[P] delicate.

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* He does not know what he expected, standing there with his heart and his hope both caught in his throat, but he had thought he might at least have an answer. But there is nothing, nothing to soothe the whirlpool within him, nothing to explain the questions he had leveled. He can feel that ocean inside sucking him down, down; the depths of it threaten to whisper over his head, closing him in silence, in darkness. He listens to her speak of warnings, of statements, of chaos. He listens and waits for any explanation, any word of what had caused that fire that eats and eats at the horizon, or what it might mean (the only fires he has seen had been set from madness, from rage). And he waits in vain. Do you know what I am? she says, and oh, there is such a storm in those eyes when he meets them. It sets his heart to trembling, whether from fear or from sorrow he cannot say. When he had first seen her, stumbling on her like a boy in a dream, he had thought her wild, he had thought her lovely. Both of those things are true still: she is a summer storm, magnificent, but all the fireflies are fled. She had never been a maiden, twining flowers in her hair in the woods – it was a goddess he had stumbled on, as Actaeon had stumbled on Diana. Would he, too, be punished for such a small sin? I do not blame your people, he wants to say, and I do not blame you. But uncertainty holds his tongue as the silver of her hair glows from the distant flames, a star set alight. Please, she says, echoing his own plea, and oh, Asterion loves her. Suddenly he is so very weary. Had he not stayed for her when she begged, clothed in bandages and blood? How many more fights would leave them all beaten? All of these things he considers, gathering them up in his heart like smooth stones. He could cast them away, or they could sink him. “Go then,” he says at last, and his voice is so soft that it might already be a memory. Asterion does not take his gaze from hers, but he lets his heart dip below the waves to be cradled by the current. Never has a goodbye felt so like drowning. @Aislinn