[Even if it would be shameful or embarrassing or strange... Hayame wishes that the only thing detectable in the sudden flood of connection between them was that day in Springstar.
Everything gets so jumbled. She sees him as a boy in the lap of what looks like a mother, as a man with his comrades, and yet beneath the images that should inspire warmth... she can feel the desperation screaming beneath it, the clawing, the struggling, the discomfort with what Meridian energies have wrought in his body.
But Zenith has done its own damage in hers. Where Meridian has tried to sway Amos with all the good that he'd had in his world, Zenith has tried to break Hayame with all the bad that didn't deserve saving. The stables where jinba were bred, captured, and broken to the saddle and bit. A young girl staring from a distance at a dead-eyed armless woman with the same black hair and dun coloring being led to the breeding post, the chosen stallion following after. Fires flickering on the edges of a banquet where a fat, rich lord puffs and groans, pleasuring himself with the pliant mouth of a prospective purchase. Orphaned children of the jinba hunts who barely knew what a parent was. A newly captured jinba screaming around the bit as it's arms are cut from its body, turning a proud, independent creature into a shell that cannot bathe, feed, or care for itself.
And the doubts come with it. She rails against the unfairness of it all, the disgrace of what had become of her. Was that world worth saving? Even if she succeeded in her own quest to save that one village, those few orphans, what did it matter for the rest of the jinba still suffering under the yolk of humanity? What was the point if she'd already failed, if she had to die just to accomplish that one little thing? Wouldn't it be better to remake the whole thing... ?
Hayame keeps her own gaze locked on their hands, the smear of blood-sap over gems and flesh, her fingers tightening and her expression strained. She could not allow herself to doubt, to let the despair creep into the cracks in her hearts, and yet... Zenith had crept in anyway.
cws: sa, slavery, forced amputations
Everything gets so jumbled. She sees him as a boy in the lap of what looks like a mother, as a man with his comrades, and yet beneath the images that should inspire warmth... she can feel the desperation screaming beneath it, the clawing, the struggling, the discomfort with what Meridian energies have wrought in his body.
But Zenith has done its own damage in hers. Where Meridian has tried to sway Amos with all the good that he'd had in his world, Zenith has tried to break Hayame with all the bad that didn't deserve saving. The stables where jinba were bred, captured, and broken to the saddle and bit. A young girl staring from a distance at a dead-eyed armless woman with the same black hair and dun coloring being led to the breeding post, the chosen stallion following after. Fires flickering on the edges of a banquet where a fat, rich lord puffs and groans, pleasuring himself with the pliant mouth of a prospective purchase. Orphaned children of the jinba hunts who barely knew what a parent was. A newly captured jinba screaming around the bit as it's arms are cut from its body, turning a proud, independent creature into a shell that cannot bathe, feed, or care for itself.
And the doubts come with it. She rails against the unfairness of it all, the disgrace of what had become of her. Was that world worth saving? Even if she succeeded in her own quest to save that one village, those few orphans, what did it matter for the rest of the jinba still suffering under the yolk of humanity? What was the point if she'd already failed, if she had to die just to accomplish that one little thing? Wouldn't it be better to remake the whole thing... ?
Hayame keeps her own gaze locked on their hands, the smear of blood-sap over gems and flesh, her fingers tightening and her expression strained. She could not allow herself to doubt, to let the despair creep into the cracks in her hearts, and yet... Zenith had crept in anyway.
If he'll just take it away--]