[P] tangled up in blue;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* The truth of her question catches him by surprise. It isn’t the fact of one being asked; he knows the movement must have seemed strange. But to know, to guess – Asterion laughs, a breathy, brief sound borne more of startlement than anything.     “Yes,” he says, but it takes him a moment to meet her earnest gaze. It’s shameful, that it should have taken him so long to notice; his gods would be displeased, but they usually were with him, anyway. She, he knows, would not have made it a step before knowing. But his magic had always been insubstantial: the stuff of mist and foam, not storms and crashing waves.   Over the scent of the rain, of the acrid lightning, of the damp loamy earth and swaying grasses and whispering, shivering trees, he can smell her. And again he feels it, that strange tug, that familiarity he cannot place. He wants to brush his nose along her neck, wants to bury it in her flower-strewn mane and discover the source of that draw, secret and low beneath the heady scent of flowers.   He has no idea that she wants much the same.   Her words make his heart stutter and his blood quicken, even as she pulls away and he finds he misses the warmth of her. The last of those words snag him and it’s his turn to watch as she looks away, searching the lines of her face as though they might resolve into someone he knows.   “Who?” he says, over-eager, unable to help the question as it escapes. “Who does it remind you of?” His heart is a trapped thing in his chest, and reason tells him it is not his twin, golden Talia, or the unicorn. That it could not be. But he can suppress the hope that rises in him then any more than he could help the question.   His heart does not slow to see the glint in her eyes, the smile that curves her lips. It is not the meadow, rain-lashed and dim, that she is seeing now; he wants badly to know where she is instead.   There are so many worlds out there.   I cut my way here, she professes, and his dark, wondering eyes slip at once to the dagger. Even in the darkness it finds a sliver of light; it gleams, throwing some ghostlight-reflection onto her face. That sorrow – Asterion does not realize that that expression is a twin to his own, that it shapes their face the same way.   There is no disbelief in him, when she names what she is, what she’s done. He can see the truth of it before him, and Asterion has always been an adept believer.   So it is wonder, not doubt, that has him stepping alongside her, has his gaze lingering on hers, as though he can read her features like a map to places he’s never been.   He wishes he had something to say, to offer her. What a terrible loss hers must have been; what a terrible discovery. He had always tried to deny the truth of his own magic; its absence, now, is nothing too terrible.   Or maybe it’s just that he’s too near his father, with his talent for walking away. The moon, for him, is always brighter over the next hill.   Her eyes meet his and the storm-strewn sky makes the amethyst into something dark and shadowed. Suddenly her eyes are a well he might fall into, but he cannot tell what might be at the bottom – starlight or the stillness at the bottom of the sea.   “Florentine,” he repeats softly, trying the name, wondering why it makes him think of sunlight on snow. “And do you wish to leave Novus?”    For the first time, he wonders if he is trapped here, in this land of slow, sleeping magic, this place where the storms are only storms.  @Florentine