you must like me for me
yeah, i want you
we can’t make any promises now
can we babe —
yeah, i want you
we can’t make any promises now
can we babe —
He is ice and the dark of space that swallows twilight. The silver threaded through his mane a cold kiss of reality that presses against her cheek where his lips had once brushed not so long ago. In answer, she is her people’s dragon fire; a whisper of storm and brimstone and lightning carefully constrained in midnight and star-flecked skin. Never had she dared look upon him with her eyes like pyres, but then again, when had he ever seen her for what she truly was? How could he look at her as if he had known her — every part of her, no matter how shadowed, how dark — and yet not understand?
Her people were everything to her. They were every damn star in her galaxy.. save for one. The North Star — Asterion. The brightest in her night skies; the beacon in her dark.
But it would seem that some stars could begin to fade.
Peace, you say. Then why does your country burn?
Asterion’s words pull her faraway gaze from the smoke that rises in the mountains. "My country does not burn only for us. It’s a warning, a statement. We will no longer bow to the chaos rippled across the courts — both from our hands," she swallows, a stone dropping in her stomach as the sun-scar on her neck burns, "or at the hands of others." She trembles to face him, to drown in those eyes of calming seas, when all at once she is igniting with pent up rage. Anger. Despair. Desperation. The threat on her and on her people was real, just as much as the scar on her neck was tangible. No matter how many times she tried to forget that it existed, it was there. But unlike the sun etched into her skin.. she could do something. She had to.
She had to.
Her heart begins to crack.
"You would not look for peace from the Night? From me?" Aislinn is lethally quiet, bordering a shuddering calm as her tempest beats against the dam of self-control. How could he say such things? Her heart constricts, violently, brutally. All she can do is shake her head, willing the words to fade away.
Goodbye? For how long?
There is a sudden, coarse line drawn in the sand between them. A canyon without passing, a crumbling bridge, an ocean of waves and stars and promises made. Too soon and all at once, they stand on opposite sides.
Please..
A crater cleaves through her heart like shears — shears that cut the sewn strings of twilight lavender and dusty rose around the beating flesh. The very same strings that had carefully threaded the broken pieces of her heart back to wholeness, near exact to one year ago. But then, they had met on a different shore, a different night. Now, there were no fireflies or summer wine, but tears and flames and the weight of a world settled upon her phantom crown. This time, she was everything but the Child of the Night that had found her prince of daydreams that midsummer’s eve.
And she hated it; for no matter how hard she tried, the cavity grew, crumbling into a hole of obsidian in her chest where he had once been forever there in her soul.
Only one word, and she was undone.
Please stay. Help me understand — don’t leave me when I don’t understand.
Her voice is feather soft — terrifyingly soft. "Do you know what I am?" she asks. Even the waves that crash onto the shore are silent as Aislinn’s words fall from her lips. She dares to look at him, really look at him, memorizing the lines of that handsome dark face. The clouds of dusk that cling to him like the stars cling to her. And those eyes.. those eyes she would have swam in, only to find the truth hidden within.
Does he truly know the woman he had fallen in love with?
"Do you know who I am to them? I can’t.. I can’t abandon them." Aislinn half turns, sea foam beating against her sides, her legs. Droplets of silver spray and catch the little light drawn from the flames. She points to her homeland with her wing, beckoning. "They are mine to protect. I swore an oath. And I —" she cranes her neck, looking back at him. "How can you blame my people? How can you blame me?"
Does she truly know the man she had fallen for that summer night?
The sigh that escapes her lungs breaks her and when she faces him full on, silver pricks her blue eyes. "Please," she begs, "please don’t ask me to stay. Not like this."
She fears the answer as sparks continue to fly towards the stars; the words tasting of ash on her tongue.
@asterion ♡ I don’t know what’s happening ;_; sorry for the book
"Aislinn speech."
art by aenemoni
