A S T E R I O N
in sunshine and in shadow*
He relaxes into the background, content to marvel at the gypsy-king’s clear ease as he set to work amid the bottles. The hearth fire was always burning, here, though it had been banked low before Riechenbach set to boiling water; the glint of the flames set the stallion’s coins to even more gleaming, caught his eyes and made them shine like stars.
Asterion wonders what it would be like, to have that kind of casual command – to be as comfortable here as holding court, or on the battlefield, or dancing at a festival. Has he ever been so confident anywhere? (Yes, he thinks, wandering, alone, under strange constellations.)
Maybe he will, in time.
For now he only takes it in, the rich-warm scents and the deep rumble of the other stallion’s voice. He nods in agreement as he accepts the mug, but his expression is considering.
“She’s strong,” he says quietly, but the volume of his voice belies the strength of it. “Stronger than she looks, I mean, with all those flowers and her kindness and…everything. The place she came from before this…” he trails off, thinking of what she’d told him of the riftlands, thinking of what he knew of Ravos. Of rogue gods and diseased dragons and how you couldn’t trust the ground you walked on. It had felt like living in a dream that could dissolve at any moment into a nightmare.
But ah, the magic! Bittersweet as saltwater, fizzing like starlight in his veins.
“I don’t know which place is stranger,” he muses, half to himself, though his gaze moves up to meet the king’s, his the dark calm of the space between the stars, Reich’s like silver moons. “There, with its monsters and mad magic and gods that walked among us, or here, with all of this.” He shrugs a dark shoulder at the room, the world, and takes a tentative sip of the brew.
And then sputters and the bitter taste and the burn down his throat, and laughs at his own coughing. “Maybe this one,” he allows, and his expression relaxes into a grin.
--
When he leaves some time later, as the first pale fingers of dawn light begin climbing up the battlements, it is still wearing a smile and a new sense of ease.
@Reichenbach tag
