and they've been changing the sound of my name;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow*   It is almost enough, here in the sun-dappled undergrowth with magic real as fog around him, to forget everything and simple be. His companion is a part of it - something about walking with Po makes him think of Eik. The bay hadn’t known much of the man, save for his friendship with Florentine, but they lapse into silence as comfortably as if they’ve been fellows for years. Not for the first time, he wonders what Novus might be without its courts and superstitions (of course, he thinks, it would not then be Novus at all). Is it such a treasonous thing, to wish that nothing divided them? The king looks over at the paint’s voice, and his eyes are equally dark. For a moment he only considers, stepping carefully over a jut of fallen branches. Caught on the rough bark are a few strands of tawny hair, smaller together than the down of a dandelion. But the doe seemed far too graceful to leave such a sign unintentionally. “If she could,” he says at last. By then Po’s pace is already quickening, and Asterion follows. He is content to stay a few steps behind, though the same breeze is lifting his forelock and tugging his hair (it feels good, after the thin humidity of the forest) and the air itself has shifted. Sharp-metallic, almost like blood - or like magic. Wariness and boyish excitement war within him; if this were the Rift, he thinks, anything could be waiting for them, having laid its trap. But it isn’t - it isn’t - he still can’t accept that the island’s magic might be bad, and dark, and hurtful. Not when he wants nothing from it, only to know. There, winking like a green eye, is an emerald in the grass. Though it is high summer, the clear color of it makes the plants around it look autumn-dull. Asterion’s ear flicks toward his companion at the sound of that whisper, and he lifts his head, slow, already searching. The trees are moving, whispering too, and there, there, there - @Ipomoea <3