For a moment longer he watches her, before he is noticed.
In those scant heartbeats he realizes that her magic is nothing like the feral and wanting sorcery of Ravos. Asterion has never seen anything so beautiful, has never been so near to magic without smelling the sharp iron tang of blood. This is something else, like a gift with no cost that he can see.
He would have watched her forever, if she had never noticed him.
But she does, of course, and he smiles when she names him, and dips his head like a prince and not a king. The bay is still too caught up in wonder to see her relief (and what might have happened if he had? he has always known his magic is given to the sea and will one day return to it, as all rivers do).
As she speaks his smile fades to seriousness, for talk of magic to him has always been a solemn thing, as near and real to his heart as dreaming. His dark-eyed gaze strays out over the waters, still quiet and level and waiting, and he pictures her words like a child’s storybook. Only when she touches him does his smile return, soft as a butterfly’s shadow, and he regards her then. “It’s only fair that something was left for the rest of us,” he says, teasing. Once more he watches her work her magic, and when she returns to shore he lags behind for a few moments, considering the lake with the corner of his mouth drawn down in thoughtfulness.
He is quiet when he follows her back to shore, though he wants to laugh at the marsh-birds that scold them from the shore; Asterion wishes he could promise them they will have their home and nests back, in time. The sound of his hooves on gold and wood punctuates his thoughts, but when a bright gleam catches his eye and he looks up to see the new wonders she has wrought they fall silent.
Everything is gold, a shining plain more grand than any city as it throws back the sunlight a thousand fold. It is like angels worshipping, like a mass of glass people who sing and sing (no matter that they are silent). And yet when he comes to her side again he sees that the panes are clearer than the windows of their kingdoms.
At her words he catches her eye again, and she is weary and gleaming with sweat but oh! Asterion can hear the blood running like a river in his blood, eager and leaping and wanting to change its banks, to shape the world as she is. He can’t hide the smile that shapes his lips then, though it could never rival the brightness of the field before them.
“And we’re lucky it’s so difficult - else everyone would be shaping their dreams, and I fear they are not all so pretty as yours, Isra.” He does not say I will help; he does not need to. For already he is reaching out to Cirrus (never far, his gull, though they give one another their space), asking her to find who she can, to bring them to the shore.
Even two dreamers such as they are not strong enough to build such a realm as this.
And as she wings off, a white speck against the blue sky like a flaw in sapphire, he turns back to the queen of stars and shadow (and magic).
“Do you think you can move that glass? Or shape it. If you can, to keep back the water, I think we can make your tunnel.” Now he is eyeing the lake again, already looking down and down within himself, searching for the well of his magic. He has hardly used it since the flooding of Terrastella; it is full again, brimming, waiting, wanting. The king has no doubt he can shape what she pictures, if she can find a way to keep it there. Asterion blows out a breath and a wave leaps and curls, forms a perfect cylinder with the opposite shore clear through the middle, the walls of water sparkling like glass. He holds it for a moment, and lets it fall with a feeling warm as satisfaction and light as joy. “I would also like to see what lives below the surface.”
@Isra
if you'll be my star*
