[P] wonderland.

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* “Aislinn,” he repeats, loud enough for only her and the fireflies and the moonlight silver on the lake to hear it. Her name is a prayer, and the night is a poem, and the ending - oh, may the ending never come. For when it does, when dawn breaks (as it must), rose and gold and watchful - when it finds them - then he will remember all the things he has willfully pushed away, in favor of this dream. But it is not here yet. Here it still hovers around midnight, the smell of distant campfires a sweet fragrance on the breeze. The fireflies are embers in her hair, and Asterion has her name to carry like a bell in the highest tower of his heart. It makes the moment real, grounded in a way he is not when he looks into her eyes (is there any other world but her eyes?) There is nothing more he needs to know, to say; his breath is only for taking in the scent of her, or catching at the way the starlight shimmers in her hair, or releasing slow and sweet each time they chance to touch. Gladly and foolishly he casts away his worry, his doubt, the questions that traveled with him from Ravos. They are on land but his legs are damp, though he does not remember stepping into the lake; they dance as shadows below the stars to no music but the thrum of their hearts and the singing of crickets, the trilling of night-birds. Perhaps he is a ghost; only a creature of mist and dreaming could feel so feather-light. The bay dares to touch the silver of her mane, skimming it like a breeze, but keeps himself from pressing a kiss to the snip like a tear-drop on her nose; it is too much, too soon. They are strangers, dreamers, fools. And below it all, below the whimsy and the wonder, a new worry whispers through his heart - that such a creature as Aislinn must certainly belong to another. The thought brings back that first expression she flashed at him, and he notices for the first time the scent of sweet, rich wine that clings to her, faint beneath the scent of campfire and cinnamon. He wonders, then, about the stars in her eyes and the bells of her laughter, and what is was that put them there. He will not care; he pushes it away. Asterion finds that he has fallen still, that he is facing her; he can feel the warmth of her, a balm even on a summer’s night like this. He catches her eyes and his own are dark, heavy with dreams and want. Suddenly he is aware of each of their breaths, and the beating-beating-beating of his heart. “May I?” he asks, so softly, as though to speak louder than a prayer would break the spell over them both. And then the velvet of his dark lips finds the curve of her neck behind her ear, the soft down of a wing’s edge, each touch question and quest. For a boy who spent his colthood dreaming of adventure, he finds that all he wants to explore is here before him. @Aislinn