Space shrinks, the cosmos lessen, the sun dims, everything disappears until it is only the two of them - Moira Tonnerre and Asterion. An Emissary and a King. A girl and a boy and a forest between them. She could shiver with the delicious sparks floating along her skin, sizzling in the air, but she does no such thing. Instead, the red crowned woman lets the silence stretch, let it settle over them as a blanket (as snow once did when she’d first screamed and raged in a fit of fire, a fit of confusion, when she was reborn into something beautiful and something sharp), and listens to the beating of her heart. Badum, badum, ...badum. It sings as only a fool’s can, sonnets marinate in thoughts that go on for miles, climbing mountains, weathering storms, scaling cliff sides and plunging into valleys deep and unknown. Even when his eyes close, when he wears a mask of quietude, of trouble brewing on the horizon, she cannot look away.

The Emissary of Denocte is as much a captive as he in this tangential arc their hearts have gone on together.

He may deny so much, but one can only weather a storm of fire so long.
Moira is a living flame.

She inhales gasoline, exhales conflagrations of poetry and pain, singing flesh and tender hearts, letting her passions fuel her evermore. Gold looks at the dappling upon his sides from the canopy above. Maple leaves, cecropia smatterings, the faint outline of moths moving and praying mantises on the hunt, it lives along his ribs, it plays along his hips. Hips and back and sides where scars lie heavy and subtle. She wants to know those scars, intimately, as well as she knew Estelle or her own name when fire burned feathers and darkness was her sole companion. Moira wishes to put on poultices until they are lessened, until they disappear, until hers is the only name he remembers, even for a heartbeat, even for a moment frozen in time.

At last, at last she breathes out with her name as a sigh upon his lips. Heart stutters, stops, then leaps and bounds and runs headlong toward him, to him.

Asterion is the sea.

And she is caught in the waves, pulled in by the undertow, so ready, so willing to jump further, to push further, to let it toss and turn her as it pleases. Even when she feels her chest tighten, even when the air is too far away to pull in, to survive, she revels in the way he looks at her. Asterion looks like he’s drowning, and how strange she finds it when he is of the sea and she was meant to be of the sky. Brown and gold meld into something molten, something magnetic, something that is unbreakable when he speaks.

Truly, Asterion is more a king then than ever before.

“You are not rotten, nor cruel, nor corrupt. You are not cold. You care so much - too much. You inspire a nation with your bravery, your willingness to let the world rest upon your shoulders. Oh! But Asterion, you are not Atlas. You cannot hold such weight forever and deny yourself life… You cannot.” With that, she moves. Distance that has separated them, kept them apart for so long by her choosing and his, it lessens when her feet lift. Offhandedly she wonders if the world sighed or if that is herself, and she is grateful for the privacy the jungle offers, the seclusion so they can talk and scream and cry and reunite. It is as though he’s shed his skin and let himself shine through.

Somehow, Asterion is looser, freer, more relaxed when the phoenix’ wings wrap around herself, wrap around him and drown out everything else. Distant is the cicada song, soft and sweet are the lovebirds calling to one another high above. Even the rustling of the brush (is that Neerja, back and ready to scare away that which Moira loves more than herself?) cannot make the pegasus withdraw.

Again, the pegasus is bold.

“How could a heart love wrong when they sing so sweetly together? Asterion, you are flawed. You are imperfect. You are so many millions of things smashed into a body of starlight, of wonder, of splendor and riches untold. There is no wrong way to love, and when one synchronizes with another, no matter how short - or long - it would be more wrong to overlook and refute the proposal and promises.” Gently she bends her neck, looping her chin below his, tucking herself against his chest until their hearts are pressed together. Her breaths take up the rhythm of his own and amber eyes close when she lets herself simply feel him once more. “Our nations would prosper. Terrastella and Denocte have lived with Kings and Queens and many more who did not love within their own court. How could we ever hope for peace, for true serenity and tranquility throughout the lands if we will not even allow ourselves the chance to find happiness alongside those of other kingdoms?” It is a whisper traced into the base of his neck, moving carefully along his hairline, and ending as a broken, cracked wisp of cigarette smoke in his ear.

She cannot be the only one who feels this way. “I’ve missed you,” she murmurs in closing, pulling back to run her lips along his cheek and lay a kiss so chastly, so sweetly and feather-soft at the corner of his mouth, “and I’ve been so horridly mistaken.”
 

Already she expects him to withdraw, time and again, to turn her away as she turned him away, time and again. When he shows no sign of pulling back, of stopping what they’ve begun, she feels her knees unlock, her nerves are on fire no longer from fear of his refusal, but from the way he leans into her. She stands tall and strong, a home welcoming him with a ready hearth and open door, embracing the starlit man with all that she is and all that she will ever be.  “I ask for no mountain’s fealty, only that of your own and mine sworn to you,” it is a warm breath for she cannot raise her voice, it flutters haphazardly, her throat tightening.

Is it too soon to say such things? To ask this of him - of herself?
She couldn’t say, she daren’t think on it longer.

A pause, she lets him gather himself, the Tonnerre girl waiting (so patiently, so impatiently) for Asterion’s next words. When they come, all air rushes from her as though knocked out of her lungs, there is almost a gasp if she could breathe, instead it is merely a choking noise. The woman who wears composure as a second skin, who faces all glares and smiles with the same cool indifference, is at last shaken and flutters against his side, against his skin, like a leaf in a tempest.

Had she heard him right?

Wander-struck eyes pull away from his shoulder, detach herself from his skin, seek out warm brown to find the honesty, unearth the truth from his soul and swallow it like she would swallow the sun. When they meet, glowing and beautiful and yearning, she smiles again - softer, sweeter, and nods at last. “You need not miss me any longer, my King,” the words are louder than the last, stronger. Confidence fills her as it so often avoided the woman before, draws breath for her where she might have let it be held and pause until thoughts unravel. There is no time for unraveling, her spool of thread is already so finely woven into knots and intricate designs. But now, there is a seashell strung on it, red thread weaving in and out of the delicate calcium carbonate structure, tying it irrevocably to herself until she cannot tell where it was first threaded into and out of. “Tell me you forgive me for all the ways I’ve wronged you - I could name constellations of my faults and I do not think it would be enough.”

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“speech” @'Asterion' <3 
 

There is a blush upon her, hot and fast and sweet, stealing over her cheeks, her ears, melting upon her neck until she fears she will burn up as he speaks, as he wraps her close. Their bodies sigh together, sing together, and it's as though something that was missing for a very long time clicks into place at last. A hole feels fuller, less empty than before, and the tempests within howl more quietly than when this adventure began. Golden eyes won't open - can't open - and she cannot know the things he pushes down, not when there is a swelling of something, a turning of something else.

It's all so confusing.
But nothing else has felt so right.

So she lets herself fall, lets the tinkling laughter of midnight stars and kiss of darkness that comes from within her brush against his cheek when his last words ring out. Only then, only once silence consumes them both, does the phoenix open blazing eyes, content and merry eyes. How they dance when looking at him.

“"Hello there, I'm Moira Tonnerre and I'm infinitely pleased to meet you, Asterion, my sweet King," she says with a wry grin. Amusement licks at her lips, the giddiness of a girl with her first crush sings along her bones, and she wonders if it should always feel this way when things seem to go so right. “"Am I wrong to feel so glad?" She whispers, afraid that he would say yes, the vile hand of doubt threatening to taint this one sweet moment in time. “"Can't we stay here together, forever? Leave politics and intrigue in another time, another land? I'd go where you go, could I keep you for a while, Asterion?"

She knows that she has no right to ask to cage his wild heart, for water always leaks out of the cages trying to bind it. Still, she could no more stop the words from falling than she could the rain from coming. Somewhere, Neerja is rolling her eyes, jealousy awakening in the tiger at the thought of sharing her bonded, her human. Somewhere, an animal is falling under sharp claws and sharper teeth, a roar shaking the trees and pushing birds into flight. There is an unease under the motionless sun, a restlessness the Pegasus has not yet felt. Too many other things she feels to know Neerja's jealousy, the islands unease, and the events to follow that the air can only hint at now.

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“speech” @'Asterion' let's leap back in time before my heart breaks for a minute of purity and sweetness and an upset tiger probably off eating a rabbit