Asch

Whispers haunt the caverns of her conscience, maleficent meanings lost on the little flower traversing the snows. Midnight tales of rapturous defeats of dragons and saved damsels had never inspired her, nor had the woven stories of monsters, beasts and behemoths, barbarians and hellions, ever turned her away from the darkness of the night. At too young of an age she had already seen that world, felt the burn of meaningless hatred across her spine, cowered beneath the malevolent gazes of her captors. There was no longer anything for her to lose, for the raptors of the wilds to pluck from her soul.

There was no longer anyone left behind to miss her when she disappeared.

How long it had been since she'd left the borders was unclear, a smog that clouded and compacted in her mind until the days became a slew of hours. There was no desire to strip her allegiance, far too young for such a foolish move. Instead, borne in its place was the need to find her father. Searching, scentless and idly roaming, for the ghost perhaps better left lost. Chasing specters of her mind, a trail of isolation and loneliness that she hid behind demure smiles and misguiding answers. Benevolent wanderers, few though they were, oft stopped her and queried where her parents were, why was she out alone in the snow and the cold with such danger lurking? Asch would bite back her answers with a shy turn of her lips concealing her bitterness. Where indeed were her parents?

She comes across the structure perhaps by accident, or maybe Fate decides she has been lonely too long, has been swallowed by the void of aimless despair and must be reunited with the world. Giving her a soul she may recognize, but one unnoticed for a few moments more. She tentatively approaches the masterfully constructed rotunda, gasping in the reverent awe belonging to those of newfound beauty. Pale golden hooves hesitantly placed themselves ahead upon the soft whispers of the snow, watching the iridescent swirls of color that swept her away on their ribbons of newness.

The sound of hoof on stone was a surprise, and her knee jerked the limb back before staring inquisitively down at the step she had attempted to ascend. It was quite like the quarries of the Basin, the stone of the granite often found intermixed in the tundra rock. Humming with curiosity, she tapped her hoof to the stone once more before dancing her way atop the steps, breath catching at the kaleidoscope of colors that exploded before her as she stood beneath the stone boughs of the structure, firmly atop the gleaming floor. Her circle ended abruptly as a deep sapphire figure caught her eye, and though she startled and dropped her head in automatic shyness, peering up she suddenly recognized the wayward son.

"Erebos?" she called, a little dumbfounded to find another her age so far from home. Clicking her heels as she walked, the golden dame offered a smile and gazed down at him cheekily from the vantage point she had over him. "Come on! It's really cool," she urged, trying to be normal for just one second Gods please just one day of normalcy. One where she wasn't quiet and bitter, as dark as the storms she often saw in Aithniel's gaze, or when her little sister played with reanimated dead animals.

Yeah, her family was all sorts of fucked up. But maybe for once, someone could see past that, see only her? Detached from the tangled strings of ArahArwenCrowleyRhiannon? Just...Asch.

Just Asch.

all those years never feeling pretty