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Her father looks so small from this far up. Well, smaller. Some days, Asha can barely recognize the gaunt, pale man, so thin that she can count his ribs. When she thinks of her father, she thinks of leathery tanned skin and hard muscles that he'd built as much from working with his mind as his body. Yet when she sees him now...
She shakes the thought away. He still has that same bright gleam in his eyes and boisterous voice.
He meets her gaze from the ground below and smiles. That too is the same. This far up, he hopefully can't see how Asha's lips shake when she returns the gesture. Her mother and grandfather flank his side like soldiers, supporting him even more than the gnarled oak walking stick that has now become a new limb for him.
Compared to him, Saba looks young.
They hadn't had to come. Her father's power was in his words rather than his body. If Asha hadn't pleaded alongside him, her mother probably never would have let him out of bed.
Asha pulls her gaze towards the sky, to its full moon and sea of stars. They've never seemed brighter or as close as they do tonight. It's as if she could reach out her hand and grab one.
Maybe this is why he'd been so insistent on going out, no matter how much he'd been coughing and his legs had been shaking that day. He couldn't have gotten even a fraction of this view from his window.
Asha gives her father another quick glance before leaning back against the wishing tree's sturdy trunk and closing her eyes. Her lips silently mouth a wish that could just as easily be called a prayer.