[P] where the wild things go;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow*     It feels like something from a fairy-tale, to watch his sister’s family around him while everything else stands frozen, bespelled and slumbering. What story, he wonders, are they turning the page to? Asterion promises himself that he will do anything to make it a good world for them. That their beginning and their far-away ending, too, will be a good one, a kind of story to keep telling. Oh, and he must remember to live it, too - so he reminds himself, as his sister breathes warm against his neck, and she speaks of her children. Suddenly there is silver limning his gaze, suddenly his eyes are stinging with tears that he hides against Flora’s mane. But Lysander is beside them, then, and the twins are playing, and all he says is “I can’t imagine more of an honor. A lucky thing for her you’ve shortened it, though.” And he is smiling, and his heart feels as full as billowing sails, as he watches his sister greet her lover and raise her dagger up, where its edge catches the light of the stalled sun and splinters the world silver. He has never seen her use her magic. At first there is nothing, nothing but the racing of his own heart, beating hard against his ribs, tight with nerves and excitement. It is easier to focus his attention on the sharp tip of her knife and not on the feelings that churn like a Charybdis within him, hope and excitement and the worry that Flora says is his birthright from his father. Oh, and when that first wind blows through, stirring the leaves and air of this world with the scent of wild places untouched by such civilized hands as had made a home of Novus, Asterion can’t keep himself from stepping forward. Closer, closer, until he can see the world begin to take shape, until he can hear the hum of magic (of worlds whispering closer, crowding at the door Florentine opens). Light from some other sun comes spilling through, painting gold and crimson on the noon ground of the island. There are birds calling, in that other world, and wider and wider his sister opens the door, and louder and louder grows his heart in his ears. The king can feel his pulse leaping in his throat as the knife pulls, gently, gently, tugging wider the window. A leaf drifts through, borne on that foreign breeze, and it is golden with autumn. When it trembles on the ground before them it looks like a piece of gold shed from the twins. The opening grows large enough to welcome them, but now Asterion is hungry for more - how many worlds, he wonders, how many pathways of stars could she open windows too? How many skies, how many creatures, how many distant wonders of time and space could they travel? And still Novus is frozen around them, without even a cloud to drift on the breeze. But when the king shivers, as his sister at last steps back and their eyes meet, he does not take it for worry. He does not think how strange, or even wait. He only glances back, once, at the island with its waiting trees and its glass-still water and its motionless sky, and thinks of all the others it holds, the ones his heart holds too. And then he touches his muzzle to Florentine’s cheek, and inhales long and sweetly of the island air and the air of the other world (the Riftlands, his father’s lands) and steps into that doorway with sunset-light bleeding through, his shadow long behind him. @Florentine