[AW] Out of a misty dream

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* Closer and closer they moved, there beneath the shadows of the sleepy green boughs, and he might have blushed, were he able, at the sound of his name from her dark lips. Always it has seemed to him a thing too grand, too big a weight for his head stuffed so with dreams, but of late it feels more comfortable. A cloak of his father’s he’s finally growing into, and not a thing to catch him up and make him trip. The way this almost-stranger smiles at him makes him feel as full of starlight as his name. He thinks that perhaps he is still drunk from the festival; how else to explain the way that time was moving, soft and more languid than the run of the water? How else to explain the way her gaze snared him more surely than any willow-branches could, winding around his heart, bidding it fall still? Almost he leans forward again, more daring than he ought – but that is when she pulls away. All at once the world comes crowding back in, penetrating the quiet cover of the willow. Before he can reply to her, before he tell her he will, oh he will, she makes an excuse that is clear even to him and retreats another step. And then she is gone, vanishing through the trees, her dusky purple melting into the shadows, the last sign of her a flick of her silver tail. “You’re welcome,” he says softly, but the only things to listen are the still-swaying branches, and the laughing creek, and nodding flowers that are nothing like the color her eyes had been. With a sigh he moves back to the stream, and toward home. @Myfanwy D: haha