A S T E R I O N
in sunshine and in shadow*
There is a sadness that grows and grows in him like a cold spring when she mentions the solemnity of the Night Court.
For him it will always be a complicated place, a tangled kite string tugging at his heart. He thinks of the great love that Denoctians carry for their home - too great, sometimes, to open their eyes to reason. He will always think of it as the court of stars, of dreaming - of bonfires and dancing and promise.
Now it is solemn, and he prays it will not last.
When he speaks again, it is with both the sadness and the hope on his tongue, slowing his words to something quietly thoughtful. “It isn’t always so. The Night Court has always been fiercely passionate - about its arts, about its differences, about its people. Though I suppose every court would say the same.” At the last he smiles, wry - but the expression fades when they talk again of the gods.
He meets her steady gaze, and sighs. “That is an answer I wish I knew.” Even Vespera herself had told him nothing; Asterion has not prayed since. When he closes his eyes to try all he can see is the scene at the Summit, trapped in that dim place with only a warning of change.
For a moment there is nothing, just the steady rhythm of their walking and the bright spring sunlight on their backs. When she answers his latest question, his curiosity sharpens, and he wishes he were more surprised to hear her words. Ravos, the Rift, Helovia - how many other worlds lost to darkness?
“I know so many with a similar story. Once I would have said this place is sure to be uneventful in comparison, but…” he shrugs a dark shoulder, glancing at the tumble-down of stone around them, the trunks of trees still black from dragon-fire. Asterion remembers those early days when he had thought Novus was dull, a page in a storybook to only be skipped - now he wonders at the innocence of that boy.
But to her last words he looks back at her, his gaze softer. “Perhaps you’ll find him here. I have had a few reunions in Novus I never would have expected.” Florentine and Calliope - a sister and a friend. Sometimes he wonders about the others of Ravos who had gone to the rift, the way the unicorn and Raymond had - whether they, too, would appear in Novus one day, wandering at the edge of the sea.
On the heels of it he wonders if this place, too, is one that they would speak of in the future, hushed tones with respect for the dead. I left at the devastation of Novus… Before he would never have believed it, but the bay has learned since then.
He is grateful for the distraction of unloading their rubble, and of her offered name. “Asterion,” he says, and gives a smile like a handshake. “Of the Dusk Court.” He says no more, least of all that he is a king.
Right now he is nothing but another survivor, a refugee helping rebuild.
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