“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.





@Moira <3

if you'll be my star*

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.”





@Moira <3

if you'll be my star*

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.





@Moira  oh trust me he's worse at it xD

if you'll be my star*

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.




@Moira  zomg

if you'll be my star*