[P] we shovel all the ashes out;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* He is surprised at her explanation, and he can feel his curiosity sharpen, a bright gleam in his dark eyes. The Regent has been a poor student of the other cultures Terrastella shares the world with – perhaps he should better use his time with Eik, the next chance he gets to see his friend. On the other hand, he’s not sure he’s seen anyone wear a true crown, except for Florentine when she must, and – And Isorath. Though each time he’d seen the kirin, he’d worn so much finery a coronet seemed almost an afterthought. “A crown is an unheard of thing, everywhere else I’ve been. I admit I still think they look ridiculous,” he confides, “far more so than the flowers.” It occurs to him then this might be yet another insult, and Asterion would blush if he were able. Had Florentine the chance to know him better before asking him to serve as Regent, he is sure she would have found someone far more suitable. Even as she wonders about him, the twilit bay is doing the same – admiring her composure, her distant coolness, even as he wonders if there are those who can get beyond it. How many troubles might he have avoided, if he were more like Seraphina and less like himself? Her query makes him question himself, replaying those distant events that have faded like cindersmoke. How is it, he thinks, that he can so precisely remember Aislinn’s stricken expression when she saw Reichenbach at the last Dawn gathering? It would be so much easier, to forget the look on her face as she fled. But he cannot, no more than he can forget a far colder look, only a few days before. “The other was nothing physical, only feelings. Perhaps that’s just the way things are, and I’m a fool for expecting any different.” His gaze drifts over the crowd, the sparking bonfires, the stars as they reveal themselves. And then he sighs, and glances back to the silver queen and her lilies. Asterion had not thought of the flowers as crowns at all, until she had made the comparison. “There were no politics, in the place I am from,” he says, and then things of the rough herds of Ravos and amends (a little wrly), “at least that I was aware of. It was all only…living. Novus makes me wish I had more of your self-possession.” Seraphina’s composure, and Raymond’s strange blend of friendly-dangerous, and Calliope’s incredible sureness that the path she was on was the right one. With those traits, he is sure he would be closer to the man he once dreamed of. @Seraphina   lordy I'm sorry she's having to deal with him in this Mood