[AW] Out of a misty dream

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* Her laugh is like the stream behind him, like the sunlight on the water, and for a moment it makes his smile true. And then the boughs are whispering over his back, the sunlight slanting in, and she is saying wait - It does not take him more encouragement than that to stop. The bay does not move forward again, since she has closed up the space he opened, but instead stands half-in and half-out of the little cave of limbs and leaves. Suddenly the space seems terribly small and intimate, but then the wind comes sighing through, and the stream is laughing nearby, and the stranger’s eyes are so very bright. At her question he ducks his head a little, his ears flicking forward as he considers her again. He is a little relieved to hear she hadn’t been at the festival, because that meant he hadn’t missed seeing her there – surely she would have caught his attention, even among such a crowd. “Oh,” he says, “it was a wonder. I’ve never heard such music, and there were a dozen kinds of cake.” His smile returns at that, recalling the impromptu food fight that Moira had begun – though there is a small, strange twinge at the way it had ended. “And then the drinking – and the dancing…” Already, he thinks, it feels like a dream. What he doesn’t say is that he had not been an active participant in most of those things – instead he’d watched as others made merry. He’d painted himself with Florentine’s help, striping his coat in the colors of the morning, but the storm had washed them all away. Still, the scent of woodsmoke clings to his skin, and it would be strange not to see lanterns once the sun goes down. “What kept you away?” he asks, and hopes it is more bold than forward. The ends of her veil move in the wind the way the willow-branches do, and shadows shift across her twilight skin. “It was so near here,” he says, as if to explain, and offers her a little half-smile. @Myfanwy