A S T E R I O N
in sunshine and in shadow*
It feels strange to be back in the Dusk Court after so long away.
Asterion isn’t sure how long he spent on the island - days? weeks? more? Time had a funny way of slipping, there, or freezing, he isn’t sure which - but he returns to a Terrastella transformed. The neutral whites, grays and browns of winter have given way to a green so rich it seems almost unlikely, a kind of alchemy only nature could produce. There is everywhere the heady, sweet scent of clover, and the soft drone of bees and hum of grasshoppers, and all of it melts into a chorus that only means home, home, home.
And he is glad to be back.
After the strangeness of the island, it is a comfort to walk along the cobblestone streets he knows more intimately than a lover, aware of each alley they fold into and each stream that meanders across their path. It is spring and nature has continued its boundless addition; baby rabbits play in the long grass, and a soft smile touches the king’s mouth at all the new foals he sees with their mothers in the city, baby-soft on legs as thin as reeds.
He hopes that they will never know a Novus touched by fear and dread, by plagues of rain and fire. He thinks of his conversations with Eik, and Seraphina, and Isra, and the world that they might build together. He hopes the man he searches for might be a part of making it.
Intuition and a few soft questions lead him away from the city, a little copse of forest beyond the sightline of the gates, where long grass gives way to cedar and oak. It is cool beneath the trees, a balm on a warm late-spring afternoon, and he does not mind the time he spends searching here below boughs that hang with moss like lace, and moths and butterflies drift between the trunks.
But it doesn’t take too long to find the man he seeks, quiet beneath the canopy whose leaves sigh with the wind. Asterion approaches the bay quietly, and ducks his head in greeting.
“Rhone,” he says, and his smile is as soft as the light that filters through the trees. He realizes then that he never properly thanked the man for his support at the meeting; it already feels so long ago. Something in him has changed, since that day. “I hope that you are well?”
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