in sunshine and in shadow
It is dark beneath the trees, when Asterion finds himself alone once more.
It is no Relic he hunts for - his is a different prey, just as mad, just as dangerous. The king does not consider what he might do when he finds Raum; he only hopes that he is the first, that the silver killer finds no other victims before he can be stopped. The stakes are too high, the price for the Ghost’s life already too much, and Asterion loves too many on this island to let them be at risk.
Oh, but there is wonder in him yet, and the magic in his veins is humming, humming with that livewire thrum of the wild magic of the island. He is too enamored by everything strange to fear for himself. Even the trees seem to be singing, and reaching out their arms laden with fruit and leaves, and beckoning come and see, come and taste. Once, as the bay stallion broke from the edge of the brush into a clearing, he saw a doe and two fawns go bounding into the shadows at the other side, only the fawns’ spots bloomed with daisies and all their dainty hooves shone like pyrite.
And so the starlit king is prepared for wonder, and prepared for evil, but he is not prepared for Moira Tonnerre and her tiger.
The first thing that his dark eye catches is flash of orange, a flash of red, a movement amid the thick curl of ferns. At once the bay slows, his breathing falling secret-soft, wary and wondering at this new revelation from the island. But as they move - as there is the sound of murmured speaking, and a cat’s throaty purr - his eyes widen, enough to reflect what dim light leaks in from the canopy, and his heart begins to beat, and beat, and beat. Surely they would hear it, and turn to find him there -
and then she laughs, and the breeze sighs through the trees so they shiver with a music all their own, and Asterion knows without a doubt who waits beyond the trees. And oh, he is afraid (of her? or for her?) and oh, he wants to go to her, and to turn and melt back in the underbrush like just another shadow on the island - like a coward.
But he cannot leave her, not when there are so many dangers both nameless and named. The leaves whisper against his skin, pressing their coolness to his rich brown sides, but he does not hear them; all he can focus on is the pair before him, the girl and the tiger.
Fool he is, he says nothing, even as he steps into the clearing they share; there is too much his heart begs to say, too much his mind wants to warn, and all he can do is look, and look, and look at the girl who confounds him and his stubborn heart.
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