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Florentine stands amidst the long grasses. Her wing is a curious thing at her side. It is still all odd angles and yet more elegant than it had been before. More right.
Oh healing was a long, slow, slow process. The knitting of bone ached like needles in the deepest parts of the night. In brightest day it was a whisper, a twinge when her wing flexed, when the feathers extended out, out, out to catch the air.
Florentine looks up, her eyes closed as the breeze rushes forward. It comes to the girl of gold as if to encourage her up into the skies. Here, with eyes closed, the grasses are but clouds, the rustle of trees the rush of wind in her ears. In this moment a Pegasus can remember what it is to fly…
Yet this girl of twilight is so utterly grounded. Gravity laughs as it weaves its roots about her slender ankles. Her skull tilts, eyes opening to behold her brother’s castle. The last she looked upon the keep, she had been a queen. But now she stands, learning what it was to be a citizen once more.
Her blood is fire in her veins, it cries for freedom, for something other than what it has become. Florentine is running with the earth trembling at her feet, her heart lifts where her body cannot. The citadel looms, in shadow and beauty and candlelit gold. Its door is great and vast and gazes on her with a familiarity that is both warmth and ice.
To open it is nothing, to stand in its atrium is to stand amidst ghosts. Voices, memories, shadowed encounters, oh they fill each inch of the tiled floor. Slowly Florentine steps through every one of them, a ship parting the seas, she does not stop, not until she steps within the throne room and there her lips tip into a smile that hurts more acutely than her wing ever has. Before her stands a corporal being, flesh and bone where her memories (so newly regained) are not.
“Asterion.” His sister says all light and life and hidden sorrow.
It is strange to look out over the sweep of grasses, the pale washes of cloud, and see all as it should be. Asterion supposes he should be glad of it - glad there are grasses at all, after the frozen mud and desolate, barren ground of last winter - but his memory of the disasters is still too strong. The king knows where to look to find evidence of mudslides and of sinkholes; Terrastella is like a cracked vase with a new coat of paint.
He supposes its people are much the same. Certainly he is; no longer washboard-ribbed, or dull-coated and weary, but the dark of his eyes is more faraway than it had ever been before.
The bay turns inside before he sees the fleck of gold galloping toward the keep; as he does the gull (who had been perched on his withers, picking idly at the strands of silver in his mane) takes off, sweeping toward the sea, wings wide to ride the wind. As Florentine steps within the castle her brother steps into the throne room, away from the wind that brings him the scent of the sea and the rich verdant smell of summer. The stained glass windows (all the colors of dusk and of his skin, rose and indigo, soft violent and coral) cast light across the stone floor, across his back. His court’s colors are the only garments Asterion wears.
For a moment he studies the dais, rough stone cut from the cliffs, pale weathered wood gathered from the shore and felled from the swamp. It is handsomely, lovingly made; how many rulers, he wonders, has it seen and survived? One day (and here something stirs in him, uncomfortable at the thought) it will remain and he will be gone. One way or another, whether he goes to the earth or to new worlds, he will only be another saltwater memory, another wave that has come and passed.
Asterion, comes the rough voice down the echoing hallway of his bond with Cirrus. His name is all she says, and all she needs; the tone is wry and warning and not at all new. The king huffs a laugh, and turns away from that ancient throne.
And as he does his sister steps into the room.
Like Cirrus, she says far more things in her naming him that one word should convey; at once his gaze focuses on her, searching for hurts, searching for the laughter she wears as well and constantly as her flowers or the smile on her face. It has been as absent as his own, the past few months, and the sorrow that pricks her is the same well within him. It laps at his soul and is fed with each new wound and oh, its waters are dark. And yet, and yet.
He goes to her, his gaze brushing like fingertips across her injured wing. His conversation with Marisol in Denocte echoes like ripples in his mind, the way she’d said flying was terrible because it could be lost, the look in her eyes as she’d said it.
Asterion touches his dark muzzle to his sister’s cheek, inhales the sweet-summer scent of her. He says nothing of the way her dagger is missing from its place around her neck; he only whuffs a warm breath against her ear.
“Florentine,” he says, and smiles against the sorrow he can feel in them both. “I hope you haven’t brought me any fresh trouble.”
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Time is her god and it slows to a trickle as she stands watching her brother. Asterion is a silhouette, framed by the golden light pouring in through clear glass windows. He is more celestial now than any star she has ever seen illuminate the night’s sky.
Her eyes drink in the stars that give his black body shape and the glimmer of his largest star, half hidden behind the sweep of his forelock.
When he moves to her, Florentine sees how his sharp angles are gone – no longer do bones protrude as they shouldn’t. His skin is vitality once more, a life force lit by the stars that litter his dark torso. But his eyes, they are as distant as moons and they do not gleam as they once did. Nothing about his gaze brings a smile to her lips, but it does bring an ache to her heart, her stomach.
That look tells of the weight of the crown, and the horrendousness of gods. Was Florentine supposed to have been the one to lead Terrastella through this all? Her eyes were already vacant then, what more damage could it have done? Even as she thinks such thoughts, her soul shatters like glass and her heart twists tighter, tighter and sputters in her chest. She could never have lead their people as well as he.
He comes to her, a kiss upon her cheek and into it she leans, laying her own upon his in turn. The words that fall from his lips are a weight, they sprout like vines from the earth and cast his sister low. Yet she smiles as he does, united in their sorrow.
“I think the crown was the biggest trouble I could ever bring you.” Those words are all whispers and apologies. Florentine drinks him in anew (because she cannot stop looking at him, not now). That invisible crown he wears, it does not weigh him down, he stands tall beneath it. And now his sister’s heart it soaring, it has loosed its tethers and slipped its weight. He is an imprint in her mind, her soul, her heart.
“I am so proud of you.” Florentine whispers, pressed close, but still far enough that she can study the curve of his jaw, the softness of his eyes, the handsome lines of his face (lest she ever forget them). She only stops admiring her brother when tears film her amethyst gaze and then she laughs and takes a breath. Petals scatter like her tears, her golden mane tumbling forward as she looks to the floor and then back up, an earnest whisper upon her lips, “So proud.”
The gilded girl stands before her brother, not just as a queen before her successor, a friend before another, a younger sister before her elder brother and a subject before her sovereign. She is all of those things and as every one of them she is proud of him. Oh this love aches and it is so big and nothing like the love she has for Lysander. It is blood and family and bonds that tie into the fabric of her being.
“To think I could have gone a life without you…” The words trail off, swallowed by the regal chamber and its golden light. Florentine has so many lives to live and in each one is a hole for him to fill. “Have I ever told you how much I love you?” Her delicate head tilts and she watches him and knows, for the first time, that she could live without their father, as long as she has her brother.
When she whispers to the air between them (colored with stained glass as it is, evening caught fast in the castle, dusk on each flagstone and dusk on their skin) he wants to deny her words. But Asterion cannot, not when they each know better, not when it would be a lie.
“I can’t pretend I didn’t know what I was accepting,” he answers her, and his eyes are dark and soft and knowing. They speak of burdens unfairly shouldered, and gods who turned their faces away, and cruel kings of neighboring kingdoms, and trials and troubles and regret. It would be worth it (if any lives lost could be worth it, any storms weathered) he thinks, to see Florentine before him again, healed and whole. To see the Dusk Court rise, unbroken, unafraid.
For that hope he would shoulder anything. For that he will be brave.
Asterion is startled when she continues, when her sorrow turns to birds-wings, when she studies him like he is something that might someday be gone. He shifts beneath the weight of her gaze, flushing warm with her words. It is only her laughter, clear as a bell, that draws his gaze back. In the spilling golden light she stands, looking terribly young and terribly grown, a queen from a distant kingdom and a girl who shared his father. When she tells him she loves him, he only bows his head.
“Once or twice,” he allows with a smile, “but never while looking so serious.”Never with tears in your eyes, he means, but he will not mention them if she won’t, not when he can feel them stinging at his own, unbidden.
Oh, but they build silver behind the nebulae-dark of his own gaze, because Asterion’s head is realizing what his heart already knows. The only thing that surprises him is that he does not feel broken, does not even feel grief. Of course there is sorrow, a slumbering sea, a wave that has always carried him - but looking at his sister there is fierce joy, too, and a fiercer love, a love like a lion, a love like the sun.
He wants to look away from her gaze, which pierces him the same way her dagger could; he wants to meet it forever. Instead he reaches for her the way he has a hundred times, tucking his forehead against the slender column of her throat. Embracing her is like standing in sunlight, the warm scent of her flowers like welcoming spring.
For a long time he does not step away, and when he does it is with a shuddering, steadying breath. Asterion smiles at his golden sibling, and pays no heed to the tears that track dark down his cheeks. “Well, my time-traveling sister,” he says, “where are you going, then?”
What he does not add, what he cannot (for he already knows the answer, no matter what she might say) is can I come with you, too?
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Asterion is dark, dark in the painted glass light. Florentine wears each light, her pale skin a greater, more living canvas than the flagstone floor. Dust motes swirl in the light, they dance to the song of her lament. Flora does not hear the music, though she feels it in her soul.
The castle is quiet, struck sleepy by the turning hours, the ebbing day and the dawning night. Everywhere she might look the dusk is beautiful, everywhere wears memories for her to watch and see and feel. But she does not look at them, instead she watches her brother and his quiet acceptance. Oh she studies the glow of his tree-born eyes, warm as chocolate beneath the wash of his lashes.
Her fate was sealed in the Night Court and the day she dreamed of anthousai and dared herself to dance in unknown forests. Upon her lips is a smile, small and sad and yet so very glad. She watches as his intuition grows, as he begins to know. And then, when she sees that creep of certainty slipping into his eyes, then she feels so acutely the sharp agony of a promise she did not keep.
Had she not vowed to take him with her? Had she not promised she would not leave him behind?
“It is not for long.” Florentine breathes because it makes her ache less, because it eases this sorrowful hurt. “I will come back. It’s…” And then she looks beyond her brother (though he is the sun to the solar system she watches). She looks to their throne room, to the palace that crowned them both and the secrets that only monarchs know and the whispers of Terrastella only she can hear. This place was her home, it was precious and it was right.
“It’s a holiday.” Florentine concludes as petals fall like tears. How long could a holiday be? A day, a week, a month, a year? Longer? When had leaving ever hurt so much? Oh when? Was Novus not a mistake? Was she not supposed to spend but a moment, and return to the Rift before her father even knew she had gone? Yet now, oh now leaving was the bitterest agony.
“Greece, with Lysander.” Florentine says and wonders over the taste, the feel of the word upon her tongue. Soon it would have a place, a name, a memory beside it. “He is going to show me where he comes from… there will be anthousai, Asterion, real flower nymphs and dancing, so much dancing.” Then she thinks of her wing, of its ache of how it still does not hang right – might it ever? “He says it is a good place to heal… Better maybe than here…”
And when has the travelling girl ever needed to justify her trips? When was she ever unselfish enough to think of another when she fled in search of another adventure?
“I will bring you back something beautiful.” She whispers as her lips press against her brother’s cheek and then looks at their home, bright and brilliant and beautiful.
“It will not feel right without you though…” And that is a truth that breaks like ice in her heart.
Asterion listens to her reassurances and he smiles for her, the dutiful brother, but his thoughts are not so easily comforted: how long, after all, is ‘not long’ to a time-traveler? Time is no river to Florentine; it is a lake that she might splash in, and surface far from where she dove. It is a circle that eats its ending and starts anew.
When she returns, he knows, it is possible that he will be old - that he will be changed - that he will be gone altogether.
His heart is no sail, then, but an anchor. The saltwater on his cheeks does not care whether it was born by happiness or by sorrow - it streaks them dark all the same, it slips to the floor like the final breath of the floods. But Asterion follows her gaze across the room they stand in, stained glass and cobblestones, promises made and broken and held. Out the southern windows is the sea, out the northern the encircling arms of the city. Not whole but unbroken - waiting to rise.
“A holiday,” he repeats, and wonders when he learned the word. Surely as a colt at Ravos he would have laughed - a break from routine? Each of his days was a holiday, then, each an adventure. Now he thinks that there is only work before him, a yoke he wears even sleeping. When she mentions more names - one he does not know, one he does - he schools his expression to keep it from changing. Asterion’s thoughts about the antlered stallion (the once-god) are as tangled as old roots, as mixed as muddy water.
But he makes her happy - how can the king begrudge his sister that?
She speaks of dancing, she speaks of nymphs, and at last the bay smiles again. He does not miss the falter in her words, the lack of her customary certainty - because of it he voices no doubts of his own. He buries them deep, down in the soil of his own heart, to wither or take root.
“It sounds wonderful,” he says, and is almost surprised when it doesn’t feel like a lie. He touches his muzzle to the curve of her jaw, wishing they might fit together like foals. “And I don’t disagree that it will be a better place to heal.”
When she promises to return with a gift Asterion laughs, soft and low. “Bring me one of these anthousai,” he says, and tugs at a strand of her golden hair the way Cirrus might. “I will judge for myself who wears their flowers better.” At last he feels strong enough to lean away, to step apart from their embrace. Her last whisper, faint and uncertain, has him looking back at her. But there is no sorrow in his eyes, and they sting no longer with his saltwater tears.
The king is growing better at goodbyes. And this one, at least, is temporary.
“Likewise,” he tells her, and flicks his tail against her golden side. “But I shall try not to have the place in shambles when you return, if you promise to come back with two working wings.”
There is one more question on his tongue (one more he will speak; the others it is unfair to make her answer) but he hesitates for a moment. Long enough to walk to a window, clear and plainly paned, low enough that he might gaze out across the city and the hills that roll away until they fade to forest and to swamp. To his surprise he can feel jealousy prickling in him, at the adventure before her, at the marvelous things she might see - but oh, he welcomes it, for it is far better than sorrow or fear.
“How soon?” Now it is his turn to whisper, as though he is only asking the cool and silent glass, or perhaps the country beyond.
How strange, he thinks, that his sister may wear time around her neck on a silver chain, and yet he never feels they have enough.
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
Florentine does not know how hard it is to watch her brother weep until she sees his cheeks begin to glisten. Tears track dark paths down his cheeks but they carve into her heart. Leaving had always been easier before. As a child, leaving, adventuring was all she knew. But now…
Now leaving brings hurt, it brings a temporary loss that might as well be permanent for all it hurts her, for all it rips her heart from her body.
But Florentine was not made for one world, or of one world. She is Time and Magic forged, she is of the Rift and it’s fickle magic. The girl has no world that is truly hers, no lifespan that is her best. She lives so many, over and over, many times and many times.
Did she begin to unravel like this in each world? Did she begin to feel the weight of loss and love begin to root her like gravity a tree? Leaving now means an eternity of quicksand until she returns – but where? Her brother in Novus, her parents in the Rift? Florentine aches for them all, she longs to hold them, but they were not travellers such as she…
Bring me an athousai. And Florentine smiles at Asterion’s request. “Done.” She breathes as he tugs her mane, the petals scattering, the golden strands curling. “I think you would like them very much.” A smile curls her lips, bright and keen, a laugh rippling on her lips.
Ah, but then he asks her when and Flora’s smile fades. It is a setting sun, for once that smile is gone there is only red like a bruise, spilling the blood of this hurt.
“Now.” Florentine says, softly, somberly. “I am returning to Denocte to find Lysander and then we are going…”
The girl takes a breath, deep and aching and, “In fact, I should probably be going.” From her mane she takes a flower, one that has never wilted, one she has had since childhood. She presses it into the snarls of his mane and brushes a kiss across his cheek.
When she turns from him, she cannot see for the tears brimming before her eyes. “I will fly home. Love you, big brother.” And Florentine leaves, knowing it is true, she will return healed, refreshed and whole.
He watches her face as she ties the blossom into his mane, and breathes in the soft-sweet scent of it, and thinks of the other gifts has has been given - a sand-dollar, a feather, the ghost of a kiss on his cheek. Oh, he wonders, will these be all I have left of my friends, one day?
But he does not weep anymore.
Instead Asterion smiles, warm and true despite the tears that sharpen his vision into something clearer and more delicate. Novus has taught him again and again to doubt all things - the honesty of a lover, the honor of serving a court, the gods themselves - but he does not doubt her, nor that she will return to him again.
With or without a flower-nymph.
“Be safe, little sister,” he says, but she is already gone.
