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How/
Still
Still
Was I a child like you,
once was I someone
wholly,
holy.
Was I innocent?
Was I beautiful?
Am I,
can I be still?
Tell me if I can love you.
Tell me if that's alright.
Tell me if your heart beats
just as quick as mine.
And ask me
are you innocent?
Ask me
are you beautiful?
(How) Can you be so (,) still?
ASHAMIN
BEAUTY IS PERCEPTION
BEAUTY IS PERCEPTION
The little filly was a picture of eagerness and pleasantry. No, Ashamin thought, correcting himself, it couldn't be pleasantry. Pleasantry had a sort of formality that young Zahra lacked. What she had, that was pure liveliness--simple joy found in living in this world.
Ashamin wasn't sure if what he felt was jealousy or admiration. He watched her with a steady gaze, his long tail running along the length of his own body, tracing its lines. He felt weakness and he felt strength. He felt unfamiliar in its patchwork picture, in its frame. Was this something he was doing, this changing of his body and this transformation of his mind?
How was he becoming who he was? He retreated from the little fairy of a filly, smiling briefly at her thanks before looking out over the water and training his black eyes on the ripples in the pool, all the while keeping his ears turned towards Zahra. He had filled that water with his own blood, wrecked the serenity of its cool, and now he had emerged. He was still wet, he was soaked through and to the bone, and he shivered with every chilling breeze. How had he gotten here, so far from home and shivering in the cold?
Was it the little filly who made him this way, or his own self?
Ashamin tried to shake the contemplation from his mind but struggled to do so. The filly's words came to him faintly. As if absent, the buck wandered towards the water on shaking legs, lowering his nose and rummaging at the shore until he could find and grip between his teeth the thick, wet leaves he had felt before in the mud. He shook them clean in the water, listening to the filly with patience all the while, before wandering back to her side.
Through the bundle he murmured softly, over and in between her words, a "stay still." The wet leaves still dripped; he extended his neck further and lower, aiming to plaster a few to cover the cut on her fetlock. He could no longer watch that gold blood slide onto the earth--could no longer watch it spill, needlessly.
When the leaves were free from his mouth, he did not move except to lift his head to the level of the filly's. He thought about what she had said, how he was a very big horse, and how she had called him Asha, as only his father had before her. His late father, the reason he was here in Helovia at all.
The two-toned, now three-tone buck smiled. "I will help," Ashamin said with a dreamy tone, as if only half present. "Whatever you ask of me to help, I will do." His breath crossed over to Zahra as he spoke. He thought about how soft her feathers must be. He stared, for a moment, at the patch of her coat at the base of the nape of her neck. How long would that mane grow, how bold would that neck be?
She was small. She was a child. She was beautiful.
For a moment, Ashamin wanted to cry.
[[Zahra--we can jump time if you want and do a weird silk spinning montage or his help can speed things up, whatever you want/fits best with her magic?]]
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.
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