Asterion

There’s something missing in him, some was-there-but-now-isn’t, but so far Asterion hasn’t noticed.

There are other things on his mind: the ache in his muscles, the fuzziness in his head like his brain became a beehive somewhere between Ravos and here. Perhaps the rift had done it, the magic made him mad - but he doesn’t feel mad. Just sleepy and strange and lonely.

He’d like more than anything to sleep, but there’s a summer storm coming. It’s building on the horizon, an ominous green, and the air where he stands is still and humid as a held breath. There are no birds singing, but there is a droning of drowsy summer insects, and a blackbird darts across the still grass and vanishes into a distant treeline. He ought to find shelter, too.

There seems to be few enough options, and he finds himself jealous for the bird’s ability to fly - nevertheless he follows it, loping with a nervous whicker toward the trees. Scant enough cover it was - only a narrow band of oaks, their leaves beginning to shiver in the stirring wind. But it was better than waiting it out in a bare field. In Ravos, the storms could be fearsome, feral things, biting wind and lashing rain and thunder like a moan. He hopes this one is only a summer thunderstorm, all noise and no teeth, but still the boy shivers with nerves and his dark eyes are wary.

Even so there is a part of him that wonders in awe at the way the rain, when it comes, sweeps across the plain and the grasses all bend before the wind like waves. The canopy he stands beneath is thick enough that at first he only hears the rain on the leaves, a sound like silver between the rumbles of thunder. Eventually raindrops do reach him, but after the sticky heat of the afternoon they feel good against his skin.

There should be a stirring there, a recognition in his blood of the water that once was his, but there is nothing.

He is just beginning to realize it when there comes another distraction - the sound of movement through the brush, barely heard above the storm - and he turns to find a mare there, heavy with the scent of flowers, honey-golden and very, very wet. Asterion can’t help the little grin that makes its way across his lips, the way his brow lifts as he takes the sight of her in. “Not quite quick enough?” 

@Florentine

Asterion

Everything is rain-slick and thick with the scent of storm, but even over it there’s something else, warm and floral and almost familiar. Her color makes him think of his twin, but even rain-damp she is not the rich molten gold of Talia but something softer, sun on clouds. Her smile only highlights their differences; he’d never seen a smile like that on the girl he’d grown up with.

It’s the kind of smile impossible not to echo, and suddenly the storm does not seem so fearsome. In that moment, with the trill of laughter beneath her words, Asterion goes from feeling lost to feeling like an adventurer.

Then a stronger breeze gusts through, rattling the leaves and sending a shower of drops down on them both, and after starting at the sudden cold the bay shakes himself like a dog and laughs. “Well said,” he answers her, and lets his gaze skirt from the flowers in her hair to the ornate weapon she wore. It reminds him that they are strangers, that he knows nothing, nothing at all of this world.

The smile softens, then, on his dark lips, and his even darker gaze slips back out to the field. They’re in the thick of it, now; the branches are creaking and swaying above them and the world is a sheet of silver. Lightning flattens the world for less than a heartbeat and once again Asterion shivers, fighting to suppress the instinctual, primeval fear that whispers of danger.

Nothing smells of magic – not the metallic deep-dark taste of Velius (something unnamable, something vital like blood or seawater) or the bitterblue of No or the bright valiant taste of the fire-wielders.

But that is not enough for Asterion to trust this storm, even if his companion seemed utterly unconcerned.

“I take it, then, the storms here aren’t dangerous? Beyond the usual, I mean.” When he glances back at her there’s a soft concern in his gaze, less for her answer and more for what she might think of him – perhaps here it is unheard of, for something darker to lurk in the heart of a storm.

Perhaps here there is no feral magic, no rift waiting to split a world apart.

He doesn’t know what it means, that he would both be relieved and sorry to hear it were so.

@Florentine

Asterion

The storm has done this, at least: no more does the day feel like a monster’s mouth, the wet press of heat.

No; the still heavy warmth has been broken, ripped apart by wind and scattered by rain. The breeze that reaches for them in their laughable shelter among the trees is cool, a damp cloth to the fever-day that had come before, and the clouds roll on and on. The sunset would likely be remarkable; Asterion wonders what might come after it.

Perhaps, whatever it was, he would not be watching it alone.

That’s enough to draw the smile back like it was summoned, and her words do more to reassure him. He nods, eyes on her and the droplets than run like rivulets down her neck and turn the honey there darker gold. Asterion, familiar with what it was to daydream, does not miss the way her gaze goes faraway. He does not doubt it is no longer this tame-enough sea of grasses she’s looking on; there’s another tempest in her eyes, and he wonders at it.

He’s even more sure when she continues, the tone of her voice echoing the small strange pang in his heart to hear things were less…wild. His head has ever been full of starstuff and stories; it is not a stretch to guess that hers might be, too. Indeed, as she speaks of her birthplace he forgets the storm before him in favor of her words, trying and failing to imagine such a tumultuous place.

It sounded like the kind of place the unicorn would go, if she had been given a choice.

The thought makes him sigh, the sound soft as sea-foam. He feels suddenly less, suddenly small. It’s then that her lament truly hits him:

There is something missing. His water-magic, that subtle stirring, the pull of internal tides. “Oh,” he says, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath and closing his eyes.

When he opens them again she is watching him, and so he only offers a little roll of his dark shoulders and a half-sheepish look by way of explanation.

“Your world sounds….very wild.” He cannot quite keep the note of longing out of his voice; such a silly, boyish thing, to be standing in a storm of one new world and yet be hungry for another. “How did you come to be in this one? And how long have you been here?” A brief pause, only the sound of rain on leaves (gentling now, the storm moving on) before he adds, “and if you don’t mind the onslaught of questions, where is it this is?”

@Florentine

Asterion

The truth of her question catches him by surprise. It isn’t the fact of one being asked; he knows the movement must have seemed strange. But to know, to guess – Asterion laughs, a breathy, brief sound borne more of startlement than anything.  
 
“Yes,” he says, but it takes him a moment to meet her earnest gaze. It’s shameful, that it should have taken him so long to notice; his gods would be displeased, but they usually were with him, anyway. She, he knows, would not have made it a step before knowing. But his magic had always been insubstantial: the stuff of mist and foam, not storms and crashing waves.
 
Over the scent of the rain, of the acrid lightning, of the damp loamy earth and swaying grasses and whispering, shivering trees, he can smell her. And again he feels it, that strange tug, that familiarity he cannot place. He wants to brush his nose along her neck, wants to bury it in her flower-strewn mane and discover the source of that draw, secret and low beneath the heady scent of flowers.
 
He has no idea that she wants much the same.
 
Her words make his heart stutter and his blood quicken, even as she pulls away and he finds he misses the warmth of her. The last of those words snag him and it’s his turn to watch as she looks away, searching the lines of her face as though they might resolve into someone he knows.
 
“Who?” he says, over-eager, unable to help the question as it escapes. “Who does it remind you of?” His heart is a trapped thing in his chest, and reason tells him it is not his twin, golden Talia, or the unicorn. That it could not be. But he can suppress the hope that rises in him then any more than he could help the question.
 
His heart does not slow to see the glint in her eyes, the smile that curves her lips. It is not the meadow, rain-lashed and dim, that she is seeing now; he wants badly to know where she is instead.
 
There are so many worlds out there.
 
I cut my way here, she professes, and his dark, wondering eyes slip at once to the dagger. Even in the darkness it finds a sliver of light; it gleams, throwing some ghostlight-reflection onto her face. That sorrow – Asterion does not realize that that expression is a twin to his own, that it shapes their face the same way.
 
There is no disbelief in him, when she names what she is, what she’s done. He can see the truth of it before him, and Asterion has always been an adept believer.
 
So it is wonder, not doubt, that has him stepping alongside her, has his gaze lingering on hers, as though he can read her features like a map to places he’s never been.
 
He wishes he had something to say, to offer her. What a terrible loss hers must have been; what a terrible discovery. He had always tried to deny the truth of his own magic; its absence, now, is nothing too terrible.
 
Or maybe it’s just that he’s too near his father, with his talent for walking away. The moon, for him, is always brighter over the next hill.
 
Her eyes meet his and the storm-strewn sky makes the amethyst into something dark and shadowed. Suddenly her eyes are a well he might fall into, but he cannot tell what might be at the bottom – starlight or the stillness at the bottom of the sea.
 
“Florentine,” he repeats softly, trying the name, wondering why it makes him think of sunlight on snow. “And do you wish to leave Novus?” 
 
For the first time, he wonders if he is trapped here, in this land of slow, sleeping magic, this place where the storms are only storms. 



@Florentine

Asterion

They’re like children with their asking, mouths shaped with wondering and manes glistening with rain like dew. Her questions tumble forward but Asterion is not perturbed; he may not put voice to all of his but oh, there are so many things he wonders. His head is full of what ifs and whys and it has always been so, since he was a slender foal on golden sand. It was Talia who had answers, who acted instead of wondering. She was like the unicorn, in that way; they would always leave him behind. 

But this golden girl, smelling of flowers and sodden with rain - he thinks he might understand her, in a way. Theirs is not cold steel or hard gold. It makes him wonder (always he is wondering) if perhaps it is not such a bad thing, to be softer, to be sturdy. 

“It was water-magic,” he says, and it’s almost a sigh. “I came from a place called Ravos, but there was a rift of magic — ” it’s hard to know how much more he might have said, if he’d been allowed to continue. But she gives voice to other things and it makes a soft smile grow on his dark muzzle, even as her question turns in him. 

Yes - yes. Of course he missed his magic. But should he not miss it more? Asterion feels a tug of longing, but he doesn’t know whether it’s for the magic itself or for the fact of missing it. He is not his father - he does not have enough experience to distinguish between guilt and loss. 

Or maybe it is simply both. 

“I never felt like it quite belonged to me,” he admits, and there are a thousand reasons why. He’d wanted something different, something more - not something reminiscent of the ocean he grew up alongside, safe and known. He’d wanted storms, not showers.

And now he had nothing. This time he knows it’s sorrow that settles like a stone, somewhere deep within him. 

My father she says, and he watches transfixed to see the shape her face takes. Her eyes and her mouth say different things but they both read love. It is his turn, now, to feel something like jealousy, even as she talks of his angst. Even the way she says is (his father has always been a was, to him) stirs something low and sad in him. When the topic moves on again, a smooth stone skipping on a lake, the ripples of that sadness linger and grow. 

And again they mirror each other, as she falls still again. He can’t help but nod at her words - yearning and roam feature frequently in the vocabulary of his own heart - but he also understands the feeling of being grounded, of something calling you to stay. 

A late-storm raindrop rolls down his nose as she returns to talking of her father, but he doesn’t shake it off. He is too busy searching his memory, for hadn’t Aridela spoken of ice? Hadn’t it been strange, to her, that a man so red could be so cold? The star-painted mare had never said much of him, had deftly defied Asterion’s begging of tales until he’d given up the asking. And still she talks with present tense, as though he’s out there somewhere, as though they might be reunited. 

“I never knew mine,” he says softly, as though to give the words too much weight might make them shatter. Then even the small pieces he did have might vanish. “He left before I was born. My mother only said he was red, and rarely laughed. But I didn’t get my magic from her.” For too long of a moment he lets his thoughts roll and build and begin to shape a new question, the most important question - 

but then he shakes his head, forcing it away. His hopeful heart couldn’t stand the answer to it, even before it was fully formed. 

The clouds have worn themselves ragged; the birds are returning to the meadow, singing despite the way the grasses dripped and sighed. He no longer felt like they were in a secret dark place of their own; the spell was breaking, though thunder still sounded low in the distance. 

The boy laughs at her question, and lips at her hair, as though he’s known her far longer. It’s a special gift of his, to begin to chase away the sorry thoughts with glad ones - it’s not a thing he inherited from his father. 

“I think I’d like to let you pick,” he says, as he steps out after her, the dew a cool kiss against his dark legs. “But my name is Asterion.” 


@Florentine