Sometimes I miss Khensa. No, not sometimes, all the time. She was predictable. She was impulsive, snarky, and sometimes aloof. She and I shared almost nothing in common (excepting of course my occasional descent into snarkiness) but then I could still write her so well, or if not well then easily. There was a distance between us. She was a different person and I felt rather that I was transcribing her actions and thoughts as an impartial bystander. With Aisha, my newest heroine, I find myself coming a little unhinged.
Not that we are completely alike, but we are more alike, and there are moments where Aisha's actions mirror what my own would have been. I write her doing one thing, all the while thinking how I would do it another way. Writing her is like fighting my own subconscious, and it's surprisingly exhausting. She's not particularly trusting, nor is she particularly confident. She holds her tongue when she should speak, and she stays when she should really run. She doesn't invite the same grand adventures as had Khensa. And Aisha is plain and quiet and anyone who didn't know her better would think she was boring, but then that's her appeal.
For though her life has taught her to live without love or hope, she still nurses that tiny bud that dreams that if she would only speak the right words to the right person at the right time someone might hear her. They would understand that she is not plain or boring, or any of those things. They would understand that she is only lonely in the shadow of her sisters' beauty.
But the beast, who would rather be a monster than a man, at first does not listen, and then he doesn't want to listen. When he at last does listen, its too late, for he has pushed her too hard, and she has given up trying to bridge the unbridgeable.
And then he must always be wondering: would the whispered words between them still be as sweet if they were all a lie?
