A dozen times Asterion has scrawled I’m sorry across a new sheet of paper, black ink like the shadows of limbs across a snow-white page, and a dozen times he has scratched it out again. He shouldn’t waste the ink, he knows, or the paper - such precious things, words captured and put down - but he can’t stop. No more than he can stop looking at the letter she wrote him, the one ending in love.
He doesn’t understand.
What had he done?- except kiss her when she’d already kissed him twice, and assume the way she looked at him (the same way he looked at her, through dark lashes with hope trembling in his breast like a bird) meant it was what she wanted. What had he done, except tell her he did not believe love was a game, and try to put an end to whatever it was they were playing with their glances and their touches and their careful words?
More than anything he feels like a fool. A fool - and oh, how familiar that feeling is, how many times it’s been beaten into him again and again like the flat of Raymond’s blade. Always Asterion feels like not enough, or too much. When he closes his eyes the fire in his room becomes the fire eating up the mountain pass, and the sigh of the sea outside is familiar enough he can picture Aislinn, standing before him, and again he watches the hope in her eyes turn to blame (it was only fair, it only echoed the path of his own heart).
Perhaps Florentine was right - Dusk was not meant to chase after Night. He is a king; what business has he, dividing his attention from his people? What business has his heart, chasing after a phoenix in the dark and leaving soft and sensible evening behind? And it was clear she wanted no chasing - only hours after he’d left her one of the Dusk pages had told him, sheepishly, about the smashed teacup, about the way she bade them never speak his name. All for a kiss, he thinks -
well, there would be no more of those.
Cirrus opens one dark eye, regarding him from her perch near the window. It is late - hours before dawn, hours after midnight - and cold, with the wind creeping in through the imperfect places in the panes and stones. Asterion shakes his head at his companion and she opens her bright beak and closes it again without a word. He does not need her in his head - he already knows what she will say (that there are more and better things to worry about than a bruised heart or a girl who doesn’t know what she wants). He already knows it’s true.
As he goes he feeds the paper to the little fire, and does not watch it eat it up until it is black and flaking and gone.
And then he slips out into the night without cloak or crown, to wander the streets of his autumn city, a dusky ghost across the frost.
king of dusk.
@open | just wanted to get down his Mood (and his mood is Keaton Henson)
The world closed in around her, darkness tucking itself cozily into the folds of her wings on a night that grew endlessly outward. The spaces between her and it stretched on and she could feel the tug of a thought unravel itself as she wandered away from closed-off walls and into the expanse. It pulled her then as it had always done; containing in its singular element a thousand beginnings and endings with no real answer to any questions asked. That's how it had always been, and she refused to let things stay the same. Long had been the travels she undertook for the sake of a sense of freedom, the feeling of anything but the burden of one whose purpose was lost to moot points and dead opinions. Never had doubts been satisfied, never had emotions been felt by a heart that was meant to beat but for one service: to learn of things of past lives that meant nothing to them, the misdeeds and wrongdoings of Gods who may have, occasionally, partook in an act of kindness. She scoffed at them, she, built from a molded desire for greater things, deeming them unworthy of being remembered.
The glow of a moon she didn't know guided a way toward a kingdom she was not part of, long resting behind her the gates of the one she belonged to but didn't yet understand the concept of. The allowance of choice wasn't made aware to her, and alliance was a fickle thing in the heart of one who cared not for gods. Crossing the paths of many who devoted themselves to sightless figures seemed reckless and wasteful, and she would not be one who followed their in irrational footsteps. She was born to hold all the knowledge about them and nothing else, everything they could ever be capable of, and instead she figured it time to learn how to be mortal. But with mortality would come emotions she had never felt, never seen, and perhaps it would be that night with the brokenhearted that she would learn something other than godly things.
The call of the fire in the coolness of the night--a lingering touch of something so sweet, so tempting--drew her closer to the man who only yearned to get away. He seemed to want to leave everything behind while she wished them all to her, the teachings of ideas that were locked away from a young child who knew nothing but what was put in front of her to memorize. All for the sake of--what?--a listless life that would produce empty hearts for the price of a full mind that was useful to none.
The giant-winged girl made way to the flame, until he stopped her. The motion of the fleeing in the near distance pulled her toward him instead, questions laying dormant on her lips. They weren't about him, but instead about her. As the darkened, star-speckled body moved onward and their gap closed, she snapped a wing out to block wherever he seemingly headed; without any meaning, really, for she saw it as the logical way to cease him from leaving her. "Where are we?" The voice was slightly rough and airy, a rounded stone tossed gently across a still pond. Depth-filled golden eyes searched his frame for any clues she should gain. For what, though, she was gaining, she didn't know. "What is your name, and what is your purpose here?" The skull-drawn face was flat, neither malice nor benevolence creased in the features, merely a curious gaze with blunt words.
For a few moments he is alone in the cold. The frost glows beneath the moonlight like the inside of a shell and the stars on his coat are as numerous and faint as the ones above, dimmed by moon and firelight. Even in the city he can smell the sea and oh, he is grateful for that; Asterion blinks his eyes slowly closed, inhales a draught of air cool enough to burn when it reaches his lungs. It feels like forgetting, like burning a word to nothing.
Then he is moving again, his feet swift and sure on the cobblestones, the ringing of his hooves fleeing after like his shadow. Asterion knows each road and alley, each garden secret and shown, and each route from the city to the sea. Only when he is alone like this does Terrastella truly feel like it might be his.
And the king is not alone for long.
He is not surprised to be stopped. What does surprise him is that it is a stranger who does it, snapping out her wing like a lifted hand, and Asterion, ever obedient, falls still. Still enough, anyhow, although everything about him still looks poised for flight - his hooves dance and strike against the stone, his nostrils are wide and shivering, and his eyes are full of starlight and smoke.
If she were a friend he might have brushed past. But because does not recognize her (and he knows so many, now) he straightens, and turns his grieving, angry gaze on her, and tries to assess whether she is a threat. She looks certain in a way he would normally be envious of, and her eyes spark like autumn bonfires toward midnight, and there is a pattern of pale marks on her face that make him think of the Ilati and their bone-masks.
But no Ilati would ever ask where they are, or what the purpose of their king in his own city.
“We are in Terrastella, the capitol of the Dusk Court, in the country of Novus.” The words roll from his tongue smooth as the tide; he has said them often enough, always with the same quiet measure of pride. He offers her no smile, yet, but the pace of his heart is slowing, and his eyes no longer look with longing to the treeline dim at the edge of the moonlit meadow. “My name is Asterion, and my purpose tonight is yet my own.” He watches her, wary now, though the only reason he had answered her thus is because he is so very tired of saying I do not know.
After another beat or two, when she does not move to strike, he settles back and regards her. He is not quite wholly present, but he is beginning to be; yet his heart is still half in his room, burning like thin paper, and half in the wild wood with a chill wind off the sea raking fingers through his hair.
But there is enough of him now to smile, wry and faint as a ring around the moon. “Now, if I may question you in turn - who are you, and how have you come at so late an hour to a place you know nothing of?”
king of dusk.
@Forseti | never apologize. I'm so glad to be writing with you again!
Wrapped around his star-speckled body he seemed to bring an aura of duty in the spaces he surrounded, exuding hesitant regalness, leaking the sense of a burden she didn't understand. What was truly upon his shoulders was the weight of an entire kingdom, one that, in reality, was far from the grandeur of its past; but the past brought tragedy, heartache, and it would seem there, with the two of them and their beating pulses and wayward souls, that same torment would weave its way around their spirits and tug them down with it. She had never felt emotion before--she was a ticking clock, an observant statue--but being there with him beneath the eyes of a knowing moon her chest was tight and she ached: she ached for him with his somber eyes and mournful heart.
She had arrived on wings made of birch boughs and earthen tones, enormous and unusual in their size. They carried an equally fictile body, and pieced together they created an imposing creature who didn't even know what possessing fear meant. She was not afraid of the strangeness of a foreign land, nor those who could potentially cause her harm. She didn't know of hostility, of love--their meanings of course were factual knowledge but to feel them... She didn't feel. Not yet.
In the span of a moment while he heeded her demand to cease his motions and address her their eyes locked: liquid gold and richest of earth's bed sharing unspeakable languages. Would he understand hers? Was she be able to decipher the broken sonnets in his? Their melancholy lyrics were lost in translation, maybe, but she knew something akin to desperation. She knew of the desire for unspoken promises and a hope for more. And maybe that would be enough to tie them there closely in that tiny universe for just a little while.
His stars shone under the twinkling sky as he regarded her like she to him. He seemed startled by her hasty actions, no thought, just reflex. Though it did not cross her mind that perhaps she was out of line, an unknown face to one who noticeably lived there. But she wouldn't apologize, wouldn't think twice of it, for he began to sate her curiosity with his answers. A land called Novus, the Dusk Court, Terrastella. She filed names away, the paths to locations that brought her there, overhead views from flight mapping out ways to get around. The ways he spoke alluded to him being of some importance to the 'Terrastella' since the words alone made him more alive. Asterion, with a private purpose. She nodded once, in acknowledgment, eliciting a slight glance between them. And then he relaxed. Her outstretched wing replaced itself against her earthen side, tucking up neatly beneath the rich maroon cape around her nape.
Then it was her turn. And while his expressions softened slightly her features never changed from its hand-drawn stillness, stoic. Who was she, exactly? She didn't know if she was a 'who' really. She just was. "They call me Forseti." For it was true, the name given by those of a long-gone past still clinging onto her. Named after a god she could never see. "I am searching," she replied back, since she saw no reason for anything but bluntness. Searching for what, though, she couldn't say. So she gave no explanation. "Searching, like you."
Her eyes catch and hold him, bright as fireflies but not half so warm - not the spark of summer but a cool autumn gold, still as a life caught in amber. Asterion envies her stoicism even as he distrusts it, here in the strange cold hours between midnight and dawn, when magic and trouble both were stirring dread shadows across Novus. But there is a part of him glad for it, too - fiercely and shamefully glad for anything to distract him from the ink still wet in his rooms and the ache still tight in his heart.
The bay’s gaze flicks to her wing as she folds it again to her side, and the faint glow of lamplight and stars do nothing to disguise its proud size; here is a woman, he thinks, who might give even Marisol a run for her money in the Halcyon training ring. (How quickly his thoughts turn from love to war, how strange that the latter hurts less!)
When she speaks again, steady-voiced in the winter-breathed wind, Asterion is tempted to arch a brow. They, she says, and it is more than duty that makes him want to ask but what do you call yourself? But he well understands the need to keep some secrets, here beneath the watchful moon, and instead he only returns her nod. “Then I will call you the same.”
What she says next surprises him, though perhaps it should not. He had said nothing of searching - but has he not always been too easy to read, his feelings writ across his face like lines on a well-worn map? He has never been good at hiding; he wears his emotions like an ocean wears waves.
If only he knows what it is he is looking for - other than a clear head and a steady heart and space enough to breathe. Other than the answer to a riddle of a girl for whom his affection is too much, or not enough.
“Like me,” he echoes softly, and considers her for a long moment. His breath clouds the air between them, a small plume of silver, when at last he sighs and shakes his head. “Then I hope you have better luck than I in finding, Forseti.”
Now he steps forward again, not content to linger when each muscle begs to move and fight both the cold kiss of the wind and the cold tide of his thoughts. He half-wonders if she will stop him again with her wing, but as he moves past her he glances back, bolder now in meeting her bright gaze. “It is a lonely hour. Will you search with me?”
Maybe he should press her for answers more satisfying and less vague; for all he knows she is Vespera wearing another disguise, come to test his court again with deadly tasks.
Maybe she should have just let him be, the man with a heart lost in a thought she could never have--at least, not yet, not there with him--and wouldn't understand even if she could have learned of all that plagued him. In all her travels never had she stayed long enough to learn of anything, save the historical elements and basic facts each world had to offer. Already there were so many new things presented her there, just with him alone.
The one she didn't know was a King.
So as their eyes stayed on each other's for moments that turned into a loss of time (his depthless, desperate shine pulling her in, seeming to beg her to just keep looking, just don't let go...), she learned what face 'forlorn' wore. She should have felt almost guilty for interrupting his quest for a thing she didn't know of, but likewise she was on one of her own and at that space where they stood perhaps he was the only one who could help her. The smoke of put-out fire still lingered in the air behind him some ways, and it wasn't difficult to put the signs together: he had left hastily, ruffled hair and sad but wild eyes, coat thrown on to trek through the cool night. She had seen many do it before, and even had done it several times herself when she needed breaks from long, dreary studying without but a minute's rest. But he was doing more than simply meandering outside for quick breath; he was going, and he probably would have kept along his path had she not stopped him. If she could have understood guilt, it was likely she would have felt it then.
Her words had seemed to push him away from her, off to somewhere much further than she could follow. She recognized the look, the small waver in his features telling her that he was thinking of things from the past, into the future, anywhere except where they were currently. They had just met, but she could already tell he was a traveler like her, in a different way. He used his mind, his emotions, to visit previous memories and jump forward into time to fabricate things that haven't happened yet, reacting to made-up scenarios, perhaps digging himself into a hole that hadn't needed shoveling in the first place. She saw no point in pulling up the past--no one could change what happened (not even most gods, or they simply didn't want to); likewise, the future was unclear and save for those who could predict specific events, all that led to that moment was mutable. She would likely never allow herself such frivolous things as 'wishing.'
He seemed to bid her well, and she nodded once in return. With her wings tucked against her sides, the 'Asterion' pushed onward, moving beyond her, and she watched but said nothing. She would not stop him a second time, for really he had already answered her questions. If it was time to move on, then she would do the same. Maybe it would have been better for her to fly back to what had been called the Dawn Court, the area in which she first landed, to stay in a slightly more familiar area until she sorted out her thoughts on where she was. So in a flurry she snapped her wings out, cape billowing as though a strong breeze brushed around it, when his voice flitted to her once again. Curiously, Forseti turned quad-horns to glance at him, ceasing her motions and pondering his words. She didn't know what 'lonely hour' meant--time was an abstract thing, it couldn't feel--but maybe he was really referring to himself with some sort of allusion.
"Do you know what you seek?" She had settled back into line with him, choosing to stay rather than leave. Was he asking for help in his quest, or inquiring if she would look for her own alongside him? There was no inkling of worry or doubt in her breast that his intentions were honest; she had known others that could put on faux visages and turn themselves into things they weren't, but had a sense of honor to him that Forseti saw no reason not to trust. "Where do you go, when you get such a melancholy look in your eyes?" Of course it was quite clear that she meant metaphorically, so she felt no need to explain her questions. She didn't know where they would be headed, but she seemed content enough to stride beside his smaller frame to wherever it might have been.
Asterion hears the soft rustle of the spread of her wings just before he looks back, and finds her poised again for flight. Oh, he envies those proud wings and the way they open the world to her! But it is well that he has never possessed his own, for there would be no hope of him lingering anywhere long enough for it to become home. The king has always had a wanderer’s heart, a dreamer’s heart, but it beats in a rhythm he can no longer follow.
He belongs to Terrastella as much as it does to him.
Part of him wants to watch her fly, to see what those mighty limbs could do - but he is growing glad not to be alone. Even if he can give her no straight answers (except his name, and even that feels half a lie without King before it), she is a distraction from the turmoil of his thoughts, and the cold wind on his face feels less hungry with a warm presence by his side.
So he is glad when she settles in beside him, and does nothing to hide the smile, soft as the frost that would silver the grounds with dawn. They are still the only souls on the wide and leaf-blown streets, save the crickets still singing in the fields and the distant, mournful call of an owl.
“No,” he answers, and there is no sign that the unknowing bothers him. They are traveling a path he knows well, now, one he has trod in darkness and light, driving rain and summer-bright sun, and all the long grasses of the meadow nod their heads as the pair passes by. “But I hope to know it when I find it.” He doesn’t expect to, not tonight, not when he has no name for what he looks for but a way to mend the ragged edges of his heart. The only cure he knows - has ever known - is saltwater and starlight.
Now that they are moving again, now that the empty room with the dying fire and the drying ink is growing further behind him, Asterion feels less like a wild thing. He almost wants to laugh at her following question, for he can imagine his golden sister pointing out his melancholy look - he has never been good at keeping his own secrets, at schooling his expression. At lying at all. “To the sea.” He regards her for a moment, breathes deeply of crisp midnight air already scented with salt, with brine. “Follow me, and I will show you.” He may be a king (though he still sees no reason to tell this stranger as much; they may both keep their anonymity) but the words are still offering, not request.
And when, a moment later, he gives in to the low-tolling pain in his heart, his words are soft and low. “What do you know of love, Forseti?”
Maybe they will each have answers yet, before the dawn finds them.
king of dusk.
@Forseti | we can close here if you like (and start a new one on the cliffs?) or keep going! your call <3
