the dark is empty; most of our heroes have been wrong.
Since the minute he left, Marisol has tried her hardest not to think of him.
And her hardest really is her hardest. She has held a blade to the throat of all thoughts of him, slept hour after hour in a dark and dreamless sleep, sparred until the throbbing pain of the gashes and bruises overcame the dull ache of missing him. Pain is pain. Physical, emotional. It’s all the same wavelength.
She tries so hard it has become a habit, a baseline instinct just under the necessity of breathing; has become so practiced that he hardly seems real anymore, just a figment of her imagination or a badly drawn caricature of a man she once loved; so practiced that at this point her heart believes he may as well be dead.
So seeing him really is like witnessing a ghost.
And oh, does he look dead. Slat-ribbed and thin. He’s all angles, gangly and sharp against the wall of granite that rises up behind him. His eyes are unnaturally cold and bright. There is no Asterion in them, no soft brown gaze to meet or any buried warmth. Instead, he is flint and stone all the way down.
Marisol wonders if that is what he has seen in her all these years. How could he bear to meet eyes with her so often when she looked like this—feral and unwilling to feel?(She wonders guiltily what she looks like now. Whether she’s softened the littlest bit. Maybe the broken-down girl she always sees in the mirror is destined to stay there forever, trapped in that thin sheet of silver, and the one who goes out into the world remains stubbornly vicious without a way out.)
Her heart quickens. She feels it race against her chest, so bright and fierce it feels almost dizzying, and the rush of blood that comes with it turns the edges of her brain and her gaze a deep, fuzzy black.
If you’re looking for gods, he says, wearing a funny little smile, there are none left.
Mari stares. The wind comes screaming down the mountainside. Without looking, she knows that to one side, she is only a few steps from the steep fall off the cliff and the whispering forest a hundred feet below. The air smells like pine needles and rain. And it is cold, cold, cold: cold as the ocean when Amaroq dragged her down, cold as the spot in her bed where Orestes used to lay, cold as the slash of a blade across skin.
"Asterion," she says. Clears her throat. Her mouth twists into an awkward line of worry, of want, of missing-him. “There will always be gods."
But her voice is tight and unconvinced.
And her hardest really is her hardest. She has held a blade to the throat of all thoughts of him, slept hour after hour in a dark and dreamless sleep, sparred until the throbbing pain of the gashes and bruises overcame the dull ache of missing him. Pain is pain. Physical, emotional. It’s all the same wavelength.
She tries so hard it has become a habit, a baseline instinct just under the necessity of breathing; has become so practiced that he hardly seems real anymore, just a figment of her imagination or a badly drawn caricature of a man she once loved; so practiced that at this point her heart believes he may as well be dead.
So seeing him really is like witnessing a ghost.
And oh, does he look dead. Slat-ribbed and thin. He’s all angles, gangly and sharp against the wall of granite that rises up behind him. His eyes are unnaturally cold and bright. There is no Asterion in them, no soft brown gaze to meet or any buried warmth. Instead, he is flint and stone all the way down.
Marisol wonders if that is what he has seen in her all these years. How could he bear to meet eyes with her so often when she looked like this—feral and unwilling to feel?(She wonders guiltily what she looks like now. Whether she’s softened the littlest bit. Maybe the broken-down girl she always sees in the mirror is destined to stay there forever, trapped in that thin sheet of silver, and the one who goes out into the world remains stubbornly vicious without a way out.)
Her heart quickens. She feels it race against her chest, so bright and fierce it feels almost dizzying, and the rush of blood that comes with it turns the edges of her brain and her gaze a deep, fuzzy black.
If you’re looking for gods, he says, wearing a funny little smile, there are none left.
Mari stares. The wind comes screaming down the mountainside. Without looking, she knows that to one side, she is only a few steps from the steep fall off the cliff and the whispering forest a hundred feet below. The air smells like pine needles and rain. And it is cold, cold, cold: cold as the ocean when Amaroq dragged her down, cold as the spot in her bed where Orestes used to lay, cold as the slash of a blade across skin.
"Asterion," she says. Clears her throat. Her mouth twists into an awkward line of worry, of want, of missing-him. “There will always be gods."
But her voice is tight and unconvinced.
![[Image: ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda...jvUop12efQ]](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/c175b84a-409b-40aa-8b86-49ed65b989ee/ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda550e.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2MxNzViODRhLTQwOWItNDBhYS04Yjg2LTQ5ZWQ2NWI5ODllZVwvZGRnNnF1eS05ZDE1ZGFiNS0zMzljLTRiMDktOGI1Ny0yMGE5OWZkYTU1MGUucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.j-t9RuUsmMyaVL-O1rvZqbyyPYdOvtjHLjvUop12efQ)
