A S T E R I O N
in sunshine and in shadow*
“You won’t be alone for long, regardless,” he says, and there is something like humor in the curl of his dark lips. Asterion had long considered himself a wanderer (an adventurer, really, when all he truly had been was a dreaming boy), a knight who needed none but the stars above and the firm ground beneath.
But now he is grown, and he can see how much his friends have made him what he is. If he were the kind to pray, it would be only to give thanks: for Eik, for Florentine, for Marisol and Cirrus. For all those that now had a piece of him, so that they carried one another wherever they were.
Oh, but love has also made him weak, made him blind; that was the trick of it. That it could lift him high or tear him to bits, fashion him into a sleeping sea or a Charybdis.
Asterion, a voice interjected, and he flicked his ear, feeling like a chastised boy at the intrusion of his bonded’s thoughts. The seagull knew him well enough, now, to know when he was being maudlin, and he could hear the laugh in her voice even as she scolded him for it.
His name on Katniss’s tongue startles him back to attention, and he dips his dark muzzle to her. “Likewise,” he says, and means it - but a shadow passes across his expression at her next question.
It is followed as quickly by a smile, but this one is soft as a sigh. “Denocte was not the only court to suffer disasters,” he begins, falling into step beside her. “My court, Terrastella, was beset by floods and mudslides until there was no grass left, no grain. Many were injured, and some lost. We are sheltering in this court, for now.” A breath of silence stretches between them before he finishes, “I am grateful for Isra’s kindness.”
Now he feels almost shameful for not mentioning his role; it had been his decision, after all, that Dusk seek refuge in Night. But it seems a strange time to mention it, his title - it was only his guilt to wrestle, and he had not yet settled how he felt.
Cirrus interrupts his thoughts once more; he could sense the seagull clack her beak, the shuffle of her feet. You are asked for, his bonded says gently through their telepathic connection, and the bay’s gaze goes to Katniss.
“I am sorry,” he says truthfully, his dark eyes soft on her. “I came to help replant, further up the mountainside. I ought to meet a few of the Dusk Court there. But I am sure I will see you again, Katniss.” When he smiles then it is like the sun slipping out from behind a veil of clouds, and just as brief - and then he is gone, running up the hillside, quick as a dark ripple of water over the surface of a lake.
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