I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone
or else alone
The bay king recognizes the longing in her gaze - it’s as familiar to him as his own reflection, so often does he wear it. Always he is yearning for the sea or the stars, for the peace that came with them both. How much more must it be for her, being born of them?
It’s a thought that’s only reinforced by what she says next, and though he shakes his head at her sorry it’s the second part of her statement that catches him.
“Oh, please don’t apologize,” he says, and his own smile is soft and wry. “I was just very interested - I’ve never met anyone else who could do it. I can see how it must be helpful,” he says, and stops before he begins to get carried away. Almost he’d told her how, when he was first learning his magic, in moments of strong emotion his own skin had begun to bead and roll with saltwater, or a mist would build around him. Luckily he’s long since mastered such behaviors, but her own seemed more to do with regulating her temperature and less in giving away her moods. “And a Treader - I like that.” There is a moment where a grin flickers across his features, slant-lipped and boyish, but it does not linger long.
Each moment that passes finds him relaxing more in her presence; despite his first moments of wariness he is entirely charmed by her torrent of conversation and each bit of her people’s speech. Despite the stars that touch his own skin, Asterion thinks that he might begin thanking a lucky starfish the way that she does. “This meadow is pretty,” he agrees, “and will be moreso each day, now that spring has come. Locally it’s called Susurro Fields.”
With a tilt of his head he indicates that they begin to walk; once he is sure she will follow, the king makes his way toward the walls of the city, his pace relaxed. Cirrus, now that all have been acquainted, takes off from his back with a brief prick of her toes and is gone, rising swiftly with the sun on her wings. The bay keeps his attention on Bel, a dark ear twisted toward her even as his gaze scans the curving fields.
“I’ll try not to make you regret it,” he answers her, and his smile still rests in the corner of his mouth. Had he any notion what she’d seen - Asterion has not even conceived of cities below the sea (though to be fair, he’d never imagined them before Novus, either), nor the utter darkness beyond where the light could reach - he would have already been asking.
At the sound of her laugh he pauses, his gaze slanting over to her, and finds he is too curious to be abashed. Once he might have been embarrassed; now he only wonders what her laugh might sound like underwater. “Ah, thank you for the clarification. I was more wondering about the…dietary differences.” He does not add anything about making a meal of her fellow equines; nothing of their meeting had given him a sense of it. Instead he shifts his curiosity elsewhere, eyeing the faint mark of her gills with interest. “Such a switch sounds like it could be uncomfortable. Do you prefer breathing underwater, or above?”
@Below Zero
Asterion.
