When he was young, he saw a ghost.
She was thin with whispering white tendrils of smoke rippling from her mane and tail. A figment that came from nothing, calling to him from across the oasis, she tormented and taunted him with her hollow songs like dust spinning in a funnel. She begged Zahhāk, pleaded with him to stop. She was incessant. He was lost.
Her stark blue eyes saw right through him, to his core. They bore their way in so deep that when he closed his eyes, they were all he could see. She tortured him with her truth only because he couldn’t find his own. He didn’t know why she demanded this of him, he didn’t know what he had done. Or perhaps, it was what he hadn’t done.
Zahhāk spent his childhood mostly alone. It felt like a vague memory of nothing more than familiar shapes and voices, with values handed down like trinkets that were his to possess and herald forever or to cast aside and forget like the unwanted trash some of them were. He wanted something better, but he could not shake the feeling of constant judgement. This memory of the blue eyed ghost girl.
He awoke in a cold sweat, his chest heavy with labored breath. Another dream. Another vision. Shaking himself straight, he slowly ambled to the nearest stream and dipped his head to drink. The cool water washed away the metallic taste in his mouth and he sighed heavily. He was exhausted, but a restful sleep eluded him.
Zahhāk
There was madness in any direction, at any hour.
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