❰❰ BRUSH ❱❱ sender plays with / brushes receiver’s hair
A man of few words Sai may not be, but there frequently come times where he is unable to speak how he wishes. He may trip over himself during his lessons, or he forgets to continue the flow of conversation (and thus proceeds to stare overlong, intently but with a reptilian glaze over his eyes).
Other times, he acts without thought.
As his mind swirls with thoughts of tests, homework, and lesson plans, Sai ambles about the monastery courtyard relying solely on muscle memory. Were he to blink now, he would find himself somewhere entirely different from where he had started! It would be a troubling situation were he aware enough to register it as such.
Sai stops, however, when a person-shaped silhouette draws closer into his field of vision. Whoever they are, he stands behind them... and, goodness, is that hair that falls down to the cobblestone? That reminds him an awful lot of his sister... not to mention the similarity in color.
"Shea, you have forgotten to put up your hair...," he mumbles, reaching down to take a sheaf of long strands. "You mustn't allow it to get dirty, now..."
...Wait. Shea's hair is not this color. And she isn't this tall. Actually, this person doesn't look like Shea at all in any capacity.
"Blessed Naga, forgive me!" He drops the hair of a stranger, face quickly paling as he draws backward. His expression is positively aghast. "I am terribly sorry! I was not paying attention and thought you were my sister. I pray that I did not cause you discomfort!"
There had been a time, lifetimes and lifetimes and lifetimes ago, when she had spared what precious free time she had on her appearance. Kohl and rouge; lotions and gold; she'd draped herself in bright fabrics and brighter jewels, too naive to know that the love and devotion earned through such shallow beauty would not be the kind to last.
In that era of ignorance, she'd grown her hair, tying it, curling it, braiding it, and straightening it—again and again, until it grew long enough to reach her ankles. Long enough to hide behind. Long enough to be a noose. She thought to cut it when Lord Sombron gave her the child he'd promised her.
—But then he lied, and then she died, and now she's little better than a fool who spends hours and hours brushing each lock until she's worked each tangle out.
A foreign hand on her labor of love-folly-wish-regret, then, is a filthy and unwelcome thing. She hadn't even let Marni touch her hair, and there had been a time when she had truly treasured that girl with as much affection as she'd deserved.
"And if you did?" Zephia asks, turning to survey the pale face of a man who looks like he's seconds away from sinking into himself. It isn't the kind of terror that she's accustomed to facing, but perhaps that works a little in his favor; the poor thing looks like he'd committed a sin rather than a social faux pas. It isn't entirely unamusing. "Would your prayers have your god come beg for mercy alongside you?"
She waits a moment. Two. She has killed men for much less, but there's rules, and turning a new leaf, and living a new life, and all the other dreary things she must remember. So, she smiles.
"...I'm kidding, of course. But maybe next time, even if you do think of your sister, you keep your hands to yourself, hm?"
