[P] Our irreparable yesterdays

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow*   He cannot shake how strange it feels, to stand conversing with the familiar man not in a field of tawny grass that brushed against their bellies under a pale blue sky but within cold walls of stone. Neither of them, he thinks (though he is, perhaps, beginning to see how much a chameleon Raymond could be) belong in a tapestried castle. As the red stallion makes his reply it strikes Asterion suddenly how absurd the situation is, like something plucked from one of his grandest childhood dreams. The bay averts his gaze then to the window, colored glass in dusky rose, patterned softly with rain. Oh, Cirrus, he thinks, and though the gull makes no verbal reply he can sense her tip her wings further out to sea, can almost feel the spray against her feathers. “Our best chance of survival is working together.” At this he glances back, eyes too dark to read. Oh, Asterion knows it’s true; that does not stop the boyish part of him from wanting to protest. “Thank you,” he says simply. “You’re right, of course.” The walls around them then, the smell of earth and mud that pervades even this part of the castle, brings him back to being trapped upon the summit. How dismissive, how strangely lighthearted the Night regime had been, their eyes gleaming dragon-bright. However strained he feels, however drawn too tight, it is still a comfort to know that those rulers are gone. It is a little easier, then, to study the red stallion’s face when he continues to speak. Asterion listens to the way he shapes the name Isra, and wonders of this new queen. He’d been too busy with his own appointment, their own disasters, to find much out; he knows only she has been called a storyteller, and that she is a unicorn. So he is curious – and if he were not so weary, might even have let his lips twitch into some semblance of a smile at the thought of another festival. Strange, too, to have the scarred soldier before him talk of parties; maybe Novus would change the horses of Ravos more than they it. If the disasters ever came to an end. “We would be glad to attend,” he says, wondering with how much more grace Florentine (or any other ruler, for that matter) would accept the invitation; but the thought of his sister draws his expression solemn once again. “Though I know Denocte is famed for its nightly festivities, I haven’t known them to host the other courts since I arrived here. If any of us remain in spring, we will come.” Whether or not Raymond catches the wry tone of the last few words, the bay does not pause to wonder; he tilts his dark muzzle toward his chest, gaze still steady on the chestnut. He wants to ask, then, if Raymond’s business is finished – wants to keep cold wrapped around him like a cloak, a moat of frigid water to guard his bruised heart. But his words, when he speaks, are not so hollow as they’d been. “Talk of a festival may be answer enough, and I hope it is – but how has the Night Court fared the past few weeks?” @Raymond this might be the worst post I have ever written you and I am sorry D: