ashamin

Ki'irha was supposed to be fire. She was the flame, he the... well, whatever the hell didn't belong next to a flame. Watching her now, though, she was some quiet stream, some delicate and soothing force spawned from a once mighty river. She was diminished. She was subdued. She was wrong.

And though everything in Ashamin's heart said stay with her, can't you see this is her love, this is her soul bared and open to you, seeking acceptance, his body revolted and his mind reared in terrified pain. Darling? How many times had she said darling to him, how many times was she going to? What was all this comfort, what was all this... this love?

He murmured the words she said, repeated the most useless of them all needlessly. He turned away and stared past her at Lochan, who stared back at him in frozen fear at the sight of all that blood, and just mumbled like a dummy: "we need a healer." But Lochan didn't move to find one, and Ashamin didn't know how to make him. "we need a healer," he repeated in a whisper, then a sigh, then nothing but in his mind over and over and over, we need a healer we need a healer we need a healer but it didn't take up all the space, there was just enough left for his heart to creep up and cry out and say WHAT ABOUT LOVE?

Ashamin shuddered and started. His body shook, the wound pulsed and blood oozed from it like lava from a crack in the earth. He was coming apart, before and because of her. He didn't know how to say anything other than "we need a healer," and here she was talking about love, and here his heart was screaming about it in his chest and then his skull and it was pounding, everything was a pounding aching desire to be honest with Ki'irha, every instinct shouted DON'T YOU FEEL THIS? and screamed at him WHY CAN'T YOU TELL HER YOUR HEART IS BREAKING FOR HER EVERY TIME YOU LOOK AT HER FACE?

But the haruspex didn't know if that was love. So when he should have told her to drop the metaphor, when he should have told her that he knew he felt something and maybe it was love and would she like to take some time with him, some time alone in quiet walks by the lake and quiet nights in his cave, to talk about this, to find out what it was, to help him through this strange pain, he didn't. He let his body pull itself up out of the snow even though it struggled and cried and resisted with every twitch of muscle and stretch of  limb and he stood and pushed himself away from her, hard and harsh, looked back at her with fire in his eyes that so often were nothing but cold, nothing but deadness, and said "would you stop it? Would you stop talking like that? Would you stop calling me darling and talking about flowers and bees and love, because I don't even know you that well, haven't we only just met, don't I know nothing of your life before this and don't you know nothing of mine? We just need a healer, we don't need to... need to..." Ashamin looked at Lochan, Lochan looked at Ashamin. The small cerndyr shivered in fear and pain, was trapped as if in headlights and could take no step closer or farther away. The haruspex stepped shakily further from Ki'irha, scared of all her touching, of how close she was trying to get to him, and snapped his jaws together at the cerndyr.

"GET US A HEALER, LOCHAN!" he neighed like a scream, his eyes bulging and his tail lashing out in pain. With that, the little eye ran to the healer's cave.



""