Unlike the once-queen, Asterion leaves tracks on the beach, but each hoof print fills up with saltwater in his wake, no matter how far he walks from the foam of the surf. Out over the water there is the ceaseless call of gulls and other birds, but none are calling for him, and he tries not to listen.
Surely it is better to hear no voices at all than to imagine ones that aren’t there.
Another difference from Seraphina - it is no surprise that the bay stallion turns endlessly to the beach. There is a void in him, lately, a blackness that sometimes howls and sometimes moves in silence (and oh, the latter is worse). There is little that quiets it, but at least the sea drowns it out, the way it has always soothed his worries. When he rages, it does too; when he is contemplative it is placid. When he is lonely it speaks to him, in murmurs and in shouts, the oldest friend he has. By now he’s so used to the dreams of dark water closing over his head that he doesn’t even wake. (They used to spur a kind of terror in him - now it feels more like peace.)
He has lost track of how long he’s been alone. In a way, all his time in the rift lands has prepared him for this; he doesn’t miss the comforts of the city, all the trappings that were so strange to him when he first arrived in Novus and have taken on a discomfort once again. He always preferred to sleep beneath the stars, with the wind in the leaves his music; now he avoids civilization intentionally, and his hair is long and wild, and he appears as feral as Leonidas. If he looks like he was ever a king, then it is only Nebudchadnezzar.
There is something in him that is yawning, hungry, dark. It first stirred when Marisol rebuked him, when he banished himself from his own country. It opened its eyes when Moira turned him away like an errant dog come home too late after too long away. (It was with him before that, before he crossed back over to Novus and the wild island, but Asterion doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know what lives in him wasn’t always a part of himself).
It likes the sea. It likes the power he holds over it, the way he can flex his mind and the waves roll up, eager as dogs. It likes the way it turns black and dangerous with a storm, and crashes against the cliffside like a symphony. It likes the way it glistens in the moonlight.
Oh, but he doesn’t realize that, either, because so does he.
Today there is not a storm, but the wind has teeth, and the cold is the kind that sets in your bones. Still he appears immune to it, wandering, searching for the same nameless thing he’s always looked for. Maybe one day he can find it, if he only can decide what it is.
He spots Ereshkigal and it is like a memory. Like the beach on the island, only the sand underfoot has turned to rock. He smiles a smile that looks strange on his face until he sees her, the figure the huge bird portended like a psychopomp. Even from here she looks wild, too, and something in him is savagely glad - that he is not alone, the only outcast, a city fallen to ruin. But deeper, truer, he is only sorry.
Her voice is a thing he must catch over the wind. But he does (simultaneously quieting the waves by habit), even as he finishes eating up the space between them, close enough to see again that scar. (There is a part of him that wishes he bore something like that, a marker of when things changed. Perhaps his was a more gradual fall.)
“Maybe I’m a ghost,” he says, only half joking, and his mouth makes a skeleton grin.
Surely it is better to hear no voices at all than to imagine ones that aren’t there.
Another difference from Seraphina - it is no surprise that the bay stallion turns endlessly to the beach. There is a void in him, lately, a blackness that sometimes howls and sometimes moves in silence (and oh, the latter is worse). There is little that quiets it, but at least the sea drowns it out, the way it has always soothed his worries. When he rages, it does too; when he is contemplative it is placid. When he is lonely it speaks to him, in murmurs and in shouts, the oldest friend he has. By now he’s so used to the dreams of dark water closing over his head that he doesn’t even wake. (They used to spur a kind of terror in him - now it feels more like peace.)
He has lost track of how long he’s been alone. In a way, all his time in the rift lands has prepared him for this; he doesn’t miss the comforts of the city, all the trappings that were so strange to him when he first arrived in Novus and have taken on a discomfort once again. He always preferred to sleep beneath the stars, with the wind in the leaves his music; now he avoids civilization intentionally, and his hair is long and wild, and he appears as feral as Leonidas. If he looks like he was ever a king, then it is only Nebudchadnezzar.
There is something in him that is yawning, hungry, dark. It first stirred when Marisol rebuked him, when he banished himself from his own country. It opened its eyes when Moira turned him away like an errant dog come home too late after too long away. (It was with him before that, before he crossed back over to Novus and the wild island, but Asterion doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know what lives in him wasn’t always a part of himself).
It likes the sea. It likes the power he holds over it, the way he can flex his mind and the waves roll up, eager as dogs. It likes the way it turns black and dangerous with a storm, and crashes against the cliffside like a symphony. It likes the way it glistens in the moonlight.
Oh, but he doesn’t realize that, either, because so does he.
Today there is not a storm, but the wind has teeth, and the cold is the kind that sets in your bones. Still he appears immune to it, wandering, searching for the same nameless thing he’s always looked for. Maybe one day he can find it, if he only can decide what it is.
He spots Ereshkigal and it is like a memory. Like the beach on the island, only the sand underfoot has turned to rock. He smiles a smile that looks strange on his face until he sees her, the figure the huge bird portended like a psychopomp. Even from here she looks wild, too, and something in him is savagely glad - that he is not alone, the only outcast, a city fallen to ruin. But deeper, truer, he is only sorry.
Her voice is a thing he must catch over the wind. But he does (simultaneously quieting the waves by habit), even as he finishes eating up the space between them, close enough to see again that scar. (There is a part of him that wishes he bore something like that, a marker of when things changed. Perhaps his was a more gradual fall.)
“Maybe I’m a ghost,” he says, only half joking, and his mouth makes a skeleton grin.
I see the winter, she's crawling up the lawn;
