[P] oh, I want to learn such simple things;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* The room is warm in every way: the sunlight that gleamed gold and ivory off of the kirin and the rich dark walls, the heat like a balm from the fire and the east-facing room, the unfamiliar smells of bergamot and herbs and something rich and almost seductive that he cannot place. At least his eyes have wandered from the man; he’s in his second, slower pass over the room, wonder writ across his expression, when the stallion’s words catch him. I don’t bite. Asterion would blush, if he could; instead he enters with a flick of his tail and duck of his chin, moving where he was directed although he lingers, standing. Reclining here would feel too…familiar. He might sink into those pillows and become somebody else. He does not miss the barest hint of teeth; it makes him wonder just how honest the previous admission had been.   In a different way, he is as awed as he had been by Calliope, the wild unicorn warrior he had once known. She had struck him from the first with her beauty and her power and the way she moved within the world, as though sure it would shape itself to her wishes. Isorath, to the dark-eyed dreamer, seems just as commanding. And to be able to make sense of the black marks on pale pages spread before him – maybe that was power, too. “I – I would.” His brief hesitation comes not from being unwilling but being unsure of himself; he is just a horse, just a boy. He was not made to read, and live in castles, and converse with men spun from gold and silk. His gaze lifts again, and this time he is caught, momentarily pinned by those pale purple eyes so like and not-like his sister’s. It is strange, he thinks then, that she is a Queen, that it makes her a ruler over someone like Isorath. “If you’d have me,” he adds, and swallows as he glances away. @Isorath  here have a country bumpkin