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Yasha first falls in love when she is very young.
Zuella is chaotic, she finds out very quickly, with a messy bush of hair and eyes like freshly melted gold that glimmer with mirth at all times. She is an archer, with an aim truer than anything Yasha has seen before, and she rapidly finds herself tripping up over her words as if they were tree roots in a darkened forest, sentences rushing to get out of her mouth in order to make the golden girl laugh, or blush (a rare feat, but one Yasha has vowed she will never forget) or even just smile. It does not take long before Yasha realises that this is far more than just plain old friendship, however it takes a deal longer for her to act upon these feelings, and even longer before there is a ring, golden and engraved with dancing designs, placed on her lover’s finger, with a silver one to match nestled comfortably on her own.
She should have known it’d all go to shit.
The hunt starts out normal- just a resource gathering excursion, nothing special, nothing to suspect- but all too soon she and Zuella are surrounded by accusing tribe members, calling them traitors, and whilst they try to lie, try to fight, try to beg, it isn’t enough and Yasha vividly remembers the way Zuella’s eyes looked so empty as she lay there, unbreathing and void of life, as she ran faster than she ever thought she could run before.
She is out in the wastelands for more time than she wants to think about, but when she finally awakes from her months-long slumber, she is met with the stony eyes of the Stormlord.
And Yasha is once again in love.
It is a different kind of love, born out of debt and devotion, of promises and principles, and yet Yasha adjusts quickly and without fault. She leaves Xhorhas, glad to see the dull browns and greys morph into the confusingly vibrant greens, and blues, and reds and oranges and colour that is the outside world. She wanders for a while, going wherever her Stormlord tells her to without question or hesitation, and when she ends up in the same town as a carnival with a familiar dragging sensation gnawing on her gut? She does not hesitate to inquire about jobs.
This is where Yasha falls in love once more.
Mollymauk Tealeaf is a barely constructed image of a man when she meets him, dressed in colours so bright they almost manage to hide the fact that he is empty behind the eyes, and whilst he is funny and loyal, he can seem a completely different person from one day to another, almost as if he is a snake shedding its skin until it finds one it likes, not too dissimilar to the snakes he gets inked into his skin not a few weeks after she meets him. The love she quickly finds herself feeling for him is somewhat like the love she felt for Zuella (opening up a myriad of wounds that she wishes would remain closed), and she finds herself walking alongside him when travelling, and sitting beside him at campfires, and sharing a tent and secrets once the sun has gone down. She is grateful for his companionship, and finds herself increasingly proud as she watches him grow more and more assured in who he is. She stays with the carnival for about a year, in which time they slowly make their way to Trostenwald, where she meets another five people she will come to care about just as much as she cares for Mollymauk.
And Yasha falls deeper and deeper and deeper.