free.” She smiled as she leaned back in her seat, “I do small jobs here and there, a jack of all trades so to speak. I do some work with a … Family business of sorts… but they don’t call on me very often.” She admitted as he hummed quietly. 

“Your eyes… are so green.” He told her as she turned her head back to laugh, since he clearly was more distracted by that than what she was saying about herself. Which was fine - she didn’t intend to leave a lasting impression with him, she only intended to chat with him until she got bored enough to go back to her family. 

But it didn’t end up that way. 

She ended up staying in Santa Fe for several weeks, she’d grown fond of him… But he certainly liked her more than she liked him and though he begged her and begged her to stay she declined and made her exit in the dead of night with a farewell note. 

He was heartbroken… For a few months… until she showed up again - very pregnant. He did what he could to make her comfortable - he wanted to make her happy and wanted to take care of this kid that she said was his. He’d always wanted to be a father he just never thought he’d get the chance because he was always worried about not having enough money - but he was determined to make it work. 

But Amara hadn’t planned on having kids - at least not this early - she was 23. Which was perfectly old enough to have kids, sure, she knew plenty of people who had kids in their early twenties, but she never wanted to be one of them. She had wanted to continue to travel without that kind of concern until she was at least 30. 

So that was about how it ended up. 

She stayed around for a year or so after Nyra was born, and Ray thought that they were all perfectly happy, before she said that she wanted to keep travelling. 

So he was left to more or less raise Nyra on his own for several years - except for once a year Amara would come back to pick her up and take her to the fabled Bonfire. 

Learning that she was a witch with actual magical powers was a whole other thing that he had to worry about. And having to deal with Nyra setting fire to things once she turned 6 was another. On top of her coming back from a bonfire when she was about 10 years old with a sleepy fox bundled in her arms was another. 

“Oh you won’t have to feed it or anything, it’s just a companion for her. It’s a demon, not a real fox.” Amara explained to Ray’s protest. 

“Oh great.” He relented but sighed. Nyra was very excited about her new pet and it’s not like he could just get rid of it when apparently it was soul bound to her… Whatever the hell that meant. 

Once Nyra was a teenager Amara started to come around more, and Nyra started to be gone a lot more and in turn - Ray started to get more nervous. He was worried about his daughter not adjusting to what he considered “real life”, and was worried she’d fail to make close friends if she was jumping from city to city with her mother but everytime Nyra came back she was just excited to talk about all of the things that she saw an experienced. 

From Nyra’s perspective, she was having the time of her life. She loved her father of course and she liked hanging out with him in Santa Fe but she hated going to school and she hated having to do regular human things. Being in class and getting asked what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, or what college she wanted to go to, always made her curl her lip and her stomach turn. She was a witch! She had the opportunity to see the world and just live life! Why should she do anything less?! If she ever wanted to settle down in the future then that was something for her to worry about in the future…

But her mother always told her “The fire in our family burns to brightly, if we stay in one place for too long it will burn us through…” And it was true, whenever she tended to stay anywhere for longer than a month once she started to travel she would get restless and bored - leaving town like she’d never been there to begin with. 

When she was 18 she started training to be a HandMaiden - which was essentially training to become the next Matriarch. Most other witch families only ever took on one handmaiden but the Dupre Matriarch took on several since they were so scattered. And within a few years she had made her way to the top of the ranks thanks to her charisma combined with her ability to observe people's behavior and adapt quickly to almost any given scenario. She’d even managed to get in with the Severin family again thanks to Silvia which the Dupre had figured would be impossible after the greenhouse tragedy… Not that many others had actually TRIED to reach out… Nyra had found out after speaking with Silvia once that it was actually very easy. 

She was proud of what she’d made for herself… She had a few regrets but not very many… She wished that her mother was more of a mother and not just a friend, she wished that she could see her father more because she knew that he was worried. But overall she was proud. She was free

She wouldn’t change where she was for the world.