Welcome to Gaia! ::

The past few months of cohabitation had been surprisingly pleasant, moreso than he'd remembered or expected. Either all of his time alone had dulled the memories of life with Embla, or else he'd never been truly happy with her; it made him squirm to try to think which option was worse, and so, Aska rarely confronted the thought at all. (Rather like his method of dealing with the omnipresent opalescent stone sealed into his collarbone like it had simply grown there, actually.) He instead occupied himself with work. Carpentry, mostly, because he did truly enjoy it; he liked to produce things and have them be used. It had been a matter of great personal pleasure to make some small things for Whisteria's shop--though nowhere near the happiness that simply being around her brought him. The ghost of his feelings for Embla still weighed heavily on his mind; but his care and devotion--he had never said love of any living being--for Whisteria had slowly risen above it, and it no longer felt like an act of infidelity to build for her what he had once built for the woman who literally ruled his life.

It was different, being partners. He could protect her, rather than letting himself be protected. He could provide, and he found that wonderful--refreshing, too, like cool water after a time too long under the hot sun. When he thought about what life would be like if he simply didn't give his body over to Althai, he pictured the Night Elf right alongside him, not before him like an unattainable goddess.

But he was born to serve, and born to kneel. In the end, he would always give the best parts of him to those who commanded it of him, and for all the God of Healing was nothing more than a literal rock weighing him down and a voice in the back of his head, he was no less commanding.

Still, he had time. He intended to make the most of it, and part of that meant finishing things for Whisteria on time. Except he'd gotten a bit... carried away... with the shelves she wanted for her shop, and they were a bit more intricate than they perhaps needed to be. But he'd never known a Healer who didn't appreciate having extra storage space, and he doubted druids would be too much different (even if they did tend to turn into cats in their sleep, which was still disconcerting but no longer early morning screaming material). It hadn't taken more than a day or two over his original (and extremely liberal) estimate to get it done, too.

He was not expecting Whist to drop by the shop-space he rented, but when he heard her enter, he set the sandpaper aside and stood up to dust himself off. "I thought you were going to be at Shadowmoon for a while longer, yet," he said, offering the druid a crooked smile. "Or I would have finished and cleaned up earlier."

He shook his head. "Of course you're not. I'm just sanding down sharp corners now." He figured the last place you needed some pointy bits of wood was in a place of healing; that was just common sense, though, and he'd seen some pretty weird things in his time. Some things that he would, in fact, not mind seeing again. Other things that he totally would mind seeing again, such as apothecaries with a lot of sharp, pointy things just hanging out.

Aska stopped thinking of that and focused again on his roommate. Lover. Whisteria. He would go with her name for then, it seemed like the safest option available at the time. Even in his own head, he wasn't exactly in private anymore. He looked around the shop space, and dragged over one of the chairs he kept for customers who wanted to see him at work; he offered it to Whist, gesturing grandly. "Have a seat, we can talk while I work if you've got nowhere better to be." He kind of hoped she didn't, but it'd be rude to say so, he thought. So he settled back down on his bench, one of the drawers for her shelves carefully balanced for the fine sanding he had left to do.

"How was the shop," he asked, "other than quiet? Did you get a lot of work done on your book?"

That was an impressive thunk. Aska eyed the bag with no small amount of suspicion, and said, "I might have to reinforce your shelves." Not that he thought that they couldn't take the weight, but honestly, that was somewhat foreboding. He looked back down to the shelf. If it was installed correctly...

These things would need to last a while. Althai didn't seem particularly interested in carpentry, and that was saddening because he'd like to be able to look after Whist in some way after he was gone. He made a pleased sound when she said that the old book had finally been fully copied over; that was good. He knew she'd wanted to be able to add more pages to it, things from Gaian plants and other strange places. For a moment, he wondered what Whisteria would have made of Lampadas's massive libraries--the healing knowledge of centuries of Healers, all condensed into one place. He had gone once or twice, but not often. The Muted weren't welcome in the places the Psionics held for themselves.

He set aside the drawer, turned his full attention to Whisteria. "What is it," he asked; in the back of his head, Althai perked up. Yes, what is it? Aska ignored him; if Whist thought something was important, then it certainly had to be.

Children. It wasn't exactly polarizing for Aska; he loved children, had always wanted them, and under any other circumstance would have welcomed what he thought Whisteria might need to talk to him about. He ran a hand through his curls, scraped his nails through the short hair at the base of his neck--how best to respond, he wondered, how could he make it clear that while he would welcome a child, there was also... regret?

"I like children," he said, "I'd always wanted to be a father." Before Althai, and the god who inhabited the gem seemed, in that odd way, to be silently apologetic.

It was odd, talking about himself in the past tense. "Would this happen to be, er. Related to the thing that you need to talk to me about," he asked.

He didn't know how to describe what he was feeling, except that it was confusing. Happy, because… he had always wanted to be a father, since he was old enough to understand what being a parent would entail. He'd loved teaching the younger children about painting and drawing. He liked watching them grow, he liked helping them grow--and to be able to watch and help a child of his own would have been the greatest gift he could ever imagine. But he was also sad, because he would get none of that. He would be lucky if he saw the child born, he knew. The gestation period for gods seemed to go much faster than that of a living, healthy child.

Aska set aside the drawer for a moment, ran a hand through his curls again. He didn't know what to do with himself--part of him wanted to dance, wanted to kiss Whisteria like he would never stop, and the other part wanted to pretend this wasn't happening. Life had never seemed truly unfair to him before, but in this one moment he felt he could outdo an angry teenager in

He looked up to see tears welling up in her eyes, and that solidified his course of action in a way that his own thoughts and feelings and needs never could. He crossed the room to kneel before her, to take her hands in his, and he said, "Thank you," because if nothing else, he was grateful that she had told him, that he would know. "Do you intend to keep it," he asked, because he knew that it wasn't always a sure thing, with unintended pregnancies. "I would like it if you did, but I understand that with my situation, and yours, and…" His words failed him, and he kissed her palm, closed his eyes.

"I am happy," he said, sincerely.

He shook his head; he didn't know, he'd never honestly thought about why he would ask a woman to abort his own child. He had decided so young that he wanted to be a father that it had simply never been an option he'd examined. And he smiled, faintly, when she thanked him, and he wished that the God of Healing wasn't listening in. That he'd never stumbled upon the Pantheon at all, except to do that would be to turn away from all of this. His greatest happiness would be brought about by the thing that would end it all, it seemed, and he sighed to think of it.

"I love you, too," he said, and though it was nothing like what he'd felt for Embla, the emotion was just as strong. Religious awe, that he would give to the nineteen-year-old girl in his memory. To the mother of his child, he would give everything he could before everything he was became someone else entirely. "I cannot think of anyone else I would rather raise a child with." And that, too, was honesty. Embla had been unstable on the best of her best days. She would be worse when in a family way; he'd known it then, he knew it now. He didn't have to mention that the bulk of the raising wouldn't be done by him, and so he didn't. It already hung over the pair of them like a storm cloud. "Thank you," he said again, lacking for better words. In their absence, he gave what he could, as he always had.

Her request was one he could fulfill, and he was glad that she didn't ask him for something impossible. Stay--that would have been the one thing he couldn't promise and wouldn't, not even for their shared peace of mind. He had never been much of one for lies, and this would be an especially terrible time to start. Having admitted aloud how he felt for her, Aska saw no reason to practice any deception--the only one he could justify was out of the way now.

His reasoning couldn't be more simple: He didn't want her to regret choosing to keep their child.

"You don't have to ask," he said. His freed hands tangled in her light blue locks, gently guiding her mouth to his.