in sunshine and in shadow
It is easy, standing here with her, and he wonders how much is the girl and how much the sea. The ocean is his oldest friend (save for golden Talia, has twin, although she is both more and less than a friend) and it doesn’t seem to matter if he stands beside the sandy beach of his birth or a hungry tide in Ravos or the cliffs they visit now. The sea is all new, and ever-changing, and yet for all of that it is as constant as his heartbeat, as the blood in his veins.
And it has helped him make friends of strangers before.
She is slight enough he thinks the wind might carry her to the stars, were she to only spread her wings – and perhaps she would belong there, bright as a comet.
At her question Asterion looks to her again, searching the eyes that shine so brightly in the bold carmine of her face, and there is something shamefully glad in him when he finds her watching the water and not him.
“Neither,” he answers, and his gaze, too, strays briefly to the sea. He pictures the wishes he’d witnessed, fluttering like ashes, spiraling slow toward the hungry waves beneath. “I did not make a wish. At the time, I felt I had everything I could want.” Asterion says nothing more, but that is enough; he is grateful for the change in course when she stretches her wings up toward the gathering dark.
When she stands like that, she reminds him a little of Florentine, of Aislinn: bold travelers, in love with the sky. The bay has never felt particularly jealous of their wings and the freedom they represented; he has ever been drawn to other things. But there is still something quietly wanting in him as the last of the light sets her pinion-feathers to flame.
He is a little sorry when she folds them again.
But his smile grows more bold when she speaks; never (he hopes) will he hear the word adventure and not feel a little trill go through him, a more vital want than the want of wings. He even laughs when she forgives him for his intrusion, though the sound is soft and brief enough to miss between the waves and the wind and the cries of the sea-birds.
Asterion could be breathless, too, watching her and the way she leans toward the edge, the wind tossing her hair, rifling through her feathers as though coaxing her to leap. He does not realize how tense his muscles are until she turns back; then he eases into a more casual stance, curving his muzzle toward hers. “Tell me if that changes,” he says with a grin, and can’t remember the last time he said anything teasing. For all of that, his next question is serious. “And what kind of adventure were you hoping for?”
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