I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone
or else alone
He’d asked her to meet him here, far from the eyes of the court, where the wind and sea covered all other sounds and where they’d stood before, years ago.
It isn’t guilt that keeps him out of the city (though of course he feels guilty, all that mixture of shame and grief and worry made a pearl in his heart long ago) but discretion. Thana had told him how long he’d been gone, and - it is too long. Too long for an explanation and amends, too long to upset lives and return to what was. Asterion is sorry, even as he’s relieved.
He is sorry, too, to listen to the gulls and hear no familiar voice among them. He wonders what became of Cirrus - if the bird is gone or only not listening for him anymore. Asterion has tried just once to reach down the bond between them, and had met the silence of a void and not a wall. He can’t watch them now, circling over the surf or diving low over the beach. Instead he watches the water, the endless roll of it, the push and pull and swell and fade.
It says nothing to him, for all its crash and hush, its whisper and roar. It had only ever been his own thoughts flung out and carried back to him, tumbled by waves and smoothed by sand, and even knowing this he still stares at the place where the water turns to whitecaps like he’s waiting for advice.
@
Asterion.
