asterion*
It was too easy for him, in the bespelled hallways of the Denoctian castle, to believe her only a woman. Even in the autumn, below the crimson canopy of Tinea as the wind began to rattle dry branches, his heart had not believed what it ought to have: that she is more, some changeling-child beyond his understanding. That the stars follow her bidding and her work is in mysteries.
Now, lightning splits below her skin like it spilled in seams from the island below that baleful cloud of ash. She is lit from within, a white-hot glow that is painted, too, across the trees and the loam and his own skin. Her laughter clashes against the sound of the bells in her hair and the king must turn his face away from her fury (he feels he might be struck blind to witness it, like a boy in a myth who hunts a hind and finds a goddess). Yet oh, what choice is there but to look when that star comes flaming through the limbs to catch like an ember in that bowl of dark blood?
It’s a wonder both black and bright, one that makes him want to hide his face, one that makes him want to pledge himself to her. To be not a king but an acolyte at the alter of the stars.
At least he has this answer - they have no need of the gods. All his pleas are swallowed up in that white-hot fire and he watches as it eats away the contents of the bowl, and the shine reflected in his eyes looks like madness.
Really? she asks, as though there might be some part of his heart that still believes Vespera will save them, that still believes in the order and judgement of the gods. His gaze lifts to her, then, even as she steps nearer, and though he gives voice to no answer one is clear in his eyes.
But there is anger in her voice when she speaks, even as her mouth presses hard and hot against his skin. Asterion flinches but does not lean away; he wonders what she tastes there, if it is only the salt of sweat and the sea or if magic might be written along his skin the way it is on hers. The bay stiffens at the implication, lifting his chin, even as he remembers his body pressed so near to hers by a crush of dancers, the music wailing in the night, the way he’d wanted to leave that room and listen only to the singing of her bells and the lullaby of her voice. When his eyes fall to the bowl (how long will it burn before it’s eaten up every drop of blood, before it fades to hollow black?) he thinks of the ash and the island and the crowd still gathered on the shore.
“If I go, it is for the good of Terrastella,” he says, and his voice is no less a challenge than hers. He feels like the bone in the bowl, burning up at her starfire touch, and yet he welcomes the heat. Within him is the depthless cold of the sea.
Leto’s gaze catches him, or perhaps his falls to her; either way they hold each other, such different constellations on their skin. He wants to count each mark upon her down to the last seed-pearl in her hair; he wants to caution her for her impudence, to speak to him of failing tests in words so similar to their errant goddess’s. “I remember the way home,” he says, and perhaps some piece of that fallen star has caught him, too, for at last he feels ready to burn.
@Leto
