aster
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
It is strange to be out in the world, where the sun is beating (and beating and beating and never moving) warmth down on her back and she can hear sounds other than that of her mother’s heartbeat and her brother’s heartbeat and the blood moving between them, a calm current, a skin-drum in her ears. The wind sighs through the leaves (shhhhh, shhhh) and brushes across her face and there is nothing else, no droning of insects, no singing of birds.
Aster thinks the leaves might be dying above her, yellow-red-brown-gone, but when she looks up with golden eyes wide they drift in lazy green. It does not occur to her that it’s strange to have all the world a held breath, that there is a way things should be and right now this is not it.
There is only now for Aster, there is only ever now. Everything else is only Perhaps.
And her twin. Leonidas lips at her skin and absentmindedly she butts her head against his shoulder like a little kid-goat and leans, inhaling the scent she was born knowing. Something soothes in her to be touching him, a troubled animal falling to sleep again, or choppy water going smooth. When he opens up his wings she leans away, beyond the flare of those small feathers, too downy yet for flight (but growing, oh, growing - her brother, already, is always going somewhere). She only watches as he beats his wings, parting imaginary clouds, crossing imaginary maps not yet drawn.
Aster knows, somehow, that she will follow him always. That there is a line drawn between them, sometimes slack and sometimes taut, and they will forever be tugging on the other - come along, slow down, look, see -
but for now he isn’t going anywhere, and she goes back to staring at the trees. How wizened they are, how furrowed their bark, how absent of ants and beetles and woodpeckers and wrens. What do they know (they must know something)? What do they wait for (and how long, how long have they waited)?
She thinks she can find out. If only given time -
Come on, Aster!
When she snorts it is only a new filly’s snort, when she shakes her finely-boned head it is clear she is only a girl and nothing stranger, not a tree or a vine or a stone or a moon. And when she charges after him, when her legs flash long and white, striping the ground with shadow and sun, shadow and sun, until she is beside him and passing him and beyond him, running just to run, her own wings flaring out and out and out -
What is she then?
Aster thinks the leaves might be dying above her, yellow-red-brown-gone, but when she looks up with golden eyes wide they drift in lazy green. It does not occur to her that it’s strange to have all the world a held breath, that there is a way things should be and right now this is not it.
There is only now for Aster, there is only ever now. Everything else is only Perhaps.
And her twin. Leonidas lips at her skin and absentmindedly she butts her head against his shoulder like a little kid-goat and leans, inhaling the scent she was born knowing. Something soothes in her to be touching him, a troubled animal falling to sleep again, or choppy water going smooth. When he opens up his wings she leans away, beyond the flare of those small feathers, too downy yet for flight (but growing, oh, growing - her brother, already, is always going somewhere). She only watches as he beats his wings, parting imaginary clouds, crossing imaginary maps not yet drawn.
Aster knows, somehow, that she will follow him always. That there is a line drawn between them, sometimes slack and sometimes taut, and they will forever be tugging on the other - come along, slow down, look, see -
but for now he isn’t going anywhere, and she goes back to staring at the trees. How wizened they are, how furrowed their bark, how absent of ants and beetles and woodpeckers and wrens. What do they know (they must know something)? What do they wait for (and how long, how long have they waited)?
She thinks she can find out. If only given time -
Come on, Aster!
When she snorts it is only a new filly’s snort, when she shakes her finely-boned head it is clear she is only a girl and nothing stranger, not a tree or a vine or a stone or a moon. And when she charges after him, when her legs flash long and white, striping the ground with shadow and sun, shadow and sun, until she is beside him and passing him and beyond him, running just to run, her own wings flaring out and out and out -
What is she then?
@Leonidas | <3
STAFF EDIT***
@aster has rolled a 6! She has found an iridescent feather on the island, that may come in handy on a future adventure...
This feather will grant her an extra roll in a future SWP RE.
