A S T E R I O N
in sunshine and in shadow*
It feels as strange to walk the Dusk Court as it did those first days here, when he still thought of Ravos as home, when he knew no names and only sought a black unicorn with lightning marking her side.
Only now Asterion is familiar with each copse of trees, each bird-cry, each scent that says summer is done. Instead of a stranger he feels like a ghost, trapped in a home that changes around him, unrecognizable to those he meets. For a long time he avoided Terrastella altogether; now the festival brings him home, though he will not go near the city, where memories lie like bricks and failures are the shadow-cracks between.
But the orchard, that is not such a bad place for a ghost.
The air smells fruit-laden and sweet, the sun is warm on his back and the wind is cool when it tugs at his hair, kisses his throat. The once-king does not partake, only watches with a mouth soft-smiling as others do, spring-born foals with their mothers beside them and groups of boys all bravado and flash. Unlike some years there are no faces creased with worry, no slat-ribs or hollow cheeks. Dusk is prospering, and Novus with it, and he is glad. Even if it only shows he isn’t needed.
A cry catches his attention; Asterion’s head lifts, ears pricking forward and then back at the splintering sound, and he turns to see a big gray stallion with a half-grown boy bucking in his grasp.
Asterion’s reponse is immediate, instinctual from years of command. “Let him go,” he orders, loping to the pair, but the man already is, sputtering back as the boy brandishes a blade toward his throat. The gray is afraid; Asterion is sure the boy is too, although his face is turned away. “Easy,” the bay addresses him, “it’s okay,” and he motions the other stallion away (if the boy will let him go).
There had been no recognition yet; too much adrenaline, and too much improbability, kept Asterion’s thoughts far from the nephew he’d met so briefly a year ago. And yet something in him is trembling, something in him is waking like the piece of blade in the boy’s hand, something is wondering, remembering -
“Leonidas?” he breathes.
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