asterion,
He wonders why it is that he’s never looked at the tip of a unicorn’s horn and seen danger. He knows firsthand that it is a killing thing, a sword for justice, a weapon as much as a wonder. Yet even watching the dip and tremble of hers his body does not warn him, his heart does not speed like the heart of a hare under the shadow of a hawk, his eyes do not find hers to beg and spare himself from violence. Maybe he is a fool, not to believe she’d do it; just a hopeful, helpless fool.
Asterion wishes he would touch her. Maybe then anything, everything would feel real.
But she does not. She inches closer, like a hunting cat, and she says it was easier, and the only thing between them is their breath like empty nebulae. Her words fall like the stars do and land with a shatter between them and his lips ask why, why, why but his voice never follows; it stays empty as space.
Not until she says this place, this living dying universe, feels like home does cold warning cup his heart. But there is too much happening for the meaning to ripple out like a pebble in a pond and pass the warning to his mind; that will come later. For now the ridge along his back only prickles when he feels her companion’s gaze fall on him like hyena’s. There is so little he can see in the darkness - only a glint of golden horns, only a flash of pearlescent teeth, only a pervading sense of threat and hunger. Asterion lifts his head, shifts his weight, remembers what it is to play war -
And there is something almost worse in watching Thana caution her beast against him. Even that is nothing to what she says next; there is that familiar feeling of falling, then, the sudden drop, the running heart. There is the smell of blood in the air, sharp and vital, but all he can think of is his own heart cleaved, all he can hear is the echo of the unicorn saying the same words his twin had said, years and worlds ago, a promise and a threat he has carried with him through and through and through.
Asterion bites his lip and nods. There is no time here but eternity, and eternity is how it feels to watch her turn with her beast and walk away.
“Find me,” he whispers, long after she is too far to hear him. Asterion watches until Thana and her monster are swallowed up by darkness, and he watches as the stars continue to fall and crash and dissipate like embers on the black glass ground.
Before the end, before all becomes darkness, he at last begins to walk toward home.
Tho' much is taken, much abides;
@Thana
