and they've been changing the sound of my name;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow*   It is a strange relief, to stand beside somebody he knows so little of. Though he is of course familiar with Ipomoea from festivals and regime summits, by sight and by name, he feels no weight of expectation, no sense of owing or being owed. It’s a kind of freedom he is grateful for - and though he is unaware of the stallion’s relinquishing of his place in Delumine, he wonders is the appaloosa feels the same. He shifts his gaze toward the man when he speaks of the gods, too accustomed to that feeling of hollowness in his own heart to mistake it in another. There is no judgement in his eyes, only quiet wondering. “Or perhaps it is beyond them,” he says, softly. In Ravos there had been the gods and their gifts, elemental and powerful, but also the rift of feral magic that not even they had understood. They had tried to keep it secret, that cleft in the earth like a canyon that ran to its core, leaking power like water. He is not convinced it is any different here; no note with the scribbled name Tempus is enough to make him think differently. Too well he remembers the gods squabbling, their pettiness and pride clear. It’s hard to believe they could create something so lovely, so strange as this. Even if it means the island is more dangerous, more unpredictable, he would rather fall to the beauty and peril of mad magic than the whim of the gods. But Po is spared, for now, of the Dusk king’s doubt. The cherry bay’s smile shifts the mood the way the sun breaking free of a thick churn of clouds changes the quality of the light; at once Asterion remembers that it is spring, that the air smells sweet, that nothing is known and so everything is possible. He listens with interest to each description, visualizing them each, though he is back to staring at the place the doe vanished. The smile slanting along his own mouth only grows. “Someone will have to add this one, then. Though I suppose we might float to the clouds yet.” Or turn to stone, he does not say; but the thought is there, crouching in the shadows of his mind, with the vague shape of Raum’s monster. Asterion smothers the image like a dying fire, wills it to dead coals. There are other, better things to think about, like the company of the man beside him, like the hind whose stare still finds him when he blinks. At Po’s question he meets his gaze, and the expression there is another one he knows, one he’s worn too rarely. “Of course,” he says. “It’s part of the story.” Before the grin can more than crease his cheek he’s stepping forward, once more into the shadow of the trees, and he imagines the ferns pressing the memory of her passing into his cool skin. And for a moment he pretends they are only two boys, safe as ink between old pages, chasing a fairy-tale.  @Ipomoea