Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
“Aster,” she says to the boy, and though she says her name softly as a lamb the sharp consonants of it still prick the air like a burr. She is interested by the way he can’t quite make her out, but she can see him down to the whiskers on his chin in the pale floating light. “And Teak.” The cheetah cub makes a loud chirrup, then takes quick cat-steps until he is in the glow of that little moon, too. His golden eyes have not left the monkey.
If she liked the way he looked when he could not see her, she is just as curious at the way his gaze pans her when she is revealed. It is the way she looks at a snake, or an owl, or anything else beautiful and new. She blinks at the light as Teak tiptoes around the stranger, then darts in to bat as his tail. He looks like autumn, Aster decides; his hair like golden wheat and his coat like fallen leaves.
“What is your name? I know it isn’t Brave.” She doesn’t necessarily intend it to be cruel, though she has yet to smile.
Her ears prick up when he says that he is trying to find the end. The cheetah has abandoned his newest play-thing; now he prowls just beyond the edge of the light, pouncing on dried leaves that shiver in the dark. “I’m trying to find the middle,” Aster says. She takes a step nearer to the boy, and tips her face into the light. Other than Avesta, other than of course her twin, Aster has not been so close to another child. She and her brother are wild things, who keep to the forests and the glens, and though she has watched the foals playing in the markets and the streets she has never joined them.
“They say there is treasure there,” she says seriously, and thinks again of the Relic. Something makes her shiver, then, a little ripple all along her spine, but it is not cold and it is not fear. “Wouldn’t you rather find it?”
@Kibou | she doesn't know how to child oops
