I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone
or else alone
There is a storm being born in the mountains.
Asterion can feel it, as all wild things do - the sharp drop in pressure, the distant smell of ozone. Between the branches of pines and oaks he watches the soundless, faraway lightning, like watching a war happen in his sleep.
But the stallion is not dreaming. He is picking his way down a slope in the semidark, watched by owls who wait for the rain from their hollowed-out trees, too wise to hunt. He is focusing on each step, careful not to slip on the snow-damp leaves, knowing that forcing his body to exhaustion keeps his mind stumbling over itself instead of thinking of other things. Sharper things, darker things, things that should not belong to him at all but have recently stopped feeling wrong.
He does not hear the snow leopard scream. Still, Asterion knows the law of the wilds. And the killing does not bother him, not when he knows it’s so something else can eat (not like the horses of Novus, so civilized in their buildings and markets, who kill - for what?)
The storm is almost on him when he crosses into a clearing where spring flowers nod amidst the last patches of snow, pale in the darkness. Now there is a distant roll of thunder, and no other sound - except that of footsteps, approaching from further down the slope.
Asterion does not stop until they come face to face, her figure dark except the white places that gleam like the moon, and the faint shine of light from her axe. Even then he does not speak, only watches her through dark eyes as thunder groans again.
@Antiope
Asterion.
