[P] delicate.

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* Always, when his thoughts are a Charybdis that threaten to pull him down, he seeks out the sea. It is no different tonight, not long after a Dusk meeting that has left him as weary as he has been on Novus. He only pauses once, in his pilgrimage to the water, and that is to watch (with horror, with awe) as the mountains across the water burn and burn and burn, a distant pyre to some dark god. Surely it was lightning, that started that blaze – except it spread so quickly. Except he can still hear Jude warning them all of dragon-fire. Except the only fires he has known have been started by men or by gods. He only hopes that everyone is safe. Asterion can’t keep his gaze from the distant smoke, like fingers that yearn to scratch a scab or worry a wound. At last the water – but he is not alone for long. She draws his gaze like a swan landing, and he marvels they way he always has to see her. At first his mind does not connect the burning beyond her with her presence here; he is too happy to see her whole, to see that she has found flight again. That she has come to see him. He starts forward, but her words stop him before he can take a second step. His ears twist, uncertain. His nose catches scents he’d hoped never to know again. “Aislinn? What do you mean?” Oh, why does she smell like ash? His gaze, so dark, keeps wanting to draw away over her shoulder, where smoke rises in a column dark as sin against the bruise of the sky.  He tries to match his breathing, his heartbeat, to the hush of the waves as they kiss the sand in sea-foam; for the most part he fails. That lick of flame on the horizon, that smell of green things burned to black on her skin, it reminds him what it is to be afraid. He is dizzy with the memories – one fire he ran from, fled like a coward boy, and another he ran into, to save the twin who repaid him with hate like cold gold. He does not take another step toward her, though the water beckons him, whispers for him to come and be healed. Asterion pulls in deep breaths that taste of salt and sea-grass, the things he loves, the things he is made of as much as any star-stuff or silver twilight.   And then he levels his gaze at her, and a slow suspicion gnaws at his heart, narrows his eyes. So many questions he has meant to ask her, but has never had the time; now he must push them away again. Always there is more trouble. He thinks of the festival, how happy he was with her, how blissfully ignorant of the darker things that transpired that night. How there were never enough answers, only more questions. The accusations Jude had leveled – is that what she thinks, too? The regent straightens, and watches her as she stands in the water (not so different from another night, a year ago, her tail trailing from pale starfire to dark soot on the rippling surface). “Is that why you’re here?” he says, and angles his muzzle toward the distant blaze, the one that sets his skin to shivering, that makes his traitorous, remembering heart so unsteady. “What have your people done?” There is a burning in the night, there is ash on the air (if he kissed her, would she taste of it?) but Asterion is cold, cold, cold. @Aislinn ahhhh