The last ask has me curious, what exactly happened when Ash appeared in Augus' lake? I know Augus threatened him but did he kinda just take pity on him or leave him to starve? I kinda find it funny picturing a 5-year-old Augus threatening a baby but at the same time it's frightening because he's 5 years old and already talking about violently harming a baby but I guess it's those territorial waterhouse instincts because another waterhorse is in his lake
I know I’ve answered this years ago but as it was years ago I’m not brave enough to wade through the pit of hundreds of asks so I’m going to answer it again, lol. And probably change my mind.
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Firstly, Augus spent most of his childhood in horse form. So a five year old colt is a fair bit more mature than a five year old child (fae do not age like human children do exactly). Also, Ash as a colt, like, Augus wasn’t threatening a defenseless baby, he was threatening a fellow animal that - in his view - could already start eating him out of house and home, running around, threaten him back.
So it wasn’t like ‘cute five year old human child meets a defenseless baby’ and it was more like ‘waterhorse juvenile meats a colt waterhorse and freaks out.’ Ash, because of his general fae maturity in general, wasn’t a baby in human form anyway.
Like, Augus’ instincts to destroy a waterhorse incursion would have been there from birth. That’s not - he’s not a human with human feelings about those kinds of things, that’s very instinctive for him. The lake he was born from only has enough food for one waterhorse, if another waterhorse comes, he will probably die. So, he must defend his land. Augus going against his instincts was actually like, really aberrant, and a lot of other fae find it very fascinating that it happened at all.
So Augus’ instincts to kill Ash were no different to like, hundreds of species of birds pushing chicks out of the nest while they’re still a chick, so that they get more food, and more of a chance to survive. Or chicks who peck other chicks to death. A lot of people are like ‘aw baby birds’ (or baby mice or baby whatever) and those babies are often viciously trying to kill each other in the background to make sure not all of them survive. I think the only example of chicks co-feeding each other cooperatively to make sure everyone has enough are Rosellas in Australia. Lol. (They may have found more species since then, but it’s certainly exceptional enough that ornithologists were like ‘look! Baby birds that don’t want each other to die!’ Nature is wild in tooth and claw, and all that. Fae are not humans, they are far more parallel to the mercenary wild in that respect.
I like to think that Ash realised he was being threatened (and being left to starve) and that his life was in danger, and so changed into human form out of panic, about 70-100 years earlier than he normally would have. And that Augus found the whole thing so strange, he forced himself to change into human form about 70-100 years earlier than he should have, which woke a more nuanced ability to process emotion inside of him. I still think he wanted to kill Ash, on and off, for years afterwards. Particularly every time he changed into waterhorse form. So he began to avoid that, especially since he needed his human hands / arms to gather the extra food he needed to keep Ash alive anyway.
And it was them spending so much time in human form before maturity that sort of changed everything for them. Like, waterhorses have literally zero reason to change into human form otherwise until they hit maturity and need to hunt humans. And by then their mind is so animal and predatory, that they can never really develop traits like compassion.
I sometimes think about Augus’ general noncommittal attitude to Gwyn at the beginning of The Wildness Within, where he sort of takes Gwyn in, but also detachedly threatens him, thinks of ransoming him back, is generally fairly cold overall until he develops more actual feelings. Augus would’ve had that with Ash, but way, way crueller. There would’ve even been periods where I think Augus would start to change his mind and want to abandon Ash or starve him away.
I also think one of the ways Ash was able to appease Augus, was through touch and affection, which waterhorses crave in general. While Ash couldn’t really feed himself, he could give Augus something that Augus couldn’t give himself, and I think it’s one of the unconscious reasons Ash goes straight to wanting to touch Augus when Augus is in a bad mood, or upset. (That survival instinct runs deep, I mean Ash likes doing it - but does he like doing it so much because it was intrinsically tied into him needing to do it for his own survival? Well probably).
