[P] give us a little love

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow*   She says nothing in return to his faint words of hope; maybe he should have expected that. Still sorrow tightens his throat when she looks away again, when he thinks of all the words and drawings she has lost that nothing he says can fill up again. But as her pen makes its soothing music against the paper he thinks, unbidden, of Pan - little lost boy, sea-green shadows below his eyes, afraid and uncertain on the cliff. Asterion thinks of the book the boy had shown him, rough sketches of herbs and their properties, and his quest to find others in Tinea. Maybe, with the right help, there would be books again, and houses, and gardens spilling over with flowers like a rainbow river swollen over its banks. It is this thought he comforts himself with when he scans her words again, and his smile widens into something less like a reflection of itself. “I would be honored, and do my best to be an apt pupil,” he says, and his soft laugh stirs the page. But at her next words he only nods, and steps away to give her room to rise. When her nose touches his shoulder he bends his head toward hers like a bough, and touches his mouth to her cheek. Just a ghost of a touch, a breath, and then they are curling away from one another again like flower petals folding on themselves for the night. But her touch - and with it her thanks - lingers with him for a long time after her footsteps have passed from the hall, after the smell of ash has drifted from the air in favor of sweeter smoke. Asterion does not pray, but he hopes, and what he hopes tonight is this: that one day he might be able to give his people more than a balm for their wounds and more than a word for their sorrows. But not tonight; tonight there is only to rest, and it is his weariness he eventually succumbs to, tucked in cushions beneath a window with the bruised night brushing plum-colored against the glass. @Fiona same to you - so quiet and lovely <3