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There’s a storm coming, and Yasha can feel it. The tension, the frustration and the anger, all those things that live in the pit of her stomach, they come bubbling up like they can feel the change in the air.
Or maybe, that’s not quite it.
Maybe there is a feeling in the pit of Yasha’s stomach, emotions that she normally keeps buried but today they are out for blood. Maybe that’s when the storm comes, when she is at her most uncontrollable. When she remembers that she is a wild thing come undone.
When Yasha was little she thought that when it rained it meant the Gods were sad. She would stand outside with her head tipped back, sticking out a tongue to taste the drops and wondering if they would be salty.
The ocean has always reminded her of loss, the taste of salt on her lips.
Yasha leaves. It isn’t because she doesn’t want to be left, because she is used to that. Alone is just the way she is meant to be, it seems. She leaves because she cannot help it. Because there are days where she is afraid that she might burst, like a dam is building up inside of her and when it breaks everyone around her will become collateral damage.
She knows that others think her uncaring. Stone face and ice cold heart. It is a cruel joke, how far from the truth this is. Yasha is filled to the brim with caring, and it has never done her any good.
Maybe this is her curse: to give a shit in a world that doesn’t.
Looking for storms is like looking for fights, Yasha doesn’t know how to stop searching. She carves her blade through the air, and the impact is like a roll of thunder. It drowns out everything else.
Maybe when it rains, the Gods are crying. If that’s true then when it storms, the Gods are fighting. Hand to hand, yelling and screaming. The sky shakes with their wrath, and afterwards the air tastes clean. There is a balance to everything in this world.
Yasha holds the anger inside her, holds the sadness and the pain. She wields it like a ghostly second weapon, letting it focus and drive her through the fight. Anger is a wild beast, difficult to harness, but Yasha has had a lot of practice. She has been angry for a long time.
Sometimes Yasha isn’t sure of anything except the sky. Sometimes she is not even sure of that. Bound and gagged in the slavers dungeon, time became blurry. If there is one thing Yasha knows how to be, it is alone. Her life feels like a broken record, playing the same sad song again and again.
She found the sky again, but she lost Molly.
If there is anything Yasha should be used to, it’s not getting to say goodbye.
In her dreams, she sees the faces of her friends both past and present. Always the same, always frozen and contorted by the pain of their brutal deaths both real and imagined. This is the fear that lives deep down inside her. That she is like a cursed king in a story - everything she touches turns to death.
She has a book full of pressed flowers that she keeps to remind herself of the beauty of the world. They are fragile and imperfect. They are dead.
Yasha has always been strong, a force to be reckoned with. She was still young when she learned that there are fights that cannot be won with brute strength. She never stopped trying anyway. The wicked blade of her sword has solved at least as many problems as it has created.
The future stretches out before Yasha, a blue sky almost as far as she can see. It takes a moment of searching but far in the distance the grey of gathering storm clouds can be seen.
There’s a storm coming, and it will not be easy to weather. She will turn her face to the heavens and let it wash over her. For the first time in a long time, she will remember what it is like to have friends by her side.
She will be grateful, and she will be sad.