[P] delicate.

[Aislinn]

you   must like me for me
yeah, i want you
we can’t make any promises now
can we babe —

A delicate, divine string of silver and night’s smoke draws her closer to the shore, where he waits upon the sands. The ribbon has been wrapped around her heart, digging into it’s beating flesh with a fever that builds and builds. Her heart is as much a wild and untamed thing as she — and on this night, oh on this night, she is everything but if not unbound. She longs to close the distance between them, to brush his velveteen muzzle with her lips. Yet.. yet, she does not. She stays; the whispers of the sea’s waves the only sound as the water laps against her with their poetry.

Aislinn? What do you mean?

A million words lay unspoken on her lips, tumbling over themselves as they war for their right to be breathed. Her crown shakes, the curtain of moon-kissed hair falling across her eyes — breaking her contact with his lovely, handsome face. How could she tell him? How could she tell him the truth of the dragon’s fire — Aether’s fire — that now burns through the mountain pass? How could she tell him that the ancient Raven Gates have been closed, and that their isolation, their solitude, was decided by three? She being one of the masters behind the Night’s decision to break away. To safe themselves. How could she tell him that?

Copper nostrils flare with salt and ash and ocean brine. When her head rises, her gaze pins onto him with an unfamiliar strength, an unfamiliar flame. Not once had she ever looked upon his face with such ferocity. The thought had never crossed her, nor had she ever expected it to. This was her prince. The very same prince who stole her heart from the shores of a silver lake; the very same prince who danced with her in a field of fireflies; the very same prince who shared her own swollen heart, who had found her when she needed him most.

And yet, he had never looked so cold. Not at her. Not until now.

Is that why you’re here?

She does not need to turn to know that his eyes — those pools of galaxies that she cannot help but steal her breath — are on the angry orange flames that reach towards the stars. Embers kiss this night, ash falling into the sea in dark, dark tears. And she is tangled within their grasp; their greedy fingerprints like shadows that dribble onto the glow of her mane, dousing the the starry gauze that clings to her skin until all that is left of her is smoke. "Please, try to understand—" she starts, before a roar of flame cries out into the night, whooshing skywards with heat and light.

What have your people done?

"What my people have done?" Her voice finds her, and she strides forward, stopping just short of the water’s edge. Fingers dance across her spine in angry drumbeats, igniting her from the inside out. Aislinn turns now, facing Asterion fully. Her lover, her other half.. but now.. the enemy? No. But she is Rage, and hell bent, and every ounce the storm-wrought child Calligo had designed her daughter to be. Aislinn’s walls are cracks of ebony stone, her storm crying out beneath her skin. Her will to protect, her loyalty, now a call stronger than any blood.

He had no idea the lengths in which she would go for the star’s children. No idea at all.

She twists her neck violently, the shining white stars tattooed there burning beneath the firelight. But it is the purplish scar there, near silver and forever etched into her skin that she brandishes. The crude, brutal Sun that she is forced to wear as a reminder for her failure, for her weakness. What had she done, but do what she needed to do to keep her kingdom safe from men like him — her attacker? From Solterra? From the Davke? In the end, it hadn’t mattered.

And now, now the stormsinger bores into him with eyes of searing blue, pleading. "My people have bled. They have been maimed" —her wings flare, her body shaking — "they have been broken, and they have been manipulated and used. We are not innocent. We desire Peace. And what of the Solterrans? You know what they did to me. Just look, really look" — she remembers all too well the rock that had marred her — "at what they have done. What they are doing. Their own Regent rebelled against their Court, and what is to stop them from invading Denocte? From Terrastella?"

Swallowing, she inhales. Long and slow. She softens, but her eyes do not — they are pyres of wicked blue, near twin to the fires that rage in the Arma. "We are doing what we must."

Only then, does she look away, seeing nothing as she stares into the abyss of shadow and flame. "I’m here.. I’m here to say goodbye."

---

@asterion ♡
"Aislinn speech."

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art by aenemoni