The North Wind and the Sun had a quarrel about which of them was the stronger. While they were disputing with much heat and bluster, a Traveler passed along the road wrapped in a cloak.
The meeting seems suggestive of an old fable. Inexplicably, a list of stories run through Orestes’s mind like a number of screenplays: The Wolf and the Crane, The Lion and the Mouse, the Fox and the Grapes, the Man and the Wood, the Ant and the Grasshopper, the Sun and… the Wind.
Here, The Sun King and The Lion meets the Lost King meets the Sea Queen’s Daughter.
Please, good sir, it would be an honor.”
Orestes finds himself embarrassed at his formality; but in a fable, everyone must speak so. When Aspara jokingly follows his lead, Orestes cannot help but smile. Beneath the Eventide Arch and with his tattoos a radiant mess, Orestes finds it difficult to believe they haven’t stepped straight through to some other dimension. Ariel slinks back around; he pauses by the girl, either because she is magical or because she is a child, and extends a paw.
The gesture is an offer of experience. A member of a nearly dead breed, they say to touch a Sun Lion grants one inexplicable insight. If she chooses to do so, it is likely she has never felt a fur so soft, so dense, softer even than the down of rabbits or kittens.
Orestes shakes his head; the lion bounds away, now to appraise the star-bay man. “I have been well enough.” Orestes replicates her tenderness; his memory of the sand-dollar, the conversation, remains one of his fondest in Novus. “I haven’t yet run Solterra into the sands, so I suppose that’s a victory. And you, dear Aspara?” Orestes is almost struck by the fact this is the second time he has seen the young girl without her parents; and the rumours of Isra’s absence across the sea return to him, and his heart pangs to know it.
Aspara, to your question - there are some kinds of happiness that are heavier than sorrow. And sometimes sadness, especially an old sadness, can be covered by joy, or by beauty. Even if you still feel the memory of it.
Ariel continues to take stock of the stallion; his eyes are small, luminous suns and he does not shy from meeting Asterion’s gaze; there is something quizzical there, something almost knowing but not quite. Ariel, stop, Orestes begs through their bond. Reluctantly, the Sun Lion draws away from their two companions to lay heavily on the ground at Orestes’s hooves.
Asterion’s words continue to resound within him. There is a knowing there Orestes is familiar with.
And sometimes sadness, especially an old sadness, can be covered by joy… or by beauty… even if you still feel the memory of it…
“How do you know?” Orestes asks, and he cannot keep his tone from being confrontational. Luckily, Aspara’s reacting to the man’s other confession.
My name is Asterion.
Here, The Sun King and The Lion meets the Lost King meets the Sea Queen’s Daughter.
Orestes knows if he were a proper Sovereign, he would feel only curiosity, the sort of curiosity one feels about the culture surrounding their country. But he is not a proper Sovereign. No. Orestes has made the fatal mistake of any man.
He has allowed himself to fall in love with someone he should not be allowed to love.
“Well met, Asterion.” His voice comes out more stiffly than he intends. Orestes glances at Aspara, and recognises the girl’s excitement and confusion. She summarises his role in Novus’s history by stating, You left.
Orestes cannot help but add, “And you left Marisol. It was hard for her.”
The gambit is one he should not have taken. He has never been a man capable of hiding his sentiments, and they are exposed rawly in the tone of his voice.
“Speech” || @
""Let us agree,"
said the Sun,
"that he is the stronger
who can strip that
Traveler of his cloak.""
said the Sun,
"that he is the stronger
who can strip that
Traveler of his cloak.""
