#echo asher

{This turned out to be much longer than expected, so a ‘read more’ to prevent your dash from becoming scroll hell.}

Slate spared a glance into the heavy pot he’d hung over the fire, balancing the wooden spoon on one of the stones he’d used to build the fire pit. He couldn’t focus well on anything else, afraid that if he diverted his attention entirely, the little white-haired girl would end up simply walking away. 

After all, she’d tried three times already. 

There had been no words exchanged, despite Slate’s best efforts to coax her into at least telling him her name. But she hadn’t struggled away when he’d changed the bandages on her feet, bathed her festering scratches and reapplied the ointments. 

In fact, after a night’s sleep, warmth and another bowl of broth he’d urged her to drink, she was looking much better. Her pale grey eyes didn’t follow him as he moved around the campsite, but remained focused on the distance. She occasionally lifted her left hand, turned it, looked at her bent fingers and then settled into stillness. 

...but he’d turned his back long enough to tug off his shirt, slosh a little water over himself and then seen the empty blanket and her hair, shining in the sunlight as she walked away. 

That’d been the first time. 

After she’d slipped away in the middle of the night, Slate had taken to sleeping with a hand resting on her ankle, fingers twined in the ragged bit of stocking she still wore. 

When she had wandered away while he chopped wood, he had adjusted his routine to ensure she was never fully out of sight. 

It was exhausting, but he couldn’t bring himself to do less. The damage done to her hands and feet, the livid scars he had found while bathing her, the wounds still fresh on her body from traveling unequipped and alone... Slate’s tired heart wrung just a bit more when he looked at her, expressionless and staring. 

With her visible in his peripheral vision, Slate gave the thicker broth another stir before he dipped out a bowlful and cleaned the outside of the bowl with a handful of wet leaves. 

“Hey, lit’l bit. Here. Tuck in, ya need t’ keep yer strength up,” he said, approaching her with slow care, kneeling in plain sight and pointedly taking a sip of the hot broth before offering the bowl to her. 

For all that she’d clearly suffered, the white-haired girl didn’t seem to fear him. His voice pulled her gaze back to him, but her eyes never wholly focused, even when she took the bowl in both hands. Obediently sipping, she didn’t flinch away when Slate drew the blanket back over her shoulders and tucked it around her. 

He waited in silence for her to finish, cupping his hands around hers carefully so carefully she’s so fragile to urge the last mouthful on her. That close, Slate could see that she was beautiful. And it made his aching heart wrench just a bit more, realizing that he was comparing her features to Gwena’s, searching for similarities and finding only differences. 

Slate put the bowl aside and let out a slow breath, shifting his weight to sit before her. “...really wish ya’d talk, lit’l bit. Or ‘least tell me yer name so I know what t’ ask people ‘bout while we’re tryin’ t’ find yer folks.” 

Without thinking, he reached out and smoothed a loose lock of her white hair back, tucked it gently behind her small ear. “Pretty lit’l gal like ya oughta have somebody lookin’ for ya.”

Despite the touch, she didn’t move, and her glassy eyes remained fixed on the distance, staring past the trees at something he could only imagine.

His shoulders dropped slightly, and Slate let out a sigh that was deeper than he’d intended it to be. 

It was the light, cold touch to his jaw that caught his attention, diverted his thoughts momentarily from the laborious circles they’d continuously dragged through. Slate looked up and blinked once. 

She was looking at him. Not through him, not past him, but at him, and there was some vague emotion in her pale, pale eyes that seemed to match what he had felt for weeks. 

The blanket clasped in one twisted hand, she shifted, clumsily dragging herself over, and Slate nearly jerked back when she simply crawled onto his lap. Without a word, she laid her head on his chest and pulled the blanket to her shoulder, haphazardly arranging it over herself and across his legs. 

Her weight against him brought sharp pain; Slate closed his eyes against it, even as his arms closed around her involuntarily. There was a little shift, and then she went still, not moving even when he scooted back to rest against the log he’d used as a makeshift seat. 

One cold hand rested against his shirtfront. Slate drew the blanket up and tucked it snugly around her before he looked up at the darkening sky. Surrounded by trees, in the peaceful quiet of dusk, with the weight of a weary, sad girl in his arms, the hurt rose in him again, remembering an orchard, a redhead in pale yellow, tears shed against his chest, and a soft voice murmuring “You feel so... safe.”

“You’re quite lovely, my dear.” Cain brushed a wisp of white hair away from her face and touched her chin, trying to bring her gaze up to meet his. Even when he angled her head, the girl’s pale, pale eyes stayed focused on something in the distance that he couldn’t see. 

The life energy that he kept balanced in her, a hand always on her arm, her back, her wrist, was strong. But there was something strangely frail about it at the same time. Something ethereal and light, as if little bound her to the concerns of the living.

It was intriguing, but not wholly unfamiliar. At least, not to him. Cain had met people in the past with the same strange, ghostly feel to them. 

All of them had been insane, but possessed of a particular clarity, a focus that he’d never found in anyone else. Judging by how she glanced at her hand and the way she would fuss until he ‘sedated’ her if they went off whatever path she had tried to follow, Cain guessed that she had the same intent focus. 

On what he wasn’t sure, but there was time enough to learn of such things when he had her safely out of the mountains. Slender and small in stature, the girl was no great burden for him to carry, and Cain swung her back into his arms as they approached one of the brooks that striped the mountains. 

Another tug and he stepped back, squinting to make sure the oiled canvas was securely tied. Slate nodded to no one in particular, moving around the freshly hewn birch to crouch by the fire, tossing a few more chunks of wood into the flames. 

His gaze shifted sideways to the wrapped bundle beneath the makeshift tent he’d erected, and the hunter sighed. 

Despite getting her warm, washed and conscious, coaxing her to sip a bowl of broth and clothing her as best he could, there had still been nothing from the white-haired girl. She had blinked at him and followed the finger he’d upheld, reassuring him that her unusually pale eye color didn’t mean blindness. Had taken the bowl he’d offered and sipped the broth under her own power once he’d urged her to. Hadn’t protested the overly large woolen socks, the shirt that hung to her knees, the thick layer of vest or the blanket he’d swathed her in. 

But she’d not said a word. 

The silence didn’t bother Slate, but the fact that she had so many poorly tended wounds did. They were either healed or in the process of healing, and he had done what he could with the pack of healing salves and bandages left over from tending his face. 

Her pale gaze had focused on his face momentarily, tracked the lines curving towards his ears, but there had been no other overt reaction. Slate might’ve taken heart that the scars left weren’t too hideous if he wasn’t relatively certain she was so traumatized by... something that she couldn’t comprehend what was going on. 

The hunter let out another slow, quiet sigh as he tossed another chunk of wood onto the fire and settled back on the flat slab of wood serving him as a seat. 

It wasn’t something he’d planned to deal with, a person, let alone a damaged girl that was clearly in trouble. But now that he’d found her, tended her and done what he could, Slate knew he couldn’t simply haul her to the nearest patch of civilization and send her on her way. 

After all, it wasn’t like anything else was going to be taking up his time now. He could afford to find out who it was that had damaged her so badly and find someone who could give her proper care before deciding what he was going to do next. 

But all that would have to wait until morning, at the very least. She was thin and weak; trying any extensive traveling with her would be hazardous at best, and he wasn’t about to risk her health any further. 

Slate glanced at the surrounding trees and let out another slow sigh before he got to his feet and retrieved the hatchet from his pack. A tent would work for the night, but she would need weeks of care, and that meant a more substantial shelter.

@housesigenheim:

Grigori wasn’t sure what he would see when the door opened, though as pleased as the maid was he held a thin hope that he would see a girl and not a moth.

“Oh thank Grenth.”

He was actually smiling, albeit with no small degree of relief, as the maid picked up the coat to help Echo into it.

“You look a true and proper young lady.”

“She’s even pretty, don’t you think so, sir?”

“Pretty…well it’s not something I think about usually.”

The question caught him so completely off guard that he answered without thinking, without fumbling for words or turning half circles. It was only after he heard his own voice that his brain caught up to his tongue and he stammered through what might have the start of seven sentences without finishing one.

“But yes, now that I think about it, yes, she is.”

Moths were pretty things, after all, and had Grigori not been so very gifted in ignoring his own contradictions he might have considered the possibility that one reason he called her moth girl was because he had in fact noticed she was pretty. That would have required him to address issues he was not interested in addressing, however, and would have interfered with the task at hand. And Grigori disliked being distracted from his work as much as he disliked delving too deeply into his own motives.

With her coat on and the scarf looped about her thin throat, he pulled his own coat and gloves on before offer his arm.

“Shall we? I’ve a list of shops from my sister as well as instructions regarding what I’m to feed you.”

The irony escaped Echo completely. 

Had she followed that red string to the end of her days, she never would have been so welcomed--as reluctant as it was--into Grigori’s company. There would have been no scarf, no graciously offered arm, no actual care for her well-being. 

It only took the collapse of everything she had believed in to reach the point where she was welcome in his presence. (In as much as anyone was.) And Echo couldn’t appreciate it beyond a vague sense of thankfulness that at least she was allowed to be as weary as she needed, for now. 

And with the absence of her fictitious heart-fluttering, Echo leaned on Grigori’s arm unselfconsciously. The red scarf added a little pretended colour to her pale cheeks, but her ghostly eyes were the same when she looked up at him and curled her thin, gloved fingers around his bicep. 

“All right.” Echo paused a moment, acknowledging something amiss, and then looked at her coat pockets. “But I’ve no money. That’s...”

Echo Asher:

1. Her name is Echovald, and no, her mother didn’t consider what it would mean to name her daughter that as opposed to perhaps after one of the Saints. 

2. Although her soothsaying abilities were greatly exaggerated, Echo does have some capability and can often find lost items without struggle. 

3. She has been traveling Tyria for over a decade searching for her ‘soulmate.’

4. Echo’s abilities as an elementalist have given her some small measure of healing capacity which she has utilized while recovering from injury on the road. 

5. Her mother died several years ago, but her father is still alive and has relocated to Lion’s Arch. 

6. The exceptionally light colouring of her eyes and the premature whitening of her hair are due to Waardenburg syndrome.

7. Echo is exceptionally fond of the colour red, especially the brighter shades. 

8. For a short period of time, Echo traveled with a group of Priory investigating hylek culture and discovered that she has an allergy to insect venom. 

9. Echo suffers from cynophobia stemming from multiple attacks by dogs. 

10. Although she doesn’t recall clearly much of what her travels have consisted of, Echo becomes extremely uncomfortable around anyone who smells strongly of alcohol. 

Linden Fiscaro:

1. The enameled cherry on her leather choker was a gift from her husband, Redorath, and is often mistaken as the source of her nickname. 

2. Although she’s excellent at maintaining and repairing firearms, Linden is only a so-so marksman. 

3. Despite genuinely enjoying well-cooked meals, Lin is better at searing a steak with a blowtorch than actually cooking. 

4. No matter how often she bathes and uses perfumed soaps, Linden always faintly smells of gun oil and grease. 

5. While the colour would work admirably with her tanned skin, chestnut hair and turquoise eyes, Lin abhors the colour blue and refuses to wear it. 

6. An accomplished mechanic, Lin has worked on everything from farm equipment to the mechanical orchestra in Divinity’s Reach. 

7. While raising Buttercup–the quaggan calf Redorath rescued before their marriage–Lin established a strong friendship with the quaggan that live in the waters outside of Lion’s Arch. 

8. Despite her husband’s protests, Lin did, in fact, name their son Tobias Zaara Brannick Fiscaro. {Redorath really only protested including Zaara’s name.}

9. If she were asked honestly, Lin would admit that she doesn’t like her ‘sister-in-law’ Aria very much at all. 

The unfamiliar weight of her hair atop her head was distracting enough to keep Echo from pulling at the loose elf-locks that had been becomingly curled around her face. 

It did not, however, stop her from gazing down at her gloved hands as she waited to be ‘collected’ for the outing that Grigori had insisted upon. As if the clothing was meant to warm her visually as well as physically, there were none of the stark greys or ice blues that she dimly recalled wearing at one point. 

Her rose-coloured sash, offsetting the rosy hue of her mocha dress, and the cream lace and matching gloves were nothing like she’d once chosen for herself when her bare funds allowed for it. Nor were there any of the dark greens and dull browns that her mother had selected, wanting to reinforce Echo’s tie to her namesake. 

The gloves were the distraction, moreso than the confusing shades of her clothing, and Echo plucked at the fabric across her thin fingers. Once before, she had eschewed all gloves, no matter the weather, in order to best see the red string that had dominated her life. 

Now... Well, there was no reason to avoid gloves, was there? Or to fuss about them, about wearing colours that didn’t suit a blood red string she had once considered her dearest decoration. 

All she had of that shade was the newly received scarf which sat on the arm of the nearby chair, waiting with the dark brown coat for her to don them against the chill. Echo’s pale eyes returned to it, time and again, and it was always a slight jolt to remember that it was not the thread she had spent so much time following. 

When the door opened, she almost forgot to get to her feet--doors, after all, had opened and closed often around her of late--but Echo saw polished black shoes, not the comfortable slippers of a nurse. She rose silently and moved to the chair with her coat, only lifting her gaze to look once at Grigori without a word of comment or question.