i've been trying to sleep

ASHƎ i did my best to control the growing unrest in my soul.     Ashe wasn’t sure it mattered if there was no going back. What was it Frey had said? ’Your feeling of being trapped won't go away, your cage will just be a little bigger.’ And the Naturals didn't even seem to want the barrier down.. She could relate in some way. She been holding onto her own intangible prison of fear and violence because she was terrified of what she was without it. But that wasn’t what Safrin asked. ”They're afraid... and it was made to keep that new god in here, wasn’t it? And the bloodfiends.” It was still hard to remember sometimes they were something quite different here.     Then suddenly there it was with the words that fell from Safrin like distant, barely glimmering stars: a sliver of hope. Ashe’s eyes flashed, and slowly she pushed herself up to stand. ”If I get through that barrier, there is someone with the power to bring him back then,” she said tightly. She knew little of this world and its religions and beings, but she had heard enough to know. ”Mort.”     That far-fetched, hardly there hope trembled in her chest. ”What I want to do is break down that barrier,” she finally answered, her voice rough with unshed tears. ”I don’t want Northaven, I don’t want Northwind, but I will not live my life in a fucking cage when there is an entire world for me and my family out there,” - she gestured vaguely towards the barrier and looking outwards. The demon was dead and they had paid too high a price for it and Ashe was fucking done... but things had just gotten very, very personal again.     She bit her lip and furrowed her brow, and she pulled free a small piece of gleaming metal from her pocket - the broken tip of a dagger’s blade. Ashe looked back to Safrin, holding out the now smooth and dull piece of steel to her - once razor sharp. ”The tip to a blade called Candor. My old dagger, I broke it when I was fighting against a beast that threatened our home, our people, the one I lost my finger to. I believe it was Candor and a stroke of luck that let me live. I found only the tip of it in the wreckage, kept it with me... ” Her eyes were searching as she held the steel further out in offering - not like Ashe had anything that would actually be worth anything to the divine.  ”Is there anything you can do?” the wolf girl asked, taking a step towards Safrin. ”Is there anything you can do to help us get into that spire, some trick, some key? Anything?”