Asterion finds that it is easier, when she speaks, to watch the sea instead of her.
Whatever that urge was, to strike - that peculiar, barbed hunger - it is lessened by the constant motion and sound of the waves. It feels sullen and yet soothed by the endless roll, the dark ceiling of clouds, the distant commotion of cormorants.
Maybe, he thinks (he hopes), it isn’t Seraphina making him feel this way, Seraphina and her sword, and her hair blown by a wind that is not this world’s, and her power. Maybe it is just the talk of gods.
He has nothing to add to her response but understanding, and this he conveys in a dip of his muzzle, a dark-eyed glance her direction. Oh, it had taken him a long time to break his own habits; to stop waiting for someone stronger, better, braver than him to step in and save what needed saving.
The bay wanders a few more steps down the beach, saltwater weeping up the crescents his hooves leave in the sand. At her question he pauses, and turns his face back toward her.
“Yes,” he says, and thinks of Ravos - of standing with Selke beside a surf not so different from this one, and watching No form from mist to man, and Fantome. “Each oversaw a particular element. They walked among us, more often than these gods. And like them, they had their favorites - they’d give little gifts, grant magic.” The surf quiets, as though to better hear him speak; so, too, does that writhing hunger inside him. Maybe all things were hungry to hear of gods.
“But also like here - do you remember that day, trapped with the regimes? - they did not always want the same things. And eventually it came to war. The land began to die - there were terrible fires, monstrous plants. A new magic began to grow, one none of the gods claimed. It opened a rift.” After knowing Florentine and her magic, a tear between worlds did not seem so strange - he can hardly remember what it felt like, all the wonder and the fear. He never should have let Calliope go without him. He never should have remained, and hoped for change. And some of that bitterness hardens his words when he says, “I was one of the last to come through. There was nothing left to stay for.”
A pause; his gaze passes over the dark shape of trees near the horizon, a distant peninsula. It makes him think of something else in the middle of the sea, and there is something urgent in his voice when he speaks again. “That last magic. It was like the island - chaotic, devouring. We should all hope they are not the same.” His heartbeat has become a bird in his chest, at the thought of that feral magic - it feels as though his blood is warming, hot enough to hiss. Asterion licks his lips, calls up a wave to wash over his hooves as though to soothe them. Once again he can’t look at Seraphina, or at Ereshkigal’s shadow. He thinks I have to flee. Before-
Once again he turns his head toward her, though his eyes do not stray from the sea. He makes an effort to smile, but not too much of one. “Goodbye, Seraphina. I hope you find something that makes staying easier.”
And then he is gone, tracking back the way he’d come, swallowing hard and not looking back. Not until the sound of the surf isn’t even a whisper behind him does he begin to run.
Whatever that urge was, to strike - that peculiar, barbed hunger - it is lessened by the constant motion and sound of the waves. It feels sullen and yet soothed by the endless roll, the dark ceiling of clouds, the distant commotion of cormorants.
Maybe, he thinks (he hopes), it isn’t Seraphina making him feel this way, Seraphina and her sword, and her hair blown by a wind that is not this world’s, and her power. Maybe it is just the talk of gods.
He has nothing to add to her response but understanding, and this he conveys in a dip of his muzzle, a dark-eyed glance her direction. Oh, it had taken him a long time to break his own habits; to stop waiting for someone stronger, better, braver than him to step in and save what needed saving.
The bay wanders a few more steps down the beach, saltwater weeping up the crescents his hooves leave in the sand. At her question he pauses, and turns his face back toward her.
“Yes,” he says, and thinks of Ravos - of standing with Selke beside a surf not so different from this one, and watching No form from mist to man, and Fantome. “Each oversaw a particular element. They walked among us, more often than these gods. And like them, they had their favorites - they’d give little gifts, grant magic.” The surf quiets, as though to better hear him speak; so, too, does that writhing hunger inside him. Maybe all things were hungry to hear of gods.
“But also like here - do you remember that day, trapped with the regimes? - they did not always want the same things. And eventually it came to war. The land began to die - there were terrible fires, monstrous plants. A new magic began to grow, one none of the gods claimed. It opened a rift.” After knowing Florentine and her magic, a tear between worlds did not seem so strange - he can hardly remember what it felt like, all the wonder and the fear. He never should have let Calliope go without him. He never should have remained, and hoped for change. And some of that bitterness hardens his words when he says, “I was one of the last to come through. There was nothing left to stay for.”
A pause; his gaze passes over the dark shape of trees near the horizon, a distant peninsula. It makes him think of something else in the middle of the sea, and there is something urgent in his voice when he speaks again. “That last magic. It was like the island - chaotic, devouring. We should all hope they are not the same.” His heartbeat has become a bird in his chest, at the thought of that feral magic - it feels as though his blood is warming, hot enough to hiss. Asterion licks his lips, calls up a wave to wash over his hooves as though to soothe them. Once again he can’t look at Seraphina, or at Ereshkigal’s shadow. He thinks I have to flee. Before-
Once again he turns his head toward her, though his eyes do not stray from the sea. He makes an effort to smile, but not too much of one. “Goodbye, Seraphina. I hope you find something that makes staying easier.”
And then he is gone, tracking back the way he’d come, swallowing hard and not looking back. Not until the sound of the surf isn’t even a whisper behind him does he begin to run.
I see the winter, she's crawling up the lawn;
