“Uncle Ashmarian!” The boy yells as he skips from rock to rock. Nimbly he leaps a crouching cat as if it were a rock (for what does a boy born in a time stuck still know of the living?) The world around him might watch his progress, bright as a phoenix, fast as a cheetah, if it could move. The boughs of willows hang unmoving. The grasses do not sway. The wind does not groan. The sounds of a boy running echo and echo. They sound like a god’s feet, fast and loud and clattering in a world made only to listen and now never do.

The boy pauses, crouched upon a rock. His head is slung low, a mane, raucous and wild tangles its way down his slender young neck. Its ends set the forest aglow with a dawn light that has not risen here for… days? Weeks? Months? The mid-day sun hangs, ever bright, ever still and darkness never comes. Leonidas is a boy who knows nothing of shadows and darkness. He knows sleep with the heat of daylight upon his back, he knows the burn of sun upon his sundrenched eyelids. He has the golden eyes of a hunter’s sun and he turns that gaze upon his sister, holding her, one moment, two, in the gold of their world.

Then he looks back to a king that stands before a waterfall’s silent roar. Water tumbles and tumbles and never falls an inch. Mist arches high and the boy lets his gilded gaze roam over the silver of it and wonders how it would feel upon his skin.

Suddenly he is leaping like a deer from his rock. Suddenly he is running swift as a rabbit that leaps from log to log and over brush and root and between great tall trees. He runs like a creature born into the woodland, like a boy too in tune with the strangeness of Time. He laughs and does not wonder how it echoes and echoes and echoes. He closes in upon his uncle and crashes into the still-pool mirror of water and through its great waterfall arm that ascends and ascends reaches and reaches. The waters groan and shift and fight. they move unnaturally, wrongly and fall still in his wake. But what is abnormal when you are born into it?

Leonidas is an arrow, aimed for his blood, for a man as dark as him, with stars upon his skin and eyes that whisper of water living and water flowing. “Ashmn-“ He stumbles, over tongue and tooth and tries again, “Ashmurian!” Out of breath and out of words the boy stops before his uncle and looks up with a grin of gums and too-few teeth. 

Feminine laughter bubbles bright like flowers and melodic as peeling bells from behind Leonidas. It is bigger than the newborn boy of thin shoulders and wide, wide eyes. “Careful, brother, or he will show you-“ And it is too late, for already Leonidas is ripping a small wooden toy from the tangle of his mane and holding it proudly up to the still sunlight. “Papa got me this today. Ashmer has one too!” The boy declares, ignoring his dam's warning.

Already the carved cheetah is stalking her way up the Dusk King’s shoulder and across his side. The small boy growls like a tiger and knows nothing of the true sounds that cheetahs make. He does not lift his gaze to wonder what the wheeling birds, frozen in flight, might sound like. 

@Asterion | "speaks" | notes: thank you for threading with him! Please bear with me whilst i work out how to write him and who he is!

Laughter bubbles bright like flowers and melodic as peeling bells. It is bigger than the newborn boy of thin shoulders and wide, wide eyes. “Careful, brother, or he will show you-“ And it is too late, for already Leonidas is ripping a small wooden toy from the tangle of his mane and holding it proudly up to the still sunlight. “Papa got me this today. Ashmer has one too!”

Behind the boy Florentine arrives in gold, as at ease as her son, though her lavender eyes burn bright like a star. Her muzzle presses into the groove behind her brother’s jaw. She closes her eyes, inhales and remembers, remembers him. “You have hardly been home, Asterion.” The girl murmurs, as her eyes tip up to the skies and the falls and the trees, the pool, the whole island that stretches out, strange and wonderful and beautiful. “So we knew we would find you here… I have so much to tell you…” And she is smiling for not even a frozen world and the ire of gods can keep her joy at bay. Not now, not now. “Lysander and… Aster are coming too. You are an uncle to a nephew and a niece,” Her eyes lower to her son and how a cheetah still roams through galaxies and rich, rich earth. “Leo, what have I told you about using others as play mats? At least ask first.” 

But the boy is not listening, not when he is mapping stars and imagining worlds. “We came to find you.” His mother murmurs to her brother. “So you can meet them, so Daddy can meet them…” Florentine pauses, holding her stuttering heart tight, swallowing it down, down. “We are going today, now. Come.” And now there is no smile upon her lips, but hope for a brother who will say yes again.

@Asterion

 
 
 

 

“Aster,” he says, to call the girl’s attention away from her brother, already racing through the grass, the path of an arrow now crooked, now true. “Daughter,” he says, (though she is already looking at him) because it is such a new and strange thing to say, more precious than ichor, sweeter than ambrosia on his tongue.

When she looks up at him, her gaze full of unmoving gold, Lysander can’t help but press a kiss to her forehead, unblemished white soft as fawn-skin. She permits it, though something in the curve of her neck tells him she would rather be away, coursing through the wood like her twin, and after a moment he straightens with a grin.

“This is for you,” he says, and without a word (she’s as quiet as a willow nymph, their little girl) her gaze drops from his own to the wood-carved cheetah he holds extended. Delicately she takes it, and he watches her examine the sloping shoulders, the curve of tail, each lovingly placed spot. “It’s just as quick as your brother’s,” he says, smiling still, and then tilts his head in the direction Leonidas and Florentine had vanished in. “Are you?”

At this her gaze lifts again to him, and Lysander thinks he sees the beginnings of a grin (oh, but slow and strange as the grin of a crescent moon) before she is gone, pale as a dove flashing through the green undergrowth.

After a moment (after a sigh that he cannot quite account for, though he should be used to worry by now, the feel of it like an iron-woven cloak across his shoulders) the once-god follows. There is nothing but silence, and far ahead the sounds of his family, until he begins, softly, to sing.

a thousand teeth
and yours among them, I know

What could be more perfect than this? The press of her brother’s skin against hers is firm and warm and wonderful.  Even in this strange place - a volcano place - Florentine cannot help but smile when she stands amidst her family.

She turns as whitelight gleams and Aster appears, less a girl as a divine creature carved of a god’s marble. Her daughter is silver and white cut through with a gold that gleams brighter than any Florentine has ever known. Is this like your blood once was? She once whispered into Lysander’s ear as her lips traced the gold of her slumbering children. Not even a Time girl can dream of a gold more wonderful than theirs. Not even a Time girl can think of children more perfect than these.

Flora knows Lysander’s blood runs red now. Oh she knows how it feels warm and frighteningly fresh as it covers her throat like a scarf. A shudder slips through her torso and her heart trembles for the horror of her memory. This day might never have been, if she had not leant her dagger to other skills that day. She swallows down the thought, pushing it away as she steps instead toward Aster, pressing a kiss to the filly’s warm brow. Then she reaches for Lysander, though she remains beside her brother. Her lips press a fierce kiss to the corner of Lysander’s and she cannot help the smile that grows, for what space is there within her for anything but joy? It swells to fill every inch of space until Florentine feels fit to burst.

She draws away from the kiss and looks at the world still static about them. “I almost wish that this moment can be frozen forever too. That I might somehow remember it as perfect as it is now.” Yet there is more joy to come and anticipation is a lance through her veins. It is electricity that jolts life into her and pours a laugh from her lips as rich as spring earth. 

Her breath escapes her in a whoosh, her smile fades yet her brows rise and the girl laughs shortly, sardonically. “Yes, it was all a bit… fast and definitely unexpected.” The gilded girl pauses as she lets her gaze watch her children and their twin cheetah toys. “She is named after you, you know?” Florentine breathes, suddenly more serious, suddenly anxious of what her brother might think. “Aster and Leonidas.” She says their names, for Asterion, for her, for the wonder of twins.

At last she sighs, at last she pulls herself from her brother’s embrace and moves past Lysander. Her shoulder brushes his, her side, her flank, her hip. Her heart skips, playful desire slips like gasoline through her veins and her tail flicks at his chest as she lays a nip upon his haunch. Her smile is wicked and her giggle a thing of gods and nymphs. 

“I think it’s time we go.” She sighs and cannot help how her heart leaps, how suddenly wonderful everything feels, how suddenly terrifying. She left her father a child and yet returns with children of her own. Guilt bubbles for all the times she has not left to find him, all the times she said no to Lysander. Urgency, desperation to make it right now, slips whitehot through her body and her breath is wild in her lungs.

Florentine looks back to her family: her boys, her girl and she smiles as she turns back and lifts her silver dagger. It warms, oh how it warms and wakens and fills with magic! It leaps to cut, to split worlds before its cleaving edge. She presses and worlds cave. Reality bows and Time whispers and tears. She inhales and it is not Novus she breathes, but the Riftlands, its air metallic and magic laden. It is ancient and feral and it calls them home.

@Asterion

Her smile is impish, even as her brother presses his face into the curve of her throat to hide his gratitude and his tears. Florentine continues to press the dagger into the air and call the Riftlands to her. She feels them both, Novus and the Riftlands coming together like planets. She feels their resistance, the press of two magics repelling, like oil and water, like two like magnets. Yet resistance is nothing new. Worlds resist her magic, but never have they been able to deny her.
 
And so, Florentine continues to press and pull and soon existence is peeling open before them like a curtain. Light spills in from her birthland and it smells as wicked wild as she remembers. Oh she swallows salvation down, she laughs as she feels this ancient magic spill over her angry and wicked as ever.
 
What delights and horrors does it hide beyond this window of hers?
 
The edges of her rift window are fresh and sharp as a cut. They glow white with matter, blazing hot like nothing she has ever known before. Her magic peels away in sparks and the worlds repel each other. Time blends through the open window, like heat meeting cold air. Everything mists. One world moves slowly, the other fast and friction growls in their ears. They rub, rub, rub.
 
Asterion stands with awe in his eyes and Flora smiles. He steps up and her stomach leaps, it is a bird taking flight as he steps eagerly through her window and is gone. Hurry, hurry, her excitement sings through her soul. She is too keen to be in the Rift again, to gather her whole family together at last, one place, one time.
 
But the magics are begging her to knit them back together, as if such strange worlds should never have met and long to be apart once again. Their corners begin to fray, resisting, and then their edges meet and press and twine and suddenly the window is sewing itself shut. Florentine presses her dagger to it, cuts them open in each place they mend and the window trembles, wildly, angrily. She frowns and her dagger is singing, with rage, with worry, with effort.
 
The Time girl turns to Lysander and whispers softly, “Go, quickly, the magics are… wrong.” And she is frowning, cutting again and again but as fast as she reopens the wounds the window is healing itself. This is not how her magic has ever been – worlds have yielded to her as sweetly as butter beneath her dagger. Their resistance is as futile as the skin of a fruit; each cut as easy as a sigh. Asterion is gone, he stepped through and he is alone in the strangeness of Rift. Her stomach twists and she looks to Lysander, the other half of her, the only one who knows Rift as well as she. Florentine leans and presses her lips to his, “I will send the twins after you and then follow them.”
 
Lysander goes, into the feral world of the Rift. Florentine wonders what monsters lurk where they have gone – or if they might step into paradise. Yet her brother is powerful and Lysander knowledgeable of the mysterious ways of the Rift worlds. They will be safe until she joins them. They will protect the twins in the moment it takes her to join them.
 
Yet Florentine’s concern for what lingers beyond, is short lived for the window fights ever harder with each horse she allows to slip through her window. The portal convulses like a heart, throbbing, sparking like live wires. The Riftlands blink before her, there for a moment and then gone, ghostly. They shimmer-shudder and grow steady at last.
 
“Aster, Leo, come. Go now, quickly.” Florentine breathes and if she knew what was to come she might never have let them step up to the window and then through. The window swallows them, they disappear from their mother’s sight, but oh the edges of the window are knitting ever faster and though she presses her dagger to them, they have become hard as iron. They close and close and close and there is nothing The Dusk girl can do to stop them. The magic in her veins is keening and writhing. Her nerves blaze as if lit. Her every fibre aches with the wrongness of this moment. She is raw and red within for her every effort to keep her magic dominant and her head is sharp with the ache of her body. Her magic convulses and pulling her dagger from the edge of the window she leaps through as the cuts bind themselves together fast as a blink. Her window, once large grows smaller, smaller, smaller.
 
Leo stands, confused. Beyond him the island stretches out as far as his eyes can see – just as it was before he and Aster stepped through the portal. He turns to the window he just stepped into – no, through. Aster turns with him and they see the window fizzling shut. The edges of the world their mother cut open are binding together until at last they are the finest line and then a mere dot and then…
 
The tip of a dagger thrusts desperately back through that final mere dot of light, opening it wider and the world of the Riftlands gleams brighter than white light. Sparks blaze as if the blade is upon a whetstone as if it is grinding down, down, down. And maybe it is, for suddenly there is a blade’s screaming crack and the tip of the dagger snaps, splitting into two. The final fissure of the window snaps shut like teeth. There is no light to be seen where there once was. There is nothing to disturb the air before them.
 
The window is gone….
 
Their family is… gone.
 
Leo steps to where his mother was – back through the window she had ushered him through but nothing moves. It does not press against him as it had. It no longer whispers in his ear that he is not wanted in that Rift world his mother tried to take him and Aster to. It does not say that they were made of this world and that Novus alone is where they belonged… It says nothing. There is no window anymore but oh he feels the writhing of the Island’s magic as it reels in the wake of the Time Travelling Girl: A girl who stands with her lover and brother and weeps over her lost children and her broken dagger.
 
At Leonidas’ feet, where he dropped his little cheetah toy, lies a true cheetah cub. It moves like no other creature he has seen. Beside it another cub stands and yawns and stretches. Each of their features is so much like the toys he and Aster had and yet, their toys are nowhere to be found. “Circe?” The boy croaks, his voice meek with shock. The tiny cub peers up at him, pausing from where it reaches curiously for a thin shard of silver - one of the remnants of his mother’s dagger. The other piece lies a little way from it. Leo lifts them, his breath slipping past his lips in a whoosh as he passes one to his sister.
 
He turns with wide, wide gold eyes to survey the clearing around them, where the waterfall still hangs still and silent. Everything was so silent. Never had the boy felt so small, so alone. “Mama?” He calls and waits. “Papa?” He shouts a little louder and does not wait so long. “Uncle Ashmerion!” He shouts so loud his voice shatters at the last. Yet still nothing stirs, though the whole island echoes with the sound of a boy’s cries. All the island watches, immortal, frozen, wrong.
 
Leo steps into Aster. He presses his face tight to her throat, nosing his way beneath the fall of her mane. The boy breathes in his twin’s smell, all the parts of her that smell of their parents and Uncle. He trembles and feels the press of her heartbeat against his, both as wild as birds. Both wild in their twin frenzy of loss.

** <3 Just to clarify, Asterion, Lysander and Florentine have now left Novus <3 **

And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
—