#of the rooster…or as you said ‘chicken…hen…..cock!!?’ bc you don’t have a word for rooster.. ❤️

[aideshou]

Beautifully universal cultural occurrences: When you travel and the aunties on the way force you to have them braid your hair 🎀💚❤️💛💞

From the the islands of the Caribbean to the mountains of Tibet. We are all the same.

[vide0-nasties]

hello you wonderful human being 👋 send you questions 9, 16, 24, 26. have a nice day~

hello to you, too, anon!! 👋👋👋 i had a pretty decent day, and i’ve got some asra-heavy answers for you bc i’m a SUCKER FOR ASRA.

9. Does your apprentice have any special abilities that youheadcanon and cannot accurately be expressed in the actual game? What are they?

How strange she felt explaining her ways to another. No onehad ever…remained interested long enough to investigate her workings. But hereis curious Asra, growing evermore ravenous with every answer she nervouslyfeeds him with her fingers.

What’s that face for?This place reeks of iron. Really? You cansmell it? I can always smell iron, and it stings from my nose to my gut. Why? My mother was a selkie, one of thegentle folk, and iron hurt her. Are you aselkie too? No, but I have her attributes. Large fingerwebs, dapples, enormousteeth. I nearly can’t drown, and I can outswim everyone I’ve ever met.

“What about the travelling witches? The Sisters?” he asks,half-sleeping with his head in her lap. The scar is still fresh to her, but hewouldn’t know.

“After my mother killed my father, I was adrift at sea ninegruesome days. A doctor helped me escape imprisonment, because I looked nearenough alike to her to be hanged. He sent me to the Sisters with his word, andthey began to train me,” she tells him, fingers in his hair, sweeping his temples.

“I thought,” Asra yawns, sinking into her touch, “I thoughtyou already knew magic.”

She shrugs. “Some. My mother refused to teach me, wanting meslavishly dependent, but I watched her and learned. When the Sisters took me,my skills were a danger, out of control. They gifted me reins. For that, I playedthe butcher and spilled blood on their behalf.”

Asra’s eyes fly open, mouth drawn into a hard frown, takingher wrist in his hand. “You’re not a tool, Eustacia. Don’t talk like that.”

“It’s all I’ve ever been, Asra.” She smiles and tucks a curlover his ear. “If it soothes you, technically I am a duchess. I inherited myfather’s duchy when he died.”

“You’re a what?!”

#’s 16, 24, and 26 under the cut!

16. Does your apprentice have any scars or tattoos? Whereare they? Describe them?

“You’re stunning,”Asra breathes, staring at her naked body for the hundredth time, “I have to look at you.”

Over the course of her life, she has turned her skin intoher very own holy text—green-black ink hammered and needled into the pallor ofher hide.

Eight-pointed stars representing the eight winds of chaosmagic sit on the backs of her hands. Patterns of sacred geometry wrap aroundand snake up her arms, her legs. Over her chest are potent sigils older thanher mother, runes more ancient than time. With these runes, and help from oneof the Sisters familiar with chaos magic, her back has made into a nearencyclopedia.

Little grotesques fight for space among the symbols:sharp-teethed bats, roaring lion’s heads, boars, roosters, snakes. One leopardseal, on the back of her calf. A feral looking pig on the top of her foot, alittle red hen on the other. “Sailor’s superstition. Pigs and chickens can’tswim. Sailor blown overboard? God will take mercy on the animals, take them toshore.”

Asra comes to a rooster hanging from the gallows on theinside of her calf. He smirks up at her through his lashes. “I know there’s astory behind this one. Tell me?” he purrs.

“My cock hangs below my knee. You wouldn’t believe how manybets I’ve won with him.”

The lines from her bottom lip to the dip of her throat—spiraling,intricate tangles. The phases of the moon, down the center of her forehead. “Haveyou ever been fourteen-years-old and wanting to piss off your mother?”

A bloated scar over her shoulder—a glance from a sword. Alumpy one around her knee—nearly lost her leg to a cannonball, and would haveif not for powerful healing magic. Cross-hatching over her palms—“Curse workand quick sigils, you know that, Asra.”

Vengeful gouges in her brow, an angry canyon pinching thefold of her nose and hugging the lean apple of her cheek. “You know I wasglassed,” she mutters, running her fingers down his thigh. “You were rightthere.”

“I know,” he tells her, taking her face in his hands andkissing the pallid markings. “I’ll never forget.”

They find each other’s hands and the scars they put there.Bite through your lover’s hand, unstopping until blood is drawn, and your loveis truly true. They had, filling their mouths with blood, and they wear theteeth marks like wedding rings.

24. Outside of magic-related workings, does your apprenticehave any hobbies? Do others know about this hobby or do they keep it a secret?

Eustacia has to keep herself entertained while alone at theshop, and that’s easier said than done for a person with the attention span ofa gnat or minnow. Always, she’s midway through a hundred projects andactivities.

Dozens of half-read books lie around her home, while thesame four get read and reread until the spines fall apart. Six crocheted blanketsin various stages of completion hide in a trunk under the bed, countless skeinsof yarn and spools of thread in a spectrum of colors dominate a wardrobe thatwas once meant only for clothes.

Handmade jewelry is forgotten unfinished among mountains ofhomebrewed and boutique makeup, only to be plucked to safety months later,finished, and forgotten in one of a half-dozen jewelry chests scattered onshelves.

The bathroom is a cacophony of homemade beauty spells andmundane cosmetics. Blessed lotions, charged bath salts, enchanted body scrubs,towels uncountable with runes stitched into the hems with black or red thread.Body butters, face masks, hand crèmes, lip balms, under-eye serums, hairtonics, pots of hair-stripping wax, what feels like thousands of oils, and a crateful of jars of hair wax and pomade.

It’s a miracle that it’s feasible to step foot insidewithout being killed by an avalanche of product.

Her many handmade nail lacquers sit in a chest next to amassively overstuffed, well-worn armchair, along with nail files, cuticlepushers, more oil and hand crème, andthe ingredients needed to curse and un-curse her nails to be unbreakable.

Sometimes, she wonders how Asra can manage to keep hissanity in the utter chaos and confusion, but when he returns from his travels,he’s so well-adjusted she’s left baffled. He’s also a terrible enabler. “Here,I saw this and thought you might like to give it a try,” he tells her,grinning.

26. How does your apprentice sleep? Do they sleep with a tonof pillows and blankets or none? Do they toss and turn? Weird things they do intheir sleep?

“Pick a hand,” Eustacia tells Asra, apropos of nothing, twofists held up.

He’s wary, and has every right to be. Usually, when shepulls this, bad things happen. That’s what happens when your first personalitytrait is usually given as ‘dangerouslyimpulsive.’ “…Left,” he says, pointing.

She groans and drops her hand. “Fucking hell—fuck me—god dammit. Get up. We’re making the bed before…ugh, we’re making the bed before bed tonight.”

Really, it’s not nearly as much of a chore as she makes itout to be in her head, despite the inexcusable amount of jewel-tone downpillows and blankets. Even the massive rabbit fur blanket on her side isn’t toounwieldy. Asra stands back and admires the freshly made bed, and looks to herwith a smile. “Now, if we take baths, we’ll sleep like the dead.”

“If I sewed you to the side of my head, I would never have abad idea again,” she tells him in agreement.

By nature, she’s nocturnal, and running the shop leaves herhateful and sleep deprived. Asra keeps strange hours himself, but she’s closedthe shop tomorrow in celebration of his return, and he has to push himself tostay awake with her. Freshly bathed, wearing clean clothes, they do make it tobed before the night has burned away.

At first, she faces away from him, battling her physicalnature and neediness, but she loses the fight. “Asra…?” she whispers into thedark, knowing he’s awake and thinking too hard.

He needs no further question, and they tangle together. Asrapresses close in her arms, head against her chest, and she curls around him,burying her face in his hair. “G’night, Eustacia,” he sighs, relaxing.

“Dream sweetly, master,” she bids him, holding the nape ofhis neck. He’s the only thing that’s ever felt like home, ever since she wokeup hearing his voice, feeling his hands, and smelling his scent.

Through the night, she shifts and turns about, but they’rehardly out of contact. He presses against her back, forehead against her neck.They sleep spine to spine. They wake only to grope for the other’s hand.

Asra manages to force his way half on top of her, and shedoesn’t even stir, letting him sleep against his shoulder. He doesn’t stir whenshe makes guttural, jerking noises deep in her throat, teeth snapping togetherwhen her jaw reacts. He calls it clonking and says it helps him to sleepbetter, because it lets him know she’s there.

In the morning, the bed is completely unmade, they smile ateach other under the blankets, and they won’t bother to make it again for twoweeks.