in sunshine and in shadow
He recognizes the first man to approach, the first to answer, but only dimly.
It is impossible to guess from where; he has spent years in Novus, now, has drank spiced pumpkin juice and worn a flower crown in Delumine, has spent summer nights in Denocte with the only light the fireflies at the edge of the forest and the bonfires, ever-burning. Asterion watches mutely as the striking paint reads the note, and when he shakes his head the bay feels his heart tighten like an ancient tree in the cold.
At dawn, at the birth of spring, it is still cool - that is what the dusk king tells himself, when a breeze makes him shiver as those few words drop like thick pearls. At the sound of a snort, he drops his gaze to the woman it came from, and as she speaks his eyes are dark and cool and steady. “Yes,” he says simply, and thinks of the summer that the Denocte regime vanished. The summer that the gods called them out from their courts, and buried them on the mountainside, and bickered in the dim as the scent of stone and soil smothered them. Asterion thinks of Vespera, her false form vanishing away like a cast-off robe, and how Isra had said Caligo looked on the night she chose the unicorn to lead. And he remembers his own prayers to Vespera, when he had climbed that long and narrow path up the mountainside, and how she had answered him but not enough - never enough to save anyone.
He might have returned his attention to the first man, then, had not an approaching figure caught his eye. Asterion nodded at Bel, glad to see her despite the worry that touched him like a pebble into a pool - small at first, rippling outward. The king is not sure what to think about his people, here, and how he will defend them, no matter how far from Terrastella they are - no matter what worlds open up.
Asterion nods again when the Treader catches his eye, though he says nothing of her pronunciation. He agrees with her (though it has more to do with the gods and their blessings than the island) but he doesn’t like the way her saying wrong makes him feel. The word rings something inside of him like a bell, somber, deep, touching everything and changing it.
He still wants wonder, still wants magic. Asterion wants Isra, or Eik, or Florentine - someone wiser, someone braver, someone who might laugh at their dark guesses. Someone to say it will be alright, and if it isn’t, we will make it so.
There is a ripple in the growing light of dawn, a piece of pale sky that has broken free. At the sight of the dragon Asterion’s shoulders tense, remembering other such beasts - but there is something appreciative, something with awe, in his gaze as he watches it land beside another stranger.
Once more his attention is drawn away before it can linger; now another man speaks, the gold and white of him bright against the black, and Asterion wonders at the smoke that seems to curl from his hooves. It’s a small thing to notice, here with magic all around them (of varying sizes, varying dangers) and he thinks briefly of how much of Novus he doesn’t know. But as he listens - stepping away from the statue, as he does, to let others crowd close and see for themselves - a smile blooms on his dark mouth, small and wry.
“It may well be a gift, or a warning. But the gods of Novus are more than ideas - for good and ill.” For a moment he turns his eyes skyward, half-hoping Vespera would appear out of the shimmering dawn to challenge him, to strike him down, to answer the questions she had denied her people, offering them death instead. “And they are fond of their tests.” There is no denying the drop in his tone, the rare anger of it.
Asterion will not stand by again and see Novus punished at the foolish whim of its gods - but he wonders whether this is something beyond even their control.
@Random Events @Aion @Morrighan @Below Zero @Maerys @Sol Bestiam
