I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone
or else alone
Asterion doesn’t expect the breadth of her reaction to what, to him, was a bit of an embarrassing confession - when she stumbles he turns toward her, offering his shoulder for balance, but she rights herself without him and he steps back, a little bemused.
Me, his sheepish smile says, and somewhere above him he thinks he can hear Cirrus’s laugh, the throaty chuckle of a gull.
When Below Zero giggles, too, and when she answers him, it is hard to believe that he was wary even for a moment of her. Her openness is disarming, her charm and happiness contagious; what had been a standard day has become a good one, thanks to the stranger.
“Being able to survive below the surface sounds magic enough to me,” he says. “But I was born with the ability to manipulate water - I lost it for a while, when I first came to Novus, but now it is stronger than ever.” He is saved from having to go into depth - or give a demonstration - by the sharing of her own childhood story, to which he chuckles softly. “There would be so much to learn in a world as wide as that one.”
He keeps an ear turned on her as they walk, and though his gaze wanders - still searching out the remnants of the flooding two years ago, like running a finger over an old wound - it touches on her every once in a while, both in curiosity and concern. If she stumbles again, he wants to be there to catch her. But it seems that Bel is finding her land-legs; as she speaks he forgets his concern, listening to her voice rise and fall like waves as she describes the world below the surface.
“I would love that,” he says, not hiding the eagerness in his voice. The king wonders about his magic, and whether it might allow him to breathe underwater; he has never tested it to that extent, but it is a whirlpool within him, the depth unknown. “I’ll be your guide to this world, if you’ll be mine to yours.”
To his surprise - and almost dismay - the walls of the city rise before them like the gray stone of the cliffs. Within the gate is noise and necessity, all the duties that wait for him. But today Asterion thinks that they can wait just a while longer.
“This is Terrastella,” he says, turning back to her, and there is a quiet kind of pride in his words and in his eyes. “The heart of the Dusk Court. Come with me - there is much to explore.” And with a nod, he follows her into the city.
@Below Zero this closer is poop but NEW FRIENDS
Asterion.
