The First Age
Ashavari Mehra - Printable Version

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- Ashavari - 09-12-2014

Description: She is something of a cautious idealist; cautious because she is aware of humanity's frailties, and idealist because she chooses to remain hopeful anyway. Curious by nature, and fearless in its pursuit. Her gifts lend her an empathic quality; she is uncannily perceptive of those around her, yet often too quick to trust. She likes to use touch to amplify her reading, but unexpected touch can still be overwhelming. In guilty compensation for her abilities, she's usually quick to show emotion, and has a tendency to wear her heart of her sleeve. She adores the open road, and loves to drive for its own sake. Asha stands 5'2'', is of slim build and soft-featured. Wavy black hair, worn long, with liquid dark doe-eyes.

Biography: Ashavari Mehra. That's what the birth certificate says. She doesn't remember much, and what she does is awash with mud and colour, a blur of disconnected images. The pain, though, the firework bright hysteria of it. Explosions of fear, revulsion, confusion. If the severance of a mother's love has a moment, a clarity, a taste - a tangible mark - then that was what she witnessed. Unknowingly so. Now she only has the memory. Taste, sound, colour. Memory and pain.

Of course, she had been a child then; fearful and repulsed and confused herself, every emotion filled up like an overflown cup, mimicking the feelings of those around her. For a while the doctors had thought she was autistic; her speech was stunted, she recoiled from the touch of some and clung to the embrace of others. Her face was blank, an empty canvas gulping in the spillages of others, not understanding the discrepancy between the lies of a face and the songs of a heart. She assumed everyone was the same.

After the incident, they knew she was not autistic.

When her mother stopped loving her, her uncle became her primary carer. The transition is a blur, but every clear memory that comes after has him in it. She remembers fear; of his fierce height, his jet black beard, the tattoos that wound about his wrists and disappeared under his sleeves, snaking out by his collar. They called him rākṣasa hatyārā and gave him a wide berth and quiet respect. He said he wouldn't kill a child. So he took her instead. That's what he says anyway, a story she discovered years later when the questions had pooled for long enough for her to finally think to ask for answers.

The basic gist: Why?
Because they were afraid of you. But why?
I don't know. Why were you even there?
Business.

Inside he was calm, as still as undisturbed water. Stoic, confidant, solid. Whatever his words were, however evasive his non-answers, she trusted him because it felt right to.

They did not stay in Lucknow, the city she had been born in. Not that she remembers much of it, or of the journey north through the chaos of India - except that the further they drove from civilisation, the quieter it got. The peace had an echo, and the only noise within it was her uncle. After that things brighten, probably because it was the start of a little consistency, a foundation on which memories could grow. She remembers Ludakh. The monastery. The school in Leh. It was also when she began to realise she was different; that if she did not smile, others did not know that she was happy on the inside, and that without tears, they could not tell when she was sad.

The monks asked plenty of questions, in hindi or english, and spoke about her in a tongue she didn't understand. If her uncle was a pool of still water, then they were like a vast plain of the same, which she found kind of magnificent in its beauty. The school was a little more chaotic, a kaleidoscope it took time to make sense of. She learned slowly. Despite her uprooting and the slow dawning realisation that she was somehow different from other children, she seemed happy enough. In Leh the stars were so clear in the black velvet of night, and the air was cold and pure by the lungful. When it snowed they were cut off from the world, guarded by the tall and benevolent mountains.

Three years passed before they moved on; it was the longest time they ever spent stationary, in hindsight perhaps because she had been so young. Maybe her uncle had intended to leave her there, she was never really sure, but she remembers his indecision when he said he was leaving and she climbed on up into the truck. Fog rolled in thick - that's what it left like anyway - and then the sun broke and he shut the door behind her, and that was that.

Afterwards they travelled. A lot. She never really questioned it, which was strange because she questioned everything else. Constantly. Insistently. Until her uncle gave her a Wallet and the ticket to free information at her fingertips, and then she discovered the ability to be quiet as a mouse while they rumbled down highways, through mountain passes, across desert plains.

The first time they went to a city was hard. It was also the first time in forever that she ever thought back to the day she left her home, probably because the chaos tasted so similar. Panic blurred the vortex of emotion, so many lives insistent on her attention. Contradictory, vibrant, demanding. A thousand needles puncturing her skin, bullying her out of her own consciousness until everything she was sank like a stone at the bottom of a pool. Her uncle picked her up from the dusty floor. A few circling faces radiated absent concern, curiosity, then washed away. He squeezed her hand, chased away the intrusion of others by force of presence.

New questions surfaced after that. The gist?: What am I?
I don't know. What's wrong with me?
Nothing.

When they stopped - in cities, villages, motels; in wide empty passes, in forests, sleeping curled tight on the backseat - her uncle was frequently absent. The older she got, the more independently she spent her time, exploring. Sometimes they stayed weeks. Sometimes months. She used the Wallet to pass the hours after the sun went down, and kept a journal that eventually became a blog. Connection over the net was more pleasant than face-to-face, or at least less confusing. She took photos, documented their worldly travels, and her uncle didn't comment accept to turn the camera away from his own face. These days it bothers her she doesn't have a picture of him. Not even one she kept for herself.

Once she brought up the definition of a word on the Wallet, and scooted into the front seat. Vigilante. He laughed, but wouldn't tell her what he did for a living. Sometimes he returned with scratches, cuts, bruises. He kept a locked box in the trunk. Money was tight, but never absent, and the time they spent in any one place seemed arbitrary. There were little things. Odd things. But if he was a bad man he didn't feel like it. When he looked at her, he shone with protection, purpose, focus. So she chose trust over truth, and they drove on.

But the little things. The odd things. Those she noticed more.

She liked the mystery, or maybe just liked that there was the whisper of stranger things than her. The locals always had stories. Her uncle never involved her in his work, that was a rule, but people liked to talk, and she liked to listen. Even when she couldn't speak the language she could feel their fear, taste it, smell it - not fear of her uncle, but of something else. Something unknown. That was in the villages, anyway, where people were still superstitious. In the cities people didn't notice her uncle at all, let alone emitted feelings she could interpret amidst the cacophony of everything else. She could have followed him; after so many years, his mental signature was engrained in her very soul. But she never did.

Her blog veered from travel to folk stories to conspiracy theories. Then she turned eighteen and things changed. She supposed she'd felt the creep of it for a while, the little ripples of disquiet. Sometimes guilt, sometimes resolution, sometimes uncertainty. He grew quiet on their journeys, like he had been back when she was a kid and her chatter had invoked a mixture of annoyance and endearment. Not that he had ever been what she'd call talkative, but the silence sounded louder, and the waves of emotion wafting off him for the first time made her uncomfortable.

He wanted to know what she wanted from her life, and he dropped the question like a ton of bricks - literally swerved the truck over to the side of the dirt road. She was grown now, and he didn't want her to have the same existence as him - rootless, ephemeral, anonymous. Existence was his word, which hurt even though she could feel the reasons he used it. How deep had he hid regret that she only tasted it now? Were there recesses to him that she'd never felt?

Their relationship was transparent, and she was startled by the suddenness of its change. She didn't want to leave him - and told him as much, but entertained the hypothetical under duress, suffocated by the determination he radiated. Maybe she should consider these things for some distant future. She thought of Leh and the stars. The calm of the monks. Every stop they had ever made that sparked some pleasant recollection - and there were plenty of grand reminiscences. But home was a person. Home was him.

For a time he didn't mention it, though she could still feel it in him, burning like banked coals.

He left a letter - had not wanted to betray his emotions in the very end, and so now she'll never know if the sentiments he did leave were true or false. He also left money, the keys to a car - where she also found her duffel-bag of belongings - and the beat up map she'd used countless times to orient them when they were beyond the range of gps. The sight left her hollow. The abandonment hurt, just the fading taste of sad and the belief that he was doing the right thing for her to pick through for comfort. She waited three weeks. Hopeful. But he never came back.

In the two years since she has continued to travel. Spent some time, too, researching where she came from, though the urge to return has never been strong. What she is is a bigger question than who, something her uncle had always stepped lightly around despite his acceptance. Her blog has continued to grow, and has a small cult following. She chases conspiracies, seeks answers, and shares the information. Which has eventually led her to Moscow.



RP History
Edited by Asha, Aug 28 2016, 05:31 PM.