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The first friend Nimona feels at home with is a young girl with hay-bright hair and freckles dotting her round cheeks, her gap-toothed smile wide enough to dazzle. Nimona’s shy, but she thinks right away that she’s the most adorable girl she’s ever seen. Gloreth—her name, she shares with her—tells Nimona just the same.
“What else can you change into?” Gloreth asks, giggling as they laze in the tall grass, the sun-drenched clouds gazing down at them while they rest their heads on their arms. It’s the perfect day for having fun and spilling secrets, and Gloreth’s company is just the cherry on top of it.
“Anything you want,” Nimona blurts out, and blinks in earnest. She’s never had a friend, and she wants badly to impress her.
Gloreth’s eye sparkles with a conspiratorial gleam. “Can you turn into a pony?” she asks. “Like in my gold-leafed storybooks?”
“Of course!” Nimona beams.
Before Gloreth can say another word, Nimona whisks her off. Soon they’re galloping straight through the miraculous heart of the meadows. Gloreth swings tightly from her mane as the wind kisses their skin, the furious blessing of skylight coursing through them with every touch. It’s the best thing Nimona’s ever done.
Gloreth ends the ride breathless, wanting to know more about her. Nimona stands proud, like she’s struck gold or done something right for the first time in her life. Gloreth, Nimona thinks giddily afterwards, is someone who helps her be her best self: unafraid of change and difference, tuned into the multitudes within herself. Nimona goes to sleep curled up as a cat that night, dreaming of becoming Gloreth’s loyal sidekick one day. She comes back every day after that, and they laugh plenty, their friendship blossoming like tree roots through the lush undergrowth of the land.
With training and swordfighting practice, they could become a force to be reckoned with. Nimona already knows what she’ll be: a fire-breathing dragon to scare their foes, a waterhorse to carry Gloreth across the seas, a bear to amuse her in their moments of play. No quest will be too hard for her, no obstacle impossible. They'll write their names into the history books.
Gloreth’s the first creature, two-legged or fish-finned, who’s taken an interest in her, and Nimona wants to dwell in that feeling some more; wants to soak in her curiosity, so much like a balm for the loneliness of Nimona’s growing years. She wouldn’t mind shapeshifting into any form Gloreth’s desires took.
Nimona clings onto this, a hope like a silver-spun thread of silk, the pale and faraway memories of her previous life, and looks forward to the promise of many more voyages with Gloreth.
The night Nimona limps away from Gloreth’s village, she reels from the numb shock of loss, sniffling and slouching. The newest shape she’s shifting into is that of grief, and it is harrowing, far larger than what she can accommodate: an ink-black cloud consuming her, an unruly beast growing eyes and distending with every drop of blame levelled against her. She can taste its rise of darkness in her throat, threatening to take flight like a coalstone rook or murderous wyvern.
A mouse skitters across the grass, under the stale prickle of ash and burned wood blanketing the air. She follows it, copies its mannerisms, and then downsizes herself into a red mouse, silent and small enough to hide from anyone who wants to throw a pitchfork at her. She’s most comfortable like this, she decides, and makes a point of staying unobtrusive enough to avoid attention. She finally settles on stitching herself to the shadows of trees and leaves, her resourceful shields, hiding behind them like she would a wavering needlework of plate armour.
For years she gets by as such, a vagabond of the forest: little more than a defiant weed, a hostage of necessity. She forages for roots and nuts; she inhabits identical and parallel lives to the birds and rodents around her but never touches them, not once. Eventually she finds the confidence to transform into larger animals again, but by then she has realised that people will only ever accept her if she packages herself as something else, something that isn’t her, safe and unobjectionable. So she does the opposite. She fashions her hair into a short bob and undercut; she discards the clothes of her old life and washes them away in a river, bidding farewell to unsainted baggage. She sharpens her fingernails into claws and grows the hair on her skin into fur, melding herself into the sovereign of her own stumbling fiefdom.
She must be the loneliest animal around, she thinks, but that is part of what it means to be her; she continues to traverse the rocky straits of extinction, between person and animal, just the way she’s always done—an in-between being who fits nowhere and everywhere, her feet only wanting steady ground, her heart yearning for some understanding.
Human society builds itself a ring of walls, and Nimona infiltrates it. She relearns the norms of how people behave, so she can dive away from them, and then blend in with featureless crowds. She falls in love with sapphire-cut jewels and gemstone cases in windows, and haggard mothers standing on rainy streets at the tender cusp of midnight. She samples mugs of brewed thunderstorm-beer at taverns. She practises reinventing herself many times over, first a whale then a rhinoceros and an ostrich, her own quiet tributes to metamorphosis. She toes the rules, and earns her freedom that way.
When she bumps into Gloreth again, Gloreth doesn’t recognise her. Then she draws her new sword out, shiny and harsh in the judgemental hemisphere of daytime, and roars at her to return to whence she came. Nimona transforms into her greatest and most heinous form yet—oopsie daisy—but she truly doesn’t know how to deal with her only friend turning on her, still, after twenty years. Nobody ever taught her, or gave her a chance to learn.
She leaves a respectable trail of destruction as she slinks outside, letting Gloreth think she’s won, but not before she’s cast her pawprints in the amnesiac scrolls of myth and folklore, a flaming page sinking into the crevices of human history, consigned to stay ghostlike yet reverberating—her own figure stretched out of shape by a poisoned imagination.
She is many things besides a monster. She only wants someone who can recognise that.
“Cat got your tongue?” Nimona says to Ballister, somewhere between their fifth and sixth slices of pizza.
She shows him her best impression of a tiger purr, and laughs when he looks lost for words. His name is Boldheart, or Blackheart or some other cliché, and she adores him, like a kitten adores its favourite roll of yarn. He’s naïve, he has the perpetual guise of a sad puppy left out in the rain too long, and Nimona knows she’s already going to win him over.
“I’m—I’m not sure about this plan,” Ballister stammers. “Isn’t there a way to strike against the Institute that doesn’t involve killing the Director?”
“Oh, you goody two-shoes.” Nimona feigns an unamused yawn. “Nobody’s giving you points for taking the high road, you know. This isn’t a game where you play-act a knight and then try to pick the right choice on a moral compass every time. Real life’s a roulette wheel.”
“I’d just like to avoid violence, alright,” Ballister says, and waves his palms in a gesture of measured reason. “Can I be a pacifist villain? Is there such a thing as a pacifist villain?”
“Only the blandest ones. Blegh.”
“Well, there you go.”
“Keep that up and I’m going to die of boredom. You can have the honour of signing my tombstone. It should say, ‘Cause of Death: Sir Knight Ballister Stick-Up-His-Ass Boringheart’.”
“Nobody is going to die,” Ballister insists again, like a captain cheerily reminding his crew on a sinking ship that everything is fine. “Unless it’s from the blade of justice. But I like your idea about hosting a parade through the city. That sounds pretty fun, actually.”
It is going to be fun, and wouldn’t Nimona know it; it’s going to rain purple confetti, with a piñata of the Great Black Monster as its centrepiece. People will rush to pummel it, of course. And when they disintegrate it with a satisfying crackle, a hologram video of the confession they’re going to procure will play. Neither she nor Ballister will have to do anything, except watch from the sidelines. It’ll be clean. It’ll be fast and entertaining.
The truth is, Nimona’s spent so long wallowing in misery that she’ll take fun wherever she can get it; in becoming a demon baby, in crashing through the walls of the Institute, in teaming up with an unlikely friend. She’s done enough penance for the crime of being herself. She can allow herself this little treat.
They hash out the details of their plan for a while more, tracking their path and angle of attack on the Institute, and then Nimona settles into a comfortable, thoughtful silence with Ballister.
“Hey,” Nimona says after a moment, and snaps her fingers to get his attention. Hums a deep tune. “Ballister. I’ve got a question. Is there ever a time when you stop doubting yourself?”
Ballister glances at her, curiosity piqued. “What do you mean?”
“Just—your purpose, I guess. Or who you are. I figure every night that I should have taken one of those Kwispy Krisps quizzes on the back of the box about what you should be when you grow up. Then maybe I’d have a proper career. Like being someone's golden kid, not a fickle shapeshifter.”
Ballister actually contemplates her question, which is nice. That he listens to her. “Knights are trained from young to have a single purpose,” he starts. “Loyalty and chivalry. But if I’m honest, I’ve been enjoying breaking away from that.”
“Yeah? How’s that working out for you?”
“It’s refreshing. And being an outsider is better than staying in an institution that doesn’t value you.” He takes a breath. “I figure you’re who you are because it feels most right. You could be anyone and anything, you’re right, but you want to be Nimona, because it feels true. Anything else would be a betrayal. And there's nothing wrong with that.”
“Wow. Look at you being profound, Boldheart. Colour me impressed.”
“Not profound, just someone with perspective.” He shakes his head. “Lots of people in the kingdom live lives of petty desperation too, you know. Everyone pretends they’ve got it together, but the ground isn't rock solid and could change any day. Like what happened to me.”
Nimona blinks, and then— “Hey, that’s why we misfits gotta band together, right?” Nimona stretches her arms out. “Against the sword-rays of green death threatening to ruin our careers. Alright, alright, I hear you. I promise I’ll stop turning into a fly at night and buzzing around your ear to annoy you.”
He gives her his best approximation of a long-suffering smile. “I appreciate that.”
She sits back on the couch in her lair—their lair—afterwards, a new emotion unfurling through her chest, counting the poker cards of her existence. She’d always thought this part would involve pain, the task of compromising herself and bleeding herself dry for a person unlike her, for the sake of dragging them into friendship. But after Ballister’s initial doubt, he hadn't needed to be dragged in at all. He's the first human in almost a millennium who hasn't been driven away, who’s been willing to be a certificate to her deepest mundane truth: that she’s neither detestable, nor radioactive. She grieves and breathes and bleeds, just like anyone else. Well, maybe not the bleeding part. But the rest of it is true.
It’s part of what she’s suspected all along, but never had the opportunity to confirm: that there are ways of moulding yourself to people that are bloodless, that don’t require sanding away your rough edges. An ingredient, only, of welcoming in the light, of opening your embrace up to happiness. Perhaps this is all you need to belong: knowing you are safe in your differences from other beings, in the presence of the right people who notice the right things.
The moment Nimona crashes through the city gates, men and women scream; but she only has one destination in mind, an apex for her sorrow, and her feet never slow as she advances.
She’s never dared to come this close to Gloreth’s statue. There is no way any living being can withstand the agony Nimona is in. Nobody else has endured a whole millennium of outsiderhood like her, and mutation wraps around her like a second skin. She's at the height of her abilities; she’s reached her breaking point; nothing can stop her. Everything's a pin or precipice waiting to drop, and she is the avatar of both wretchedness and glory.
At Gloreth’s statue, Ballister stalls her with a palm to the echoing cavern of her chest, a single foolish, impoverished gesture. She locks eyes with him, and sees: a path through, perhaps. A silent plea. A turning point.
Nimona turns, and launches herself in one last grand show, a swan song, and flies up as a phoenix through the sky, saving the city from the Director.
Revival comes to Nimona in halting drips within the splinters of the old kingdom. The sun’s glare flits over her eyelids like a butterfly, and she blinks her eyes open under the parchment sunlight caressing her in response. For the first hour she simply dusts herself off and takes in her surroundings, lifting a bruised hand to her face as she gazes out upon the unravelled valley; the aftermath stares back in its unholy extent and she throws a smile, small and lopsided, at the bird-shaped dent in the city's perimeter.
Then she gets up, and wanders.
She wanders into the city, marvelling with an escaped convict’s relief at its buildings and the streets teeming with people. Gradual vivacity, the sort made up of people piecing back their homes together rubble by rubble. She walks through a boulevard of knights and children in broad, surreal daylight, its trellises overgrown with a riot of violet irises that survived disaster, and the breath catches in her throat when nobody, not a single person, lifts a sword against her. Already the earth is mending; mending against disfigurement, bending beyond the rusted chains of the Director’s tyranny and dogma.
Elsewhere, Ambrosius Goldenloin is marshalling the knights together, sending the call for a new republic and a revised treatise on monsters. The winds of change are fast rippling through. Nimona feels the lightest she has in a long time, the world around changing to reflect her wishes. After a millennium, fluidity has come to these shores.
Somehow, she has always believed it would happen, against the dumb optimism of the thing. It’s why she held on this long, against the wishes to impale herself on Gloreth’s blade. She is an ancient creature armed still with a child’s heart, after everything, and that innocence has helped her survive the heartbreak of human society, the collision of other souls into her life. She’s free now to rediscover herself, safe in the joy that she will always be unfolding, her next transformation an exciting experiment, her cells and blood given a fresh chance at artistry.
She ventures to Ballister’s door once more with her best shark-dance moves ready. Sure enough, he greets her with genuine shock and happiness, eyes widening as he pulls his heartwood door open.
“Got space for an old friend?” Nimona asks.
Ballister flashes her an impish grin, ready for mischief. She’s taught him well. “Need you ask?”
It isn’t their last adventure together. He gives her a fistbump and then grasps her gloved hand, welcoming her to his hearth, to the brave new world they helped build.