A S T E R I O N
in sunshine and in shadow*
He marvels at how easy she is with the children, how clearly comfortable she is among the jumble of long-legged colts and curly-maned fillies. Other than his twin, Asterion has never been around any so young. The worlds he’d wandered had been strange, sometimes cruel, populated by few enough adults and no children.
Perhaps it is unsurprising that he enjoys their presence, unsurprising that he wears an echoing smile for each of their own.
And then there is the stranger (thought she doesn’t feel like a stranger at all). He is grinning still when she meets his eye, though it fades into something more soft and secret as she continues. You have someone you need to find tonight, don’t you?
“Yes,” he answers her with a nod. He does not ask how she knows; already he’s seen how perceptive she is, though he is clueless to how clearly his wants are written across his face. And then he laughs, soft as starlight, when she gestures toward the children. “Yes, you wouldn’t want such a talented bunch on your bad side.”
A breeze touches the cold, still-damp paint on his sides and he shivers, not unpleasantly, as the blue-eyed girl whispers to his companion. His smile turns almost wistful, watching them, though his feelings are too much a mix (like the paint that marks him now) for him to untangle just why.
The bay nods again at the girl with the poppies in her hair and the amber in her eyes, his smile whole and true. “I’m glad I bumped in to you,” he says, and before he can add anything else the children are gone, a flock of sparrows, and the stranger with them.
And Asterion, weighty with belonging, light with happiness, sets out into the evening.
that's a wrap! <3 can't wait til they meet again
