@kitkat-of-doom it's a little short but I just love his character concept. Auhhh more in the tags but yeah! Here's what I got for Ash!
---
Ash is no stranger to travel: even as a mortal, he'd been familiar and experienced in it.
Back then he'd known the best rule was to pack light. Don't bring many keepsakes with you on long journeys, because keeping track of them would be nigh impossible. There were always greater concerns than trinkets.
But that was centuries ago.
Now, his trinkets decorated his person everywhere he could fit them. Multiple earrings, none of which matched; he has the mates hanging somewhere, fashioned into a necklace or bracelet. Embroidery in fine detail, swirls of august leaves transforming into gusts of winter winds.
Many different belts, all heavy with baubles, cinched the impeccably layered tops to his pants. On those, he'd looped more trinkets around each beltloop.
What he couldn't keep on himself, he kept safer than he kept himself. Knick knacks and keepsakes and collectibles and meaningless things—well, meaningless to anyone who wasn't him.
It was the week before the upcoming solstice, and Ash had a very old friend to pay a visit to.
The path through town had changed in the last hundred years, but the trodden dirt winding down past the well and out to the fields hadn't.
The maple tree that had been growing there was cut down. Again. He'd have to plant a new one. Again. For now, he arranged himself on the stump. Trinkets and stones and bracelets clinked together as he moved.
"I swear they don't listen. I've made your funerary wishes very clear to the groundskeepers. But, that's a problem for later, no?"
Ash tugs one of his enchanted bags loose off his belt and pulls out a harp. An instrument which definitely should not have fit in that bag, and a smile plays at his lips as he wonders if they would've liked that particular bit of magic.
"I've been working on your song, and I think I finally finished it."
He plays the harp until his fingers are aching, which is a rare feat these days.
"Lost bird, sparrow in a storm / When I caught you from midair / You fucking bit me and I swear/ I miss you. Mongrel that you were."
Achingly fond and overwhelmed grief, his smile was for the headstone next to the tree stump.
"You never settled for what they gave you /Wielding your words like the blade they made you / Sharp tongue, sharp wit and sharper eyes still / You could see straight through what claimed to be invisible."
He sang about the firestorm of a person who had changed his life, reminding him of just how far humanity could push itself.
They'd been radical beyond their time, and he'd enjoyed watching that. Back then, he hadn't been as dedicated to memory as he was now. He couldn't say they'd been close friends, not even remotely. But the person had still changed his views, his approach to life again. He'd seen their will carried out, and been taken aback at it.
All of their belongings, fought for and hard won, donated away. Their only wish to be buried beneath the maple tree on the hill.
For him, that was worth remembering. "I don't know when I'll be back to visit. If I'm not out here myself to get a new tree planted, I'll have the groundsmen do it. There's something happening in the kingdom, with our Princess. Things are amiss."
He stared at the stone, the oldest in the cemetery. The name and dates were hardly even readable now.
Pale strands of hair blew into his face with the wind. He hesitated to voice his doubts in full.
"Your presence is sorely missed, my friend. You'd sort this mischief and miscommunication out in an instant. But alas, we continue to muddle on without you."
He stood, putting his instrument away under the protest of sore knuckles.
"I'll see you when this is all figured out. Rest well."
