Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
Leonidas twists away, and his antler does not pierce her skin. But it does leave a smear of golden dust on her cheek, like a trail of dust from a butterfly’s wing, or a kiss of pollen from a daylily.
“Don’t you remember? There was a storm. There was a wind, I blew away with it. It knocked down so many of the trees…” Is it true? Is it a lie, a test, a memory? Certainly she can see the way the tops of the trees were tossed that day when they were not quite yearlings, can hear the groaning of the limbs and the roar of the wind and smell the sharp ozone on the air.
But there have been many storms since their parting.
When she looks at him, Aster imagines that her blood is running a little faster in her veins. Her breaths, certainly, come a little quicker now, eager things like waves lapping a shoreline. His magic touches her the same way hers does in return; their magics reach for one another deep within them like trembling vines and roots, desperate to tangle back together.
“I looked for you. But it is a big world, brother.” There is no apology in her tone, but there is something soft and malleable in the gold of her eyes as she ponders the gold in his. Aster doesn’t know the shape of the word sorry, but her soul knows the shape of his, and has missed it.
“I won’t lose you now,” she says, and her expression is as beatific as a girl-saint in a relic.
Oh, Aster would die for him (would kill for him, too). He would only need to ask.
@Leonidas | <3
