asterion*
When the sound of her steps come knocking like knuckles on a door, at first Asterion does not turn. But his body is aware of hers; the whisper of silk on wood and gold, the warmth rolling off her when she stands close, the low sweet music of her voice.
For a moment he says nothing to her words, only considering them, and as he does he reaches out with his magic - just a little, enough to cup a handful of the cool dark water, to lift it and spill it like sand through fingers. As before, he wonders how far his magic goes, how deep.
But tonight will not be the night he finds out.
“I helped to create this one,” he says, soft as star-shine in the new silence, but he is smiling when at last he looks to her. “But that is wise advice all the same.”
The first thing he thinks, seeing her in the blue-cast of the suspended lake, is that she looks the way her voice sounds - a velvet scabbard over a knife. Asterion has never seen her before (he knows this despite the mask she wears), but he recognizes the desert heat that clings to her skin, and it is not hard to imagine her beneath the bright watchful eye of the sun. Oh, her horns and eyes glint wickedly, no matter how she smells of roses.
“The masquerade suits you far more than it will me,” he tells her, still wearing that slight beginning of a smile. Asterion is rarely so quick to speak, but there is something about the night (the way he feels a little like he is hosting, the way it seems their troubles are done, if only for today) that has him feeling a step outside himself. If not bold, it at least makes him more talkative. “Have you found the evening to your liking?”
@Vendetta
