Using the examples mentioned (more-or-less chronologically by character introduction):
Nita starts out the series as a quiet-though-observant kid, almost scared to believe that she could have a kindred spirit in someone her own age - Kit. (Still, she's the one who finds him in the woods and Kit is the one to ask if she's the missing element for his spell.) And then later she is scared of having that relationship/partnership break through change, as first mentioned in High Wizardry and later coming back again as of A Wizard of Mars, whether it's of Kit possibly wanting to see other people or of the two of them being/becoming boyfriend-and-girlfriend, though she also comes to display a resilience in communicating in her close relationships (being the first to bring it up to Kit in the former case, and in the latter having the term spill out during the fight with Aurilelde and Kit not freaking out on her after the fact. "Took you long enough.") She is reluctant to take Kit for granted, and even more unhappy when her parents force her to visit her Aunt Annie in Ireland in an attempt to separate the two. She is willing to sacrifice actual years off her life ("A year of my life per shot!") to keep her friends and family safe. (High Wizardry again - see also her grim acceptance of using her own life as fuel to prevent the Crossings from being invaded in Wizards at War) The Lone Power taunts Nita about her duality between trying to shoulder the burden of everything herself and people somehow managing to "walk into the fire" for her, regardless of her wishes. It's a head-twisting move on Its part, but it doesn't come out of nowhere.
She inadvertently takes the 'willing to sacrifice herself' stance to the next level rather early on in her wizarding career - when S'reee invokes Wizard's Right on Nita and Kit, Nita volunteers herself for the Silent Lord, mistaking the role as one involving literal silence, and devalues herself as explanation ("I'm not much of a singer." is more or less how it goes). She learns in a hurry that she'd have been better off reading the fine print, but it's her budding relationship with Ed'rashtekaresket that helps her come to terms with dying (and then, to tie things along, her love for Kit that motivates her to sacrifice herself as something more than being a martyr or even just "going through the motions" - to make the death something joyful)... and then, again because of that acceptance, and possibly more than a little because she makes mention of wanting to ease the Pale Slayer's pain, it ends up not being her who is sacrificed. S'reee and Nita, in contrast with Ed and Nita, are about two mutually-overwhelmed individuals learning to deal with responsibility that they are otherwise deemed 'too young' to have to handle; Ed had been laboring under his position for a much longer time. It also doesn't hurt when you actually live through someone's pain while healing them; there's something about that sort of experience that has a way of connecting people. That aside, S'reee and Nita continue to collaborate on water-related projects, bringing their different perspectives together to work on things like troubleshooting whalesarks, cleaning the ocean off of Long Island Beach, and dissolving mines. And, like true siblings, they tease each other about relationships; S'reee teases Nita bout Kit, naturally, and Nita learns about S'reee's own boyfriend Hwiii'sh (alongside teasing S'reee about her many titles and since-acquired responsibilities).
When her mother is diagnosed with cancer, make no mistake; Nita's hit just as hard by the news as her father and sister. But, while the latter two are both wizards, and whereas Dairine jumps right in and makes a slapdash attempt at fixing the cancer cells, Nita learns everything she can about medical wizardries, and later kernels, in an attempt to fix her mother the 'right' way. She's glad for the help she finds in the aeschetic continua, though she also notes later that she was too overwhelmed/freaked out at the time to appreciate most of it properly. Pralaya, in particular, becomes something of a mentor to her through his calm disposition; while his species is quite accepting of death, he is sympathetic to her cause and is perhaps drawn to her because of her water affinity... and then it turns out the Lone Power was overshadowing him, seeking to make Nita either break her Oath or sacrifice her wizardry, so she would stop being a thorn in the LP's side. Nita rejects this, and is horrified when her own recognition of the Lone Power in Pralaya's body kills the multi-legged otter, while they are in her mother's body. Nita is still stricken with guilt, much later; all she was able to do in the end was buy her mother some time, not even clean the cancer out completely (though Betty, also seeking not to be a tool of the LP, preferred things this way rather than by making herself a terror to her family in a quest to just cling on to life). It takes some months for Nita to crawl out of her depression, but again her family and Kit (and a timely contact from new-wizard Darryl!) do their best to bring her back out of her shell.
She is thus later unafraid to pull out the 'big guns' when the Lone Power is involved - as seen when she invokes the Binding Oath on Esemeli while on Alaalu to force her to help Nita, Kit (and presumably Ponch) with whatever they ask her to. She also takes no shit (or flirts, or compliments on her intelligence) from the LP in this incarnation, though this nearly gets the two wizards stranded in the figurative center of the planet. In the same timeframe, she learns from Qwelt what it would be like to be the only wizard on a planet, even one that is seemingly perfectly fine with this arrangement and wizardry at large. Like most successful attempts at Study Abroad, she comes to appreciate the planet's own case (and then ends up nearly breaking it to fix it, because of the dream-visions she's getting that imply something is wrong), and to treasure what parts of home are still good, and how hearing things that she already suspects, from the voice of a stranger, can make the utmost difference.
And then, after that not-exactly-a-holiday, she and Kit (and Ponch) come home to find out the universe is going to end, unless the wizards still in latency are able to find a way to stop it. She ends up on a team searching for the Instrumentality that could cut off the Lone Power's machinations in their tracks, and for the most part she keeps her eyes on the goal, though guilt bites at her regarding not being able to communicate with her dad back on Earth (or even hug him, at one point). When she does manage to go back, picking up some wise words from the koi (that make little sense at the time) in the process, she is reminded again of what they are fighting for when Tom doesn't even remember wizardry being real. She nearly reaches such a point later herself - she specifically tells the peridexis that its presence is what's keeping her sane when the Lone Power starts Its crackdown on Rashah. (I'd wager that this reliance is what induces the peridexis into sticking around after the Pullulus is handled.)
Most key during this episode, however, is that Nita has experienced what all children on Rashah go through - but when Memeki (the Yaldat that is also the Hesper) points this out, Nita says exactly what makes the two kinds of death different, planting the seed that motherhood can be different, and that just because the Lone Power is holding all the strings doesn't mean It should continue to get Its way!
And in Games Wizards Play, Nita turns the tables on It. ("I am looking at you from across the board.") By this point she is in no way a passive or even reactionary player, and is willing to treat the Lone Power as an equal. Not just 'with respect', but with challenge, and the expectancy that It, too, can change.
*CRACKS KNUCKLES*
Nita starts out the series as a quiet-though-observant kid, almost scared to believe that she could have a kindred spirit in someone her own age - Kit. (Still, she's the one who finds him in the woods and Kit is the one to ask if she's the missing element for his spell.) And then later she is scared of having that relationship/partnership break through change, as first mentioned in High Wizardry and later coming back again as of A Wizard of Mars, whether it's of Kit possibly wanting to see other people or of the two of them being/becoming boyfriend-and-girlfriend, though she also comes to display a resilience in communicating in her close relationships (being the first to bring it up to Kit in the former case, and in the latter having the term spill out during the fight with Aurilelde and Kit not freaking out on her after the fact. "Took you long enough.") She is reluctant to take Kit for granted, and even more unhappy when her parents force her to visit her Aunt Annie in Ireland in an attempt to separate the two. She is willing to sacrifice actual years off her life ("A year of my life per shot!") to keep her friends and family safe. (High Wizardry again - see also her grim acceptance of using her own life as fuel to prevent the Crossings from being invaded in Wizards at War) The Lone Power taunts Nita about her duality between trying to shoulder the burden of everything herself and people somehow managing to "walk into the fire" for her, regardless of her wishes. It's a head-twisting move on Its part, but it doesn't come out of nowhere.
She inadvertently takes the 'willing to sacrifice herself' stance to the next level rather early on in her wizarding career - when S'reee invokes Wizard's Right on Nita and Kit, Nita volunteers herself for the Silent Lord, mistaking the role as one involving literal silence, and devalues herself as explanation ("I'm not much of a singer." is more or less how it goes). She learns in a hurry that she'd have been better off reading the fine print, but it's her budding relationship with Ed'rashtekaresket that helps her come to terms with dying (and then, to tie things along, her love for Kit that motivates her to sacrifice herself as something more than being a martyr or even just "going through the motions" - to make the death something joyful)... and then, again because of that acceptance, and possibly more than a little because she makes mention of wanting to ease the Pale Slayer's pain, it ends up not being her who is sacrificed. S'reee and Nita, in contrast with Ed and Nita, are about two mutually-overwhelmed individuals learning to deal with responsibility that they are otherwise deemed 'too young' to have to handle; Ed had been laboring under his position for a much longer time. It also doesn't hurt when you actually live through someone's pain while healing them; there's something about that sort of experience that has a way of connecting people. That aside, S'reee and Nita continue to collaborate on water-related projects, bringing their different perspectives together to work on things like troubleshooting whalesarks, cleaning the ocean off of Long Island Beach, and dissolving mines. And, like true siblings, they tease each other about relationships; S'reee teases Nita bout Kit, naturally, and Nita learns about S'reee's own boyfriend Hwiii'sh (alongside teasing S'reee about her many titles and since-acquired responsibilities).
When her mother is diagnosed with cancer, make no mistake; Nita's hit just as hard by the news as her father and sister. But, while the latter two are both wizards, and whereas Dairine jumps right in and makes a slapdash attempt at fixing the cancer cells, Nita learns everything she can about medical wizardries, and later kernels, in an attempt to fix her mother the 'right' way. She's glad for the help she finds in the aeschetic continua, though she also notes later that she was too overwhelmed/freaked out at the time to appreciate most of it properly. Pralaya, in particular, becomes something of a mentor to her through his calm disposition; while his species is quite accepting of death, he is sympathetic to her cause and is perhaps drawn to her because of her water affinity... and then it turns out the Lone Power was overshadowing him, seeking to make Nita either break her Oath or sacrifice her wizardry, so she would stop being a thorn in the LP's side. Nita rejects this, and is horrified when her own recognition of the Lone Power in Pralaya's body kills the multi-legged otter, while they are in her mother's body. Nita is still stricken with guilt, much later; all she was able to do in the end was buy her mother some time, not even clean the cancer out completely (though Betty, also seeking not to be a tool of the LP, preferred things this way rather than by making herself a terror to her family in a quest to just cling on to life). It takes some months for Nita to crawl out of her depression, but again her family and Kit (and a timely contact from new-wizard Darryl!) do their best to bring her back out of her shell.
She is thus later unafraid to pull out the 'big guns' when the Lone Power is involved - as seen when she invokes the Binding Oath on Esemeli while on Alaalu to force her to help Nita, Kit (and presumably Ponch) with whatever they ask her to. She also takes no shit (or flirts, or compliments on her intelligence) from the LP in this incarnation, though this nearly gets the two wizards stranded in the figurative center of the planet. In the same timeframe, she learns from Qwelt what it would be like to be the only wizard on a planet, even one that is seemingly perfectly fine with this arrangement and wizardry at large. Like most successful attempts at Study Abroad, she comes to appreciate the planet's own case (and then ends up nearly breaking it to fix it, because of the dream-visions she's getting that imply something is wrong), and to treasure what parts of home are still good, and how hearing things that she already suspects, from the voice of a stranger, can make the utmost difference.
And then, after that not-exactly-a-holiday, she and Kit (and Ponch) come home to find out the universe is going to end, unless the wizards still in latency are able to find a way to stop it. She ends up on a team searching for the Instrumentality that could cut off the Lone Power's machinations in their tracks, and for the most part she keeps her eyes on the goal, though guilt bites at her regarding not being able to communicate with her dad back on Earth (or even hug him, at one point). When she does manage to go back, picking up some wise words from the koi (that make little sense at the time) in the process, she is reminded again of what they are fighting for when Tom doesn't even remember wizardry being real. She nearly reaches such a point later herself - she specifically tells the peridexis that its presence is what's keeping her sane when the Lone Power starts Its crackdown on Rashah. (I'd wager that this reliance is what induces the peridexis into sticking around after the Pullulus is handled.)
Most key during this episode, however, is that Nita has experienced what all children on Rashah go through - but when Memeki (the Yaldat that is also the Hesper) points this out, Nita says exactly what makes the two kinds of death different, planting the seed that motherhood can be different, and that just because the Lone Power is holding all the strings doesn't mean It should continue to get Its way!
And in Games Wizards Play, Nita turns the tables on It. ("I am looking at you from across the board.") By this point she is in no way a passive or even reactionary player, and is willing to treat the Lone Power as an equal. Not just 'with respect', but with challenge, and the expectancy that It, too, can change.