A S T E R I O N
in sunshine and in shadow*
Asterion has not forgotten.
He could not forget; Calliope lives in him still, slow and dark beneath the deep water of his soul. Like its counterpart of flesh and blood and sinew the memory of her never slumbers, only waits – for the moments he is alone, the moments he is afraid, the moments he begins to forget himself. Be brave, says each flash of her silver eyes. Braver than that.
He will never be worthy of even the memory of her.
But such thoughts are far enough from him now, as the relative cool of the summer night begins to give way and silver limns the horizon. It had been (of course it had been) Florentine’s idea to wander the winding streets before the heat and light of dawn, and Asterion was glad enough to follow. Still he sought any excuse to avoid the inside of those gray walls that remind him too much of a certain maze. Out here, at least, he can smell the sea.
He is weary, taciturn, by the time they wind back toward their quarters. It is still thick with shadows, but already humidity is rising, curling their hair, deepening the scent of the queen’s flowers – the ones that bloom in her hair as well as along her streets.
Their hooves echo on the cobblestones and it is the only noise as they slip into the courtyard, where the leaves of the willow are beginning to turn silver, to turn rose. Overhead a bird calls, welcoming the morning, and Asterion turns his gaze skyward to find it. When he looks back, it is to find his sister vanishing beyond the willow. “Flora,” he says, but his voice is still soft with night, and she does not hear, and she does not turn. Asterion can only follow.
So he does, and his skin shivers when a last cool breeze touches him. It shivers again as the long branches of the willow caress it, slipping over his dusky coat; he does not know, yet, that he walks over cloven prints. But there is a smell in the air, now, that his nose wrinkles as it catches: ozone and animal, nothing like the flowers of his sister and her gardens.
There is a wild thing there, and it makes Asterion’s heart race as though he knows it’s hunting him.
He knows it by the time he finds Florentine again, gold against the shadows that still cling to the walls, to the space like a sanctuary beneath the tree. Only for a moment does his gaze touch the trampled flowers that bleed the smell of bright summer from their broken stalks; his mind is still slow to put it together. Florentine speaks and what she says wouldn’t make sense to him even if he were listening properly (this is nothing new, his queen has always talked in riddles) but her words might as well be the laughter of a creek for all he hears them now.
Because oh, it is her, it is her.
How many times has he imagined their reunion? How many times has he remembered their first meeting, when he was the one who waited beneath the boughs, unaware his fate was coming for him?
Any words he might have imagined fall away. He must pull in a breath to keep from swaying and then he steps forward, unaware he is trembling like a boy, to press his nose to the dark cheek that feels like satin and smells like a summer storm.
“You’re here,” he says, and his voice is soft with wonder.
He does not yet consider what her arrival in this world might mean.
@Calliope @
