A S T E R I O N
in sunshine and in shadow*
It is a fragile winter day, the kind where the sun touches the frost and turns it to spun sugar, where breath spills in great dragon-smoke and the air is cold and clear for miles. Asterion preferred these to the season’s other kind, gray skies and white snow and the gray sea rolling endlessly on, a world flat and still and colorless.
Regardless of the day, Asterion was not outside to enjoy it. It is a day of business, of gnawing worry, of going over lists of grain and goods for winter and wondering is there enough. (This year there is, but after the last winter - Vespera’s winter - he is not sure he will ever be content with enough again.)
The bay is trying to keep his attention from straying to the day outside the windows before a page thrust his muzzle into the meeting-room, his mild brown gaze seeking the king at once. “Yes, Briar?” Asterion prompted him, and already he can feel his heart stirring in his chest, giving a preliminary knock against his ribcage. Oh please, he thinks, let it be no more trouble, no more tragedy -
“King Somnus is here, m’lord. He requests an audience.” A breath catches, holds in Asterion’s throat; then he nods to the others in the room and departs at once, dismissing the page with thanks when Briar directs him to the courtyard. A hundred possibilities rush through his mind like dead leaves on a swift wind as he makes his ways through the sunlit halls, but he hopes it is nothing, he hopes it is good news about the king’s son. He hopes it is not death.
Then he is out in the sunlight and the cold, and he sees the dunalino at once. There, he thinks, is a king. Somnus has always looked the part, golden and proud, with his piercing green eyes and the curve of his horn and the powerful wings tucked to his side. The most Asterion can say for himself is that he no longer feels like he’s only pretending.
“King Somnus,” he greets the golden man, voice soft and solemn, and dips his dark muzzle in greeting. “Come away, out of the cold. We have - ah - something warm to drink, I’m sure.” Once he might have felt inadequate, not knowing how to properly host a visiting sovereign - but there is no time for it now. There are more important matters that courtly grace. He gestures with a tilt of his chin before he steps away again, up the few wide steps and back into the heart of the castle.
Only once they are inside, out of earshot of the curious passing through the courtyard, away from even the carrying wind, does he speak. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
@Somnus
