however big, however small let me be part of it all
S
amaira was a stranger to cities, having never lived in or even seen one her entire life. Although she’d been told stories, about busy streets lined with stone and houses and buildings that pressed up against each other, she found that no words could truly describe it. The sensation of her steps against the cobbled road, it was so different even from the wooden floors of the homes she had always called her own.
The signs and sounds were sensory overload. It was a beautiful summer day and the streets were full of conversation, laughter, shouting. And the colors, of flowers, of wares, of the outfits adorning each equine who walked by her, let alone the equines themselves. So diverse, each one different from the last. Samaira didn’t know where to look, couldn’t decide what intrigued her the most. Her silver eyes bounced eagerly from sign to sight, her ears twisting this way and that atop her head.
All the hubbub had managed to take her mind off her wing, bandaged closed against her side as it was. And in her distracted, Samaira found herself on a collision course with more than one unsuspecting equine on the street, though she managed to catch herself in time and prevent any accidents. Then she saw someone brandishing an instrument, playing to a small gathered crowd.
Distracted again, this time she did not see the body that her steps were taking her straight toward until she was almost upon him. Samaira came to a stop suddenly, her eyes widened in shock, her cheeks warming slightly with sheepishness. "My apologies, I’m not used to such crowds,” her accented voice was maybe the first giveaway that she was not from here, smokey and lilting. “I should be more careful,” she said as she got her first look at the stranger.
It is late summer and the city is in full bloom, the boulevards thick with flowers, the markets full of wares, bright color and bright sound. For once Asterion does not miss the lazy drone of bees, or the sigh of the breeze in wildflowers, or the sun full and hot on his skin with the sea to his side; for once he enjoys the full-throated joy of his city.
As always he wears no sign of his station, no crown or circlet or intricate braids; he walks unadorned along the streets, drifting like a hummingbird from bouquet to bouquet of bright summer scenes. He buys a sweet roll from a beaming filly at a market stand, he compliments the myriad of richly colored rugs at the weavers, and when he heard the sound of a lute being tuned he turned to find the source of it.
Music had been one of the strangest and most wonderful things he’d discovered in Novus, and he rarely missed an opportunity to listen; now the bay is drawn to the player like a moth, too curious to notice when his path took him perilously near another equine doing the same thing.
Luckily she stops just before he sees her, and he stumbles back a step in turn, feeling a sheepish grin take shape on his own mouth. The king shakes his head at her apology, his forelock spilling dark across the star on his forehead. When he looks at her his gaze catches first on the flowers she wears, and then her silver eyes.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be used to them,” he answers her, and both his voice and the curve of his lips is wry. How long ago it seems he slept beneath a river of stars, with nothing but crickets and wind for company.
But the lilt of her voice continues, and now that there is some space between him he takes her in with his dark-eyed gaze, his smile lingering (however faint) when she continues her apology.
“So it seems,” he answers her with a raised brow, indicating her injured wing. His voice is light in jest, but as Asterion more closely studies her he can feel the sorrow pooling again within him. Ah, he wishes he were not so skilled at learning such wounds; he has seen so many, now, with Moira and Flora and Aislinn and Theo.
And now this stranger - he is careful not to touch her again, even admit the bustling crowd, but he gestures with his dark muzzle toward her snowy bandages. “Somebody did a good job binding that,” he tells her, but he does not ask who, and he does not ask why.
She may be in his city, but it is not yet his right to impose himself so. This does nothing, of course, to stop his wondering - and perhaps his gaze asks the question that his tongue cannot.
however big, however small let me be part of it all
H
e grins sheepishly and Samaira has to pause for a moment when she looks at him, catching on the dark bay of his skin and the black swath of his hair. Oh, how like Cassius he looks at first glance that her heart skips a beat and flutters and drops all at once. But this man’s eyes are night skies and his skin is tinged with twilight and she knows that Cassius is not here, and she is glad for it. “That doesn’t bode very well for me, does it?” she responds in kind with her own smile curving her earthen lips. “Your home is so… alive, so full of wonder.”
They look at each other and her silver eyes are at complete contrast with his own and they are standing in the crowd with the sun on their backs but it feels like a strange new world. When was the last time she had properly met someone new? Samaira didn’t exactly count the harsh, steely woman Marisol in that category, as she’d come crashing through the trees very unproperly, but it had been a relief to know that here, she would not be chased.
His brow raises when he looks at her wing, bandaged carefully against her side. There is something almost mournful in her eyes then, as she stretches her good wing, letting her feathers flutter in the gentle breeze. “A tendon injury, I’ve been told. The kindly healer in the swamp said it would be better in a few months,” and she smiles, but it is almost a frown disguising itself as a smile. To think that she had finally found herself in a world where her wings did not make her a criminal, and she could not use them for several months. But, she thought, she would be able to use them again, and freely without fear.
When her face turns once more toward her companion she looks at him and all she sees is hope. Things can be different here; she hopes they will be different here, desperately, wildly, longingly. It is in every smile she wears, in every curious glance, in every tug of her hair on the breeze. She looks again in his eyes and can only imagine what he is wondering, the questions he must have.
The reminder of Cassius’ horrible smile when he’d turned her in and told her to run threatens to drown her some moments, filling her veins with an icy chill. If there is nothing to fear here, why does she still feel a prickling along her spine? Her chest tightens and then expands into something empty and gaping and wide, and she realizes that it is because she is missing the feeling of trust that she used to so readily wear. The words are there, on the tip of her tongue, and they dry up and crumble and fall like brittle petals, whispering away into the wind.
There is a rising trill of music then, and her gaze slides away from the man in front of her, glancing to the musician who appears to be reaching the climax of their performance. Samaira takes a moment to breathe, to fill the space in her with anything, even air, and closes her eyes. And she listens for a heartbeat, two, three, and the lines of her face smooth as she does. The music reminds her of her mother, who used to play and hum to her when she was but a filly, filling their little forest glade with song.
When her eyes open again they seem clearer, brighter, and she dips her head slightly. Her dark hair swings forward, dragging upon the ground at her feet. She hms for a moment, as if reminiscing, “It is lovely,” Samaira says and she guards her heart when she looks back up, “I could not imagine listening to such music every time I walked the streets. It is a wonder nobody dances.” And if there is a something wistful in her words it is silken and soft, and but a murmur.
“You may find you’re a faster learner than me,” he answers, and his smile is a soft echo of her own. It changes into something else, though, as she continues - something almost proud, as though Terrastella were a child he’d watched grow tall and true, as though her compliment were meant for him, too. How good it was, to hear somebody call the Dusk Court alive- there had been moments, in the last year, when he thought they might all be buried under water and swept out to sea. “Maybe you just have the right kind of eyes for it,” he says softly, his eyes catching the silver gleam of hers like the night against the moon.
Oh, Asterion wonders too - but his questions are for this stranger he regards, with the tattoos against her skin and the flowers in her hair.
And he wonders of the injury to her wing, too, though he does not press further as she extends her hale one, and answers his unasked question. He remembers then what Marisol had said of flight - how wonderful it was, and how terrible, since each time might be the last. The smile he wears then is a wry thing, a similarly complicated expression to her own, but there is nothing hard in his eyes as they catch hers once more. “It seems that you are stuck with us for a while, then.”
He had meant the words in jest, but as he regards her he sees the shift in her expression, the sudden wariness in her gaze. Asterion puts another step between them, opening up more space for the warm summer wind to course through, wondering at the change in her - what had he done? He ought to comfort her, but the words catch behind the king’s teeth, for he does not want to distress her further. As the music around them swells like dawn he ignores it for the sound of the wind through her feathers, the flutter of her lashes against her cheek, the scent of wildflowers that he isn’t sure belongs to her or to the sunlit city.
When she lifts her head and opens those crescent-moon eyes he quickly averts his gaze, not wanting to be caught staring. But whatever shadow had passed over her heart, she shows no sign of it in her next words. The stallion scans the city, as if weighing them, and tries to see it as she does - for its beauty, and not the sadness that lingers like a current beneath it. “Keep watching, and you may see it yet,” he says, his voice no louder than his own as he turns back to her. “But we are still recovering from - a great sadness.” How else to phrase what had befallen their court? Asterion sighs, and shakes his mane like he might shake away the sorrow like it is only water, and when he looks at her again he stands just a little taller. “But if you are moved to dance, I would join you. I am Asterion, by the by.”
however big, however small let me be part of it all
S
he lets it go, for now. Buries it somewhere beneath the folds of her thoughts. It might emerge at another time, the lingering feelings of what it is like to be hunted, to run for your life, but she does not want them now. Not here, standing before this man of earth and sky who is like a new version of her past, remade into something more beautiful, something that does not make her heart twist with fear or worry. Something that has made her smile.
“If I am to be stuck anywhere,” she pauses, glancing at his nightfall eyes, “then right here seems the perfect place.” Oh, if her silver eyes don’t watch him with equal parts curiosity and warmth. This, she could do time and time again she thinks. Conversations on the street to the sound of music, with a bright sun above them. This, she thinks, could be all the girl in her had ever wished for, when she walked through the forest and made friends with the woodland creatures.
She watches him speak and steals a glance about them again as he speaks of recovery. With the knowing Samaira can see it better, in the weight of the shoulders of those who pass her, in the weariness of a pair of eyes she catches by chance. Her gaze becomes contemplative, the silver in them softer as her thoughts return momentarily to her bandaged wing, and she understands. The pegasus, not quite thinking it through, not quite knowing whether she should or not, extends her good wing to gently brush the feathers of it across the man’s shoulder. Then, she says, “What better a place, then, for me to recover too,” and if he looks at her she will smile gently, “We will heal together.”
Something in Samaira lightens when he says that he will dance with her then, like she had closed her eyes and made a wish and he has made it come true. “Asterion,” she tastes the name on her tongue, letting it brush over her lips like the sweet soft petals of a flower. It is something special that his is the first name she learns in this beautifully strange new world, and it is difficult for her to disguise her joy as it radiates from her like a beam.
“Nothing could make me happier than if you would join me in a dance,” and she turns, pressing golden edged hooves to the cobblestone to make her way toward the musician. She glances back, her lips curled up at the corners as her sterling gaze waits for him to join her. “I am Samaira,” and her voice is velvet and smooth and she lifts her head to the sun and sways to the music like grass beneath a gentle breeze. “It reminds me of a song my mother used to sing to me when I was a girl,” and she feels, perhaps for the first time since arriving, free.
He smiles when she calls his court the perfect place, for how could he do anything else? And, just as she buries her own memories, he pushes down and down the way the streets had looked half-submerged, the way his people shivered and feared and drowned, the look in their goddess’s eye when she set them a test they could only ever fail. It is over, he tells himself, and they are still here. There are flowers growing along the cobblestone streets and music coloring the air more brightly than birdsong and they are here.
When the brush of her feathers glances across his shoulder light as a whispered prayer he closes his eyes. It is only the sun beating down on his back, then, and the summer-wildflower scent of her beside him, and her touch a reminder that neither of them are alone. In he breathes, and gathers all these things to himself. As he exhales he opens his eyes to her smile, and it is as easy as breathing to return it. “Yes,” he agrees, “we will.” And for once there is no doubt in him.
It is easier still to follow her across the street, heedless of the eyes that turn to watch him, filling himself only with the music and summer sunlight. The musician smiles to see them approach, and bows her head back to her fiddle.
Samaira, she names herself, and he lets the name sink down and down as he studies her grin and the dark fall of her hair. “It must have been a lovely song,” he says, soft, and thinks of what his own mother used to hum to them, woven in with the sighing of the sea. “Did it have any words?”
Oh, but Asterion is beyond words then, as his feet begin a drumming against the pavement. Out, out of his head he wills all the other memories, all the other dances; he sways like the summer breeze, he raises his head to the sky, and when there is the sound of laughter, warm as bells in evening, it takes him a moment to realize it is coming from his own throat, his own mouth, his own heart.
however big, however small let me be part of it all
T
he song played by the musician is not the same, of course, as the song her mother would sing to her when she was young, but the melody is similar enough that she can imagine. The sound of the fiddle draws it out of her memories on whispering notes, and Samaira remembers the first time she’d heard it.
It had been just after she’d found out for the first time why they never went outside the forest, why she had never met anyone else, no other children, no other adults. Her parents had sat her down and explained to her the truth about the world they lived in: that the world, it did not want her because she was different. Oh, she had cried, and hid in herself in her room for hours, drowning in confusion and hurt. Until her mother had come, and, gently running a hand through her hair, had sung.
So, too, Samaira begins to sing.
“There are so many ways to go,
Many goals to reach, if you dare.
Believe you have what it takes.
We all have doubts,
But the most beautiful thing you've got
Is a light, shining clearly,
And it lives within you.
A compass which lights up your night.”
And her voice, perhaps, is not the most beautiful. Not clear and high and naturally musical. It is wafted through with the smokiness of her accent, low, with the warmth of a breathy rasp, but there is emotion in it that needs no technique, no precision, to make distinct. It is belief and strength, and belief in that strength within you. Her parents had always made sure that Samaira never felt wrong, even if their world tried to.
Her song comes to an end just as the music does, and Samaira, bashfully, stops swaying and smiles a sheepish smile. But her silver eyes shine in the sunlight and she chuckles, a little breathlessly, “I am not the singer my mother was, but I will always remember the sound of her voice.” She turns toward the fiddler, and the sincerity in her voice is mirrored in her eyes when she says, “You have such talent… thank you so much for playing for us.”
“I’m wondering if you might show me some place where I could stay the night?” Samaira asks, turning back to Asterion, “I’d like to see more of your home.” Her question punctuates the air between them with more things unsaid. ‘I very much enjoy your company, and I am not ready to be alone again,’ is perhaps the biggest, and it is true.
She has been so long on her own that she is not prepared to do it again, even if just for the night. There is so much here that she wants to see, and still a whole day ahead of them. The pegasus hopes, as she begins to turn back toward the sun-filled streets to move further into the court, that he will agree to be her escort on this next journey of her life.
@Asterion | "speaks" | notes: I do believe that is an end <3 Her song if you're curious, though I used the english translation obviously haha
At first he is only vaguely aware of the voice rising in song beside him, for his eyes are still closed and his head still turned to the sun. But his laugh settles to silence and a soft curve of smile as the words drift low and smoky like incense over him.
His dancing falls to near-stillness as he listens, and it is his own mother he thinks of, humming ancient melodies to Asterion and his twin. He can’t remember, now, if there had ever been words - but her voice made music, though none of them had ever heard a fiddle or a flute or a drum.
When the words fade away, when there is quiet again over the street, the king at last opens his eyes. He is not altogether surprised to find them just a little wet, a little silver-limned, but he blinks the sting of memory away as he turns again to face Samaira. “I am grateful that you do,” he says, and nods deeply at the fiddler as she thanks them. Asterion is glad to live in a place where there is music in the streets - today that alone seemed worth the burdens that came with a court.
Before she can finish her question the bay is nodding, still wearing a smile wrought of memory and music. “Of course,” he says, “it would be my pleasure.” With a tilt of his jaw he gestures toward the heart of the city and begins to walk, as the musician (now he has found himself with an even larger audience) begins to tune his fiddle for another song.
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