@felismarinae asked:
☆ A'steri just kneels there, on half-rotted wooden boards, her spectacles long since tossed aside into some forgotten corner when she was tired of taking them off to wipe at her eyes. White-tipped cobalt hair surrounds her on the floor, falling into the cracks between the boards, clinging to her clothes, making her neck and shoulders itch. She lacks the energy to try brushing it away. A sharpened dagger stands embedded in the wall, presumably thrown with considerable force.
☆ She looks hideous.
To know what would happen while being all the while unable to change it was a curse she had chosen to bear, and this was the first time she simultaneously regretted it, and was proud to have done it. To let another Warrior of Light walk such a path in the hardest times alone like she had--the times where one isolated despite being surrounded by smiling faces and hands that held your own--was something she could not wish on them.
She had expected Haurchefant's death to cut deep. Hells, the pain was one she knew all too well. The grief was a festering wound that stung and fueled her crusade against the Holy See once upon a time. A non-stop mission against the self-proclaimed Fury's chosen. She did not expect to visit the inn room to check on her and be met with the remains of her ponytail scattered across the floor with a knife in the wall and glasses thrown haphazardly across the room.
Wordlessly, Hikari takes out the shears from her weaver's kit and approached A'steri, gingerly taking each mauled lock in her fingers and shaping her hair. She was no hairdresser, but it could be salvaged. Occasionally, she would blow warm, cinnamon-scented breath across A'steri's shoulders to blow off the hairs that clung ruthlessly to her clothing. She was only satisfied when she squeezed the Miqo'te's shoulder in reassurance.
"There was nothing y'could have done. You will spend the rest've yer life makin' excuses. 'What if I were jus' a bit faster' or 'What if I had taken the hit instead?' Y'can't live like I did, A'steri. I will not have this church make you int' a martyr. Let that anger an' injustice fuel yer next move, an' keep movin' forward. It's what he'd want."
