Asterion Asterion is grateful that he is not alone when he climbs once again to the peak. Oh, he is accompanied by no other beside him, but his bonded is there in his mind, as real and vital as though she sat on his withers or soared lazily on the currents of air far overhead. They had agreed (or rather, she had cajoled and he had insisted and she had begrudgingly acquiesced) that this was something he needed to do by himself. Even so, the gull is no less present in his head as the trees thin and the dirt turns to stone and the autumn sunlight doesn’t stop the wind from reminding him that winter is coming. Tell me what you’re seeing, he thinks, a game now well-familiar. Pelicans, she thinks back, and Asterion almost laughs at the sour note in her tone. They’re migrating south, and hogging all the fish while they do. And the tide is coming in, washing in logs from that storm the other morning, and I think I saw that sister of yours, chasing clouds again. His smile is no less warm, then, although no one can see it. So all is well. All is well, Cirrus agrees, and the Regent grunts and continues up the endless slopes. The trails are still well-worn from the meeting at the Summit, but the bulk of the fervor has died down. There are no other worshipers this day, as afternoon turns to golden evening, and why would there be? For the gods lived here no longer. They were free (if they had ever been bound), and maybe that makes what Asterion is doing foolish, but that has never stopped him before. Indeed, he almost feels relieved when at last he reaches her shrine. There is nothing but unholy dust and a vacant pedestal and thin sunlight and wind. It is easier this way, he thinks, and then on the heels of it: I should have brought an offering. But Asterion would never remember to be anything but what he was, unadorned, carrying nothing but himself. Almost he has forgotten what it was like, to have magic; but he has never forgotten standing beside No, the water-god of Ravos, and speaking to him as though to a friend. Water has a way of reshaping things to its own design eventually, he’d said, and Asterion wonders now if the words are still true. If there is any saltwater left in him, or if there were ever any design, any plan for any of them. Maybe the gods were just guessing too – ah, but that it is a fearsome thought. He does not know if Vespera can hear him, now that her ears are elsewhere. But he thinks of Marisol, and her steadfast faith, and he drops his head to touch his dark muzzle to the empty base where the god’s statue had sat. “Thank you for Cirrus,” he says softly, as a chill wind that smells of pine rakes its fingers through his hair, “if you are the one to thank. I know I have not been faithful to you, or to any of you, but I hope you forgive me.” A wry smile shapes his mouth. “I was hardly faithful when I saw gods perform miracles before me. I just wanted to give my gratitude, but…oh, Vespera, I don’t understand. I don’t know what any of you want. I don’t even know what I want.” With a sigh he leans away, and stares out over the whole of Novus, unfolding before him like a map. Always he’d longed for adventure, and perhaps here he’d found it – perhaps he’d simply never known what to do with what he had. “I just want them to be safe,” he says, his voice a whisper of seafoam, and the wind tears that away from him, too. @Random Events |
Worship - it took me years to say the words;
Users browsing this thread: 2 Guest(s)
the sweetest of sunsets She is drawn back to the mountains, back to the peaks and their empty shrines for much the same reason as he: only while Asterion seeks a godly counsel, Vespera seeks to be that counsel. To gaze upon the face of Florentine’s regent and anoint him in her love, to hear his prayers and to offer him some small piece of hope and comfort. Of course, the emotions of mortals are nearly as wild and unpredictable as the gods’; but Vespera knows when he sets out for Veneror, and she meets him there. The goddess arrives as he touches his muzzle to the base of her pedestal, from which she had stepped down only days before. The memory brings a smile to her face: the wind in her hair and upon her face, that first breath she took so filled with sharp and crisp and lovely air. Up here it was as if they stood upon the top of the world, and it was here, so near to the heavens, that she felt most alive. The dirt crunches gently under her hooves as she approaches him from the west, the setting sun framing her from behind. At dusk she is at her most vibrant: colors dance and shine across her pelt, radiating light in a reflection of the setting sun. Her hind legs are the dark blue of the ocean over which the sun sets, but her muzzle and her chest and her forelegs are as if dipped in liquid light, a gradient of colors filling all the spaces in between. Vespera is as radiant as the dusk - it is only fitting, for the goddess of Terrastella. “Not even gods always know what it is they want.” she speaks softly, kindly, her affection shining in every word. All men are created equal, she knows; some are given strength of body, others given strength of mind... but each of them are uniquely their own self. Even so, Vespera guards a special place in her heart for those of her own Court. “There is nothing to forgive, Asterion. And your thanks belong to Cirrus; she chose you, after all, who was I to tell her no?” She laughs then, her voice light and musical with smiles playing at the corners of her lips. “She’s very decisive, if you don’t already know.” But the goddess’ humor soon sobers. His heart is worn proudly on his dark leg; kind and hopeful and altruistic. It is what makes him perfect for his role as Regent… but it is also what makes his job harder in the end. And when Vespera speaks again, her voice is as soft as it ever could be, sweet and melodious as the whispering wind. “Little is ever certain in life. You can trust the sun to rise in the east and to set in the west, but it is nigh impossible to know what the sun will awaken to each day, nor the state in which it falls back asleep. The choices of a million people influence the day’s course. So too, do your choices affect your people, Asterion.” @asterion Please be advised, tagging the Random Event account does not guarantee a response!
|
