There is still no sign of sand, no flicker of seaweed shaped into wings, but the trees seem to be leaning close, and listening. The birds seem to follow them, flitting from branch to branch, bright spots of color amid the dark green.
If they are listening, Asterion wonders, what might they understand? And who might they be telling what they see?
Must be a portal thing, she says, and the king gives a low, soft laugh and a nod. But what he doesn’t say is that he wonders if it’s a Novus thing - maybe the gods’ magic, deafening anything else until…what? Until they proved themselves worthy, or proficient? As they continued on, picking their way carefully over logs and through tangles of branches when the path narrowed to nearly nothing, Cirrus (increasingly uncomfortable, in trees this dense and strange) laid her bright beak against his shoulder. Enough questions, she said through the bond they shared. “Be here. Gods know there’s enough going on. The bay turns back one slim ear, but as usual the gull is not wrong.
He can tell from the weight of Corr’s voice that his story had made her somber, and Asterion offers her a smile. If he’d known her better, he might have added a brush of his nose to her shoulder - but then he is always slow to touch, except with those as close as Florentine. Instead he only adds, “It was. And I’m not sorry - I never truly found my place there. Not like in Dusk. It is family, as you say.” At that, his smile curls into a grin; family, maybe more than grey pegasus knows. No part of him had expected to find a sister here.
The tune of the forest around them changes; the trees begin to open wide again, and there is the sound of water, musical through the trees. It is not the deep breathing of the sea but the laughing of a brook, and he trades a glance with Corr before continuing forward, ducking beneath the leaning trunk of a fallen tree.
“In a way,” he answers her, as his dark gaze goes back to searching the path. “Though I’m not sure who followed who. There was a unicorn, Calliope, who I knew first in that world. She was here, for a time. And then Florentine - I never knew I had a sister. But she came from another world, one that had others from Ravos. It makes you wonder just how many there are, and how near the borders…” It is uncharacteristic for him to trail into silence, for him to cock his head as if listening; but suddenly he wonders if, as Corr had suggested, the island is a portal, with all the borders of the world worn thin. Humming on the other side, just out of sight, waiting —
This time he gets a nip from Cirrus, and shakes his head as if he can clear such thoughts as easily as flies. “And what of your home, Corrdelia?” he asks, glancing back at her, eyes dark on the crow and the girl.
Ahead of them, the trees fall away to meadow, and the meadow ends at a wide river running quick, and there is no sign of a little dragon made of sand.
Maybe he has gone into the water, dissolved to pieces, been swept out back to sea.
@Corrdelia <3
if you'll be my star*
