.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
admis
sion
sion
Please, I need
help I need
comfort or something
more, something
less, just a touch
or a sound,
confirmation you're with me
assurance that I'm not alone
ASHAMIN
BEAUTY IS PERCEPTION
BEAUTY IS PERCEPTION
In time, his scream faded to silence. Ashamin became aware of the stillness of the world around him. Was it the winter that dampened sound like this, and seemed to conquer life? He looked out over the surface of the lake, watching little frozen patches float and sink with the slightest ripples.
He would be four years old, soon. Though he knew not exactly when, he knew the anniversary of his birth was coming soon. He could taste it in the way the wind blew cold and unforgiving, and the way it pushed the water. He could taste it, too, in the pattern of his own blood mixed with the fresh pond around him. This was age: growing old enough to be hurt.
Ashamin had been hurt so many times, now. He felt the pain more immediate than before, but knew that this ache of the fight was no different than that of loss. Loss of the father and loss of the virginity of the unscarred flesh were interconnected. As he looked, now, at his torn hindquarter--as he observed the twisted flesh, bent up and away from the muscle--he contemplated a life lived with the injury. Would this become him, this marked hind, this struggle to walk?
Ashamin turned away. There was nothing to look at but pain, and it was a pain he could not bear. His left hoof shifted in the water and he felt the chain of something unfamiliar wrapped around it. Though he startled, when the mud cleared he knew it was no danger. It was a piece of jewelry, an amulet of sorts, he supposed. It had been too cold and stiff to be a snake, too thin and wiry, and now it was something he'd expected even less.
No, the snakes were gone. He looked back at the orb and nudged it carefully back to shore, wincing at the pain in his every movement but trying to keep the little thing safe as he had before with the Owl's visions. The water was too cold for the heartbeat within it.
And then a sound came out of the stillness of everything: a voice. A hello--a word, no, perhaps a name, he did not recognize. His head jolted up with an overeager quickness and his long tail stirred in the water. He longed to lift his body and bring it to the sound of another, the faint trace of hope for healing or even just comfort, but pain shackled him still. His words rang out uneven and unsteady, but clear even in their hesitation.
"Hello?" The call was returned simply. "Is... is someone out there?
Ashamin didn't often ask for many things. Perhaps it was the pain talking--perhaps it was the quickening redness of the water around him, the muddying of its clarity until he could see through it no longer--but he knew, now, that he must ask.
"Please, whoever is there... I need help."
And there it was: his first plea, his first open admission of need since he'd come to this wide, mysterious land. He needed help.
[[For Zahra]]
Table by Jen, with help from Avis
See Ashamin's profile for more information about Lochan, Rakt, and his various items.
All magic and force allowed, barring death and permanent injury.
Do not tag me, please message on skype instead
