Asterion doesn’t know how she does it – how she can attend a festival with the memory of the last one a shadow on her heart, yet still wear a smile. A true one, the kind that reaches her eyes (though he has rarely seen any other on his sister, his queen).
She is a marvelous thing, he thinks, though as he follows her his dark mouth quirks. If only he had not agreed to her terms for attending.
The bay does not share her enthusiasm. They stand now just within the grounds, near a booth buried in strands of flowers, the scent of them overwhelming even what Florentine already wears. Somewhere, he knows, is Moira, and Cyrene, and Raymond and Calliope – and it is enough. It is more than that.
“Alright, he says, giving in to her gaze on him. Though his tone is serious, though he gives a little long-suffering sigh, there is a hint of a smile in his dark eyes when they meet hers. “You can pick one thing for me to do with you.” He flicks an ear, glancing around at the flurry of activity around them – face painting, apple bobbing, a thousand things besides. His stomach flutters with nerves, with guilt, with worry.
He still finds Novus such a strange world.
“What will it be?” he asks, looking back at her, and the resignation in his voice is belied by the smile he wears.
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She doesn’t know how well she hides it.
She doesn’t know how her brother watches her and wonders too, just how she can smile like she does.
Even Florentine does not know.
Yet she smiles. She smiles as if her joy is a sun that will not set, as if the clouds of sorrow can pass before her and the heat of such a smile will burn it all away.
The Dusk girl smiles because she has to. She smiles because her brother does not, because she knows the shadow of sadness that presses around his heart. It is Caligo’s curse and Florentine knows what it is to be touched by night, to be hurt by stars and moonlight.
So she smiles, to keep the shadows back, to be a flame that will light their way. It is a small light, a small flame, enough for just one lit step – but one step’s enough for now.
One thing. Ah, he relents. That flame-lit smile grows brighter; one step, two. The smile is genuine, the shadows smaller. Maybe she is not as broken as she first thought. Delight sparks in her heart and spreads out like a fuse to the very ends of her being.
These children of Gabriel stand watching the festival crowds together. Asterion the quiet of their father, and Florentine the bravery he never acknowledged. Her skull tilts as she considers her brother. Long limbs take a step towards him, and her jaw rests along his spine. She peers past him to review the festivities, “That was a very foolish thing to have said.” His sister mocks him lightly, her voice a singsong murmur. “I could choose so many things.”
Yet she does not. Even as she looks at them, even whilst she lets the moment drag on as if she considers a hundred things that would make him uncomfortable, she has already made her decision.
Florentine will ask him for only one thing. “Tell me a story about your magic.” She whispers. She could go back in Time, she could steal from him any privacy of his past and watch her older brother grow from a child into an adult. Yet she doesn’t, no matter how much she longs to know him better. Instead she will let him choose a story to tell her. She will let him choose which piece of himself to reveal.
It is not what he expects her to say, but when, with Florentine, has it ever been?
“Oh,” he says, and even in that one syllable his surprise is clear. He had expected a game, or a dance, or something silly, something frivolous, something light. Instead, his thoughts turn back to Ravos, back to the hollowed-out space inside him where once something vital and real had been. Back to wilderness and gods and nothing at all like this fragile civilization.
It is a comfort to have her chin resting on his back, and though he shifts his weight he is careful to keep still as he considers, as he forgets the riot of color and sound around them.
There are many stories he could choose from, and for a moment he almost tells her about Talia – about the firestorm in the desert, the one she had run to, wanting to be swallowed up. About how he had pulled together everything he had and shouted for his magic to save her, and how it had, bringing rain, stifling the fire enough to buy others time to arrive and help. How when it was over, she had still left him.
But it is not the story he wants to tell. It is not a moment he wants to live in any longer.
“There were gods in Ravos,” he begins instead, “and they could be kind or they could be cruel, but always they were insistent on teaching lessons.” For a moment he smiles, whether or not she can see it; his dark galaxy eyes see far away indeed, now, back to No and to Selke and Maaemo.
“Herds were grouped by abilities – water magic, earth, fire. The earth horses lived in a place called Sydan. They had been squabbling over leadership when they should have been working together to rebuild after a fire.” He presses his eyes closed for a moment, remembering the fire’s beginnings – how it had been started by a filly, how Calliope had chased her down so effortlessly, careless of her age or inexperience, and promised her she would have no more warnings, only punishment. How Asterion himself had done nothing, paralyzed by fear and indecision.
When he speaks again his voice is lower, quieter.
“The earth goddess was angry with her people for bickering. She blighted the land – covered it in poisonous plants, plants large enough and hungry enough to eat horses. She bade them heal it.” He licks his dark lips, glances back at his sister. He wears no smile, now.
“I had a friend in Sydan. I had promised him I would return with others that shared the water-gifts I had, so we might bring back the land after the fire. We didn’t know until we arrived what the goddess had done. After we learned – after we encountered one of the plants ourselves – we didn’t know what to do. We’d come to help regrow, not do battle with a jungle.” Oh, if only he knew that one of Florentine’s friends had been among them, then. How grateful he had been, for Pan’s enthusiasm and optimism. He remembers the moment when doubt first began to turn to hope, like a silver veil lifting. Like smoke clearing to a blue-sky day.
“But then I realized we could still work together. We had the earth horses draw the soil away from the roots of the plants, and then we inundated them with water. And then we lowered the temperature of that water until it froze, becoming ice, shattering the roots. The plants did not last long then.” Asterion grins again, and it is a happy thing but a wistful one, too, as he remembers the hum of magic in his blood. Ah, what a gift it had been, to create, to draw water into dry spaces. He had not appreciated it enough when he had it, and he misses it fiercely now.
The bay’s tone shifts, easier now as he closes his story. “Afterward, the earth goddess was kind. She gave us gifts of gratitude, and bade us remember.” At last he falls silent, recalling the scene, the weight of the stone she had gifted him, the look in her eyes for the moment they had met his own. And then he shakes his head, and turns his gaze back to the amethyst of his sister’s.
“But none of it should have happened in the first place,” he says.
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Florentine does not know of a sister; the creature baptized in water and flame. She does not know how that girl turned fury upon their brother and drove him away with words that blistered his soul. Florentine does not know all the ways his sister had scarred him and how, despite it all, he yearned for her still.
Such love, it is something that binds the star boy and his flower sister closer. The only blood they share came from the red, red stallion; a love he unwittingly gave them. It was a love to be feared and a love to be adored.
Flora does not lift her chin from her brother’s spine but leans into him, her weight against his. Her heart is a steady rhythm and her golden lashes are heavy, heavy. Though he does not fill her daydream mind with stories of their long lost sister, he does fill it with tales of gods.
The Ravos he paints is not the one that has filled originally her mind. He redraws it, he fills it with shadows that twist and taint. Florentine might have shivered, were she any other girl. She might have trembled at the mention of gods who built forests of poisonous plants and then bid their worshippers walk.
It is only her petals that stir, and they drift thoughtfully to the earth and wonder when the choking vines might come. In silence the flower girl listens to this cautionary tale. It pricks its warnings along her spine and prods the fabric of her soul.
“And you were there.” His sister muses soft and light and just for him. “I wish I had been there.” And the traveler girl wonders whens he might be able to steal away to cut a window into Ravos. But through her amethyst gaze she watches her brother and knows she might never go. There is a darkness in him as he speaks, but it is a darkness that does not reach her. She will kneel before no god, she would bend time before she lets her kingdom suffer like that goddess once punished her worshipers.
“And if you saw those gods now, what would you say to them?” Ah it has all come to this. For Florentine does not know what it is to love a god, to believe in their love and their power. So the wanderer turns to her brother and asks quite gently, “Do you love them still?” For Florentine knows she could never love a god.
“And I was there,” he echoes, and his voice is low, a thing almost like a shadow that creeps along the ground. It feels now like another lifetime, though perhaps he is just a different man; he had been confident, then, in the stallion he was certain of becoming. Magic had given him no foreboding, and he did not fear the gods – but his time in Ravos had been spent drifting, looking for a way to moor himself.
He had thought it the unicorn, but now that foolish, boyish thinking seems distant to him, too. He wonders at that – that he could be a stranger to himself. He wonders who he might be a year from now.
I wish I had been there, she muses, and at that he chuckles. “You would have liked it. You would have caused havoc, I’m sure,” he says, and smiles to picture it.
But his smile fades at her question of the gods. He steps away from her, the better to catch her gaze. They are surrounded by people, by merriment; a thousand scents and sounds drift by on the easy summer wind, and most of them were foreign to him not so long ago. Asterion forgets Delumine, forgets the summer sunlight, and thinks instead of No and Selke, of Maaemo, of all the mortals he considered his friends. (He does not think of Lysander, as he had not known him in his time, and perhaps this is for the best – it would open too many questions, it would unsettle so many things).
“I never loved them,” he says, “though others did. I considered them…friends. Some of them, anyway. But they were different than us; their powers seemed limitless. I suppose I never thought to wonder what made them gods, because their differences were clear, then.”
He thinks of Calliope, then, and her talk of justice, of righteousness, of tearing down the gods. The bay had not known them to be cruel, the way that she had; certainly the water-gods had done nothing deserving of an uprising. But they’d had power, and the ability to give it and to take it away. Maybe that had been enough for the unicorn. Maybe it should have been, for him.
“I would ask them what gave them the right to judge us, I suppose,” he says, and then he shakes his head, and looks around, and remembers he is at a party.
“Come on,” he tells her, and tugs at a section of her golden mane. “We’re supposed to be merry here, I think, and this is surely not what they had in mind.”
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
She stands with her head upon his spine. Beneath her jaw she thinks she feels the thrum of his blood and wonders how much of it is theirs to share. How long could she stand here beside her brother before she ever felt restless? Does he know the ties she has bound between them? Each one she has spun so tight and knotted even tighter still. She hides every blade from herself and from him. Ah Asterion, your sister might never let you go now – too intense is her heart.
He steps away from her and she affords him this. Her chin lifts as her brother moves and the world is cold beneath her chin, the stars so suddenly far away. Higher than the festival she looks, up to where the moon hangs pregnant and silver. She bathes the world in silver, diluting Florentine’s skin to milk.
Her brother’s thoughts are full of gods – gods he knows and maybe even gods he might once have loved. In the silence between them Florentine watches him. Each expression that paints itself across his face, his sister studies as though it were exquisite art – for what is art if not life?
Asterion answers her then. He did not love the gods and she sighs a breath she had not known she held. It is a small breath, something sad and something relieved. Florentine cannot decide what she makes of gods or monsters. For each are glorious and each are terrible. Each are sinful and each are good. None are transcendent and none are worthy of her worship. So she thinks, so her soul whispers against her heart.
‘Were the differences clear?” She asks with a tilt of her head. “Should we take them now and place them somewhere else – would they be so powerful, so godly then?” Like a child she asks the questions, like a child she expects answers but has none of her own. Like the obstinate she will accept no answer easily. Ah her belief is a wretched and confusing thing.
“I think I would like to believe in a god, or maybe even more. I like the idea, but I have seen too much, I do not know what I would call a god I could bring myself to worship.”
She might has dwelled there. Florentine might have allowed herself to sink into what it means to be a god and their devout worshippers. But her brother does not allow it. With a tug upon her mane he ends their conversation and her lips curl into a mischievous smile, grateful and bright. “Then what shall we do now, brother?” Her eyes drift out into the sea of festivities. “Make merry with liquor or paint our skin until we do not recognize even ourselves?”
He is grateful for her ties, grateful for the ways she has wound them together, even without his knowing. Asterion’s life until Novus was full of knots undone, threads easily snapped. That is why he drifted so far, so long, all the while searching for an anchor he didn’t know he needed.
Has he finally learned she will not push him away, as Talia had? That no matter what he does as Regent she will love him still?
She is easy to talk to (she is always easy to talk to), her gold painted pale beneath the moonlight. Florentine could be a carving of a queen, then, were it not for the flowers that drift and scent the air, or the way her hair stirs in the breeze, or her liquid, searching eyes. All these things are too alive to ever let her pass as stone, however the moonlight colors her.
“They were,” he says, thinking of how No would turn to a pillar of salt and sea-foam, or how Selke could remake the waves and guide the tide. His own water-magic had been nothing in comparison – and it had been a gift, besides. He had seen the gods give their gifts, and had seen them taken away, and nobody else in Ravos had that ability.
But at her mention of removing the gods, his brow furrows, an ear twisting toward her then back, uneasy. Asterion does not like the thoughts of more gods, here, whether they had their power or no. “I do not think they would be. I don’t know what they would be – if they would be more like us – but I think the world shapes them as much as they do it. If you took them out of their world…” The bay huffs a breath, shakes his head. His gaze on her then is dark, but there is a glint in it still, of humor or starlight or both. “I think we have enough to deal with without transplanted gods, sister.”
Something deep inside him shudders and twists, at the thought of his sister playing so with the gods.
For if she could do such a thing, what did that make her?
He is glad, then, to return his thoughts to the party, glad to finish the talk of gods and their whims. It is with relief that he looks on her smile and returns it, before nudging her muzzle with his nose in a gentle push. “Let’s do both,” he says, wondering if he can fake joviality until he feels it. “But the painting first – I shudder to think of what you’d make me look like after a couple droughts of wine.” Asterion laughs, then starts forward, flicking his tail at his sister’s chest as he goes.
Perhaps with enough wine, enough paint, enough laughter, he can forget all talk of gods for the night.
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
Florentine watches her brother, rapt. She drinks in his every word for its wisdom, for the careful thought he gives it. She may be his sovereign, but his place as her older, wiser brother is never in dispute.
Her head bobs, lips pursing as she considers his every word as he considers every thought he puts voice to. They are silent, in their small, private space away from the thrum of the festival.
Florentine gave her brother her every attention, but for one moment, where it slips to a boy with antlers. This would not be her only conversation about gods this night. She was to entertain the idea more, little did she know.
With dark eyes she studies her brother and the stars that dapple his skin. She reaches out to touch one and then the next. Over and over, a thousand stars upon his skin that she locks away in her memory. “I would be lost without you, brother.” And never has she spoken a truth so honestly.
He accepts her offering of painting and her laughter spills like Prosecco between them. “I am sure you are right. Though maybe my drunken efforts will be thoroughly inspired?”
Her brother moves forward, his tail flicking at her chest. With a huff she lifts her head to avoid the flash of his tail. With a laugh she surges on, nape arching as her teeth reach out to nip at his flank. “Come brother, I will race you. You may wish to win, or else I shall have you painted in girly pink and glitter before the night is over and no one will ever take you seriously as a regent again.”
With that the flower girl is gone, leaving only petals in her wake.
