I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone
or else alone
There is little enough to add, when she speaks of simpler times, and voices her unease for the things changing now. He can only watch her, gray as the sea before a storm, gray as a ghost against the sun-bright yellow of her cloak. He can only regard the ocean beyond, and the forest behind, and the shadow of a vulture dark against the sand, and ask his own heart what roils in its depths.
“I feel like I’ve spent most of my life worrying,” he says at last, still quiet, half to himself. “And so far it hasn’t changed a thing.” If only it was as easy to stop feeling as it was to name futile; if only his own feelings and mind obeyed him as well as the waves now did, or the rain.
It’s a true smile that curves his mouth when she asks of his sister, and for the first time when he meets Seraphina’s gaze his own is clear of darkness and doubt. “Better than I’ve seen her in a long time,” he says, and it gladdens him to remember how they’d stood together as the smoke of the volcano rose like a god’s offering in the distance. “She was born in a world of wild magic, so this feels almost like home to her. And,” he says, hoping Flora will not mind her brother sharing her news, “she’s going to be a mother, soon.” A little thrill goes through him then, an echo of the one when she’d first told him. Asterion knows nothing of children, nothing of being an uncle, except that love for it has already grown up in his heart, wild as a garden.
If only he could have paused in that thought, if the sun had chosen then to freeze and time to sweep them up.
When she offers her advice (and comfort, of a sort) it is Eik that the king thinks of. Of how he and the grey man had stood upon Denocte’s wide balcony, looked over the sea and spoke of magic, of the responsibility that meant power.
He would not have touched her, except that he looks over at the moment of her pause and sees how her eyes go far away. What Seraphina sees is not what he sees, a woman marked by fate more than once with a wild world at her back. It makes him think, of all things, of Calliope, of each scar silvered on her flesh and the way she bore them proudly. The bay can’t remember if he’d ever asked her the story of any, though he knew her before she was given the one that barred her eye.
Gods would take your bargain then cut your heart out anyway.
Asterion touches her lightly, on the shoulder, with the dark velvet of his nose. He breathes warmth onto her skin as though she is Florentine, or Eik, or Marisol, or anyone he loves. And then he steps away again, and a wave rushes up to kiss their feet.
Her tone changes then, and he is glad of it. At her comment his gaze shifts her way, and he leans, quiet, into the cool sand. “I can - they’d be eager to do it, I think. And you are right about the bridge, too. Do you know of anyone? I wonder what’s below the waves - though the only ones who could tell me wouldn’t.” His smile feels foreign when it shapes his dark mouth; he is still a man unused to anger, and to violence. Asterion has never been a creature of sharp edges, no matter what he wished for as a boy; he’s as soft as fog or sea-foam.
Though that is not what the unicorn had told him, before she left.
“I have magic,” he says. “Strong enough, perhaps-" and then he trails away, his ears twisting, too, until he follows her gaze to the iguana.
He watches the sunlight glint off its unnatural gold, and watches each puff of sand become a butterfly. It is not wholly intentional, when he shifts closer to Seraphina, and he holds his breath as he watches the bloom drift out to sea.
“Yes,” he agrees softly, still watching the place where the butterflies have vanished to suggestions of color. “I think we’d better start changing, too.”
@
Asterion.
