Here,
I prepare my body for you:
a toy, some trifling aspect of
the sins you wouldn't have it for.

Take it,
before I am gone.
Destroy me someplace quiet.



It had been a long time since the Haruspex had allowed himself to cry, but upon returning from the Goddess of the Moon, he allowed himself this outburst. Lochan was sent home, immediately. The haruspex could not face those white eyes, so sure of everything that they saw and yet so free of judgement. His own coal ones dripped with wet.

And it wasn't because he was scared, really. And it wasn't because he was finally feeling the emotions he had kept locked within him to make room for the problems of others, no. It was some sort of instinct he couldn't understand. He came home to the Basin from his talk with the Goddess of the Moon, and though he did not know why, he could not stop the tears.

The only solution he could find would be to walk. And so he did, far from his cave along the lake and the wide shadow of the sentinels--far from everything he knew and understood. In the steady light of now dawned day he climbed mountain shelves.

He wanted to look down on the world, if only to understand that he had no power over it.

But as he made his ascent, he saw winds stir in sudden storms along a shelf too high for him. It looked deadly in a way he had never seen before, but the urge to thrust himself into its chaos and dry his tears with its rushing air was quelled by the reminder of his new and painful task. No, he had to save his body for the pain of magic.

So Ashamin stuck close to the mountainside, a shelf coming out over his for once nearly bare form (natural save for the coils he always wore and an amulet on the chain of the false god's blue fang) and casting a shadow over him. Only when the storm subsided did he pull his weary body further up the mountain. What he saw, standing before the last of the settling winds with her trusty companion, was Hotaru.

It was too late to stop crying, and to see the lady before him was no help. Old and complicated feelings arose in his breast--cold encounters and intimate ones haunted him. The red lady of winter, the woman of storms, had been the cause of this magic. And though perhaps she had already hurt him too much without knowing--perhaps he had already let himself think more of nothing, dwell upon fleeting and meaningless moments--she apparently had exactly the kind of power that he needed.

His face was still tear stained--the distance between them close enough that she might even be able to see the wet marks. His coal eyes were still brimming and wet. He felt his own heart beating with pain and he listened for hers; in vain, he hoped to find a rhythm that matched his own.

"Hotaru," he breathed with a puff of white air and a shudder through his bones. No title, no formality. Not for all he had thought and wondered in desperate, hopeless hope. Just Hotaru.

He watched the last of the magic settle and the destruction it had caused in the surroundings--small chips of rock cut from the mountainside, little pebbles tumbling down, maybe threatening avalanche. He let his teary eyes look for hers, even as he still sought out her heartbeat.

"Hotaru, I need your help."



""

ASHAMIN