[AW] promise something good for me;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* Dead. He thinks, of course, of the rift that had brought him here, and the others who’d gone into it before, and of the gods left behind. Had they leapt, too? Had they wasted away to nothing in an empty land with no one to worship them? Had they simply created more creatures to love them, crafted them from ash and dust and bone and mud? Is a dead god a god at all? Asterion has never been a particularly pious creature; his faith was a fickle thing even after he’d spoken with Ravos’s gods. He wants to tell her that gods can be reborn – it seems like it should be a truth – but he does not want to lie. And so he only edges closer, near enough to offer the deep brown curve of his shoulder, and looks out across the straight blue line of the horizon. He tries to match his breathing with the roll of the waves; in as the water sighs up on the sand, out as it pulls back, leaving foam insubstantial as dream-stuff. When the moment passes, he feels both empty and full, lonely and yet closer to the girl than he had been a few minutes ago. It’s a strange, in-between sort of emotion, and he, too, is glad when the conversation circles to something far less weighty. Perhaps, if he ever makes it to the peak where the Novus citizens worship, he will remember Maude’s sorrow. “It’s the first meeting I’ve ever been to,” he says, and is surprised by the measure of guilt he feels at the admission. In Ravos, his desire for adventure and unwillingness to belong had not seemed at all selfish; now he thinks back on some of the conversations with No, the god’s frustrations with his wandering feet and foolish head, and wonders what he’d missed out on by turning away from community. “I’ve never even lived in a … a herd before. Though that feels like the wrong word for whatever this place is.” The buildings and books and weapons and titles – it makes him wonder if somewhere there are a flock of seagulls who call themselves kings and wear crowns of mussels. It makes him smile – a curve of the lips at his own foolishness – and he shakes his head to chase away the vision. “I’m not sure what to make of it all,” he admits, dark-eyed gaze slipping back to her, and then his voice goes soft and grey as the November sea. “But I have no where else to go.” @Maude <3