in sunshine and in shadow
He watches the firelight catch on the dark red of her skin, burnishing it to the color of wine. It is wine he thinks of tonight, and not blood; starlight and bonfires instead of lightning and ash. The saltwater-king watches her and remembers the way she had looked painted by gold water in late afternoon light, the way she had looked with something terrible in her eyes the first time he saw her. Why, he wonders, does he so wish to see her in every season, every light, beneath every shape of moon or pattern of cloud? Why do his thoughts catch on her, or his gaze, snagged like silk on a bramble (or flesh on the cutting-edge of her blade)?
When she offers no response to him, when she steps away, Asterion does not follow - except with his eyes, ocean-dark. They see the way the snow flees her, the way everything below that withers where it had been waiting for spring. If he followed her steps, if he touched his lips to each little-death, would he, too, diminish and die? What would he feel, would he know as it happened?
Oh, he wonders from where these thoughts are born, that drift and flare like bits of ash. He prays they don’t become wishes, too.
Only when she speaks of the sea does he turn to it. Then on ear slants toward the unicorn and the fire, and one to the waves that thrust themselves against the cliffs as though the rock might save them, only to shatter and disperse and foam.
“But the moonlight does not last,” he says, and the sorrow in his voice is for far more than a handful of wishes. It isn’t paper and ink he thinks of then, but every name and hope that has been written on his heart. Asterion has learned, since he arrived here so young and foolish, that such silver-sweet moments are never for forever.
Maybe they were never meant to be. How easy it is, to tire of magic and the gods themselves, to grow bored of peace. Maybe the darkness is essential to help them remember the light.
“The ocean will keep them forever.” When he sighs, it is still not wishes he thinks of.
@Thana
