His reflection.
Zahhāk looked from the blue mare back to the pool and the distorted shapes of the two figures within it—him and her. What did it do to offend you? His gaze softened as the water calmed, reflecting the two of them back as they stood together. He realized that this was the first time another creature had bothered to ask him how he was doing. Not directly, but in her way, the blue mare was asking why he hated himself so. He sighed and snorted lightly.
He wanted to tell her it was complicated, but it wasn’t. Zahhāk had simply given up on himself—he made the choice to leave the comfort and safety of his mother perhaps too young and as a consequence, spent the winter alone and starving. He wanted to blame someone else—anyone else—but he could not lie to himself any longer. He alone had let himself fall into such a wasted condition, and he was ashamed. Hearing the black Akhal-Teke with the white nose call him out on this fact only enraged him, but despite her cruelty, she was right. He just refused to give her the satisfaction of admitting it.
But this blue mare, she was an opportunity he could not squander.
“I am ashamed,” he admitted to her, his voice wavering slightly. “I thought I could survive on my own.” He did—he craved independence. He thought that freedom would lift the obligations of familial expectations off his narrow shoulders, but he was wrong. Very wrong. And he suffered at his own decisions because of it. “I cannot.”
Zahhāk raised his head from the pool and looked back toward her, his eyes soft with desperation—pleading, hopeful that she would be able to help him regain his strength somehow. He needed her, and he can only silently pray to his gods that she would find it in her heart to be the one to offer him some kind of respite. Otherwise, he didn’t know how much longer he could make it.
Zahhāk
There was madness in any direction, at any hour.
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