[P] tangled up in blue;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* The storm has done this, at least: no more does the day feel like a monster’s mouth, the wet press of heat. No; the still heavy warmth has been broken, ripped apart by wind and scattered by rain. The breeze that reaches for them in their laughable shelter among the trees is cool, a damp cloth to the fever-day that had come before, and the clouds roll on and on. The sunset would likely be remarkable; Asterion wonders what might come after it. Perhaps, whatever it was, he would not be watching it alone. That’s enough to draw the smile back like it was summoned, and her words do more to reassure him. He nods, eyes on her and the droplets than run like rivulets down her neck and turn the honey there darker gold. Asterion, familiar with what it was to daydream, does not miss the way her gaze goes faraway. He does not doubt it is no longer this tame-enough sea of grasses she’s looking on; there’s another tempest in her eyes, and he wonders at it. He’s even more sure when she continues, the tone of her voice echoing the small strange pang in his heart to hear things were less…wild. His head has ever been full of starstuff and stories; it is not a stretch to guess that hers might be, too. Indeed, as she speaks of her birthplace he forgets the storm before him in favor of her words, trying and failing to imagine such a tumultuous place. It sounded like the kind of place the unicorn would go, if she had been given a choice. The thought makes him sigh, the sound soft as sea-foam. He feels suddenly less, suddenly small. It’s then that her lament truly hits him: There is something missing. His water-magic, that subtle stirring, the pull of internal tides. “Oh,” he says, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath and closing his eyes. When he opens them again she is watching him, and so he only offers a little roll of his dark shoulders and a half-sheepish look by way of explanation. “Your world sounds….very wild.” He cannot quite keep the note of longing out of his voice; such a silly, boyish thing, to be standing in a storm of one new world and yet be hungry for another. “How did you come to be in this one? And how long have you been here?” A brief pause, only the sound of rain on leaves (gentling now, the storm moving on) before he adds, “and if you don’t mind the onslaught of questions, where is it this is?” @Florentine