A S T E R I O N
in sunshine and in shadow*
How similar they were, if only they’d known. Asterion had always been too much a dreamer, chasing down fairy tales, watchful for knights and monsters both. He had found neither of them, so far. As for Novus – yes, it has castles, and courts, and lovers and queens.
But to him, imagination always outpacing him, Novus is no greater a story than a star-haired boy, shipwrecked on a beach, with a smile that caches and keeps.
“A boat! You’re brave. And lucky that it didn’t break earlier,” he says, turning serious at the last before shaking his head as if to drive the thought away. Asterion cannot bring himself, in that moment, to look back out to sea and imagine being in the midst of it, lost and alone, and then to have –
ah. No; he is too young, yet, to consider such tragedy.
He is glad for the question, then, and to focus again on the cold. “Ossian,” he repeats, and smiles back at him. He likes the sound of the name, which to him is like the sea-foam rushing up onto the sand, retreating again in the same breath. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I am Asterion.” A good name for a dreamer; his mother had been so in love with the stars she’d worn them on her skin.
Another breeze sweeps in off the sea and it reminds him he has a task other than standing here, thinking of foolish things like names of foam and stars. He jerks his chin, indicating the cliffside up the beach, speckled with nesting birds and striped with layers of rock. As they make their way toward the rough shelter, a small colony of sea lions eyes them with bobbing heads. Asterion remembers when they and the sea gulls made up his pretend enemies in a long-ago colthood, and he huffs a good-natured snort their direction.
He wonders if they recognize him at all; surely he is a more familiar site than the striking, star-haired boy he’s with.
The last of the sunset is fading, now, and it’s dark this near to the base of the cliffs; the best light there is comes from Ossian. Asterion is almost lost in the dim, save for the small star on his forehead, but his new companion looks like the outline of a ghost with his burning eyes and corona of hair. The bay slips between a cleft in the rock, and immediately the wind dies away. Even the noise from the sea is hushed, here, and though the split continues back into a proper cavern, Asterion stops just a few steps into the mouth, careful to leave room for the boy.
“Well,” he says, and for a moment can think of nothing more. He is unused to rescues; more often he is the one to be found. But his mind is always full of questions, and he softly asks the first. “Did you know it was here you were headed?”
@Ossian he is too cute!
