Already he wishes he hadn’t seen her again.
Since he’d turned that day on the beach (and he hadn’t looked back, not until he was well out of sight, and there was both hurt and relief not to see her silhouette on the beach or above it, wings wide as a an albatross, coming to ask him to stay) he hasn’t thought of Marisol much at all.
Leaving the Dusk Court had hurt. But it had not hurt as badly as leaving Denocte after Moira left him at the castle doors, the memory of her kiss still burning on his cheek. Asterion had thought, foolishly, that the more he was pushed away, the less it would sting - as though he could become numb to it, or at least inured. It seems, instead, that grief is a sea as wide and deep as love.
After that, he had not thought much at all.
He still doesn’t know what it is in him that tangles his mind, that deepens its shadows and its hunger. Asterion doesn’t realize that it’s anything at all - but oh, he should know better.
If nothing else, he should know by the way his gaze flicks from the queen to the open space beside them, a terrible, long way down.
The bay stallion looks back at the sound of his name. His ears twist back, as though uncertain, or displeased. Still, his small smile (the one that doesn’t belong to him at all) remains.
“It’s better without them,” he says lightly, as though she hadn’t answered anything at all. Then he nods down at her, takes a step closer, tilts his head curiously, dog-like. “You’ve grown out your hair.”
Since he’d turned that day on the beach (and he hadn’t looked back, not until he was well out of sight, and there was both hurt and relief not to see her silhouette on the beach or above it, wings wide as a an albatross, coming to ask him to stay) he hasn’t thought of Marisol much at all.
Leaving the Dusk Court had hurt. But it had not hurt as badly as leaving Denocte after Moira left him at the castle doors, the memory of her kiss still burning on his cheek. Asterion had thought, foolishly, that the more he was pushed away, the less it would sting - as though he could become numb to it, or at least inured. It seems, instead, that grief is a sea as wide and deep as love.
After that, he had not thought much at all.
He still doesn’t know what it is in him that tangles his mind, that deepens its shadows and its hunger. Asterion doesn’t realize that it’s anything at all - but oh, he should know better.
If nothing else, he should know by the way his gaze flicks from the queen to the open space beside them, a terrible, long way down.
The bay stallion looks back at the sound of his name. His ears twist back, as though uncertain, or displeased. Still, his small smile (the one that doesn’t belong to him at all) remains.
“It’s better without them,” he says lightly, as though she hadn’t answered anything at all. Then he nods down at her, takes a step closer, tilts his head curiously, dog-like. “You’ve grown out your hair.”
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
See, they return, and bring us with them.
