**SPOILERS FOR A REVEAL IN BOOK 2 - Read on only if you know it and/or don't care to be spoiled.**
Still here? Good. :)
There have been countless requests and inquiries as to what Ahya would have looked like had the Arbiter not pulsed their mother with that DNA ray when they were both still in the womb. The sisters were now fused together as one body with Ahya being regulated to being the tailmaw since her atoms rejected the pulse and started breaking down to nothing. The only way she could survive was to latch onto her sister and become one with her, since Taylor's atoms accepted the DNA rays successfully and caused far more momentous things to happen in the fabric of their world. These two were born together, forever bound to be of one body and neither knowing who they are as individuals but only as a pairing. One cannot be taken without the other.
When this YCH graced my screen, I immediately saw an opportunity for a 'What If?' situation. What if Taylor and Ahya were suddenly split and became their own persons? Would Ahya be suddenly overwhelmed with the three new senses of smell, sight and hearing? Would she be wary of everything as she turned to her twin sister for comfort and guidance on how to brave this scary new world of stimuli? How would the sisters react to each other meeting face to face after having been body and tailmaw for so long? So many interesting interactions and scenarios that could be derived from this concept.
As for the depiction of Ahya, I had to take a few creative liberties to set her apart from Taylor despite them being twins. Obviously, the red fur was a genetic defect due to the way the DNA pulse affected them both, forever altering parts of their fur to a color not natural to their species. However, since Taylor is so well associated with red fur/hair, I decided to keep it intact to make her and Ahya more recognizable as characters. Furthermore, the golden eye of Taylor's was also of a result of a defect of two DNAs being spliced together and creating that abnormal color for one of her eyes, but I decided to give that color to Ahya's eyes instead just to differentiate her from Taylor. Not just that, we get differences in red stripe patterns along their tails and the overall body language and posture - Taylor being the more confident of the two while Ahya is a bit more unsure and needing reassurance. So much is said in this picture with so little and I love it. Hopefully you can love this glimpse too of what could have been...
