A S T E R I O N
in sunshine and in shadow*
Asterion is unused to being looked at so searchingly, much less by eyes that burned like flame in a face so dark. The effect makes him feel off-balance, and he thinks that this is how he must have looked at Aislinn, the first time he met her beneath the moonlight last summer. Still, he makes himself hold the stranger’s gaze until he responds.
He thinks nothing of the way the stranger stutters, attributing it to the cold. Asterion had come from a place bordering on tropical; it was a wonder to him the colt was standing at all, much less speaking.
“This is Novus,” he answers, soft as the sweep of sea-foam over sand, and searches the boy’s face a moment longer before following his gaze to the cathedral of stone behind them. “More particularly, you’ve found yourself on the cliffs at the border of the Dusk Court.” The name of it still sounds strange in his mouth, as airy and pretend as a sand castle.
Courts and kings and queens, festivals and elegance – maybe he should have found it romantic. Maybe it should have appealed to the part of him that has always loved stories of knights.
He does not wonder what a hero would do, here; he already knows what must be done. “We must get you dry,” he says, turning his attention back to the boy, unable to keep his eyes from wandering once more over the seafoam-colored hair. I reminds him once more of Aislinn, and quickly he pulls his gaze to the burnished eyes instead, startlingly bright in his dark face. “If you think you can make it, my home is a few hours’ walk, and is sheltered and warm. There are healers, there. Otherwise there’s a cave just down the beach – we could at least get out of the wind.”
As he waits for a reply, it is his turn to drink in details, to search him the way one would a wonder – even in this land of armor and weapons, scarves and necklaces of coins, wings and horns and scales, he has never seen anyone quite like this. For the first time, he wonders just how the boy had arrived on these shores in midwinter. “Did you – did you swim here?”
@Ossian sorry this took so long! forgot how to write.
