Asterion drifts through the rooms of the castle, counting up dreams.
Wonder by wonder they lay before him, more numerous than the stars. There are ribbons and banners in colors he has no name for, tapestries whose threads glimmer and shine. In one room fish swim, suspended in crystal bowls, bright as flames in lamps; he wonders if they feel anything like their brethren at the lake to (he wonders if they are real at all). In another a solitary singer weaves a story with her voice as dancers in matching masks trail fire in sweeping arcs. But not all of the wonders he counts are so temporary or so strange - each grin he sees, each laugh he catches - these are all dreams, too.
The bay stallion still wears his mask, filagreed silver that hugs his cheekbones, presses cool around his eyes. The silks he wore are long gone, discarded in a heap somewhere after too much dancing, too much drink. Instead he wears lamplight across his shoulders, star-shine down his back. There is wine in his bloodstream, and joy, and the crowds wheel before him like a great murmuration.
It is a wailing, rising song that drawls him into the next room. One of the greatest wonders of Novus, he thinks, is its music; never before had he heard strings or horns or something so simple as breath blown across a reed. Now he follows the sound of a solitary violin into a room like a galaxy, and falls into darkness and noise.
Here horses dance like planets, like comets, like stars. Here they each wear masks and move free. His eyes shine as he scans them, this symphony - and then his gaze catches on one figure alone.
None dance like she does. None have skins so black or hair so wild. But it is not just her dancing that snags him, but the markings that crawl up her shoulders and neck and throat like runes - for he recognizes them.
Oh, he has not seen Rhea since their first meeting in the swamp; he can only pray she has survived the storms. But he could never forget the letters and markings she wore, painted on the bridge of her nose and carved into the curls of her horns. He had not thought he would see them again, here in a room where chanting echoes off the walls, round and round, pulling him down, below the thin wail of the violin.
Of course he approaches. He must know for sure; it is too hard to watch with the way she whirls and weaves, moving across the room like moonlight on water. Asterion, too, must move like starlight to reach her, for all the room around them is a current fast-flowing. It is difficult to reach her, more difficult still to catch her eye, to find a moment when she is moving slowly enough to reach for her ear. Yet he catches the curl of it, above her mask of bone; he is not afraid of the teeth it wears, not tonight. “I did not expect any of the Ilati to venture here tonight,” he says at last, “but I am glad you have.”
@Leto
and hardly ever what we dream
