#ashe lore

When I was young, around 14 or so, I was just kind of figuring out my life. Finding out I was trans, or even egged, or even kinky, was going to be another few years away (btw shoutout to @adamwitt for your help there, fucking nerd.)

Well, I decided a few things about my bodily autonomy and started growing my hair out, grooming myself a bit better, just generally trying to feel good about my body. I was developing some other stuff, and the way I looked didn't fit the way I wanted to look, and I wasn't really quite sure why. I did know, however, that I wanted longer hair. Nothing extreme, should length was fine enough for me.

Well, my dad made fun of me for it. A lot. Not just like "oh lookin' shaggy there kiddo" but full on "You're starting to look like a fag, get your hair cut or I'll shave it off." kind of shit. It was intense. This went on for a few months at first, and then I joined the swim team in high school.

As a 14 year old boy in high school, I got bullied a bit, as I'm sure we all did. But my hair really wasn't much of a concern for anyone. The worst I got was being called Eric Foreman (from That 70's Show). No one called me a fag or queer or a homo because of my hair.

Not until my dad did. At a swimming meet. In front of my team. After I won. His congratulations turned sour immediately after he said "well now that you're winning, you gonna cut some time by shaving your head? I'm telling you, it makes you look like a sissy."

This was not the end. Now my team was doing it. They'd bring in their dad's clippers and offer to shave my head, or they'd make comments in the showers, and it was pretty terrible. I eventually quit the team when it didn't stop in the middle of my second season.

That first year though, right before some big tournament, my dad picked me up from school. This didn't happen very often, and he said we were going to McDonald's or Coldstone or some such place, as a treat. We weren't. We went to one of those sports-themed barbershops, the ones where they hire attractive women like they were the hooters of hair cuttery.

Luckily for me, the lady who ended up cutting my hair either knew what was up when she saw my sobbing quietly in her chair, or had read the FUCKING GENEVA CONVENTION (seriously, cutting the hair of prisoners is an actual war crime, look it up), and decided to help me pull one over on my old man.

She asked if she could even out my hair, make it look a bit more presentable, and even help me figure out how to style it a bit better. Now this is mid-aughties money, but it was still like a $30 wash, trim, style. Then, just to add a pickle on top of his shit sundae of a comeback, she convinced my dad to buy me some nice Tea Tree oil shampoo and conditioner. The really nice shit, I think it was Paul Mitchell brand? Shit was like $25 per bottle, and she suckered his ass into one each because it would help get rid of the chlorine from all the pool water.

This lady was my hero for an hour. I was still sad, still unhappy with what my dad tried to do to me. Maybe it's not as bad as getting beaten or having him pull out the clippers and hold me down, but it was still a betrayal of trust, not 2 years after my parents had divorced and sent me and my sister down diverging paths of emotional hell and mental anguish.

He doesn't remember anymore. Maybe he remembers that he tried and we pulled one over on him, but he doesn't remember how angry he was when we got in the car. He doesn't remember how hurt I was when he dragged me in. He doesn't remember trying to bribe the hair stylist with $40 to make sure I walked out with a "respectable hair cut." But it's been 15 or 16 years now. He's old.

He's softer too now. He treats me like a daughter. Sometimes the meds he's on make him seem not all there and he forgets, but I've seen him shake the fog away and remind himself, and call me Ashley like I want. We still talk about cars and planes and guns and the cool shit I liked back then that I still like now.

I haven't asked him to apologize about how he acted back then. He did that by being less of a piece of shit in his old age. But at the same time, I won't forgive him his past, because it was a defining traumatic moment in my life. I'll never forget it. And when he finally kicks the bucket, I'll let that memory fade into obscurity, remembered only by me as something that hurt and shaped me into who I am today. It's weird to say it made me a better person, but it did.

At some point, wanting to be a girl became a thing for me. It might just be my brand of Weird Brain Shit, but it felt very sudden. All at once, I was going through puberty and dating and having sex and doing all the things teenage boys do at that time, and it almost never felt off. I was in shape, I was actually pretty muscular and if I had kept up with my workout routine that highschool sports had instilled into me, I might have come out looking like a pretty hot guy. Especially after the acne went away.

But, something clicked in me. Something tiny that didn't make sense just yet that I wanted to be a girl. Not that I didn't feel like a boy, or that I couldn't keep being one, but that I wanted to be a girl. I couldn't find words to explain it for a very long time, and I still don't think I'm doing it justice, but I've come to understand it a little.

I ended up letting my at-the-time undiagnosed anxiety hold me back for a very long time. By 17 I knew that I didn't really think I was cis, maybe genderfluid or bi-gender, because those were easier things to think of. Around 18, I told my friends at the time, who at this point had seen me in a skirt in private on more than one occasion. But that was all just for sex and playing with gender roles with fuckbuddies. I still didn't understand.

At 20, I pushed that all down as hard as I could for awhile. I wanted to join the navy, be a pilot and fly fast planes. I still kind of wish I could, but that time has come to pass. At 22, when my application kind of just fell through and my girlfriend of 4 years (12 now) moved. I rekindled my relationship with my gender questioning, but I still wasn't motivated. I even went on a few dates (thanks polyamory!) dressed as a woman, though I'm not sure I really fit the part yet.

And then, the big thing happened. I was 25, squandering my life, and had just moved again. I didn't have a job and both me and my partner were depressed as hell. She broke up with me days before the move, and I went back home to my mom.

Utterly broken and looking for anything that could change me for the better, I started therapy. My therapist convinced me to talk to myself, to understand who I was and what I was feeling, In three sessions, I understood that I wasn't male. I shouldn't have been trying to be, I had been so lazy and so stupid and the 19 year old me would be disappointed in how I wasted the body we had sculpted into this lazy, floppy mess. I ugly cried in his office for 45 of our 50 minutes. He wasn't very familiar with this kind of problem, and gave me what help and resources he could.

Within a few months I had a job again, complete with health insurance and the kind of stability you get from having a paycheck. On October 30th, 2018, I had my first appointment with a doctor to start HRT. I met them as my old name, but that would end shortly.

On Halloween, I started my first dose of estrogen and spiro. I cried again, asking myself why it took so long to do this. I had insurance before, I could have done this then. I could have looked online, I could have done so many things! But I didn't. I pushed it off because it was easier then.

Honestly, less fanfare than I thought there'd be. I mean don't get me wrong it's been a wild ride, but the last few weeks before I hit the big 3-0 felt very... anxious.

I know now how not-a-big-deal it is to have moved up to 30, but the last month of 29 felt like I was missing something, that I didn't have what I thought I was supposed to by then. Obviously everyone has their shit figured out by now, right?

WRONG

And oh how wrong I was. It's just another year. We're all still figuring things out, all the time. There's those posts about people who don't do some big thing until their 40's or 50's or whatever!

But even that isn't what I was so worried about. There were so many little things I wanted to have done that I just hadn't for so long. You know what the big accomplishment I wanted to have before my 30th birthday was? Finishing a game. Not "100% all quests all secrets found easter eggs unlocked" but just finishing a game.

Well I fucking did it! I finished Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate Daemonhunters(yes that's the full title). I had to save scum and restart missions and read about how to beat certain bosses but I still finished the story and saw the credits. I haven't done that since... fuck, this is even worse than the Warhammer game, Modern Warfare 3. That's how long I have gone without finishing a game.

I played Stardew Valley a bit this year too, but I stopped after I married the character named after my girlfriend because that was the end of the game for me. I set my own goal in a game that doesn't really care about goals and just wants you to have fun and that goal was even less than the basic premise of "have a nice farm."

From her vantage point, Ashe could see the people of her small tribe were busy at work preparing for her mother's triumphant arrival from the raid. Down there, they'd be skinning and gutting rabbits for the feast and preparing the flagons for the copious amounts of mead that would be consumed in the celebration. In her heart, she knew she should be happy to see her mother return and to celebrate the warriors who fought daily to keep the tribe safe. Instead, she was consumed by the shame of perpetually being not-good-enough in her mother's eyes. Week after week she was left home instead of honing her skills during raids. Month after month she could feel herself falling into one of the lesser roles of the tribe, namely the gatherers. It stung her more than the ice shards in a blizzard.

Above the bustling nestle of cabins, Ashe was perched on a large boulder that was jutting out of the side of the small mountain that overlooked her home. The mountain was overgrown with snow-topped evergreens and was quiet. This place was her escape and she took solace in the fact that she could comfortably stay here and watch and know that even if a villager happened to glance up, she wouldn't be seen. There was only one person who knew of her 'happy place', as he called it. His name was Cyril Buchlisen and he was perhaps her closest, if not only, friend. Often enough if she was missing he'd climb a couple minutes up the mountainside to find her. They wouldn't speak, just sit and watch the town below. She felt guilty for it, but he was really the only person she was looking forward to coming home. From her perch, she kept an eye out for his abnormally colored auburn hair.

For most of her teen years, she'd hated Cyril. In the archery training classes, he'd been the prodigy. She too was a prodigy of the art, but she hated him because he'd risen quickly through the ranks in her mother's favor as she'd stayed behind. Cyril had always been the quiet type, and when Ashe was young she saw his silence as arrogance.Her skin crawled in his presence, and he quickly became the benchmarker of her sucess. 'Shoot quicker than Cyril', 'Be more accurate than Cyril', 'Become better than Cyril'. Eventually she'd become more on point in her shooting, and she and Cyril were labelled "too advanced" for the teen's archery classes. Cyril was promoted hunter by ceremony, and Ashe looked forward to going through the same ceremony.

The harsh reality was that in Aithne's eyes, Ashe was still unworthy of the hunter title. Instead for the past year, Ashe had been recieving "private lessons" from her mother...in plain view of the entire homestead. It was after these lessons that Cyril the Hunter had come back into the picture. There were nights where Aithne had given up on Ashe's perfection and left her in the snow, and on those nights Cyril came to bandage her wounds. She felt this was some sort of punishment from her Mother, a handful of salt in the wounds that he was wrapping. One night, instead of waiting for him to come out of the woodwork, she walked up the mountain. She held her bow and arrow and bloodied fingers in her lap and peered over the rock. She watched the archers get on their horses and prepare for that night's boar hunt. She watched and she hated them. That was where Cyril found her.

Something broke inside of Ashe, and she leapt to her feet, arrow strung and pointing at his forehead. She was far from firm, shaking from more from anger and hurt than from the cold. "Why do you always come? Is it because my Mother tells you? Because no one else will? Or is it because you love to see my suffering?" She expected him to attack her, but he only led up his bowstring-calloused hands and looked her in the eyes. "You mother's never sent me. I send myself because I want to help you." Ashe had thrown her weapons into the snow and jumped down from the outcropped rock. He'd caught up to her and forcibly bandaged her hand, but she had barely struggled. From then on, he followed her up the mountain.

On several occasions she'd threatened to shoot him or push him down the moutntain, but he always stayed. Over time, they became very close. Ashe was fourteen, three years away from being of marriageable age. Cyril was a year older than her, but more and more she began hoping she'd be promised to him. Her feelings didn't go unnoticed by him, and she was overjoyed to find he cared for her just as much. Hidden from the watchful eye of her mother, she'd already had her first kiss and many more. Their occasional nights on the mountain and the even rarer scout duties that they were put on were the only times Ashe was truly happy. Two nights before, Ashe had been with Cyril on the mountain. He informed her that the warriors were leaving in the morning for a raid, and told Ashe that he planned to talk to Aithne about betrothing them on the way home because she'd be in a better mood after their victory. Even if Aithne wouldn't ever decide to name her the real successor to the tribe, at least Ashe knew she'd be happy and well taken care of by the best warrior of the town. With a handful of goodbye kisses and his embrace, Cyril was gone when the sun rose.

Ashe snapped out of her reverie and noticed that the warriors had returned. she could see them slowly approaching the village in the distance, but they were too far to distinguish any faces. Gracefully she hopped down from the boulder and began slowly descending the snowy bank. Ashe would try and sneak into the crowd from behind as she often did, to avoid being spotted. When she approached the closes cabin to the end of the village, she quickly realized something was amiss. The village was silent. there was no sound of cheering, no laughing, no sounds of work. Ashe's slow pace quickly turned into a sprint as she dashed between the cabins. At the mouth of the homestead, the entire villages was standing. The elderly, the children, the warriors, and their familes all silent with head bowed. Like curtains, they parted as she approached.

Ashe's throat tightened and her breath caught in her lungs when she reached the tribe's field general. Elvwar was a man who was build like an oak, and he towered over everyone in the village, but here in bowed in front of her, the tree had been cut in half. "Ashe. I have some news." That tone of voice twisted a knife in her gut. She realized all of the tribe's warriors were kneeling in the snow behind him, all of them surrounding four lumps of fur on top of shields. No. "There was an accident....the enemy has grown in number and we didn't forsee that. Our warriors fought bravely...but there were some casualties." Ashe was deafened by his words, her ears not registering the sobs of the people behind her or the whines of the horses.

Ashe's legs felt like lead as she carried herself towards the lumps covered in furs and blankets. She was paralyzed, she couldn't kneel of move. "Take the covers off." Ashe's voice was thick, and tears were already rolling down her face. Elvwar walked next to one of the heaps in the middle and sunk into the snow. The weight of all the Ironspike Mountains was on his shoulders as he removed the bloodied fur that Ashe knew so well. There on the shield was the bloodied face of Aithne, her face peaceful in death. "I'm so sorry, Ashe." Elvwar placed a hand on her shoulder, and it was all the more heavy with the realization that she was now the leader of her tribe at fifteen years old.

With tears starting to freeze on her face, she searched the crowd of archers kneeling in the snow and found the face that she so desperately needed to see was missing. Ashe herself pulled back the remaining furs. One was the female archer from next door. Another was a grizzled old man with a yellow beard. Her ice cold fingers faltered over the coonskin blanket that covered the last corpse. She pulled back the corner and found auburn hair caked in thick dark blood. Elvwar stopped her from pulling it back any more. "It's best that you don't reveal that one in front of the children. He died well. Cyril threw himself in front of your Mother to try to save her...but..." He didn't need to finish.