asterion*
She thinks of the graves now covered in grass and it is death that Asterion thinks of, too, those behind and those to still come, queens with carvings of their likeness and vagabonds with nothing but their names. Perhaps to the gods each generation of them is something faceless, a crop of locusts to die in droves and leave nothing but their husks.
But whatever comes for them next, Asterion will fight it. Not just with shelter and soft words of comfort that lingered like woodsmoke before dying away, not only with running away, but with every ounce of his bright blood. And he knows he is not alone - knows he is only following the example set by those like Theodosia who would rather die than quit.
He watches her now and is satisfied to see a smile that mirrors the way his own feels carve its way across her mouth. He thinks again of what he had meant to say - slow down, be easy - but he can no more tell her that now than ask her to raise the dead. Anyway, she does not look weak; she looks like a winter storm.
When she accepts his offer he tilts his head down and scrapes a hoof experimentally against the dirt. Between them is a rack of spears and he pauses when he reaches them, studying the smooth wooden shafts and training-dull edges. “I’ve never even held a weapon,” he muses aloud, and wonders for a moment which is worse: that he has passed so many years in Novus without lifting so much as a knife, or that he wants so badly to learn now. In the end he decides that it does not much matter.
He leans away, stretching autumn-cold muscles, and searches out her eye. “Would you show me how to use these?”
As he draws a spear from the small forest of them he wonders if a training-blade ever dreamed of taking a life.
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