Shashi - Original Form

Before, things were simple, though that did not mean things weren’t difficult, as well. He (and he was only he then, not also sometimes they) began existence as an ordinary hare. 

Like every hare, he was a prey animal and he knew it. 

Death chased after prey animals in all aspects of their life, and prey animals did their own chase after life. Even when he had not yet opened his eyes, he was already innately aware that death could come if he did not do his absolute best to survive. He pushed his siblings aside for his mother’s milk, chasing after life.

Because he did so, he was able to grow into a strong-bodied adolescent. But strength was comparative. Just because he was a strong hare did not mean he could fight any hunting animal.

He remembered how his body quivered even as he stuck to the taller grasses in hopes of hiding as predators circled the area at times. 

He always had to be ready to run from death. Always had to be ready to chase after life. And that did not change the older he became. 

Even though he knew he was an excellent specimen of hare, he also knew the possibility of death was at every turn. It was as much a part of his life as living was, in its own way.

One day, he would die. It was natural that he would do such. 

It was not that he was resigned to death. It was that death was part of his identity, even as he did his best to chase after life. Until in the end, he had neither.

But that was skipping ahead in this story… Or was it?

Shashi knew exactly why he was what was known as a ‘trespasser’ colloquially among esk. Vetru had meant to save him as he died, but Vetru did not understand, could not understand. 

To transform Shashi was not saving him. Rather, to transform Shashi had condemned him to an existence that was not life. He was cursed, not blessed.

He remembered his fury at waking up in a different shape transitioning to existential agony as Vetru cheerily explained what it meant to be an esk. 

Yes, he had been so still at first, not saying a word, partly from being barely able to process that he could do such a thing as speak. But mostly, it was his own rising fury.

Because Vetru had stolen everything from him. His life was not a life without there being death chasing him as well. He had been stolen from the cycle that he understood in his own way as prey, in becoming an esk.

As he selected his phrasing with increasing wrath held behind each carefully chosen word, he felt tremendous grief as he thought of the death that had been stolen from him.

Vetru had not understood. He tried to say that the former hare had not even tried living as an esk, to perhaps give it a few days. Shashi had bluntly and harshly informed Vetru, the thief of his fate, that what the Wanderer had given to him was not life at all, disconnected from death as this existence was.

Then, quietly, reluctantly, Vetru had mentioned final transformations, meant to return an esk to nature. The disdain that Shashi had felt for such a concept had been obvious even then. A death that one could choose was not the same death that had chased him through his actual life.

But by then, it was clear that Vetru did not understand what Shashi meant at all, because for all that they shared a language, his words fell on a deaf mind. 

So rather than explain any of that, Shashi had looked upon Vetru and swore to haunt him. That his purpose would be to make Vetru regret. And not simply regretting the creation of Shashi, no. 

Vetru would regret everything when Shashi was done.

That was when Vetru had run from his creation. 

Shashi had not given chase, not then. In truth, he needed time to mourn the loss of his death first. 

Even his truest body was gone, stolen from the world like everything else that he had known. No predators would eat it, no plants would use it as nutrients.

In the future, when he dwelled on his furious grief, the gentle breeze would shift to monsoon winds, a natural attunement to his mood. But he had not yet become the elemental he would be.

Instead, he laid down where he should have died. Gradually, he found himself forming his new identity as well as deciding upon his name, a word that felt right and came to him suddenly.

Later, he would find that some thought his name meant ‘moon’, the most common way to interpret such a name. In truth, his name was more like the literal translation. 

For he had been a hare and he would never forget that existence.