There is something like rain running down his cheeks.
It’s not until he tastes the salt that he realizes that it is tears - though he cannot remember crying, and his eyes don’t sting, and his vision is no clearer. Maybe it is only his magic, the tide in him drawing the water from her cells.
There is a scream ringing in his ears.
For a moment, he thinks it might be from his own mouth - certainly something in him is howling, shrieking, wailing, enough to shake an avalanche from the upper slopes. But his dark lips are still sealed tight, and his ears ring and ring and ring, and the scream falls away -
Like Marisol does.
Asterion can’t help but watch her fall. He doesn’t want to (he is still screaming, somewhere in his head) but even so his dark eyes are full of it, the bright underside of her wings, the dark smudge of her body growing smaller and smaller. He keeps expecting her to fly, and she doesn’t, and doesn’t, and doesn’t, and soon there is no sound but the stones that plinked down the ledge along with her, then only the wind, then only his own breathing.
At last the shape of her, so familiar, is swallowed up by the dark tops of the trees.
And there is saltwater tracking down his cheeks. It does not abate, those tears that turn to sobs that turn to heaving breaths, even as he begins to walk. Asterion picks his way ever so carefully down the slope, cautious not to so much as slip on a loose stone or scattered bit of scree.
It is a long way down.
It’s not until he tastes the salt that he realizes that it is tears - though he cannot remember crying, and his eyes don’t sting, and his vision is no clearer. Maybe it is only his magic, the tide in him drawing the water from her cells.
There is a scream ringing in his ears.
For a moment, he thinks it might be from his own mouth - certainly something in him is howling, shrieking, wailing, enough to shake an avalanche from the upper slopes. But his dark lips are still sealed tight, and his ears ring and ring and ring, and the scream falls away -
Like Marisol does.
Asterion can’t help but watch her fall. He doesn’t want to (he is still screaming, somewhere in his head) but even so his dark eyes are full of it, the bright underside of her wings, the dark smudge of her body growing smaller and smaller. He keeps expecting her to fly, and she doesn’t, and doesn’t, and doesn’t, and soon there is no sound but the stones that plinked down the ledge along with her, then only the wind, then only his own breathing.
At last the shape of her, so familiar, is swallowed up by the dark tops of the trees.
And there is saltwater tracking down his cheeks. It does not abate, those tears that turn to sobs that turn to heaving breaths, even as he begins to walk. Asterion picks his way ever so carefully down the slope, cautious not to so much as slip on a loose stone or scattered bit of scree.
It is a long way down.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
See, they return, and bring us with them.
