This keening soul;
The tips of Leto’s hooves tap over the heads of the tide-sunk mirrors. She is suspended by the sea, cradled in salted, autumnal waters. Her hair peels out darker than an oil spill. Through moon-wide eyes she watches how he cuts a lone, dark figure upon the shore of lead and glass. The sea whispers secrets into her lips as they tip into a smile. Starlight gleams white across the shed-star’s satin soft smile, it dances lively as a flea upon the water.
The tide carries her closer to the shore, pulled in, magnetised by his magic. Stardust gleams across her lashes, wet by the water when she blinks. The droplets gleam like crystals strung between her lashes. They roll like tears down the slender path of her cheek.
Tap, tap, tap, over and over the sharp, submerged edges of mirrors her feet drift. The sound is a symphony of strange, feral magic. Soon solid slick glass rises beneath her feet as the ocean grows shallow pushing itself up the mirror beach. Leto rises from the ocean as her Ilati kin rose from the fables whispered upon enchanted tongues. She is magic and myth ascending out of inky black. Over the mirrors she steps, nimble and predatory, lithe and celestial. Bells chime and bones clink in her hair, chants and spells breathe over her slender spine. Her movement is magic, her every step a beautiful, tribal savagery.
She does not look at the mirrors who bear for her a never ending number of Letos, each from another world, another time. She does not care for what could have been. Not any more. Star magic alights within her veins. The cold of the ocean falls away and steam rises from her skin. Its idle mist rises like prayer from the black of her skin. Ancient religion and sacrament breathes across her painted skin. Sigils, Ilati and shed-star and ocean-born alike gleam silver and gold over the curves of her slim body.
She was made for chants woven in magic, for dances tribal and savage, she is made a creature of the sea and she moves celestial, enchanting, a siren born, a priestess forged. She might be the wildest thing the sea has yielded that day and she slinks after him with her hair tousled, bangles of bone, strings of pearls, the bells, the unwinding plaits, the moon-limned leaves, they all chime, they all toll their achingly beautiful warning. She knows how wicked she has become, how her beauty has turned feral and ever more enchanting. Leto knows too how her hot, white star-blood is no longer the most dangerous thing about her. I am coming Those bells warn her once king. Do you remember me? They sing. Come, beautiful boy, let me drag you out into the sea. They enchant.
Her siren song sings, and if he does not hear it, if Asterion does not feel the way her gaze presses like fingertips up the curve of his spine, then he will know she has come when at last she touches her lips to his flank. I am here. She trails the constellations of stars that draw across his sides. She knows his every one, Leto counted each of them as he too counted the feathers in her hair. Within her, are the names of every constellation that finds art and life across his skin. Oh, beneath her touch he is again, so real, and the constellations, even drowned by his water magic and choked by his sadness, still they sing as pearls gleam from the bottom of the ocean.
Leto laughs, low, expressive as a poem, that presses its words of holiness and desire into his skin, into his bones. They are each made of stars, made of the sea, the earth of Terrastella once bound them and now they are each free. You left again. I was so angry with you. I was so hurt. She might have said if she had not been changed between Anandi’s teeth. Unmade, remade, rekindled, reborn.
Instead, the kelpie breathes, “I always wanted to paint you,” lightly, longingly, her gaze trailing moonlight like paint across his skin, drawing out his constellations in the wake of her lips. His magic trembles beneath her mouth, it beckons her as the sea calls her back wild and wicked and open. “You are a free man now, Asterion.” Leto says, at last drawing away from him, the salt of his skin upon her. “So why do you still walk like Atlas? Have you not learned how to share?” And then, oh then, how wild her smile turns, how wicked and delightful. She laughs, as her teeth gleam with tribal starlight. Her gaze tips down to the mirrors at their feet and the thousand pairs of mahogany and nebular eyes that gaze back. Oh, Asterion, the Ilati-girl thinks, do you let yourself be tortured so in every single world?
@Asterion
Anyone! | "speaks" | notes:
