The way grief needs oxygen.
The way every once in a while,
it catches the light and starts smoking.
Orestes said, glorious as the sun, “Strength can be its own kind of weakness.”
The thought made my head hurt, and then my heart. It was too much like something my father would say. There’s too much truth to it, and too much paradox, and it made me feel for a moment like we’re all caught in a strange dance, a loop-- doing the same things over and over again. Being the same people, over and over again. All the suffering we feel, all the hurt we do, cogs on a wheel we keep turning because we’ve forgotten what it feels like to do anything else.
I wanted to say “no, strength is just strength,” but it felt too much like denial. So instead I grew somber, chewing the inside of my lip like I might find better words hidden within my own flesh.
I didn’t, of course.
But Orestes invited me to Solterra and I brightened like the sun. “I would love that. I’ll bring my sister.” It was a promise, and although it might not mean anything to him it meant the world to me.
(Asterion said "oh" somewhere around then, or maybe sooner, and I would think of that sound later that night before I fell asleep. What did it mean? Did he, perhaps, realize our relation? I wish I hadn't been too cowardly to tell him the truth: "My parents are Eik and Isra. They told me stories about you. They knew you were coming back someday, somehow-- they never stopped believing in you.")
Then something strange suddenly caught my attention, and I do not say this lightly-- it took a lot to distract me from those two precious men. I felt buoyant to stand there between them like an equal, and the memory of that conversation would fill me with light for a long time to come. But you see, from the corner of my eye I saw Antiope pass beneath the colored light of the eventide arch. She was leaving, in the middle of the celebration for the great arch. I felt myself frowning, then quickly returned my attention to the two stallions and smiled blithely as though there was nothing afoot.
And, really, there wasn’t. But the nighttime and the colored glass and the smoke in the air all heightened my senses. I was convinced there was some great mystery to be unravelled, and I would be the one to unravel it. I was still young enough to believe in things with enough conviction to almost make them come true.
What good fate for me, that the conversation was about to wrap itself up! Although I quite liked my godfather up until that moment, it was only when he made the move to leave that I felt I could love him. I never knew how to end a conversation, how to leave when I so dearly wanted to. He saved me from that, and even though it had nothing to do with me I still felt like I was in his debt.
“Oh I'm sorry, there’s something I need to do. Goodbye uncle Asterion, it was so nice to meet you!” The title just slipped out-- I wouldn’t realize it until after. For all I knew, it would be the first and last time I’d ever see him, so I stepped forward and pressed my lips to his temple in a kiss; that way I could at least tell Avesta what he smelled like. Eik’s stories always lacked the important details like that. “I’m so, so happy you found your father,” I added, almost breathlessly. I was very suddenly close to tears with how far away mine felt-- I quickly turned to Orestes before emotion could overcome me.
“Bye Orestes.” I smiled shyly at the sun king. I was far more certain I would see him again some day, so I did not give him a kiss. To Ariel I dipped my head in farewell. Then I turned and slipped into the shadows of the tree line, intent as a hound as I followed my sovereign into the night.
The way my grief will die with me.
The way it will cleave and grow
like antlers.
A S P A R A
@Asterion @Orestes the longest farewell <3 I loved this thread so much, thank you both! Aspara is going to sneakily(?) follow Antiope in this thread... although I imagine she will be found out and confronted somewhere on the way to Veneror
The Sun's rays grew warmer and warmer. The man took off his cap and mopped his brow. At last he became so heated that he pulled off his cloak, and, to escape the blazing sunshine,
The “departing” chapter of a happenstance meeting always seems to come too swiftly and, when it does, it arrives like a judge’s sentence. He feels the encounter winding down; running its course; and he is a fool to try and grasp at the running time as if they are strings slipping from his grasp. So Orestes does not try.
“Please bring your sister,” Orestes tells Aspara, with a smile. “I would love to meet her.”
And then: the Once-King meets Orestes’s eyes and holds them, with a complicated expression; there is no way for the Sun King to read the intricacies of it, and so he does not try. There is merely a dryness in his mouth, and feeling of otherness as if Orestes stands at the precipice of another story staring in rather than living it.
Aspara is the saving grace of the conversation, and the encounter. Your city has always had my favorite festivals, Asterion says.
Then: I’m glad to have met you both. But I am going to continue on. Though if you are too… I’d be honoured to have your company, and your stories. Orestes appreciates the invitation, but there is an itching feeling that he is not meant to go, that he is meant to stay. Aspara is next, as she says suddenly:
Oh I’m sorry. There’s something I need to do. Goodbye uncle Asterion, it was so nice to meet you!
Yes, indeed. Perhaps he is caught on the fringes of another’s story, staring in. Orestes, with Aspara’s fond and thoughtless admission, feels… strangely sad, to not have that kind of history. There are very few people in the world waiting for him to come back. In fact, Orestes doubts anyone is. The revelation fills him with profound sadness, that he disguises as contemplation. The Sun King smiles at each of his companions. “The pleasure was mine. Thank you for a remarkable evening. I hope to meet again, Asterion, although I must decline your invitation tonight. And… Aspara… I will be waiting for a visit from you and your sister. Take care.”
With that, Orestes turns from them. Ariel is first; his magic pulsates, and then plunges into darkness. For all intents and appearances, the Sun Lion appears nondescript as they near the Eventide arch. Orestes, too, does his best to resemble a normal man visiting a celebration. It does not take long for him to disappear into the crowd as if it is a sea, craning his neck to observe the arch and the way even in darkness the stars reflect across the painted panes.
As he walks, Orestes realises the simple fact that has left him so dissatisfied with the encounter:
He doesn’t have roots.
As much of Solterra as he embraces, there is a part of him that feels so wholly like a foreigner. Orestes knows that, tonight, no one is waiting for him to come home.
He comes to rest on the fringes of the gathering, half in the trees. He watches, for a while. And then, rather than go to the city of Denocte, he turns and begins the long journey back toward Solterra.
There are many ways they might have parted that night, amid the quiet dazzle of the archway and the harsher gold of the lion’s glow. It is enough for Asterion that it did with the unicorn’s kiss to his brow, the word uncle on her lips, as though he is still as good as family. “Thank you, Aspara,” he says in place of goodbye, and he feels like an old man then, sentimental and silly-grateful that she turns away before the tears prickle enough at his eyes to make themselves seen. While she says farewell to the sun king, the star-browned once-king scrubs his cheek against the inside of his leg, wiping away the trace of them.
When he watches her go, it is with a fondness he has no right to; she vanishes like a little moon in the darkness.
Orestes he watches with a more subtle, complex expression. “I’m sure we will,” he’d said at their goodbye, and he had meant it; it does not seem unlikely, though the whims of Novus’s gods were, to be fair, unpredictable. And perhaps he is wrong - for if the man knows Marisol the way his brief mention of her had suggested (in only so much as the shape of her name on his lips, the timbre of his voice - Asterion knows the sound of a man in love) then perhaps it will not belong before Marisol tells the king of their recent encounter.
And that is a memory too new to be dull, so the bay presses it down, down as he turns away to join the stream of pilgrims to the city of starlight.
