“Cake,” he echoes with a smile, “is an excellent place to start. Wise you are, Moira.” Her laughter passes over him like a cool wind, a bell that rings over the deep-dark of his soul. And like a bell, it draws him back, and all the colors seem brighter for it.
There is a long, low, wooden table just across the way from them, and the limbs above it are strung with colored lanterns and ribbons bright as butterflies. He steers them toward it, nodding at her question. “All the ones I’ve seen,” he says, and he is almost thankful for the way she has pointed out the beauty to him. It would have been easy not to see it, when his thoughts were on a beach, a burning, a goodbye.
He would rather be here, he thinks.
“Delumine seems to take it especially seriously, though I wish you could have seen the midwinter party.” He wonders what she remembers of his story – Asterion can’t recall if he told her of the bonfires that threw sparks like stars, or the lights that shone on the fresh-fallen snow, or how the whole of Terrastella had been transformed to a dream-world for the night. Oh, if only it had been so happy on the waking. “I have never been to a gathering in Solterra, however, or in the Night Court. I’ve heard that every night is a celebration, there.” Despite his words, he wears no smile; it has faded away at the mention of Denocte. The only time the bay had been there was after receiving a frantic note on a rain-soaked night, and he had spent his visit in their infirmary with a half-delirious Aislinn.
Maybe it was a mercy, that the only time he’d told her he loved her was when her head was too clouded with drugs and pain to hear.
Again he pushes thoughts of the gypsy girl away, frustrated by how they dog him; surely she is not thinking of him.
They have reached the table, now, and he is surprised it does not groan beneath the burden it bears: of cake alone there are a dozen kinds. Rich oat-cakes drizzled with honey, and lavender cakes of a delicate pink, cloud-light confections dotted with berries. The smell of it competes with the sweet scent of the flowers. It’s enough to make him dizzy, when normally he is surrounded by the smells of salt and sea-grass and ocean brine.
“We have a difficult choice ahead of us,” he says, dark gaze meeting the bright gold of hers, and though his tone is serious there is a laugh in his eyes.
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if you'll be my star*
