The sound of his name comes to him on the wind, ragged and wishful as a memory. Almost he misses it altogether over the slow sounds of the silver morning, but he and Cirrus both turn their heads, and his dark mouth shapes a grin at the sight of Marisol coming through the fog.
(Though there is a part of him unwilling to turn his back on the open waves, not wanting to miss that dark shape, that something out there beyond the breakers.)
“Commander,” he greets her, and his dark eyes are brighter than any sea-wet smooth stone that gleams on the beach. He does not move as she approaches, save his dark hair tousled by the wind, and the gull perched nearby only ruffles her feathers and tucks her head contentedly down.
Marisol is close enough to scent even over the tang of the sea, then, and Asterion closes his eyes for a moment, unable to help but give in to his whimsy and wishing – to inhale the taste of clouds on her skin, clinging to her wings like dew; currents as out of reach to him as those in the open ocean. Never mind that it is so similar to the fog that cocoons them both.
To fly – oh, it would open a new world to explore.
But perhaps that would only make it more difficult to stay in this one. The bay needs no more things to tempt him from keeping his feet firmly on the ground.
He welcomes the warmth of her, the near-brush of her wings folded dark against her sides. Good morning, she says, and brief and bright as a falling star he grins.
“It is, isn’t it?” If he were ever to build a castle, he thinks, he would put it only here, and it would exist only on a morning like this, a world of glass and salt and secrets. A world where anything might come rising up out of the sea like a fairy-tale myth.
It would be natural, maybe, to ask her about their god then – the summit and all that followed is still a heavy press against his heart, a shadow that swallows the idle moments of his mind. But Asterion does not wish to, and for once he allows himself to be stubborn.
So instead he tilts his muzzle out to sea as a gust of wind comes up, misting him with water that tastes of salt, that perhaps came from places he could never imagine and would never see. “Have you ever seen them, in your flying? Are there truly horses that live in the sea?”
He shifts, in his boyish dreaming, and his dark shoulder brushes against her own – but Asterion is looking out to the open water, imagining worlds beneath the waves.
@
if you'll be my star*
