I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone
or else alone
It is easy, standing there with Florentine at the edge of the world, watching the place where all the things they know fall away. It is easy to nod - I know - even though his knowing is a lie. Asterion doesn’t know the magic the way that she does, has never seen anything like the rift has shown her. He knows gods and he knows the power in his own bones, the magic in others’ -
but he has never been in a place where time works backwards, or turns plants into machines and stone creatures into real. He has never sipped from a pool and found himself borne away on a dream that alters him forever. He has never met a Sphinx with challenge flashing in her eyes and offered her a bargain.
He is not Gabriel, yet he thinks himself ready for what the world might bring.
They are quiet, as the storm across the ocean is quiet. Lightning flashes in that tumultuous cloud that grows as it collapses, reaching outward, reaching up, but no thunder follows. The sea is vengeful against the rocks, striking them with sounds like slaps, sending up great froths of foam. Asterion is already holding her breath when she asks her question, and then everything else in him falls still except for his heart, which is already answering yes, yes, yes.
The bay doesn’t even know if his father is aware he exists. Is it worse or better if he doesn’t? What does his face look like, what might he say? What do they owe to each other?
He takes his gaze from the volcano across the water, maybe ending, maybe beginning. “I will,” he says, like a vow, and he feels like he’s plunged off the cliff, salt-spray stinging his face, falling, falling, flying.
But Florentine grounds him, as she always does. At her other question - far easier to answer! - he grins again, though his heart has fallen somewhere below the sea. Now it waits, a treasure chest well-locked. Full of fool’s gold, or real treasure?- he can’t say. “Yes,” he says, and presses first his nose and then his cheek against her golden, taut side. For a moment there is only breathing, and then - movement. A ripple, a kick. The king withdraws, startled, and wonder and joy make wide and shining his gaze.
“That’s a different kind of magic,” he says softly. “Do you know when-?”
@Florentine
but he has never been in a place where time works backwards, or turns plants into machines and stone creatures into real. He has never sipped from a pool and found himself borne away on a dream that alters him forever. He has never met a Sphinx with challenge flashing in her eyes and offered her a bargain.
He is not Gabriel, yet he thinks himself ready for what the world might bring.
They are quiet, as the storm across the ocean is quiet. Lightning flashes in that tumultuous cloud that grows as it collapses, reaching outward, reaching up, but no thunder follows. The sea is vengeful against the rocks, striking them with sounds like slaps, sending up great froths of foam. Asterion is already holding her breath when she asks her question, and then everything else in him falls still except for his heart, which is already answering yes, yes, yes.
The bay doesn’t even know if his father is aware he exists. Is it worse or better if he doesn’t? What does his face look like, what might he say? What do they owe to each other?
He takes his gaze from the volcano across the water, maybe ending, maybe beginning. “I will,” he says, like a vow, and he feels like he’s plunged off the cliff, salt-spray stinging his face, falling, falling, flying.
But Florentine grounds him, as she always does. At her other question - far easier to answer! - he grins again, though his heart has fallen somewhere below the sea. Now it waits, a treasure chest well-locked. Full of fool’s gold, or real treasure?- he can’t say. “Yes,” he says, and presses first his nose and then his cheek against her golden, taut side. For a moment there is only breathing, and then - movement. A ripple, a kick. The king withdraws, startled, and wonder and joy make wide and shining his gaze.
“That’s a different kind of magic,” he says softly. “Do you know when-?”
@
Asterion.
