She makes no move to reciprocate his brief touch against her shoulder, but Asterion had not expected her to; he is surprised enough that she remembers his name. But the stallion still wishes there was some form of comfort he could give her - for no matter where she has been, what she has seen, he imagines she must feel like a wanderer who has returned at last to home, only to find it burned. He can understand the feeling; the bay has had the heart cut out of him, too. Nothing in life seems certain except that his bedrock of truth, of understanding of the world, will be shaken and reshaped again and again before the end.
They must only learn to stand on unsteady ground.
Her first question is for Florentine, and though Asterion makes no sign of it he is grateful for the concern. The king does not let her linger in suspense before he answers, and even in this taut meeting his dark lips can’t help but smile at the thought of her. “She’s safe. As for the where of it, I never can keep track of Flora. It’s like trying to hold a sunbeam.”
When he pulls in a breath, it is as much to give her time for the words to settle as anything else. Asterion pulls his gaze away from her, giving her what privacy he can to wrestle with her thoughts, studying instead the quiet courtyard, the chilly winter day. Deep furrows of clouds like fields plowed and planted stretch across the horizon, and the bay wonders if they will bloom snow.
He only looks back to her when she speaks again. It is strange, he thinks, to be the one with any answers at all, even if they are unsatisfying, even if they only lead to a gnawing chasm asking why. Asterion is still steady as the riverbed when he drops his muzzle and holds her eyes. “Everything has happened. It has been years of turmoil and change, and it began with the gods.” It is as succinct a beginning as he can make it, and the ripple of grief it makes in his heart is nothing compared to the sorrow he feels at her next words.
“I will call you what you wish,” he answers, but he does not finish the phrase with Silanos. When he looks at her, his eyes dark and deep and steady, it is Rannveig he sees, Rannveig whose mere presence still stirs some boyish hope in him to stand straighter, lift his chin, and be brave. She will always be the Winter Wolf to him, a queen in more than name.
And yet he understands. Has he not felt that same guilt, a vice, an anchor around his heart? Has he not, too, been dragged down and down into the dark by the weight of what he left undone?
Asterion remarks nothing further on it; it is not his place, not when they are strangers sharing nothing but a hollow, heavy crown. Instead he shifts where he stands, and takes a deep breath of salt-tinged air. “I will tell you everything you wish to know - but not here. Would you go into the castle, or walk with me out beyond the walls?”
@Rannveig
and hardly ever what we dream
