The king is relieved when the healer bustles forward; having idle hands has always made him uncomfortable, but never more so than when he knows there is work to be done, but doesn’t trust himself to do it. He watches with both interest and concern creasing his star-marked brow as the healer completes her check. When the palomino mare straightens he nods, thanks her, and tries not to wonder if she had been the same mare to take care of Aislinn that rain-drenched night more than a year ago.
As the healer leaves his gaze returns to Theo, and a smile twitches at the corner of his dark mouth when she corrects herself before at last naming him. Somehow even when she says his name and not a title it still feels like a version of himself he doesn’t know.
He might have cautioned her not to stand, but he knows too many mares - Marisol, Flora, Moira, Calliope - who would only laugh at him or worse for his worrying. And so Asterion only steps back, giving her room, noting how the muscles and tendons of her legs and wings work. Strange, how much he has learned of the limits of a body in the last few months - but he is thankful that Theo is not gravely injured as well as sick.
“Under the circumstances, okay isn’t bad,” he says wryly, and that smile still lingers. He, too, wants to sigh in relief when she stretches her wings; the memory of Flora’s and Moria’s and Aislinn’s, all mangled and broken and torn, clings to him more surely than his shadow. What Marisol had told him about flying begins to make more sense.
His smile disappears like a retreating wave when she asks what happened, and he shrugs one lean shoulder, his dark gaze still on her. “I only know what Marisol told me and what the nurses have said,” he says. “You were walking with the Commander when you collapsed - luckily not far from here. She helped bring you in, but you lost consciousness soon after. Pneumonia, they said, and exhaustion.”
For a moment he considers her still, and there is something like pride that lives with the worry in his eyes. And then he shakes his head like he might at any of his friends when they took on too much. “It’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner, as hard as you were working. We all owe you thanks. I trust I don’t have to set the Commander after you to make sure you follow the healer’s orders?” Here his smile returns, a boyish grin, the kind normally kept back by the weight of his responsibilities. “I wish I could say there won’t be more work waiting when you’re well.” There is more he wants to say, another question that waits just behind his teeth - but it can hold until she is at least a few more moments out of unconsciousness.
@
if you'll be my star*
