Softe

I was just thinking about Sahel the other day. Feeling bad cos I don’t talk about him nearly as much as I do the other characters 🥺

Honestly, I probably don’t talk much about him cos he’s too far stable a character. He has normal and logical responses and is very sharp. He’s simply too excellent. But I was thinking about how, even though he is technically the youngest child in the house, he has older sibling tendencies probably because he’s older than Segun and Assorra. He’s been the one to keep them from coming to blows all the time, so he’s become like an older brother to them.

Well except Assorra never really saw it like that. In her eyes, he was just doing his job as the prince’s aide, but would always side with the prince if ever it came down to choosing between them. But I’m thinking that one day, Assorra is at some ceremony of sorts (it’s why they’re all wearing white-ish clothes in the picture) and she’s obviously tired-looking and somber. And Sahel comes over and pats her head while asking what’s wrong. In that moment, Assorra remembers how he would always do that when they were younger, and how she would react horrendously. But he would still do it anyway whenever she felt particularly terrible. The real Assorra always interpreted this as an aggressive act, like he was trying to bother her when she was already angry.

But the Assorra now was able to look at it objectively. To remember those memories with fresh eyes, and came to the shocking understanding that Sahel had never really HATED her. It was just how Assorra had interpreted his actions and his status as the prince’s aide. After all, each time her and the prince would fight, she knew that the aide should always take the side of the prince. She knew and commended him for doing his job properly, but she also felt a bit abandoned by it. And after such fights, Sahel would always come over and pat her head, and she would snap at him and he’d have to leave, but she’d always feel just a bit better.

It was a strange way to look at it. The way they communicated as kids, and now as adults was all muddled up. Even though Assorra at this particular moment had been sad, this kinda allowed her mood to brighten. For the first time ever, she did not swat Sahel’s hand away or react badly. It was really weird for Sahel tho. He stood there for a good minute waiting for her to blow up or something. And she just didn’t. To the point where the extremely smooth and elegant Sahel was awkward, wondering if he should take his hand away or not 🤣

But Assorra thanked him after this. She thanked him not only for today, but also for all those other times when he’d had to choose between her and Segun, and somehow tried his best to choose both. It made her feel a little less hopeless. A little less like a villainess that was hated by everyone, and a little more human.