in sunshine and in shadow
Time freezes as the king and emissary speak.
Asterion does not realize that the sun has not moved the breadth of a hair in its track across the sky; he does not realize that all the insects and birds are falling silent, that the only sound now is the whisper of wind in the leaves. He is too caught up by the girl before him - the wild tangle of her hair, the fire-bright gleam of her eyes, the way she watches him like a woman starving.
They stand on a world of wonders, of magic, and yet there might only be the two of them: he pouring his innermost fears out like water, and her the hungry soil drinking it down. What seeds, then, would grow?
His breath is caught behind his teeth when at last he finishes speaking; his heart pounds like he’s been running. And would it be to, he wonders, or from?- he feels emptier without those words, like they had been a weight in his heart pressing him down, and now he might drift anywhere, blown by her will. Asterion is still unsure what that will might be. For all her pretty words, for all her paintings, he still remembers how sharply she had turned her cheek away.
But Moira does not rebuke him now.
Yet it’s not easy to listen to her tell him all the things he is not; how quickly rebuttals rise to his tongue! That he is too soft, too indecisive - that his kindness is a cover for weakness, a heart afraid of direction. All these thoughts he forces down, to hold her gaze, to listen, to wait -
and all of them wash out like litter with a tide when Moira closes the space between them.
It’s a relief not to have to hold her gaze anymore, and be strong beneath its burning; it feels like home when her wings enfold him, soft and warm against his skin. As she speaks he presses his star-marked brow against the curve of her neck, breathing in the scent of her, the cedarsmoke of Denocte an incense he could pray to. The king listens and lets her words soak into him like water and finds he is thirsty for them, for the hope and promise they offer.
How easy it is to adjust when she tucks his nose beneath his, how easy to shape himself to her presence. Could everything fit together so easily? Here, with their courts as much a dream as the island, everything seems possible. Together they breathe like the sea. Our nations would prosper, she whispers against a fleck of silver star on his shoulder. She breathes words against his skin, warm and soft as summer rain, and even each shiver feels sweet beneath the sound of her voice. When happiness tickles the hairs of his ear he lets go a shaky breath, leaning his body more against hers as if he could sink into her like sun-warmed sand, like foam vanishing to nothing on the beach.
“I see why Isra named you Emissary,” he says softly, with the ghost of a laugh, and flicks his ear against her ticklish breath. “Your words could make a mountain kneel.”
The corner of his mouth where she laid her kiss begins to curl into a smile, and Asterion does not turn his cheek away. When he does withdraw, it is only enough to catch and hold her gaze, to murmur into the space between them. “Tell me I don’t have to miss you any more.”
He still does not notice that the light has not changed, the sun has not moved. And if he had, if this moment was caught in time, frozen like amber to last forever -
the king would not mind.
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