Asterion

It’s the edge of autumn, and the bison know it. They graze the waving brown grasses of the plain with a singleminded determination, and beyond the brown humps of their backs rises a peak so tall it wears evening clouds down to its shoulders, lilac and rose in the deepening dark. 

It is beautiful in the way that everything Asterion has seen here is beautiful - and despite that beauty (or perhaps because of it) he laments. It feels too safe. There is nothing of the feral magic of Ravos, the unpredictable danger that might give birth to a maze or a monster. There is nothing of the chaotic warring of the gods, producing firestorms and howling fails and carnivorous plants like ravenous, unruly children. 

Of course, only a fool would long for such things on a late summer’s eve like this. But Asterion does not feel like a fool. The boy feels alive, blood humming with discovery, just days after his meeting with Florentine. To learn of his half-sister, to hear of his father - it makes him feel drunk on fate. 

Surely that is why he approaches the first lone stranger he sees. He moves too boldly across the plain, the prairie grass golden against his dark hide, the colors of evening reflected on his hips and shoulders. The other stallion is darker yet, a shadow against the sky, and that is all that Asterion can tell of him until it’s too close to change his mind. 

Not that he would, anyhow. He’d never learned to look for danger; Calliope had never had the opportunity to teach him. And even a few days in Novus - heavy, heady summer - has made him lazy. As blackbirds wheel and chatter above the bison and settle again, as the sunset slides down the mountain, Asterion offers the stranger a soft smile, tucking his chin briefly to his chest. “Well met,” he says, before realizing he has nothing else to say, to ask. Typically this would embarrass him, but for all Asterion knows (at least he hopes it, dreams it) he and this stallion are linked by destiny, too, and so he only laughs. The sound is soft and silver as mist, and disperses as quickly. “Do you think they envy us?” he asks then, and gestures toward the bison. 

Maybe it’s a foolish question, but tonight he’s hard-pressed to care. 

@Parade