in sunshine and in shadow
Oh, Asterion has changed – he is different without and different within. The exterior parts are more temporary; he is still colored with paint, whorled and dotted and marked with twilight. Last night it had felt right, but as he walks alone through the courtyard he feels a little silly, like a tapestry come alive, a piece of a moment not meant to carry on.
Some things are better beneath starlight.
The things inside of him, though. That’s where the ground has shifted the most, and a little of it comes through in the weight of his gaze. He understands more today than he did last week, or yesterday morning, and the knowledge is burdensome, not so much an anchor as a yoke. Even so there is first surprise and then an easy kind of happiness when his dark-eyed gaze finds Eik.
The gray stallion stops but the bay closes the space up between them, near enough to share breath, hazy in the afternoon where the aftermath of bonfires still drifts around them. “Hello Eik,” he answers, and his smile is the firmest part of him. Otherwise he feels a little like that day-old smoke: smudged and drifting.
And then a breeze stirs, carrying a scent that hints at spring, a taste like the color of the true-blue sky. Around them his countrymen shake off the lingering effects of the previous night, and Asterion is not like the smoke at all. He is home.
At Eik’s question he can only laugh, though there’s little humor of it, and think of his conversation with Florentine. “Not yet,” he answers. It is a little strange (though there is no reason it should be) to stand with the gray with stone and not sand beneath their hooves, but Asterion closes his eyes for a moment and scents the sea, the salt and brine of it carried with Eik.
When he opens them again, yet again he feels more like a man and less like a shade. Just how see-through had he been, before he was found and grounded by his friend?“Welcome to Terrastella,” he says, and though the word still feels strange on his tongue the syllables roll smooth. It is an easy name to say. “Though I hope you were made welcome enough last night. Did you happen on that honey mead?” He pulls a grimace at the memory, the blurry ache that followed, a feeling altogether new to him.
But it was a better hurt by far than what Florentine had suffered (or, for that matter, Lysander), and his expression sobers quickly. “I’m glad to see you,” he says then, and though his voice is bathed in sunlight his eyes are the same as they were by the sea.
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