[P] tangled up in blue;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* Everything is rain-slick and thick with the scent of storm, but even over it there’s something else, warm and floral and almost familiar. Her color makes him think of his twin, but even rain-damp she is not the rich molten gold of Talia but something softer, sun on clouds. Her smile only highlights their differences; he’d never seen a smile like that on the girl he’d grown up with. It’s the kind of smile impossible not to echo, and suddenly the storm does not seem so fearsome. In that moment, with the trill of laughter beneath her words, Asterion goes from feeling lost to feeling like an adventurer. Then a stronger breeze gusts through, rattling the leaves and sending a shower of drops down on them both, and after starting at the sudden cold the bay shakes himself like a dog and laughs. “Well said,” he answers her, and lets his gaze skirt from the flowers in her hair to the ornate weapon she wore. It reminds him that they are strangers, that he knows nothing, nothing at all of this world. The smile softens, then, on his dark lips, and his even darker gaze slips back out to the field. They’re in the thick of it, now; the branches are creaking and swaying above them and the world is a sheet of silver. Lightning flattens the world for less than a heartbeat and once again Asterion shivers, fighting to suppress the instinctual, primeval fear that whispers of danger. Nothing smells of magic – not the metallic deep-dark taste of Velius (something unnamable, something vital like blood or seawater) or the bitterblue of No or the bright valiant taste of the fire-wielders. But that is not enough for Asterion to trust this storm, even if his companion seemed utterly unconcerned. “I take it, then, the storms here aren’t dangerous? Beyond the usual, I mean.” When he glances back at her there’s a soft concern in his gaze, less for her answer and more for what she might think of him – perhaps here it is unheard of, for something darker to lurk in the heart of a storm. Perhaps here there is no feral magic, no rift waiting to split a world apart. He doesn’t know what it means, that he would both be relieved and sorry to hear it were so. @Florentine