asterion*
“There are many games, I’ve learned,” he answers her, and if his tone turns a little dark with memory it is because he remembers another summer night, not so long ago, and a gathering not so different than this one. Only there had been a kirin, then, white and gold and searing with cruel laughter in his eyes, and Denocte had been led with a different ruler, one who wore the darkness more like a weapon than a cloak. And a pegasus, with stars in her eyes and hair like snow-fall, and when he thinks of her he thinks of saying love.
Asterion’s guilt is gone, washed clean by time and all the other things that have befallen him. With it is his anger, and his sorrow, and the tangle of feelings he could never cut through - but he remembers all the same.
“Queen Isra is a storyteller,” he says to the stranger, and though the words sound almost like a defense there is only wonder in his eyes as he turns again to look across the night. There is moonlight on the water, and firelight on the shore, and starlight all above; it is high summer and wonders are waiting. So he believes, so he tells himself. “The best stories never concern themselves with reason.” Now he smiles at her, though he wonders when the magic of it all will fade - a week, a month, or with the first silver touch of dawn?
The bay listens with all seriousness as she describes what a mask ought to be, as though their discussion were a grave thing. Still, there is a smile faint across his dark mouth, even as he lets himself be lulled by the richness of her voice. Ah, a hundred things might hold him back, but a mask could never ease his fears of failing his people. “Are you often different, then, than as you are now?” he asks her, with the catchlight of the moon in his eyes, with the sound of the water sighing at his back.
Her step nearer is not unmissed, the whisper of silk on wood and the scent of her drifting nearer, sweet incense from the desert. But Asterion says nothing of it, only turns his head toward her own, and it is as though they stand before a raised and waiting sea.
But there is nothing but peace around them, and only merriment on the shore; what is it, then, that has his blood running so hot, his dreams growing hungry? At her question he tilts his head, considering. “Nothing,” he says first, and then grins wryly. “Or at least nothing I expect to find. Perhaps just peace - a sense that the worst is over. That we survived, and can find joy in our survival.”
It sounds so foolish to him, so unlike what he sees in himself, that he laughs and shakes his head. Unlike her careful coiffing his own mane is careless and tousled, the wind its only comb; when he laughs he is a boy again, and not a king. And then he looks at her, and reminds himself that the night is not for contemplation, alone by the water.
“And what do you look for? Surely not lonely and underdressed men who have forgotten how to celebrate.”
@Vendetta
