It feels good to work with the sun on his back and glinting off the lake, even when he must squint against the bright of it; he had grown so terribly weary of rain. And as those who have come to help grow more comfortable they begin to talk amongst themselves, to laugh, to wonder at the strange thing they are building. This, too, is different enough to be a relief, and for a while Asterion forgets that he is a king.
Even when Isra steps forward again to finish the work he is nothing but a dreamer, nothing but a man who might at last build something lovely. He does not mind the sweat that slicks his skin then - and he dismisses the way his heart stumbles when the sea-blue of her eyes catches him by surprise as owed only to the work he is doing.
Asterion will never be used to the way a unicorn looks at him.
But he falls still when she begins to tap her horn against the sea-glass, with the dark waters moving just beyond, and thinks of nothing but the magic she performs.
When she speaks, soft as the clouds that are gathering overhead and sweet as the warm wind with its breath of summer, the bay stallion smiles a little to himself but does not answer her. A dream, he thinks, and steps back as she finishes this thing they have built. For a moment he only takes it all in (and there is so much! oh, he wishes Fiona were here now, with her pencil and her paper, that she might make the moment immortal). But when Isra speaks the king’s gaze goes back to her.
“Only if we might perhaps rest first,” he says, and the smile he wears then is almost sheepish, certainly boyish, as though it is he that is weary, he that has drawn too deeply. Only his eyes betray his worry - but then, they are always as dark as the sea where the light cannot reach.
Still, he thinks, as he follows her across the wood-and-gold planks and the sounds of their footsteps and the slow lapping of waves against strange glass echo back at him, he has never seen anything quite so beautiful as what they have made.
@Isra <3
if you'll be my star*
