It is just before dawn and the world is all silver.
There is dew on the grass and fog rising up from all the hollows in the fields, and the first thin rays of sunlight shine down on the fog and turn it to glass or to starlight. Far away, carried clear on the crisp autumn air, Asterion can hear the sighing, singing call of the sea. He laughs into the silent, silver morning, and stretches on the grass that wets his hocks and knees with cool kisses, and makes to answer its summons.
Surely, comes the voice, textured as the outside of a shell in his mind, you aren’t thinking of simply walking? Before the last words fade the flap of wings follows, and Cirrus swoops like a phantom from the fog, another pale ghost in a morning of them. The bay stallion lifts his star-marked brow to her, and then he grins. “Alright, then. A race.”
The gull replies with a satisfied caw and a flap of wings that stirs the stallion’s dark hair from his face, and then she is gone, and the regent follows her across the misty morning and down to the sea.
In the end they agree to call it a tie. It was hard to say, in the fog, which of them reached the shoreline first, but they are each happily and thoroughly exhausted when they do. Cirrus stands on rock dark and wet with fog, and Asterion stands beside her, catching his breath with air that tastes of mist and brine.
The sea is only now becoming clear before them, like a mirror unfogging. At first the only thing visible is the little waves that run up to the beach, washing the rocks and shells with their foam; then come the breakers as the sun begins to burn off the mist. It is cool, but the bay does not shiver; his muscles are all warm and wanting from the heedless run to the shore. Blessedly, his mind is empty of gods and courts and problems – it is full of the day, of the shine of sunlight on the water, of the other sea-birds that Cirrus watches so indignantly.
Until he spots a dark shadow out beyond the place where the shelf of sand drops off. “Cirrus, he says, and she looks around with dark eyes gleaming. “Do you see – is that a dolphin, you think?” The big gull peers, and they are both still until a dark head breaks the surface and is gone again in the space of a heartbeat.
Maybe, says the gull, but she sounds doubtful, almost wary. Asterion tilts his head, feeling a shiver start to wend its way through him as he thinks of recent whispers – of horses that live in the sea, and eat flesh, and come up on the sands to dance beneath the full moon, wanton and wild.
Suddenly the day, the shroud of fog, is as eerie as it is lovely.
“Have you seen them?” he asks his companion, voice gone soft and wondering. For a moment Cirrus says nothing, then she clacks her beak at him, and the eye she turns on him is bright and keen.
Yes, she says, and her tone is like a warning. And you should hope not to – especially this time of year.
Asterion nods, chastised by her knowing look, but oh! In his heart he wonders and he wants.
open to any!
if you'll be my star*
