💋 // for asha from orla? or asha and asharen if that tickles the fancy
kisses ! (I'm not counting, but will only do the ones I feel like it until I feel like it)
@extravagantfool & @extravagantmuse
There was the Fool and their Shadow, and they walked through the world hand in hand together.
It is a soft thing, barely a thought through the mind of the Shadow as they press the cold lips against the blind side. Lighter than a feather over skin that they know still feels a pain and a rawness that was unlike anything that Orla had known how to name - but perhaps closer to what she knew. The burning of lyrium upon flesh is a unique sensation, after all, but Asha does not speak of it and so neither does Orla.
Asha cannot see them clouding their blind side, they cannot see the shadow that Orla casts, but they know she is there. They know because of the rustling of leather as the Shadow moves, the weight of their gloved hands against too soft of a fabric to be considered armour, and that feather light touch upon areas that she knows hurt if she could be felt there.
To be a shadow, to be no one, to be unseen, that was where she would always be seen. It is only when Asha pulls them to their good side that the small smile can be seen, the warmth over brown eyes.
The Fool steals a kiss from the Shadow for even in cold days they knew that warmth could be found there. One needed only be willing to close one’s eyes and pick through its pockets.
Perhaps it is a familiarity of bond between not quite blood but of a kindred spirit. Perhaps, indeed, it has something to do with the change that has come upon them when they were able to leave the prison. There is recognition that felt different - like a nerve pinched in the back of her neck where the thin runes of the Well ritual had been etched into her skin. Asharen holds them all the tighter at the feeling, cold fingers made out of flesh and warm brass fingers that smelled of blood despite the blue and green hues.
It is goodbye, perhaps for now - eternity or until death was too large to comprehend and too kind of a thought. It is a kiss given with a smile and with unmoving lips that still speak of prayers to beings that had woven this world into being. There is always a tone of foolishness, that instead of being a woman she is again a child clinging to her mother’s skirts for comfort and guidance, that those prayers should keep them safe. Knowing now what she knew. But she now held the needle: one of the few things that she held still control over.
So, even if no prayer or hope was answered. Even if her kiss was just a form of comfort. A form of affection. That would be good. That would be enough.
They did not need holiness or the divine on their side, only luck and each other.
Asharen still repeated those same words in her mind. Spoken in a stilled, silent tongue and taught lips after she brushes aside red hair. Red from the blood that caked it and from family - just like hers. There is a smile when she moves away; all goodbyes were hard, but this was the hardest perhaps of all - but it was still something that she wanted to do. Needed to do.
And that, that, Asharen knew that Asha would understand above everyone else.
Watch over us, for the path we tread is perilous.
