[AW] promise something good for me;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow*  It was a brisk autumn afternoon, the light falling fast to evening, and Asterion is missing the sea.   He hadn’t thought he would. The twilight bay had spent a good part of his life trying to divest himself of his ties to the ocean; he’d grown up along a quiet shore racing sea-foam on the sand, dreaming of bigger, wilder things. Now he missed those ties, missed the things that grounded him and made him belong. His heart had always cried excelsior! and so he was a pilgrim, always alone.   Here, though…here, he could already feel others like roots, twined around his heart. It is too much, even if it is good, and so the boy breaks away for the coast.   The winding path to the cliffs reminds him of Novus – a little wild, a little lonely, filled in with the low sound of the wind and the high, thin crying of the gulls. It feels good to work up a sweat with the day this cool, feels good to tire his muscles and give his mind a chance to wander over all the…discoveries. It’s difficult to believe it’s only been a week since he arrived here; so much has happened.   Asterion is neither surprised nor particularly sorry to find he is not alone in his walk to the sea. At first, he thinks the gold-and-cream is Florentine, but it becomes very clear very quickly that he is wrong. The bay hesitates for only a moment, salt-tinged breeze tugging at his dark hair, before continuing on. He makes no effort to disguise the sound of his hooves on the path, but it’s hard to say what there is to hear above the distant crash of the ocean, the whine of the wind.   “Hello,” he calls, the word as much question as greeting. His smile is soft on his dark lips, but there’s no worry in his eyes. This does not seem like the kind of place bad things happen; if there is magic here, it is not the unpredictable, feral kind he knows. “How’s the view?”   As he approaches her, he does not consider that it is man, as much as magic, that must be treated cautiously.  For @Maude and anyone else!