in sunshine and in shadow
How would you have me know you?
Oh, the question makes him fall still at the same time it makes him flush, though he does not falter from the hold of her silver eyes. It seems too intimate, and a part of him envies her boldness even as he wonders how to answer. What might his words change, what currents could they alter?
When she looks to the sky, he looks to the sea. “As a man,” he says at last, “who does what he can with what he has.” The words are no hardly spoken than he laughs, and a breeze tugs at his forelock, and the look he shoots her is boyish and grinning. “My sister would say that answer is nothing but evasion.” And she would not be wrong, but Asterion offers no more: indecision has always been his worst sin. Instead he only tilts his chin to watch a family of sandpipers dart by, hardly leaving traces on the sand.
“I’ve always wished I could,” he replies softly, and his tone is wistful even now. Often he tries to console himself with the truth: that if he had wings, it would be too easy to run away. How could anyone hold him, when the next hill was only a tilt of feathers and a running start? Every horizon would be a promise he could keep, and the king would find it hard to swear fealty to anything else. Sometimes, Cirrus would try to tell him what it was like in what mean ways she could, but they both knew it was nowhere near the same. How do you explain sight to the blind?
So he smiles, when Samaira speaks of Alaunus and how they found one another, and he thinks of them flying above him. At the mention of his healing powers the bay’s interest sharpens further, both ears turning forward in curiosity as he regards the heron. “An especially good friend to have,” he says, and his gaze turns back to the pegasus as she continues. Now his smile curves once more into a grin, and he crosses the short distance between them to touch his nose once, briefly, to her cheek. The sand is cool against his fetlocks but both of their bodies are warm in the early morning; when he draws away the scent of flowers lingers. “I’m so glad to hear it, and hope it means you’ll stay. There’s much to learn from the healers here - and no shortage of reasons to use those skills, more seriously.” The smile he wears turns wry, then fades like the horizon-line into a fog.
It’s the horizon he’s watching as silence descends between them again, save for the breathing of the sea. The light is growing bolder on the clouds, sharpening into what will become a warm late spring day. One of his ears is still tuned to her, and when she says his name - as if surprised to - he turns his head. Asterion is silent as she asks her question, but however difficult it is to read those moon-silver eyes he does not miss the near urgency, the weight, in her words. The bay dips his muzzle, thinking.
There are so many things he could tell her, from the inane - strawberries make me sneeze - to the truths that lie heavy next to his heart (I’m still learning that not everyone is going to leave me, given time and opportunity).
“I still prefer to sleep outside,” he says at last, carefully conversational. When he glances at her, there is still something almost conspiratory in his eye. “I never feel myself, in buildings. When I can’t see the sky or hear or feel the wind, there’s no hope for me of relaxing. It’s why I sneak away to the sea so often. Sometimes I think I must have heard it before I was born - the sea and the sound of my mother’s breathing.” As his gaze rests on her, he wonders if it is enough, an answer that will sate her, that does not feel like an evasion.
“Also I’m allergic to strawberries,” he says, and there is his grin again, there and gone like a cloud torn gently to bits by the wind.
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