[P] tangled up in blue;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* They’re like children with their asking, mouths shaped with wondering and manes glistening with rain like dew. Her questions tumble forward but Asterion is not perturbed; he may not put voice to all of his but oh, there are so many things he wonders. His head is full of what ifs and whys and it has always been so, since he was a slender foal on golden sand. It was Talia who had answers, who acted instead of wondering. She was like the unicorn, in that way; they would always leave him behind.  But this golden girl, smelling of flowers and sodden with rain - he thinks he might understand her, in a way. Theirs is not cold steel or hard gold. It makes him wonder (always he is wondering) if perhaps it is not such a bad thing, to be softer, to be sturdy.  “It was water-magic,” he says, and it’s almost a sigh. “I came from a place called Ravos, but there was a rift of magic — ” it’s hard to know how much more he might have said, if he’d been allowed to continue. But she gives voice to other things and it makes a soft smile grow on his dark muzzle, even as her question turns in him.  Yes - yes. Of course he missed his magic. But should he not miss it more? Asterion feels a tug of longing, but he doesn’t know whether it’s for the magic itself or for the fact of missing it. He is not his father - he does not have enough experience to distinguish between guilt and loss.  Or maybe it is simply both.  “I never felt like it quite belonged to me,” he admits, and there are a thousand reasons why. He’d wanted something different, something more - not something reminiscent of the ocean he grew up alongside, safe and known. He’d wanted storms, not showers. And now he had nothing. This time he knows it’s sorrow that settles like a stone, somewhere deep within him.  My father she says, and he watches transfixed to see the shape her face takes. Her eyes and her mouth say different things but they both read love. It is his turn, now, to feel something like jealousy, even as she talks of his angst. Even the way she says is (his father has always been a was, to him) stirs something low and sad in him. When the topic moves on again, a smooth stone skipping on a lake, the ripples of that sadness linger and grow.  And again they mirror each other, as she falls still again. He can’t help but nod at her words - yearning and roam feature frequently in the vocabulary of his own heart - but he also understands the feeling of being grounded, of something calling you to stay.  A late-storm raindrop rolls down his nose as she returns to talking of her father, but he doesn’t shake it off. He is too busy searching his memory, for hadn’t Aridela spoken of ice? Hadn’t it been strange, to her, that a man so red could be so cold? The star-painted mare had never said much of him, had deftly defied Asterion’s begging of tales until he’d given up the asking. And still she talks with present tense, as though he’s out there somewhere, as though they might be reunited.  “I never knew mine,” he says softly, as though to give the words too much weight might make them shatter. Then even the small pieces he did have might vanish. “He left before I was born. My mother only said he was red, and rarely laughed. But I didn’t get my magic from her.” For too long of a moment he lets his thoughts roll and build and begin to shape a new question, the most important question -  but then he shakes his head, forcing it away. His hopeful heart couldn’t stand the answer to it, even before it was fully formed.  The clouds have worn themselves ragged; the birds are returning to the meadow, singing despite the way the grasses dripped and sighed. He no longer felt like they were in a secret dark place of their own; the spell was breaking, though thunder still sounded low in the distance.  The boy laughs at her question, and lips at her hair, as though he’s known her far longer. It’s a special gift of his, to begin to chase away the sorry thoughts with glad ones - it’s not a thing he inherited from his father.  “I think I’d like to let you pick,” he says, as he steps out after her, the dew a cool kiss against his dark legs. “But my name is Asterion.”  @Florentine