Myfanwy, may you spend your lifetime “”
Beneath the midday sunshine's glow,
A bleak morning mist shrouded the creek, casting an otherworldly softness about the tableau. Sounds echoed softly into silence as though passing through a world of dreams and half-truths, and a face not twenty paces off might have belonged to a lover or stranger with equal surety. This was the killing hour.
Myfanwy ached in the quiet shadows of her creekside pool, the shimmering lilac armor of her scales heavy and uncomfortable as it constricted her lean, hungry frame. There were no lovers now to look upon from the depths with wistful eyes. It was only her, alone with her hunger and the creeping dread that each day the hunger would grow with the reddening of the leaves and the onset of winter, until not even she would know herself anymore. The lean times were like a waking nightmare, all vivid color and sound and gnashing teeth, and there had never been a time that she did not fear them. But she could no more escape them than she could escape her kelp-tangled mane or the gape of her fanged, predatory jaws.
So she cowered instead.
A disturbance stirred the surface of her waters and, driven purely by instinct, she flitted toward it like a whisper in the crystalline depths. A fawn, one of this year's crop by the spots stubbornly clinging to his hide, had wandered from the safety of his mother's side to quench his thirst in the misty pool. Myfanwy sighed happily at his innocent loveliness, the twitch of his black nose, the grace in his long and delicate legs.
Then she lunged, and the last thing the fawn's dark-almond eyes would see before it succumbed to the red froth of his watery tomb was a flash of teeth and prismatic brightness, echoing endlessly of hope and regret.
*
The onset of a bright midday sun had burned away the mist, and with it all evidence of the murder that had taken place that morning but what grass and mud could tell. Myfanwy lay under the dappled shade of a willow tree, all traces of her true nature tucked away behind the dry-land glamour of her kind. Her face was veiled with sheer rose-colored fabric, but beneath that her eyes turned skyward with the full dreamy weight of her woolgathering behind them.
The lilac lady looked lovely, serene. Not a drop of blood left on her, or spilled along the shoreline for any heartbroken doe to find. That morning might not even have happened at all.
That was how she preferred to think of it. She fed on her sad, red dreams and awoke refreshed and peaceful, with the shadow of her hunger a distant whisper in the dusty corners of her mind. The world was lovely and kind and safe, like her. Perhaps later she would rise and wander the forests around Amare Creek, share stories with the travelers that passed by her waters from time to time. For now she was content to salute the sun and daylight, and dream of brighter futures.
And on your cheeks O may the roses “”
Dance for a hundred years or so.
In recent weeks the stars are no longer a comfort, their constellations only a map to memories that wound. Always before he had lingered long beneath the moonlight, following his feet and untangling his thoughts with only the company of the stars and the wind and the cool press of darkness. Now it only reminds him how lonely he is, and how wrong he had been.
So he is glad that it is daylight as he winds his way along the stream, the last of the bright festival flowers still tangled in his mane. He has never been before to Amare, but it lies between his home and the Dawn Court, and the bay is in a mood for wandering.
It would be lovely indeed, if only he could forget the winking whispers of what the location is often used for.
The creek leaps and laughs and babbles alongside him, a constant companion uninterested in his responses. The trees bar him with shadow as he walks, and birds warble overhead as beatifically as any of the festival singers.
For all of the peace of the day his mind is still a messy thing. In a last effort to distract himself, Asterion steps into the creek, stepping carefully on slick stone as cold water rushes around his ankles. He lets himself think of only this: the placement of each hoof, the icy chill of the water, the white-noise wash of it. He images each of his worries falling like petals onto the smooth surface and being whisked away, further and further downstream until they are at last washed out to sea.
It works until he sees the willow.
The last one he’d stood beneath had concealed a unicorn with a heart of a lion. It had witnessed a reunion that had raised a mix of emotions that were becoming too familiar – joy and shame and damnable hope.
For a long moment he stands before it, just out of reach of the ropey limbs that trail slender leaves, and feels the water that tugs him onward.
And then he steps out of the stream and up the stony bank, dreamer’s heart wishful of one more discovery. With a breath he walks between its branches and into the dappled shade.
At first his mind doesn’t know what to make of it, the figure lying on the grass: her hair becomes sea-foam, her silver-scattered hide soft dawn on the waves. But then his vision adjusts, and his flighty head settles, and he becomes aware of his intrusion. Asterion’s dark gaze falls to the veiled face of the stranger, and finds just a glimpse of her opalescent eyes.
Myfanwy, may you spend your lifetime “”
Beneath the midday sunshine's glow,
The splashing of footsteps through water stirred in the lilac lady a catlike alertness. Anticipation knotted her muscles as tight as bowstrings, and even though she wasn't hungry she could not help the brief anticipatory rush that precedes the kill. Instinct begged her silence and she obeyed, a faintly glistening statue in the willow's dappled shadow as the careless shunk shunk shunk drew nearer.
He rounded the tree trunk. For a moment she simply lay there and stared, a deer caught in the headlights of indecision as a part of her argued the virtues of gluttony against the other's surprise at being caught out in the creek of all places, where for months she had passed unseen and unremarked by lovers and passersby alike. A third part - the part that may once have been prey - wondered impotently if he would think his eyes misled him if she simply kept very, very still.
He was the rich brown of good earth, and where sunlight succeeded in filtering through the willow's brushy crown stars twinkled in stripes of deep violet. But the biggest and brightest star lay right between a pair of deep russet eyes laden with the shadows of a hundred unspoken preoccupations. Myfanwy shimmered, but in the right light she was sure that this boy would shine - and like the starlight embedded in his skin, something about his eye seemed distant and sad.
Oh, the stranger said.
A beat. The spark of their eye contact jolted her back to reality, and squeaking a startled "oh goodness!" she leapt to her feet with all the unearthly grace of a duck on dry land. "Is this your place?" she blurted stupidly, despite the fact that in seasons of basking she had never seen him there before.
And on your cheeks O may the roses “”
Dance for a hundred years or so.
He has a the good grace to step back and cast his glance aside as she clambers to her feet, as though he’s caught her doing something more delicate than resting beneath shade on a summer afternoon. But he can’t help the way his gaze is drawn back to her, again and again, and he gives in with looks as shy as any boy’s.
Asterion has seen a thousand kinds of horses in his time in Novus, each stranger than the last; a rainbow of colors, a forge of jewelry, all manner of wings and scales and hairstyles. But he has never laid eyes on something quite like her. (It is something about the eyes, maybe, or the veil that covers them and ripples like a skein of dusk over most of her face, or- )
Her question is a lucky thing for him, for it shakes him from his tumble of strange thoughts and back into himself. Before he can help it he shakes his head, a half-smile, unbidden, drawing up a corner of his lips. “No,” he assures her. “I thought it was yours.” A pause in which his eyes drift to hers again, wondering if their shifting myriad of color was some trick of the fabric. Why this feeling, that he could look at them a hundred times and never find them the same?
“I’m sorry I interrupted your nap – I feel like taking one too, after such a festival,” he says, for surely she, too, is making her way back from the Dawn Court party. “I can, ah--” and he begins to back his way out from beneath the boughs again, their leaves whispering over his dark skin.
Inwardly he berates himself for how badly he hopes she will stop him.
Myfanwy, may you spend your lifetime “”
Beneath the midday sunshine's glow,
I thought it was yours.
Relieved, embarrassed laughter bubbled from her chest at those words. It chimed like bells tolling out the truth of their misunderstanding through the windswept boughs of the willow tree above them. But nearly as quickly as the laughter had come, Asterion pressed onward, and the lilac mare's prismatic eyes went round with wonder at his next words.
She'd never been to a festival before. Mother was terrified of crowds and so she was terrified of them, for even prey are dangerous in large enough numbers. But stories carried into her midst on the backs and lips of travelers had been enough to whet her appetite for the unknown, and often she dreamed of grand castles and wild adventures despite being still too cowardly to experience them herself.
Asterion started backpedaling, and for once the part of her that ached to lunge at a fleeing meal quivered less eagerly than the one that simply wanted him to stay.
"Wait -" she chirped, stepping forward as he stepped back. The willow too resisted his retreat, its tapered limbs cascading across his star-marked flesh like a sylvan cloak. "You don't have to go. I don't mind."
Truthfully it was rare to meet passers-by that didn't seem in a hurry, or that didn't already have company of their own of a sort that, ah, rather did not lend itself to an extra particpant. Rarer still was it to run into someone so pleasant, whose dark eyes sang with depths that belonged only to the gealach uisce and whose skin danced with celestial fire.
"What was it like?" she continued, her voice painted with the same innocent eagerness that glistened in her veiled eyes. "The festival, I mean."
And on your cheeks O may the roses “”
Dance for a hundred years or so.
Her laugh is like the stream behind him, like the sunlight on the water, and for a moment it makes his smile true.
And then the boughs are whispering over his back, the sunlight slanting in, and she is saying wait -
It does not take him more encouragement than that to stop. The bay does not move forward again, since she has closed up the space he opened, but instead stands half-in and half-out of the little cave of limbs and leaves. Suddenly the space seems terribly small and intimate, but then the wind comes sighing through, and the stream is laughing nearby, and the stranger’s eyes are so very bright.
At her question he ducks his head a little, his ears flicking forward as he considers her again. He is a little relieved to hear she hadn’t been at the festival, because that meant he hadn’t missed seeing her there – surely she would have caught his attention, even among such a crowd.
“Oh,” he says, “it was a wonder. I’ve never heard such music, and there were a dozen kinds of cake.” His smile returns at that, recalling the impromptu food fight that Moira had begun – though there is a small, strange twinge at the way it had ended. “And then the drinking – and the dancing…”
Already, he thinks, it feels like a dream. What he doesn’t say is that he had not been an active participant in most of those things – instead he’d watched as others made merry. He’d painted himself with Florentine’s help, striping his coat in the colors of the morning, but the storm had washed them all away.
Still, the scent of woodsmoke clings to his skin, and it would be strange not to see lanterns once the sun goes down.
“What kept you away?” he asks, and hopes it is more bold than forward. The ends of her veil move in the wind the way the willow-branches do, and shadows shift across her twilight skin. “It was so near here,” he says, as if to explain, and offers her a little half-smile.
Myfanwy, may you spend your lifetime “”
Beneath the midday sunshine's glow,
Myfanwy's eyes lit up as the star-marked stallion painted pictures of the festival in broad, colorful strokes across the canvas of her imagination. Fairy lights drifted like fireflies through a moon-silvered forest as the air came alive with songs sweeter than she had ever heard serenading Tinea's hungry heart. Horses of all stripes, garbed in their finest, sharing sup over stories gathered from a hundred lifetimes of adventuring.
How had this shy boy bedecked himself for the occasion? Had he worn a net of diamond-studded velvet cords? Woven flowers of a king's own purple into the crest of his night-dark hair? Or had he gone as he'd come to her, russet as autumn leaves and streaked with the deep violet and glitter of a twilit sky?
Myfanwy felt both incredibly small and unspeakably vast in that moment, as though the infectious quality of his voice might sweep her away into a land where she needn't hunt or be hunted.
What kept you away?
The spell was broken somewhat. "Well, I..." She offered an embarrassed smile: how do you explain that you had gotten wind of a party and not gone, for fear of the specter of painted bodies and bone ornaments? For fear they might see through your disguise as others could not and hunt you all the way back to your watery bed to harvest your still-beating heart? Certainly he'd flee in an instant, and for once she found herself wanting to keep someone around for reasons other than her hunger.
"It felt weird," Myfanwy continued, more decisively this time. "I don't really know anyone, so...." She trailed off. After a beat of silence, she leaned in with the subtle bend of a willow blown by the breeze, prismatic eyes brightening with the mirth of an idea bubbling to the surface. "I'm Myfanwy."
And on your cheeks O may the roses “”
Dance for a hundred years or so.
As he speaks, as his lips and teeth and tongue form syllables smooth as the stream that babbles nearby and soft as the clouds that drift overhead, Asterion watches her eyes.
Does he imagine the way they shift, slide far away to dreaming? The bay has been caught with such an expression often enough to recognize it in another, but it is difficult to tell behind the film of her veil. He wants to name each color that lives there, a changing pool, but he thinks to do that he would need to better see –
He does not realize he’s stepped nearer until she speaks. Then he glances away, almost sheepish, still helpless to understand why he finds himself so strangely snared.
But he looks back again, just to catch her smile, and he accepts her explanation with a nod. Had it not been for duty, after all, he might have been as apt to avoid the gathering, and he had no such excuse.
Oh, and then she leans nearer, and those eyes catch and gleam in sunlight thin as a sliver of glass. Now he does not want to look away from them, for her hair like pale stars is still too similar to another’s in the way it rests against her shoulder or ghosts across her cheek. She smells of sunlight, and windswept grass, and something else he can’t yet place –
And he forgets to try, when she gives her name.
Myfanwy,” he repeats, a clumsy try at the new syllables, but the smile he gives her then betrays no shyness. And I’m Asterion. So now you know me – I hope that means I’ll see you at the next one.”
Ah, he has become a horse as foolish and frivolous as the worst of Novus, already talking of the next party with the decorations of the last still hanging. But surely Myfanwy was not so fierce and fervent as Calliope, and would not find him weak for it.
Myfanwy, may you spend your lifetime “”
Beneath the midday sunshine's glow,
The pale mare could not restrain the slow, creeping smile that tugged at her lips as Asterion repeated her name as best he could. It was an unwieldy thing at best, as quaint and folksy as could be found amongst the peoples of Novus simply because there was nothing in Novus more isolated than a séasúr kelpie and nothing more resistant to progress. 'Asterion' was far more grand, echoing the starlight etched into his skin like one of the fanciful demigods of old.
So now you know me – I hope that means I’ll see you at the next one.
She bit her lip, suddenly coy under the glow of his own grin. "Perhaps you will, Asterion." She had not realized how closely the swaying boughs of the willow tree had brought them together until an errant breeze stirred a leafy tendril against her flank and disturbed the teardrop pearls dangling from her veil. Carried along in its delicate grasp, intermingled with the creek's lush, florid greenery, was a hint of warm earthy brine. His scent.
Suddenly the danger struck her, that she should smile so freely at this boy and meet his eye under the looming threat of autumn - and all this mere strides from her waters, where scant hours ago something far more innocent met its untimely end to satisfy her beastly whims.
Myfanwy leaned back slightly, aware of their closeness and the lingering shadow of brine in her lungs. She blushed brightly beneath the silver-dusted fur of her cheeks. "I hope you will," she said, and the fae enthusiasm had been replaced with almost impatient apprehension that her attempt at an accompanying chuckle did little to bolster. "The time! I forgot, I...I need to go." It was her turn to step backward now, careful not to go any nearer to the creek's edge.
"Thank you for the story!" she said and, unwilling to give him the opportunity to stop her, Myfanwy bounded almost deerlike through the willow branches and deeper into Viride forest.
And on your cheeks O may the roses “”
Dance for a hundred years or so.
Closer and closer they moved, there beneath the shadows of the sleepy green boughs, and he might have blushed, were he able, at the sound of his name from her dark lips.
Always it has seemed to him a thing too grand, too big a weight for his head stuffed so with dreams, but of late it feels more comfortable. A cloak of his father’s he’s finally growing into, and not a thing to catch him up and make him trip. The way this almost-stranger smiles at him makes him feel as full of starlight as his name.
He thinks that perhaps he is still drunk from the festival; how else to explain the way that time was moving, soft and more languid than the run of the water? How else to explain the way her gaze snared him more surely than any willow-branches could, winding around his heart, bidding it fall still?
Almost he leans forward again, more daring than he ought – but that is when she pulls away.
All at once the world comes crowding back in, penetrating the quiet cover of the willow. Before he can reply to her, before he tell her he will, oh he will, she makes an excuse that is clear even to him and retreats another step.
And then she is gone, vanishing through the trees, her dusky purple melting into the shadows, the last sign of her a flick of her silver tail.
“You’re welcome,” he says softly, but the only things to listen are the still-swaying branches, and the laughing creek, and nodding flowers that are nothing like the color her eyes had been.
With a sigh he moves back to the stream, and toward home.
