[AW] Out of a misty dream

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* As he speaks, as his lips and teeth and tongue form syllables smooth as the stream that babbles nearby and soft as the clouds that drift overhead, Asterion watches her eyes. Does he imagine the way they shift, slide far away to dreaming? The bay has been caught with such an expression often enough to recognize it in another, but it is difficult to tell behind the film of her veil. He wants to name each color that lives there, a changing pool, but he thinks to do that he would need to better see – He does not realize he’s stepped nearer until she speaks. Then he glances away, almost sheepish, still helpless to understand why he finds himself so strangely snared. But he looks back again, just to catch her smile, and he accepts her explanation with a nod. Had it not been for duty, after all, he might have been as apt to avoid the gathering, and he had no such excuse. Oh, and then she leans nearer, and those eyes catch and gleam in sunlight thin as a sliver of glass. Now he does not want to look away from them, for her hair like pale stars is still too similar to another’s in the way it rests against her shoulder or ghosts across her cheek. She smells of sunlight, and windswept grass, and something else he can’t yet place – And he forgets to try, when she gives her name. Myfanwy,” he repeats, a clumsy try at the new syllables, but the smile he gives her then betrays no shyness. And I’m Asterion. So now you know me – I hope that means I’ll see you at the next one.”   Ah, he has become a horse as foolish and frivolous as the worst of Novus, already talking of the next party with the decorations of the last still hanging. But surely Myfanwy was not so fierce and fervent as Calliope, and would not find him weak for it. @Myfanwy