[P] we can weep and call it singing;

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* Oh, how he wishes he could hold to her gods – to any of the gods of Novus. Asterion has no one to pray to, not here; only the stars that shiver from behind their blanket of clouds, driven distant by the rain. Only to the spaces between each breath she takes, each beat of her heart. Such things are not made to listen to prayers, only dreams. But all his useless praying stops as soon as she responds to him. His eyes open again, dark as the sky outside, disbelief and hope warring like lightning. They are words he’s never heard before, words he’s never spoken – words he will carry, now. They will hang in his heart like a silver bell and toll their truth in time with each heartbeat. There is nothing that could keep him from her, now; he is heedless of her healers, heedless of her pain or his own damp sides. He meets her muzzle with his own, breathes a kiss onto the snip over her nose, ghosts his lips along her jaw, her cheek, the hollow above her eye.   Until the nurse nudges him away again, though he can’t say whether it was through a physical touch or a mental one. He only knows that when Aislinn begs him to stay the space between them is enough to make him shatter. “I’m staying right here,” he vows, and does not let his gaze stray from the storm-washed blue of her eyes until they drift closed. Until her breathing softens, and her head droops. Only then does his attention begin to drift to her wing – That is when the whisper catches him. First an ear twists, but Asterion’s attention follows as he turns toward her. He doesn’t realize he’s holding her breath as she speaks; it’s not until the healer herself pauses that it blows out in a gust. A fight. He had known that part of her, wild storm-child, Champion of Battle, but he has never actually associated her with battle. With the violence of it, the physical contact, the pain and the blood. It makes the air sour to think of her hurt, makes something twist low in his belly, even when he knows it is not his place, not his business. His lips are parted but still he says nothing, only listens with need and with dread when the healer continues. She should recover okay - this he catches, holds, tucks away for a time when he is not waiting for the name. Tor. Asterion does not know what he was waiting to hear, but this name is frustrating in the way it does not satisfy him. He knows it only because of his brief time as a Regent – he knows it belongs to the Warden of Day. There is no other association. “Thank you,” he tells her, the words devoid of feeling, but she is already drifting away. The bay does not look after her; his gaze turns back to Aislinn, stilling his own breath to listen to the now-even rise and fall of hers, soft as sea-foam on the beach. He says nothing, only considers the name – Tor – and feels the way disappointment grows in him, spreading its sinister roots. He had wanted to make useful his anger and his worry and his fear; he had wanted some reason for revenge. A direction to point these black feelings, all foreign. But if it was only a battle between them, a warrior’s challenge gone wrong – Then Tor is a name he can do nothing about.   @Aislinn   <3