[P] we're not meant for history;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* I don’t know she says, an echo of his own thoughts, and his heart seems to sigh, to tremble like a boat on the water. Oh, just a little wave, just a little swell; there are far more dangers, above and below. But at least neither of them are alone. Yet that is not where Florentine ends. She goes on, her eyes ground-steady on him, and at first a dark-rimmed ear twitches her direction before the words themselves catch hold, sink in. Surely his surprise, then, is a comical thing: his jaw goes slack, his dark eyes go wide. “Me? But I –” I don’t know anything, he wants to say, but he closes his teeth on it. He is a boy no longer; isn’t that what he’d decided, there by the sea with Eik? It was time to become a man; he’d been painted in Vespera’s colors, and some traces of them cling to him still. They are whirls and lines on his side, circles of gold and dashes of turquoise, and he thinks, too, of the tattoo on Aislinn’s neck. Yes – he is a man, now, and a man does not make excuses. So Asterion pulls himself straight, just for a moment, and stands as tall as the lion-hearted unicorn that still stalks his dreams, sometimes. “I’ll do the best I can,” he vows, his voice so level, his face so grave. A graveness she mocks, so that he wrinkles his nose and huffs a breath her direction, before reaching over to lip at a flower. But for all her jesting, a pang rings within him, echoes dimly in his heart. He wishes the compliment would warm him, but instead that sadness, older than him, returns. “I hope I do a better job of staying.” As soon as he says the words, voice soft and low and almost bitter, he wishes he could take them back: Florentine has always made clear her love for Gabriel. Her love for everyone, really; he envies her for it, even standing as they are now, discussing the fallout from such love. Had his father felt that way, leaving Aridela? Conflicted? Then he shakes his head, brusque, pushing down all those tangled thoughts of jealousy and want and useless wishing. It is old history, buried beneath years of other things; a shipwreck. It is here that matters, and now. He wishes she would laugh again. He wishes it was still last night, and none of this had happened, and none would. But those were a boy’s thoughts; he knows that now. “Of course you are,” he says, and offers her a smile. “You’re very brave, you know. I admire you, and I am honored to do…whatever it is a Regent does.” Then he does laugh, because it suddenly seems so absurd, that he should be here, that he should be anything but a boy on a quest for dreams. This is a far cry from the adventures he’d envisioned in his youth. @Florentine