To look at her is to remember the creature he once was - all starfire and spark, curiosity eating up the edges of his soul the way flame licked up bark. Once, recalls the toss of her hair, you did not know what walls were, and oh! how his heart aches for such days! (It is easy, watching Leto, to forget about the burrs tangled in his hair, the winter-leanness and mud in his coat, the need to be always aware).
He wonders what adventures they might have, what stories she could tell him, if only he were not a king -
But it is only the wine in his blood, only the music and the bells caught fast in her hair and the way all of it works together to urge him to wildness. Perhaps it is a blessing, that they stand beneath a ceiling (however bespelled it is tonight), for if he were below the vast swath of stars he might try to catch one, and name it for her.
It has always been so easy for him, to be swept away.
Yes, she admits, and his heard bounds to imagine what she might know of him. His gaze on her is intent, but it softens when she casts her own to the floor, her eyes lost behind the tilting angle of her stark bone mask. The king does not understand what emotion changes her then, cannot imagine it as shyness. When she trails off his ears prick, wanting badly to hear what might come next.
But nothing does. Music interferes, dancers intervene, the moment moves on and is lost like a dropped grace note or a rhythm abandoned. Asterion tries not to be sorry.
And he isn’t, not when they speak of Terrastella, not when she looks at him again with the glint of something bright (like a fraction of star, a sliver of moon) in the dark of her skull’s shadowed eyes. Somehow he does not guess that it might be tears. Then it is easy to once more forget the room around them, and when he nods it is solemn and wanting. “Yes,” he says, “it is.”
Soon, he knows, they will return. Soon, when the festival was over and Denocte had been rebuilt as best it could be, he and Isra would part with their kingdoms friends. The knowledge of it is not enough for Asterion tonight, not when Leto's words ring wise in his ears.
His eyes follow her as she curves past him, smooth as water; her skin is so dark he can see no shadows upon it and he wonders if it feels like velvet or like satin. The bells in her hair are calling him still and dutifully he follows, only glancing at the other dancers enough so that he does not collide with them. They are near the doorway when she pauses - on the other side a hundred worlds wait.
If he stepped beyond that threshold, he thinks, where would he go? Would he follow the starlight of wine in his veins, or only follow her? How tempting it is, to have her lead him home - but it is too far to reach tonight. He is not a boy able to follow whimsy any longer, not a man who will again let himself be led away by a beautiful, wild girl without a thought, even if he is not running away but running home.
Duty keeps him grounded, as behind him the dancers spin and bow and the drum-song begins to give way to strings. From the hallway music drifts in from a dozen rooms, a tangled hymn of passion and sadness and longing and joy. The silver of his mask is cold against his cheeks when he gives his head the barest shake, and turns away from her for the first time since seeing her.
Yet his thoughts follow her, wherever it is she goes then, and they stay with her well past the sunrise.
@Leto oh he got dramatic there at the end
and hardly ever what we dream
