#ussanui

The seventh Toa has arrived. Mask and staff printed+painted by Buryu. Torso and feet were originally white, but were stained using iDye Poly Violet. I didn't do the best job, so they're a bit off-color. 😬

then-Matoran Hahli stood, catatonic, in front of the Ussanui that Taku-

Takanuva (had to get used to the name),

and others were putting together, made of other things that were now dead. Maybe they’d never been alive; carapaces of Bohrok, Rahkshi staffs, calcified remains of flying Rahi that were strewn all over the jungle. Maybe that’s what they all were, in the end. Because if they weren’t, then Jaller had suffered, and had died, for nothing.

Who was to say whether this plan would work? One had to be distrustful of prophecies, since they could end up being stories we clothed under the veil of fate to convince ourselves that we knew where things were going. They were vague things, things that could be twisted and taken literally or metaphorically, evidence to back up any claim or any worry we were carrying. There must’ve been some prophecy of someone dying or sacrificing themselves. The Matoran and Turaga around her must’ve been handling this better than she was because they believed Jaller’s death was foretold.

His body was just lying there, mouth agape, eyes closed. From another angle you wouldn’t be able to see into his mask’s eyeholes and you’d think he was sleeping. Could she tell herself over and over again that this is what had happened to him? She was still rooted to the ground, and hadn’t moved now for well over an hour. She had to give it to those around her that were doing her the kindness of checking in with her. She would’ve screamed. Maybe cried. Maybe kicked the Ussanui until it was nothing, and there was no purpose to journeying below, because Jaller was dead and there was no real need to do anything of importance, was there?

Mata Nui could be damned, because they had to keep sacrificing so much for absolutely nothing.

If she were a Toa, she thought to herself, she wouldn’t bullshit her friends with lies to make them feel better. She owed them the truth. She would fight for them, because if death was guaranteed then she should at least make it worth it. She would ignore prophecies or etchings on walls, because she could only believe in what was in front of her.

Her lifelong friend Jaller lay dead in front of her, and night fell like they were all back to living their normal lives. She couldn’t do this anymore.

But if he were still here, she thought, he’d shake her, and tell her she had a duty to perform. Ha. Perform was the right word there, because she didn’t know what to do, she only knew how to act out a role, how to act out her role. Did he buy into his own role, of a fearless leader and warrior who would give his life for a cause? Or is this something he truly believed? Could he have been such a fanatic to give himself into something he knew not how it ended?

She would not be able to ask him. She had to remind herself of that.

If you ask others who were there that day, the most powerful thing was when Hahli walked up with Jaller’s mask and gave it to Takanuva to install in his Ussanui. A moment of reverence and power, most people think. But she told me that it was an effort to get rid of the thing that was torturing her soul.

And yet, she felt such guilt later, an empty pang in her chest, and she tortured herself even more, and finally decided against her own better judgment to hide inside the vehicle, so that she could see revenge exacted on the creature that had caused them so much pain, that had led to Jaller’s death, that led her to nurture this previously-undiscovered rage.

Toa Hahli jokes nowadays that this is how the universe knew she was ready to become a Toa, because her spirit had finally broken into something different. Now she believes that Jaller’s was always of this kind, and that the universe could not let her friend die just like that. Seeing a Mask of Life at least assured her that the Great Beings did not take death lightly.