in sunshine and in shadow
It is full dark, now, save for the stars.
Maybe that should trouble him, for the path from the cliffside is not without its treachery, but Asterion has always managed to find his way home in the dark. Instead it is almost a comfort, the night pressing in against them like they are the only two in the world. By the time he is finished with his long, fruitless tangle of words, even the gulls are quiet, all gone back to their rocky nests. The stars only watch, impassive as ever.
It is not your fault, she says in a voice as soft as seafoam, and oh! That might have been enough, but then there is her touch. It is a brief thing, but full of warmth, and if they were not so recently met the bay might have leaned into it. Instead he only bends toward her, touching his muzzle to her cheek for the space of a heartbeat. When she withdraws, he makes no move to close the distance between them again.
“I will know it whether I want it or not,” he says, and the whisk of his tail is almost a shrug. He knows that an ending will come; Asterion’s days of leaving the story halfway through are done.
He dips his head at her next words, his eyes on the darkness that had been the sea. Still the sounds of it rise around them, as much a comfort as his own heartbeat, or the sound of his companion’s breathing. It is easy for his gaze to find hers again, even if her words still make him feel like blushing.
“I am glad as well, Moira Tonnerre,” he answers, and cannot help the way using her full name makes his dark lips quirk in what is almost a smile. “But you are safe from my questions, at least for tonight. I should be getting back to the court.” There is almost regret in the way he turns from her, from the lullaby of the sea, from the stars overhead. It would be easier, he thinks, to stay here for the night, for the following day, for the summer.
It is a lucky thing he has no wings. Asterion would not trust himself not to use them.
As much as the comfort of the water, he finds he does not want to leave her. Moira has a piece of him, now (he almost feels lighter, as though the words had been a physical weight on his mind, his heart) – and after all she owes him answers now, too.
He tries to keep the hope from his voice when he looks back at her, white points like a beacon in the dark, but he is not wholly successful. “Unless you’d care to join me?”
Whatever her answer, and whether he leaves alone or with her, it will be a better walk back to the keep than it had been the way here.
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