i've been trying to sleep

ASHƎ i did my best to control the growing unrest in my soul.     Ashe was sitting in the damp earth as the sun dipped below the horizon. All was dim, muted and blue, quiet and chilled. Dark and heavy stormclouds were hovering, breathing in the flowerbirth warmth and exhaling gentle rolls of distant thunder. Candles flickered uncertainly in the breeze the carried petrichor through the trees. And she…     She sat upon the ground, her back against a symbol-carved stone and her deep blue cloak drawn closely around her. The small young woman hugged her legs to her chest, her chin tucked against her knees and remained wholly still. It was a wonder she didn’t fade from existence, as that strange power of hers so often did when she sat like this. But she didn’t want to disappear. She didn’t want to fade away into nothing. Live he’d said.     Her fire blue eyes stared out into the gathering dark. She had been sitting this way for some time now. Hours. Cobalt eyes swam in her vision, and her own began to fill and blur her sight. Her lip trembled, but the tears remained burning in her reddened eyes, as if each one shed made it too real, too irreversible. It is real, it is irreversible, idiot girl.     No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop replaying memories over and over and over. Hanging onto him however she could. It had all been borrowed time, borrowed and running out faster than she could ever keep a hold of, and she’d told him as much… His voice resounded in her: ’There's always more time. I'll steal you more... As much as you need, for as long as you need…’ Where was the time now?     Finally a tear slipped free, and Ashe held herself all the tighter. She knew who she should ask for. The patron of death, Ludo would the logical option... but she could only see him rising into starlight, and she instead whispered to the dark: ”I would like to speak with Safrin .”