I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone
or else alone
He watches the way she falls still as an acolyte, save for the way the wind pulls her hair. Asterion’s smile doesn’t waver, but there is a moment when the shapes have vanished into mist where he wonders what she thinks, if she will scoff, if he has intruded on a private moment -
When his gaze meets hers the bay holds his breath; and then she laughs like sunlight on water and the whole world seems to sigh and continue around them.
Asterion doesn’t move as she comes to him, only tucks his chin toward his chest, still smiling, holding onto the sound of her laughter like he holds onto anything lovely and rare that he’s witnessed. He still doesn’t recognize her, and he’s still strangely relieved by it.
“My sister would say not nearly enough,” he answers with a wry arc of smile, and dips his head boyishly as she continues. “And I rarely take the opportunity to use it so…frivolously.” It isn’t the right word; his gaze speaks an apology to the sea when he looks out to it. But it is true that Asterion rarely takes the time to play; before he was a king, the world was so much less serious. Then, he might have shaped all kinds of creation from the water, or called in rainclouds just for company. But Asterion’s power had not found him until his crown had; at least he’d kept the one.
He smiles more openly at her third question, though it turns soft and almost faraway. To him the sound of the waves is inexorably linked from his mother; the same breathing sighs, the same ceaseless rhythm he heard in his sleep even before he was born, salt and blood. “It has always called me home,” he answers, staring out at the line where the water shifts to darker blue. “But it took a long time for it to listen in kind.” Asterion might have turned more serious, then, except for the sound of her laugh. It is like bells ringing, and the color of her eyes is like the sky above the sea.
For so long he has been so serious, so weighted with duty and guilt, that already he is near to thinking I would do anything to hear that laugh again.
“Have you been here long?” And he leaves the question broad - it could mean the shoreline, or Terrastella, or this world altogether.
@
Asterion.
