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

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* There was once a time when Asterion longed for nothing more than to meet a dragon in his den. His was a boyhood stuffed with dreams of heroes and villains and gilded knights, of skipping from one adventure to the next like a smooth stone across the water. It was a natural yearning for someone born somewhere both safe and solitary. When he could deny the begging of his feet and his heart no longer, he’d left and never looked back. Now here he was, a young man on a quest far from the ones he’d envisioned. Even so he could feel the hunger in him, the want for more prickling in his blood, and he is beginning to lean over the desk when Isorath directed him once more to sit. Asterion sat. The sensation surprises him; it is nothing at all like bedding down in a bed of wild, coarse grasses along the sea or wildflowers in a glen. This felt like reclining on a cloud, but warm and sleek. He manages not to exclaim anything, though his surprise is briefly written across his face. It’s gone by the time he looks up, watching the kirin do tidy and efficient-looking things with the steaming liquid. “You just must be very busy,” he says, though he has no actual idea what a Sage does. This space suggested being far more involved than his own little corner of Denocte. Where Isorath smelled of incense and the leather-musk of books (and other things, things Asterion had no way to place) the bay still smelled of pine and wind and early winter. His dark ears tip forward at Isorath’s admonition, not half so sure himself. Not so long ago, a black-and-silver unicorn with a horn like a rapier and a laugh like a storm had promised to teach him to fight – and that hadn’t come true, either. Still, disagreeing seems like a bad way to begin, and so he meets the kirin’s gaze with a nod and a smile. “Under your teaching I almost believe it,” he says, then tilts his chin back toward a book, near enough for the musk-and-paper scent to tease him. His breath ruffles the pages. “What is this one about?” He hopes fiercely that it is a tale of knights and kings and wild things, though likely it is only a ledger of goods. Things were often much more in his head than they turned out to be on paper - so to speak. @Isorath