Through grey mists, over grey waters, among grey thoughts, one would believe them easy to see.

Those happenings that demanded more than silent co-existents. Visions seen from the corner of your eye, warranting a triple over double take. Intrusions into a landscape of colourless, endless ripples.

Perhaps Ashe did.

The slightest intrusion into a cyclical ‘life’. He would be remiss to label it as such, and not just because it scarcely applied to a being such as himself. This inescapable state of, well, being, among air and water with no strength to push back between them--the billionth ripple, the trillionth wave that broke young in more of a denied gasp for air than anything else. All swirling into languid grey.

His responsibility.

This in itself was hard to define.

A place to start would have been appreciated: what exactly he was responsible for. It was simple enough to be told something, and then flung into the deep end with questions exploding in your mind as bubbles and foam should have in any natural river. The knowledge of what needed overseeing. When to intervene--if ever. When the rules of nature were so supposedly clear-cut...

It was irritating, at times, when the waters rolled on below with such calm. Unquestioning, yet intent. Frustratingly measured. No back-and-forth of tides. Just...one unbroken direction. One progression towards nowhere in particular.

And one that gave such an inaccurate idea of how it truly felt in the River. Ashe felt the bitter tang seem to strengthen every time he told a wayward soul to submit. Why did they question it, when it was so easy for them to do? He wondered about it sometimes. A lot of times. Lying down. Going with the flow. Drifting.

Never was that easy.

Did the river know this? Was it some spiteful thing, a broiling gash in the flesh of reality, delighting in watching so many restless souls come so quickly to regret their own rashness? With such sinuous, serpentine grace in every movement, did it rejoice in how it crept into the mind, stained the soul and decayed the body? Left bodies of monstrous make-believe floating on its waters? Moulded into something they could barely recognise, or even inhabit?

Or was it careless, heedless, winding on through the aether--with some single-minded focus on its journey to who-knew-where, and with all unwitting passengers left to flounder within, never to be noticed, never to know themselves again...and was this in fact worse?

With so much time on his hands, so many misted threads unwinding around his fingers--he figured an endless amount, and this was far from hyperbole--Ashe often wondered how much of this theorising was borne from his own mind. His own wondering, wandering mind, imposing things that weren’t empirically proven over what may have been merely a mockery of nature. A facsimile of something with life in it that no-one could understand.

Like what he sensed more than noticed so often, wading through the waters.

It was less a thing he could align with any concept he knew; more in line with watching the shape of something behind a veil or curtain, close enough to make out in some vague form, to touch through another material...and yet still so, well, veiled in mystery.

Unable to settle at any point in the shallows. Tentative fingers breaching the surface, stirring the silvery liquid. Hunched over even as it got back to its feet, gaze never leaving the ripples around it.

Figuring things out for itself. First, how to enter (given that its current presence appeared more of a fluke than anything intentional). Then how to remain for longer. It was being rejected. By the River itself, or by the Reaper that ‘governed’ it, or by its own hands...who could say? So much before actually hinting at anything resembling exploring.

All of this from what Ashe could gather, pieced together from increasingly less cursory glances.

Their object of focus resolving itself more and more in not only his observations at the time but also over his meandering mental waves.

It just had to be the fact that it was something different. That had to be it. The demand for his attention was painful, and yet it was something he hesitated to broach. This figure of possible myth, with eyes pouring forth their eerie blue fire, antlers twisting unnaturally with a similar hue--were they one that would welcome interaction at all, much less query...or even conflict? Would his presence be acknowledged at all? Could it?

Should he even be trying to near this creature? Ashe’s mere theories of the thing gave him an idea of something beyond understanding--something he shouldn’t even try to hazard at. Sensing its literal testing of the waters, those actions of something...or someone...that could be as listless as he was...everytime, that pang. Working its way up through his twisting guts. But the thing was...he couldn’t call it fear.

Was he hurting anyone, other than himself?

Was he hurting himself at all?

Ashe couldn’t really decide how he felt about...well, what he’d been moulded into. ‘Living’ this way for so long--judging any slight towards his cycle of boring familiarity as an act of aggression. The first ripples raced out towards suspicion. His first advance being a potential attack. Another part of his...his responsibility?

Truly something to imagine, there. Fate contracting to a single point in time, Fate in the hands of a lone Reaper. A Reaper with no real power. Drifting through existence’s backwater.

One idle movement, and another dance of wavelets moved ahead of it. His mind spiralled with the ripples that spread across the river. Every wet touch set off a fresh eddy: so measured, so unhurried, so regular. There was no offsetting their path. No making them move quicker.

Not that Ashe had ever entertained the idea past the odd impulse.

Was it safe to say he’d been moulded into this manner, after all? Could it just have turned out as some sort of natural conclusion from how he was to begin with?

Just as difficult to gather from the ventures of that other presence sensed here. Every time was different. They were disjointed jaunts; they varied in length and tangibility. Given how even that hint of regularity had soon been stamped out, the Reaper’s precious little knowledge of the situation to begin with was difficult to draw from.

Just moments in time like any others he knew--listless and without achievement or progression. Just moments with liminal bells and whistles as tangible as anything else here. Sharing endless space. Watching, and being watched. Or sensing. And being sensed.

Ashe wanted to just fall back. He already knew how this was going to pan out. The way it always did wind up panning out. This presence wasn’t the first. Likely wouldn’t be the last. And neither brought about by his hands nor hindered by them. After whatever extraneous measure of time spent turning things over, poring them over, and casting them over, never to actually do anything with them. Next time--

Next time.

Another breath of spent air joined the hanging mist of so many. He was already so certain that there’d be a ‘next time’. However many times had his actions been decided for him? More and more did he float ahead on this featureless, straight, grey path by the sway of less conscious desires. And more and more did he want to clear his mind completely, just for a little while, and be steered. There was no falling back for a Reaper. Would there be for...whoever or whatever this was?

It would be something to see, if there was. If he would witness it. Or even influence it. But Ashe was nothing if not moderated--he needed to take his time, and it helped that there was plenty to take. Maybe breaching the waters a little further; within contact or vision, once he saw it again.

How...final. What a decision. But he really did seem to hold some conviction, this convict. Quite the performance being put on. It would be interesting to see what the next jaunt would bring. One he certainly wouldn’t bother interfering with.

Not that he could. One attempt had been enough proof. Not that he’d bother again, either.

It was something different, after all.