[P] God went North.

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow*   He tries not to think as he watches Raymond prepare to go. He tries to keep his face a thing of stone, pictures the granite cliffsides that the sea dashes itself against again and again and always fails to move. Asterion wants to be steel, wants to be strong. Oh, but he is only ever water – sometimes furious, sometimes merely foam to fade away to nothing. The red stallion gives him no straight answer, only a gaze that cuts and burns, and the Regent knows he should never have hoped for anything else. It is enough, anyway. What help he’d had from a lifetime ago is help no more; the black unicorn’s coming here had been a false hope. But she had never been his lionheart, anyway. It is not until they turn away, not until the brackish swampwater is seeping into Ruth’s prints, not until the rumble of each monstrous footstep has faded to only a tremble, that Asterion blows out a long breath and drops his head. For a moment he stands like a wounded thing, muzzle almost brushing the mud, and his sides rise and fall quick as a rabbit’s as he fights to keep himself together. Cirrus only watches him in silence until he straightens again. The bay offers her a long, dark-eyed glance, and then a single nod. The gull takes to wing, beating her way out of the dark canopy and up into the sunlight, and Asterion turns and begins to climb the wooden steps to see what has become of his sister, and each step echoes with a sound that is hollow, hollow, hollow. @Raymond