@chaospirals sent : "So many colours trail after you. I could paint for a lifetime and not capture all that you are. What's it like to hold so much life within you?"
so much life within her, he says . . . but he does not see the wells of death she has consumed in order to get to where she is now. thousands of souls, the very essence of what makes a living being alive, devoured as if they were nothing, all in gluttonous greed until one day the burgeoning floodgates began to crack from the swelling tides surging deep within. eventually, the pressure became far too much, and ahri was encumbered by the overwhelming emotions, every memory, and it dawned upon her that, perhaps, she could not live as she had been, stealing soul after soul, life after life, without thought or remorse.
ahri smiles at hwei, now, though she doesn't quite meet his eyes. it's a broken little thing, crooked and eerie and weak, a worn down door thick with the scent of rot hanging pitifully by its hinges, and even then, that untouchable air of otherworldly beauty doesn't falter. her bundled tails rustle, soft and slow with the gently rolling breeze, and she stretches an arm out to catch them, carefully drawing the plumage of thick, white fur into her lap.
her gaze remains distant, as though she's silently pondering the capsizing seas of void and darkness grasping for her limbs to drag her down into depths she cannot escape in penance for the sins she has wrought upon this earth. " what colors do you see? " she asks, at long last. ahri absentmindedly strokes the fur of her tails, dragging her clawed fingers through the fine hairs and between the tails. her breath stills in the pit of her lungs for but a moment as she considers her answer.
ahri releases her tails and sets them loose behind her, and once more they sway with the wind in tandem with the branches and leaves. " when you live as long as i do, you learn the lessons the centuries bring. the lessons of life in its sweetest moments, and the lessons in the mistakes you make in all of their tragedy and loss. " a melancholic note cuts into her voice, clinging thick with a heaviness that digs its claws in deep. " you learn to appreciate life for what it is, live in respect to the world around, let go of the things that burden you, like petty revenge. and it helps, you know, that i'm not the same cold - blooded killer mothers used to tell their children horrific bedtime stories about. "
that, she adds with a smile, coy and teasing. even ahri has to find a way to pepper humor into something sorrowful that would otherwise cloud the mood with inescapable darkness.
