Closed Meditation, from Hatchling to Now

[Allassanachassanya]

3rd Autumn 516 AV
Early morning in the Luiana

If only today she could shift into her snake form, they way she'd entered the world 103 years ago. Today was her birthday. Stuck, in a crowded, painful hole of a ship. Her morning so far had consisted of a rude awakening by some fool that decided to check on the trade and had tripped and fallen. Of course, after that, she hadn't been able to get back to sleep. Now, with her scarf tied firmly around her neck, the woman was forced to go to the mess hall and get food for her stomach.

Half a bell later, and she was clutching her bowl of porridge close as she perched on the bough of the ship. It was cold, far colder than she wanted it to be. The boat was skipping fiercely along, its patched and ragged brown sails flapping with rage as the boat ploughed onwards. Today, the captain had said, was one singular day away from their destination. The fact it was also her birthday paled in comparison.

The woman was unable to wait for the city. Back in Summer, her idea to go to Alvadas had been a distant dream. For one, she didn't think she would have enough mizas to get there, presuming travel to be difficult and expensive for a city well-known for it's elusiveness. But she'd found a ship, and now she had but one day to prepare before she could see it herself for the first time.

Pulling her cloak closer, she relished the warmth of the porridge, hugging the bowl close and warming her nose with the steam. In the water below, she watched the foam cresting pensively.
"Ya finished with your bowl Sanya?"
If there was one thing she'd learnt from this trip, it was that sailors were irritating. She shook her head, and gave a taut smile towards the man, who quickly wandered off again. Good.

Alone again, the woman stared down at the waves, and let her mind empty. Similar to when she was practising malediction, the woman looked at the most still part of the ocean and focused on nothing. With effort, she started to weed out the numerous thoughts, hunger, cold, annoyance, curiosity... each thought passed and croseds her mind, and each time she fought with it to get it out again.

[Allassanachassanya]

It had always been difficult, she found, to focus when she had a lot on her mind. It was the case now. Behind her, the continual tramping and conversing between sailors nagged at her, and thoughts of her family, the recent anniversary of her mam's death and the proximity of Alvadas all threatened to plunge her into the murky waters of too much thought. She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.

In a sense, it was even harder to concentrate like this. The thoughts grew even brighter in her mind. But she kept breathing, kept concentrating on nothing, and soon (she hoped), she'd be at that state where tranquillity reigned. It was a long time coming, almost a bell in fact. Numerous times she'd been interrupted by some busy-body who thought she'd fallen asleep, but they soon got the message. And finally, she and her thoughts were at peace with one another.

However, it was very difficult for her to stay so quite within herself. Not more than ten chimes passed before she had broken her meditation and slipped into wondering again. Thinking about Alvadas, about what the future might hold. She knew the first thing she'd do would be to buy herself something nice, something that she could wear perhaps. Of course, she would explore the city, as she had done everywhere since Ahnatep. Then she would find herself a job. Something that wasn't related to her magic, she'd grown very wary now of people's intolerance towards magic, especially one so focused on death.

With a stretch, she curled her legs up to cradle them for a while as she gazed at the horizon, before standing up unsteadily to pace up and down the ship. It was her birthday, and she had nothing to do. The loneliness she'd felt earlier in the day was giving way to boredom. She turned her mind towards things she could do. Without anything to work on, she felt at a loose end.

The ship she travelled on was not particularly big, but nor was it particularly small, so she soon found that after several chimes she had grown weary of the up and down motion of her feet on the boards. But the only other options were down... or up. She craned her head to look up at the crow's nest. She had always enjoyed climbing, slithering really along walls and balconies in Ahnatep. There was something very fulfilling about slithering along warm stone, something that made her smile. Climbing the mast in human form, in the beginning stages of Fall would never be as comforting. But...

"Hey, sssailor. Mind if I climb?" She inclined her head awkwardly towards the mast, and the aforementioned sailor blinked confusedly until he figured his way past the woman's foreign accent. "Uh, yeah. Sure! Just remember to be careful, okay?" She nodded without much mind to the now forgotten sailor, and looked up at the mast, the various little nooks and crannies where one could place their feet. She didn't often climb in human form, but now was her chance.

[Allassanachassanya]

One foot on there... The woman was shakily discovering her feet and hands were definitely not as good in human form. Sometimes she really disliked being able to shift as and when she liked. This situation was definitely one of them. Yet, she persevered. The mast wasn't particularly difficult as such to climb. There were handy footholds clearly designed to let someone climb up, and Ssanya made use of them by hauling herself up ungracefully but effectively. When she reached nearer the end however, it started to get a but more difficult, and she almost got her foot tangled in a length of rope before finally pulling herself up into the crow's nest.

The view from the top however was much the same as from sea level. In all directions, water reigned. As little as she knew about the sea god Laviku, she had to admit that the sight was impressive. Yet, she thought defensively, Laviku's domain could never be as good ss dear Siku's. Or indeed Caiyha's. She offered the both of them a silent prayer, and then looked about her once more.

The ocean was quite choppy today, and the wind was high. As it was, the woman's hair was whipping about her, and her cheeks and nose were getting cold in the air. But it wasn't the cold that was bothering her, although she huddled against it in her cloak. No, it was that feeling of being at a loose end. An unpleasant mix of wanting to get things done even whilst being unable to do anything. Truthfully, her palms itched to practice her mother's magic. As a necessity of travelling on a ship, the snake couldn't hunt, couldn't bring bones back down into her quarters for fear of arousing suspicion.

Yet, malediction was all she wanted to do. With frustration, she frowned at the wind. But the cold was getting the better of her, and an idea had settled in her mind. It was time to go down...

[Allassanachassanya]

Below the deck was uncomfortably familiar. The woman gave a cursory look around the hold, mostly checking for intruders. There were none, presumably everyone was busy above deck. She smiled, and walked over to her space. It was small, cramped... she hunkered down and opened her chest, carefully picking around inside unto she withdrew what she was looking for. She held in her hands a scroll of parchment and a small pot of black paint. Gripped in her teeth was a miniature paint brush.

She started to prepare her workplace. Putting down the parchment was the first step, done instinctively. Next, she pulled her thumb over the bristles of the brush, making them softer. Then came the paint jar, the gentle stirring of the pigment with the binder, creating the right mix as she stir-stir-stirred. She didn't get it perfect, but it didn't matter. She wasn't going going to be painting for anyone other than herself, after all.

Her parchment was virtually new, bought from a nice young lady in Kenash who she'd visited a couple of times before she'd left. The seller had a stall of alsorts, ranging from ink to quills. She had of course only been interested in the parchment, fresh and crisp. Now that same parchment, only slightly used, lay in front of her. The paint seemed ready, if slightly watery. She curled up her knees underneath her and lay down on the floor, perched looking down at where she would be working.

She quietly dipped the brush into the paint, and hovered it slowly over the surface. Inspiration was a slow beast to coax, and it was rather awkward today. The first part of the roll was covered with fragmented doodles and sketches, and so she carefully pressed the brush down against the thread of a trailing doodle. She dragged the brush along, thoughtfully. It was often the case that she didn't know what she was doing. She didn't plan her malediction circles, not fully. But here, she practiced, and discovered her own style and her own way of doing things.

The black paint was fresh and bright against the pale parchment, like ash on the lightest sand. She painted and painted until she had come up with a small, wandering trail of paint, spiralling into the centre. She dipped the paintbrush in the paint again, and carefully pressed little pinpricks of darkness around the edge of the spiral. Leaning back, she carefully blew on the page, and idly painted a line across her finger.

[Allassanachassanya]

She gazed at the spiral, and her hand for a good few chimes, as thoughts of death and confusion wandered through her consciousness. The confusion came from the spiral, a symbol she commonly associated with the motion of going around in circles. The death, obviously, came from her reason for this painting. A long while ago, she had realised she preferred to gain inspiration for the malediction circles from the bones themselves. She kicked herself as she realised she was doing exactly what she hated, retroactively fitting a design to the thing it would be painted upon.

Instead, she once again gazed pensively at her design, lackadaisical as it was, having never thought about painting as an artform entirely different to malediction. The two had always gone hand in hand. Back in the nest, her mother had taught her how to paint malediction circles using the blood of the animal or person they had killed, but paint had always been there just in case. Now, Ssanya giggled quietly at the thought of herself as an artist.

Then she stopped to consider it somewhat. It was true that she did always enjoy the action of painting, the caressing motion of the bristles. It was an oddly sensuous experience, that tracing of the cool paint, leaving dark shadows in it's wake. Yet she had never practised painting as a separate thing to malediction. Never even realised in a way that what she was doing was, in a sense, painting.

Now she dipped the brush into the paint again, and hovered it indecisively over the page. What should she paint if it wasn't circles or patterns? What did artists paint? Was it the things around them, or what came to their imagination? These were the questions she asked herself as the paint slowly started to dry on the brush, and she had to lick it to bring the moisture back.

She decided suddenly that she should just do what she had been doing, but perhaps elaborate a little. With a fresh collection of paint onto the brush, the woman dotted a tiny speck onto one of the corners of the parchment. It came out rather heavy with bristles, and almost splintery, which wasn't what she had been expecting. She had thought that she might have made a neat, small dot, but the splintered point acted as an interesting star shape, so she would work with what she had.

She only had one paintbrush, and it was a small one at that. Because of this, it was difficult for her to get any kind of differing strokes, but the thought didn't occur to her that she might want a difference. As such, her finished painting was more like a line drawing than an actual painting. She had branched lines out from the corner and then cross-painted the lines together so that they formed some kind of web pattern. Occasionally she had painted in certain squares or patterns. The finished result was a checkerboard spider's web, quite basic of design. Yet she was happy with her experimentation, and had assured herself that painting in some way different to malediction.

[Allassanachassanya]

With a satisfied sigh, she uncurled herself from the floor and sat with crossed legs as she packed away her belongings. That had staved some of the boredom, and she felt the better for it somehow. Perhaps she would explore this method of painting more when she was back on proper land, when she arrived in the city. There would probably be more things to paint there, or at least more inspiration. The boards and barrels of the ship provided little entertainment.

With everything packed away, and no real desire to see other people, the woman simply sat and contemplated. Ssanya was a highly thoughtful individual, and liked to think on all kinds of things. Currently though, her thoughts occupied malediction. That, perhaps, was not very surprising. She reached to scratch her face and then brought her hand back down to slap a fly away.

One of her mother's lessons in conjunction with malediction came back to her. It was a lesson on concentration, or the lack of it. She could remember the occasion well, the warm burrow noisy with the sounds of others, the desert sand walls hardened with age and caked with scribbles and patterns of countless other rattler snakelings. Most of all, her mam's voice heavy with the spiced accent of Ekytol, guiding her into a state of internal silence even whilst the sibilant speech of her brethren hissed all around her.

The memory was as fresh as the day it was made, and Ssanya found herself wondering whether she could replicate it. The practice was one she often did, or at least as often as she could. Her mam had been keen to drum it into all of her brothers and sisters, but she felt ashamed to admit that since leaving Ekytol, her practice of meditation had become mainly forgotten as the world distracted her with it's differences.

It was her day of birth today though. Her mam and her lessons lay heavy on her mind today, and as she couldn't give her energies to malediction today, the draw to practice meditation was much stronger. She was more fully awake now too, and away from the bright, sharp, distracting sounds of the sailors and the busy ship. Down here, was (begrudgingly) like the nest. Dark, vaguely warm, and compact. Not as comfy as the nest, that was for sure. But nest-like nonetheless.

Still in her cross-legged position, Ssanya slowly closed her flickering eyes. What was it Allassana had said?

Let each thought become a grain of sand, and let that sand flow like the desert winds until not one thought becomes distinguishable from the other, and you finally become one with your thoughts, becoming as mindless yet alive as the sands themselves.

Gods how she wished for the desert right now.

Still, she clasped her hands together and tried to think like sand. It wasn't difficult to imagine the desert, as it had been the backdrop for the majority of her life. It was harder though to let her thoughts become it. Some of her thoughts were easy to blend away, those nostalgia-drenched ones of the past that were so heavily set in the desert, but easily put away. The ones that were harder to change were the new ones. The frustration at the ship she sailed upon. The excitement of the coming of Alvadas. Most annoyingly of all, it was what she called the 'tiny thoughts' that were the hardest to not think.

Hunger. Discomfort. A slowly forming headache. All of these nagged constantly at her mind, like an unwelcome visitor. She struggled for whoever knows how long to squash them, until she finally accepted that her brain had had enough for the day. As she opened her eyes it was as if the walls of the nest had crumbled around her, and she returned to reality perhaps a little more grouchy than she had left it. The meditating had made her sleepy though. As her temples throbbed, the woman curled up on the decking and promptly drifted off into a fitful sleep, filled with dreams of happiness and home.

[Yisanareysin]

The ssssssnake hassss your gradesssss...

Ssanya

Skills

‡ Observation +5
‡ Meditation +3
‡ Planning +1
‡ Climbing +1
‡ Painting +2

Lores

‡ Sailors are annoying
‡ Meditation: Harder with a lot on your mind
‡ Climbing: Harder with limbs
‡ Shifting is sometimes inconvenient
‡ Suvan Sea: Is massive
‡ Painting: Preparing a workplace
‡ Painting: Separate from Malediction
‡ Meditation: Allassana's exercise

Comments
I loved all these little glimpses into Ssanya's past and mindset. I look forward to reading a lot more of her

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