[AW] Out of a misty dream

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* He has a the good grace to step back and cast his glance aside as she clambers to her feet, as though he’s caught her doing something more delicate than resting beneath shade on a summer afternoon. But he can’t help the way his gaze is drawn back to her, again and again, and he gives in with looks as shy as any boy’s. Asterion has seen a thousand kinds of horses in his time in Novus, each stranger than the last; a rainbow of colors, a forge of jewelry, all manner of wings and scales and hairstyles. But he has never laid eyes on something quite like her. (It is something about the eyes, maybe, or the veil that covers them and ripples like a skein of dusk over most of her face, or- ) Her question is a lucky thing for him, for it shakes him from his tumble of strange thoughts and back into himself. Before he can help it he shakes his head, a half-smile, unbidden, drawing up a corner of his lips. “No,” he assures her. “I thought it was yours.” A pause in which his eyes drift to hers again, wondering if their shifting myriad of color was some trick of the fabric. Why this feeling, that he could look at them a hundred times and never find them the same? “I’m sorry I interrupted your nap – I feel like taking one too, after such a festival,” he says, for surely she, too, is making her way back from the Dawn Court party. “I can, ah--” and he begins to back his way out from beneath the boughs again, their leaves whispering over his dark skin.   Inwardly he berates himself for how badly he hopes she will stop him. @Myfanwy