#It's interesting that these are mostly from Mahesha's

[tc-doherty]

Find the Word Tag

I was tagged by @asher-orion-writes Once again this is all from one story, Second Chances, but with this set of words… I just had to. Although that means it goes into some… less than pleasant places.

I am tagging @muddshadow because you always seem to be interested in this one! Also @emilyoracle to prove that I am sharing parts of it and you don't need to bully me!

Otherwise, I just did one yesterday so this is an open tag. Your words are: mild, fold, impact, and concentrate.

Touch

Mahesha had never actually met any other shapeshifters. He did not particularly want to meet them now. Especially not with the way they bounded over to him, clearly excited.

He backed away as they came closer, backed away again as they reached out to touch him.

"Izare Harrickson,” he said, before they could even say a word. “Something happened to him, didn’t it?”

The female in the front looked him up and down. “Ah,” she said, “see we all thought he smelled like another shapeshifter, but he always acted like he didn’t know any.” She paused. “You look very human.”

Mahesha did not say anything rude, but it was a great effort. He was already anxious, and his pounding headache was not making things any easier. He did not have the patience to put up with a bunch of needy corv. “I only want to know where Izare is.”

“Gone,” said one of the others.

“Captured,” said a third. “We had bad information and our commander led us into a trap. Izare got captured giving us time to get out.”

The female nodded. “He said that he couldn’t let us get caught, knowing what Kovarians do to shapeshifters.”

Izare had sacrificed himself, for them? For a bunch of…a bunch of beasts? Mahesha closed his eyes. Of course he had. What was more knightly than that? “Do you have any information on where the prison camps are?”

“Kovarians don’t keep prisoners alive long enough to bother. They’re all taken to the commander and…”

He didn’t have to finish. Mahesha got the picture.

Gasp(ing)

Mahesha didn’t know what to say. He was caught, a rat in a trap, pulled between his loyalty to Izare and the domineering hand of the man in charge. He was not used to speaking back, not used to changing the situation. But this was Izare and Izare was going to get hurt and above all, above all, Mahesha never wanted him to know that kind of suffering.

“I did what I thought was right,” he said, slowly. “Izare is wasted here, with people who don’t appreciate him. You’re being cruel. You’re just bullying him.”

Harrick hit him.

The force of the backhand was so hard that Mahesha lost his balance and fell backwards. First into the table, then onto the floor. He wasn’t surprised.

He’d seen it coming. The small movement of Harrick’s shoulder, the intent in his eyes. He’d felt worse, much worse, but that was then and this was now, with a small trickle of silver blood at the corner of his mouth that he needed to hide before Izare saw.

The kick that came after just seemed excessive. It drove the breath out of him and left him gasping on the floor.

“You don’t get to decide what’s right for this house or those in it,” Harrick said. His voice was low and dangerous again. “Break your word again and I’ll break mine.”

Pain

Izare did not like words, or perhaps words didn’t like him. He didn’t say anything about it, but he did not have to. It was one thing for Izare to tell a story, lively and animated, acting it out with body and voice both. It was another thing to watch him in the tiny classroom attached to the temple, to see how he stuttered and struggled until his frustration mounted to a point where he wouldn’t try anymore.

Mahesha didn’t really understand human kindness, but he did understand humans causing pain. This, to him, seemed very much like that. Mrs. Malson turned a blind eye to Izare’s struggling. She pushed him, never relenting, forcing him to reveal his lack of understanding to all the children in the village.

Children were cruel.

Mahesha wasn’t really surprised by that. He knew better than anyone what cruelties humans were capable of. It made sense to him that it would start young, sprouting like a weed and growing stronger with age. He wanted to help, to protect Izare, but he couldn’t talk, couldn’t say a word in Izare’s defense. Their taunts were verbal – cutting remarks and jokes and cruel laughter – and Mahesha thought he couldn’t defend Izare without behind able to speak. Even if he had been able to speak, Mahesha wasn’t sure what he could have done. He had been raised to be submissive to humans, speaking out against them was alien to him. What could he even have said?

Eyes

Izare took a moment to study him. He looked a lot different now that he was dry and dressed in a plain linen tunic like any other child in the area. But even normal clothing didn’t make him look any more like a normal boy. In fact, it only made him look stranger. Izare had never seen hair like his, hair that spilled down the boy’s shoulders in a tangle of black curls that shone bright as honed steel in the light, that almost seemed to shift colors like the evening sky. And his eyes! They were blue, but not the dark blue that Izare was used to seeing in those with Dreisken blood like his. The boy’s eyes were bright, pale blue like deep ice or the sky just after dawn.

“He looks like a prince!” Izare said, hardly realizing the words were out of his mouth until he said them. He grinned. “We can call him Mahesha, after the Dreisken prince who had to wander the world for twelve years. He also fell in a river and-”

“He’s not a pet, Izare,” Sanjae said. There was a weird catch in his voice that Izare had never heard before. He turned around to see Sanjae shake his head. “And the Dreiska are wanderers, they don’t have any princes.”

“There used to be!” Izare stomped one foot on the floor tiles, light blue just like the boy’s eyes. “Mama said the Dreiska had a great empire in the south once with palaces made of gold and rulers so good and beautiful it made the gods cry. You should know.”