she looks into her mirror,
wishing someone could hear her, so loud
They came together, yet separate. He stands beside her, but she can feel a chasm between them that she knows she cannot - will not - ever cross. It is a gaping hole slowly swirling around in her body, looking for something more to devour than the subtle emotions flickering just beneath her glistening skin. Moira is a sight with her smile in place, lashes curled for the occasion and hair pinned instead of buns and braids. Anselme would smile at her, wish her well while she is out, and tell her to be good. Gizelle would flutter about like the proud parent she is, but her fire was burning low last Moira had seen of her, with her heart glued to Anselme's. Her mother is nothing more than a marionette now, strings pulled out of 'love' that she claims she feels, yet does not show day in and out. Growing up, Moira remembers her parents were fond of each other, still wrapped in passionate embraces despite Gizelle being grounded - forever banned from flight. There was a pain in her eyes that the phoenix always saw and could never interpret until now - until Estelle was left behind.
Even Estelle would dote on Moira and how well she cleaned up tonight.
Yellow eyes turn toward Asterion, a slight panic racing through her at the sheer amount of people about. "There are so many, there is so much going on," she whispers to him, curling closer into his side so that their shoulders brush. Comfort follows quickly at even that small touch, her head lowers, flowers slipping just so, until she peers at the world through curls and bangs. Unsteady, unsure, Mo knows she wishes to be among them, to slip through stalls and breath in the smell of brushes on canvas, laugh and dance and sing as she did at balls with the other children. But that will come with time as shadows grow longer and souls merrier.
He tries as best he can to lose himself wholly in the festivities, but there is still a part of him on that beach, watching a piece of the mountain burn.
Asterion wonders if it will always be so – it is not the first time he’s lived with the memory of smoke in his nostrils, or felt his heartbeat quicken at the crackle and hiss of flame. Fire, it seems, will always wound him.
But he wrenches his thoughts from Aislinn now. She was never his to claim, and maybe he was nothing but a fool, to ever have been starry-eyed for a gypsy girl. Maybe it would have always ended like this – maybe loving her was like loving the moon.
The regent has decided a dozen times now that he is finished with the night; as he turns back to Moira, he adds one more.
She is lovely, a picture of grace, and he is sure he looks near-feral beside her, unadorned save his crown of wildflowers, his hair a dark tousle. Asterion feels a pang of guilt that his thoughts have been so far away, but shame is coming to be as familiar as a friend of late, and he ignores it as she presses closer to him.
Her words echo his own thoughts, but he smiles for her, and touches his dark muzzle to her cheek. “There will be no sad stories from tonight,” he tells her, and it carries the ring of a promise.
He should tell her she looks beautiful, he thinks, but shyness overcomes him. Instead he noses her flower crown, steadying himself with the sweet scent, a perfume to drive away the memory of smoke. And then he starts forward, smiling back at her over his shoulder. “How should we begin ours?”
she looks into her mirror,
wishing someone could hear her, so loud
He is distant at first, lost in his own world as they pass through the gates to get their crowns, but she does not mind. She looks to the wildflowers on his head and smiles, wishing she could take one to press into the pages of a book with so many flowers that Moira could not possibly name them all. There are separate books - one for memories like tonight, another for healing and the uses of the plants, and another just to capture the beauty of the world. In her sketchbook that Estelle holds, she often would put in small scraps of those days, those precious moments. A lock of hair, a fallen petal, a thread from the tapestries on the wall.
If she could, she would press her crown into the pages for eternity to remember it as fondly as she does. Glancing to Asterion, just in time for the twilight man to press his nose into her flowers, she wonders if he likes it, too.
The way he looks just ahead, glancing at her with those starry eyes full of dreams and memories, she can't help but pause to catch her breath. Is it possible to have a broken heart before you even know you care? Hers could shatter there just from that little look. It's enough to push her into motion once more, deftly gliding over the grounds until they are once more close enough to touch, separated only by caverns and chasms they erect. "Cake," she laughs, the alto of her voice vibrating with excitement and nerves. "Are places always this pretty for festivities?" Emboldened by his presence, by his promise for sorrow to be washed away, she lets her shoulders relax, tense muscles now tight only for movement. A shadow lifts, and for a moment in time Moira feels weightless.
“Cake,” he echoes with a smile, “is an excellent place to start. Wise you are, Moira.” Her laughter passes over him like a cool wind, a bell that rings over the deep-dark of his soul. And like a bell, it draws him back, and all the colors seem brighter for it.
There is a long, low, wooden table just across the way from them, and the limbs above it are strung with colored lanterns and ribbons bright as butterflies. He steers them toward it, nodding at her question. “All the ones I’ve seen,” he says, and he is almost thankful for the way she has pointed out the beauty to him. It would have been easy not to see it, when his thoughts were on a beach, a burning, a goodbye.
He would rather be here, he thinks.
“Delumine seems to take it especially seriously, though I wish you could have seen the midwinter party.” He wonders what she remembers of his story – Asterion can’t recall if he told her of the bonfires that threw sparks like stars, or the lights that shone on the fresh-fallen snow, or how the whole of Terrastella had been transformed to a dream-world for the night. Oh, if only it had been so happy on the waking. “I have never been to a gathering in Solterra, however, or in the Night Court. I’ve heard that every night is a celebration, there.” Despite his words, he wears no smile; it has faded away at the mention of Denocte. The only time the bay had been there was after receiving a frantic note on a rain-soaked night, and he had spent his visit in their infirmary with a half-delirious Aislinn.
Maybe it was a mercy, that the only time he’d told her he loved her was when her head was too clouded with drugs and pain to hear.
Again he pushes thoughts of the gypsy girl away, frustrated by how they dog him; surely she is not thinking of him.
They have reached the table, now, and he is surprised it does not groan beneath the burden it bears: of cake alone there are a dozen kinds. Rich oat-cakes drizzled with honey, and lavender cakes of a delicate pink, cloud-light confections dotted with berries. The smell of it competes with the sweet scent of the flowers. It’s enough to make him dizzy, when normally he is surrounded by the smells of salt and sea-grass and ocean brine.
“We have a difficult choice ahead of us,” he says, dark gaze meeting the bright gold of hers, and though his tone is serious there is a laugh in his eyes.
Humming her appreciation and blushing under the praise, she sticks close to him as he guides them toward a large display full of sugary sweets. She remembers things like this among gossamer gowns and glistening smiles that hid sharks and leeches and spiders who only vied for power and poisons. There was dancing then, too, but the feeling was different. Those who came of age were celebrated at a great festivity once during the year, yet Anselm would never let Moira eat the sweets. Ears flick back for a moment as she remembers those days - the days when those of her blood would still glare and snarl or blatantly ignore her. Truly, it still thunders in her bloodstream, slips unseen in the shadows of her mind, and most days she can push it aside. Today, the voice is held at bay once more when Asterion begins to speak again.
He reminds her of the ocean - calm or dangerous, but always steady, always constant. Like seafoam and surf breaking upon the beach, she can almost feel the warm waters lap at her, ease her into something more comfortable to be around these crowds. If she could express her gratitude, she would. Silence is Moira's best feature in her opinion. Out of sight, out of mind. When he is silent with the passing of people, only their footsteps for Moira's music, she purses her lips thoughtfully. "I never really had the chance for such sweets before. The few I could sneak, or those that Leo brought me, were cherished and treasured. However," she paused, giving him a sly grin, "I think I could have beat the wolves with how fast they disappeared." And just like that her peals of laughter are back once more, a smile in place as she brushes her shoulder against his.
You are not alone she tries to convey.
Moira is not good at being physical, at comforting others. Estelle is trained for such touch, such soothing. Her every movement is meant to be a seduction of the senses, the mind, and the body. She is meant to ease any into a place they wish to be. Moira... Moira is meant to heal, but she was not taught to be so personal. "We could try them all." She says, grinning as broadly as the Cheshire cat. With such a simple statement, a small slice of carrot cake slides toward her, cream cheese icing already in the air. Before Asterion can react, she throws the icing at his face and bursts out tittering. "You said tonight is not for sorrow," managing to gasp out the words at last, the phoenix woman retreats hastily to the other side of the display. "So do not frown so, Asterion, or there will be worse things than frosting!"
He would be sorry to know she thinks herself best in silence; already he is growing too fond of the sound of her voice, the rich music of it, the timbre of laughter that carries it all. She reminds him of Florentine when she talks, a tumble of unselfconscious words that he can get lost in.
Perhaps he gave her the wrong impression, there on the cliffside where they met; Asterion is not much of a talker by nature. But when he is silent his worries circle him, dark shadows under water, looking always for an opening.
It sounds as though Leo was a true friend,” he says with a smile, and does not flinch at the brush of her shoulder, the whisper stray wisps of her mane over his skin.
Despite his years spent alone, it seems that touch is a thing he is growing accustomed to, too. At least he manages not to shy like a wild thing.
“I’d never heard of such things until I came to Novus. There was only grass if you were lucky and leaves and brush when you weren’t.” A strange thought occurs to him, then: he doesn’t know which seems more foreign, now – that lifetime spent foraging in lean and brutal months, eating mouthfuls of snow for water, or this one with its pillows and castles and cakes.
When first he’d arrived, Asterion had never thought he would adjust – yet here he was, listening to music, accompanying a lady. Was he the better or worse for it? Weaker or stronger?
Moira yanks him from such thoughts once again – this time with a well-placed fleck of icing. It dots the bridge of his nose, and after his initial shock and following attempt to lick it off fail, he curls his chin to his chest and rubs the icing off on his leg. He does it unhurriedly, keeping his gaze down as she scurries to the other side of the cakes – and then flicks a strip of vanilla frosting back at her.
“Now we match, at least,” he says, laughing, the scent of sugar in his nose fragile as gossamer. The bay grins at her, and in this moment he is no longer a Regent with a broken heart, but a boy once more with stars in his eyes and silver in his hair.
And icing on his foreleg.
“Worse than frosting? I can’t imagine such a threat. Unless it is the bees that follow.”
"Leo," she muses, looking off in the distance for but a moment. Moira remembers his sterling silver body, his gunpowder skin kissed by dapples. She remembers those off-gold hooves and piercing blue eyes. His angled mane. Every inch of him held true to their Arabian looks. Taller than she, but also more mischievous. Dark smiles meant for dinners by candle and beaches under the moon, silver ears too keen to listen and be whispered in, but he was sweet. If, that is, ambition could allow such sweetness to be a part of someone. But he was just a part of the past now, one that she sighs over after a moment. "He was a boy who thought he loved a girl and was too young to know any better. But I'm sure he's a fine man now. I do hope he's well. He was always so political, but never cared for the correctness of his own interests." And there is the sadness that is a living thing within her. Like a tapeworm, it hides in the pit of her belly, consuming all she offers, until at last it is strong enough to reveal itself without dying. A dying smile falls off the edges of her face at last, bleak eyes meeting his.
Letting it take her for but a moment, the girl remembers what he said. What she repeated like clockwork.
It is not a night for sorrows.
Pulling all those fragmented edges near again, bundling them in a cloth so fine, so riddled with holes from all the times she's shoved shards and shattered edges in, they are hidden again. It is not the sadness that leads her back to him, but the curiosity for such a different life. Only grass if you were lucky, not to play in and spend days gazing up at the clouds, but to eat to survive. Never has she lived such a rough life as that. Rumors never even made it to her home. "Do you miss that way of life, or do you prefer to be pampered and privileged as we are here?" Quiet curiosity is becoming, swirling in the depth of her eyes, lending that little pout to her lips that isn't quite what she should be doing, lightening her dark face until it is not bloodied but open instead.
Alas, the question came too late as frosting came her way. The phoenix jerks herself backward with a squeal, feels the smooth, sticky sweet frosting hit along her jaw, smear down her neck. It falls and leaves a travesty in its wake, leaves laughter spewing from her as she shakes her head. Has it hit her hair? "And here I was, thinking you were a gentleman, Asterion. What would my mother say if she saw us."
Chuckling, she moves forward, light as a feather, as smooth as water, until they are face to face and chest to chest. A wry grin to match his own, a bright, burning star that shines just for him, they are a duo of day and night to be contested. "Worse than your wildest imaginations, starboy." Lifting her chin up, exposing her throat, she gives him a pointed look. "You've made quite the mess, what are we to do about it now?"
He chances a look at her, as her memory carries her back, and he is struck with how familiar is the expression she wears. How many times has he felt such a thing, some mix of sorrow and gladness? Almost Asterion feels like he is intruding, until she begins to speak.
For a long moment afterward he is silent, letting the ripples of her words settle over his heart. They, too, are familiar – for has he not been that same boy?
What was love, when did it become real? Was it only ever in the proving, in the end? This is not about you, he reminds himself, and extends his muzzle to her own, where her smile slips away to nothing. Briefly he touches her, his breath warm on the velvet-soft of her nose, and then, still silent, he draws away.
Asterion has no words for her, nothing to comfort with but shared sorrow.
The moment passes, as all moments do, and there is something like wonder in his eyes as he watches her put herself back together. Another pang of familiarity, another silver sliver of regret: how similar they are, he thinks, and his heart aches for her. Moira Tonnerre should know nothing of sorrow.
At least, for the moment, sorrow is traded for sugar.
“A gentleman?” he laughs, and shakes his head. “I only just told you of how feral I was.” Dark eyes merry, he stands his ground as she draws near, close enough he can smell the sweetness of her breath, the clean scent of her coat. Some of her hair is threatening to come free from its pins and he is glad of it – but just as quickly as the thought comes he thinks why should I be glad? It should matter nothing to her whether her hair is bound or free, tumbling curls or neat coils.
She is close close close, and Asterion falls still. That crooked smile is gone from his face, but it lingers still in his eyes – and those fall from her own down the angle of her cheek, the smooth column of her throat. Where the frosting stripes her skin.
“We may as well give ourselves over to the bees,” he says with mock-resignation. The bridge of his nose tingles where the frosting still rests, a strange kind of war-paint. Asterion’s heart is suddenly a rabid, fluttering thing in his chest, though he can’t think why, and he worries the moment is stretching too long, becoming something, something –
“Unless-” he says, and extends his nose forward, nibbling a fleck of frosting from her throat before he can think better of it. His heartbeat is still a quick, bird-winged thing, but the danger (what danger?) is passed. The vanilla is rich and sweet on his tongue, the taste of an autumn afternoon or a slow summer day. “We could do things the way we savages do.” He angles his frosting-specked face toward her, arching a brow expectantly.
"If you're feral," she murmurs, still breathless from when his lips brushed her cheek, eyes mildly dilated, heart elevated and slightly overwhelmed, "then that's positively charming. I'd like to know more about wild things," and she whispers it like a lover would, leaning in to brush her lips along his ear, a wicked grin in her tone. Only after the silence stretches too long, a thin barrier crumbling, a terrified thing beating in her chest, does she withdraw with a smirk.
Moira Tonnerre is many things, but a smirk is not something commonly worn. Pleasure shines in those honeyed eyes, a challenge, a burning - it is something she will not touch, but oh how she wants to reach forth and grab it with both hands !
Asterion breaks the spell, his lips pressed along the long column of her throat, cleansing the patches he carefully placed, whispers tickling her skin and setting her nerves on fire. Shock stutters down her spine like a skittering rat that flees from being found. So fast, so quickly, the atmosphere grows as thick as the cream atop her morning coffee, a heavy thing that makes you push forward and pause to think all at once. He's so forward. Was she not just as bold? Has she invited him into such a taboo exchange without ever realizing it? Despite the bells screaming in her head, the alarms flashing bright red like the blood that once washed over her hands, her chin tilts up and a small noise slips out.
"And what do savages do, Asterion?" husky - her voice is too husky. This is a territory for Estelle to waltz amongst, not one for her to traipse over and sully with her lack of expertise. Should she even respond in kind? What would happen if she just let go?
Gone are the days of cold, silent rooms with portraits that stare and condemn her damaged soul. All that is left of the past are the memories she carries and the promise that one day she will return to Estelle and Marquelle and the Twins. They deserve at least that much from her, but who's left to stop the wanton cravings, the carnal desires, from which she refrains and suppresses for the sheer decency of the Tonnerre name?
Chained by no man any longer, her pyre blazes higher and higher into the night. She is not meant to be ash upon the ground, a song forgotten, a memory faded. Moira Tonnerre is a phoenix, lighting herself on fire just to watch the way she can burn.
Her own brows now match his as she steps forward, testing the distance between them, until is so close she could count his eyelashes. Reaching up, carefully a small kiss is placed upon his cheek, a steely glint in her eye, determination in her veins, and slowly she traces the freckles on his face with her lips until she finds the frosting. Only then does she dare taste the forbidden fruit, cream cheese icing smeared over a dark mouth, and sinning on her mind. Withdrawing as he did, she smiles so sweetly, licking almost all traces of her crimes away.
#c05122
@asterion . well this did not go as planned c':
Something about her words – the way she says them or the meanings themselves, he is helpless at the moment to tell which – makes him dizzy, makes him breathless, makes him feel like he is staring up at a bright path of stars that look so near he might fall into them.
Oh, she makes him shiver when her lips ghost along his ear; she makes his breath catch in his throat like something snared.
I am no wild thing, he wants to tell her, but what is the gallop of his heart if not feral? What is the sudden sharpness of his senses, the dizzying pull, the startling want?
She draws away and their eyes meet, flint and tinder, and Asterion can find no words, no wry or soft thing to say that could hope to change the shift in the air. But perhaps it does not matter; he is naked before her, everything laid bare in the deep-dark of his gaze.
The sound that slips from her unbidden when his lips touch her throat - ah, it could bring him to his knees. It makes him feel reckless and he is not a reckless man.
And what do savages do, Asterion?
They take and they live and they never regret, they are never sorry for a moment –
But Asterion is sorry, when she says his name. The syllables, the shape of it, even the emotion there – it makes him think of Aislinn and it is like a punch to the gut. What is he doing here, with his mouth on her skin and the scent of her surrounding him? What is he doing with his heart that drums against his ribcage like a thing lawless and wanton?
He is terribly still beneath her touch. His eyes, so full of daring, fall closed, and his breath hitches and holds when she presses a kiss to his cheek. Her breath smells of sugar and flowers and the warm sweetness of horses. He does not dare move as her lips trace over him, designs as intricate and precious as any painted on his hide from the festival, and he only breathes again as she pulls away. It is no better with his eyes open; there is still the memory of her whisper in his ear.
“Moira,” he says, and his voice is a ragged thing, frothy waves whipped wild by the wind. Oh, traitorous heart! It is turning him to a fool once more. Asterion swallows, and reminds himself that they are at a party, that they are surrounded by a dozen horses, any of which he might know.
He reminds himself that she lives in the night court, and that in the night court lives too the source of his broken heart.
Music drifts in, and he remembers where they are – that there are flowers crowning them both, and laughter from distant groups, and that she deserves better than his sorry heart, which doesn’t even know what it wants. Asterion swallows, and smiles.
“They like dancing,” he says, as though it is anything other than a distraction, a chance to breath, to think, “after their desserts and before their dinner. Shall we?” And before she can make him stay, before he can betray himself any further, before he can remember her breath shaping words into the curl of his ear, he turns away.
And this more than anything makes him feel like a savage, careless thing.
