over the mountains of the moon
down the valley of the shadow-
down the valley of the shadow-
I
won’t be afraid, she says, and though Asterion knows her hardly at all (is it truly only week ago they’d met, in that room of magic and make-believe?) it is still enough to say “I know.” The king does not move as he speaks it, only watches her with his eyes the dark spaces between starlight, empty and full all at once. Somehow there is still faith in him, even after all that has come to pass with Dusk and Night and Day and Dawn, festivals of starlight sewn together with red death. There is no reason for him to doubt her, not when she speaks with such sureness and carves her truth upon the tree before him, but still every beat of his heart denies her words.
The mossy stone is a cool kiss upon his shoulder, and though he burns with curiosity to know what she writes there his gaze does not leave her face. He watches the smile grow like a moon on her dark lips and does not shiver beneath her touch. Around them the autumn wind sighs, tugs leaves from the gnarled hands of trees and frees them to fall like red stars in the dusk.
Again she speaks, and again there is nothing he can say that might dissuade her. How could he, when he could do no different? If the sea were prophesied to swallow him up he would still wade into its salt and brine embrace; with love would he let it turn his bones to coral and his eyes to pearls.
Asterion would welcome such a death.
And so he holds his tongue, though it burns to tell her how he might save her, how she might save herself. Her laughter sounds like a night-calling bird and her bells ring out in answer as darkness shrouds them, and all the crickets and the frogs are singing too, and still the king does not know the words. It is her story he is caught up in, this girl of stars and runes who writes upon his skin. Is it an ending she leaves there, dark as a shadow against his faint starlight? Or a beginning?
When her breath whispers over his skin his breath catches rough in his throat. It is cool against the moss and mud, but the bay does not shiver; his blood might be starfire, too, for the way it burns through his body, as though he had never stopped running. Her lips are still near enough to stir the hairs of his shoulder when he curves his head toward her, presses his muzzle against her cheek. “I won’t let you drown,” he says, and the oath to him feels as sure as the roots of the sigil-tree, reaching down and down into the dark.
But Asterion has become a man of many anchors, many roots, many stories twisting together and tangling their threads. No matter how much his heart cries out that he could stay beneath this tree forever there are other bells that ring him home.
Reluctantly he draws away. The night is cooling fast, though he does not realize it now with the wind only in the canopy, heard but not felt.
“I should go.” Yet Asterion does not move, not yet - he only looks at her, like he could drink the sight of her down and keep her safe inside him. His eyes say what his tongue cannot - come with me, stay in my sight - he knows enough, now, that all his promises would not be enough to keep her safe.
When at last he turns away, moving softly as a deer through the gathering dark, a part of him lingers there beneath the ancient boughs of the Ilati tree.
@Leto
