in sunshine and in shadow
“You may find you’re a faster learner than me,” he answers, and his smile is a soft echo of her own. It changes into something else, though, as she continues - something almost proud, as though Terrastella were a child he’d watched grow tall and true, as though her compliment were meant for him, too. How good it was, to hear somebody call the Dusk Court alive- there had been moments, in the last year, when he thought they might all be buried under water and swept out to sea. “Maybe you just have the right kind of eyes for it,” he says softly, his eyes catching the silver gleam of hers like the night against the moon.
Oh, Asterion wonders too - but his questions are for this stranger he regards, with the tattoos against her skin and the flowers in her hair.
And he wonders of the injury to her wing, too, though he does not press further as she extends her hale one, and answers his unasked question. He remembers then what Marisol had said of flight - how wonderful it was, and how terrible, since each time might be the last. The smile he wears then is a wry thing, a similarly complicated expression to her own, but there is nothing hard in his eyes as they catch hers once more. “It seems that you are stuck with us for a while, then.”
He had meant the words in jest, but as he regards her he sees the shift in her expression, the sudden wariness in her gaze. Asterion puts another step between them, opening up more space for the warm summer wind to course through, wondering at the change in her - what had he done? He ought to comfort her, but the words catch behind the king’s teeth, for he does not want to distress her further. As the music around them swells like dawn he ignores it for the sound of the wind through her feathers, the flutter of her lashes against her cheek, the scent of wildflowers that he isn’t sure belongs to her or to the sunlit city.
When she lifts her head and opens those crescent-moon eyes he quickly averts his gaze, not wanting to be caught staring. But whatever shadow had passed over her heart, she shows no sign of it in her next words. The stallion scans the city, as if weighing them, and tries to see it as she does - for its beauty, and not the sadness that lingers like a current beneath it. “Keep watching, and you may see it yet,” he says, his voice no louder than his own as he turns back to her. “But we are still recovering from - a great sadness.” How else to phrase what had befallen their court? Asterion sighs, and shakes his mane like he might shake away the sorrow like it is only water, and when he looks at her again he stands just a little taller. “But if you are moved to dance, I would join you. I am Asterion, by the by.”
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