I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone
or else alone
The sound of her approach is lost to the sighing of the waves and the wind, and maybe Marisol hadn’t intended to be heard. Maybe she’d intended for him to turn, and catch her staring, and feel his heart curl like a fist at the slate he finds there.
It isn’t the first time - it’s far from it - that she’s been angry with him, or disappointed, and Asterion had steeled himself for those reactions now. But this feels different, worse than a gut-punch, worse than the sear of her spear along his side in a spar from another life. Worse than Thana, the first he’d seen, saying It was easier when you were gone. Do not find me again. He wonders if Marisol will say the same; she looks like she’s thinking it.
Is it such a sin, to have come back home? To be alive?
Asterion dips his head, and does not smile. But his eyes are as soft as the dawn-light, as dark as deep water, and where hers say nothing his say please.
“I am so sorry,” he says simply, after a long moment of silence where he waits for her to speak and knows she will not. “I never meant to leave.” Another pause; he wants to step nearer, to press his forehead to hers and to inhale the scent of her, which is so near the scent of home. He stays where he is, feeling the sea-foam cold around his hocks, feeling it pull the sand away from beneath his feet like its coaxing him to follow.
“Neither do I intend to…make things complicated for you. Or more complicated than I already have.” Almost, his lopsided half-smile emerges; his eyes still say please. The wind and cold and light fill the space between them and he wishes for her words, for her voice, no matter how frigid or hard or hurtful. “I don’t want it widely known that I’m…returned. And I hear that Novus is seeing its first true peace in years. That Terrastella is prospering under its queen.” Asterion wants to say that he is both grateful and proud, but he knows that would risk sounding condescending. He wants to say forgive me, but he never will.
He’s too afraid she’ll say nothing in return.
@
Asterion.
