[P] give us a little love

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow*   It is difficult to know whether she wants him there at all. He reads what he can from the curve of her shoulder, the bow of her head; he cannot see her eyes, from here, cast down as they are, but it is not hard to envision them limned in wet silver. Her hurts are nothing he can fix. Perhaps Florentine could, with her time-eating dagger; perhaps, if he asked her, she could go back and back, unstitching the seams of the world until it was the morning of the meeting on the summit. And this time they would not go. Oh, but what then? Gods made more vengeful by disobedience than obedience? It is hard to imagine. Yet it is tempting, too, the thought that they might stand together, and fight, and play no games of gophers and rain - The scratch of her pen on paper draws him back. “I would like to learn some of those things,” he says idly, as the mourning doves call in the plum-colored night. Asterion has no answer for the next thing she writes. It makes him feel stricken, the way he is a king and yet has nothing to offer her. He studies the paper, not the words but the flames, leaping and dark-drawn and devouring the page. His heart feels like an empty well, fallen down and down where the water is dark and cool and still. “Rebuild,” he says softly. What other answer is there for any of them? “And heal, with time. And eventually…” He trails off, shifts until he’s not standing behind her looking over her shoulder but is beside her, instead, so they can look at one another. See me, he thinks, see our home.   “Eventually you will feel whole again, and stronger than you ever were, for having learned how much you can survive.” It is not only Fiona he is answering, though his gaze never leaves hers. Until at last, of course, it does - straying again across the room, soft pillows and gentle curtains, and to the window where a summer night is coming alive with fireflies, with stars. Maybe this is why he smiles then, though it’s as soft and small a thing as the room they are in. “If you need a place to stay, in the meantime, you’re welcome to my rooms. I always prefer to be outside, this time of year.” @Fiona