in sunshine and in shadow
These caves are not his kind of darkness.
His darkness is that of an open-sky night when the moon is new and hidden away, when the ocean is a quiet murmur and the stars outshine the torches of the city he’s left behind. His darkness is a storm at morning, keeping the birds hushed and the sky rumbling, bruised gray, heavy with rain. A wide-open kind of power, with nothing hidden away.
But here the ancient stone hems him in. There is a distant, steady drip of water that could drive a man mad if he never found the source of it. There is a still blackness that the eye must adjust to, and even then their shapes are only suggestions. Asterion doesn’t like the way the sound of their breathing carries in the space.
Maybe it is the caves that make his heart close up like a fist curling finger by finger. Or maybe it’s a different kind of dark.
It’s the strangers laugh that starts it, low and arrogant. Asterion can almost feel the brush of his feathers, carrying the smell of ancient sunshine and dust, of dunes that have long since weathered away. Lust, he says, and shame, and when the bay stallion’s gaze finds him it is sharp, and angry, and his ears are back. Desert-born the stranger may be, but there must be water in him, water Asterion could dry up with just a flex of his power -
But then the word is echoed, and it is not a judge’s mallet, not from Euryale’s lips. The black thing inside him uncoils, just a little. Her regard is like a flame held to his skin, setting every nerve alight; he feels bare, he feels seen in a way that Moira, or Samaira, or Aislinn had never looked at him. When she speaks again - to him, to him alone - he does not reply, but his chin drops toward his chest, and his gaze holds hers, and darkness, then, does not feel like another word for sin. And when she nears, when her shoulder brushes against him like a wave lapping the sand, when her lips touch him, he looks back to the stranger with less malice or jealousy. What shame, his gaze says, even as he denies himself from touching her in return.
Oh, but when she speaks of love he can do nothing but listen. In his heart he ticks off all she names and still he comes up wanting. True love, she says, and he thinks not for me, never for me. His love always ends in ash or cold dead coals. His love ends in salt and sorrow.
And that is why he is here. Not to feel - to avoid feeling.
Asterion wants to murmur to her, I did not know you were so wise. Instead he only brushes his lips behind her ear, a ghost’s caress. He barely hears the other male; once again an ear flicks back, until Euryale laughs and the sound of it turns his blood to wine and his skin to silk.
His heart a Charybdis of loss and want, hidden away from the stars and the sea, the once-king feels a black wave lap at his feet. It is cold and gently urging and he follows it, crossing the cavern’s chamber to the rose-gold man until those golden eyes are close enough to sear him.
“Yes,” he says, low. “Show us something impressive.”
@Euryale @Cairo
His darkness is that of an open-sky night when the moon is new and hidden away, when the ocean is a quiet murmur and the stars outshine the torches of the city he’s left behind. His darkness is a storm at morning, keeping the birds hushed and the sky rumbling, bruised gray, heavy with rain. A wide-open kind of power, with nothing hidden away.
But here the ancient stone hems him in. There is a distant, steady drip of water that could drive a man mad if he never found the source of it. There is a still blackness that the eye must adjust to, and even then their shapes are only suggestions. Asterion doesn’t like the way the sound of their breathing carries in the space.
Maybe it is the caves that make his heart close up like a fist curling finger by finger. Or maybe it’s a different kind of dark.
It’s the strangers laugh that starts it, low and arrogant. Asterion can almost feel the brush of his feathers, carrying the smell of ancient sunshine and dust, of dunes that have long since weathered away. Lust, he says, and shame, and when the bay stallion’s gaze finds him it is sharp, and angry, and his ears are back. Desert-born the stranger may be, but there must be water in him, water Asterion could dry up with just a flex of his power -
But then the word is echoed, and it is not a judge’s mallet, not from Euryale’s lips. The black thing inside him uncoils, just a little. Her regard is like a flame held to his skin, setting every nerve alight; he feels bare, he feels seen in a way that Moira, or Samaira, or Aislinn had never looked at him. When she speaks again - to him, to him alone - he does not reply, but his chin drops toward his chest, and his gaze holds hers, and darkness, then, does not feel like another word for sin. And when she nears, when her shoulder brushes against him like a wave lapping the sand, when her lips touch him, he looks back to the stranger with less malice or jealousy. What shame, his gaze says, even as he denies himself from touching her in return.
Oh, but when she speaks of love he can do nothing but listen. In his heart he ticks off all she names and still he comes up wanting. True love, she says, and he thinks not for me, never for me. His love always ends in ash or cold dead coals. His love ends in salt and sorrow.
And that is why he is here. Not to feel - to avoid feeling.
Asterion wants to murmur to her, I did not know you were so wise. Instead he only brushes his lips behind her ear, a ghost’s caress. He barely hears the other male; once again an ear flicks back, until Euryale laughs and the sound of it turns his blood to wine and his skin to silk.
His heart a Charybdis of loss and want, hidden away from the stars and the sea, the once-king feels a black wave lap at his feet. It is cold and gently urging and he follows it, crossing the cavern’s chamber to the rose-gold man until those golden eyes are close enough to sear him.
“Yes,” he says, low. “Show us something impressive.”
@Euryale @
