It’s an unusually cool summer day, and the rain patters gently down, beading drops on the wild roses and quieting the world to a murmur. Songbirds still trill from the cover of the trees and the sound of the king’s steps is muffled on the smooth round stones of the path.
Asterion has never cared for summer the way he has the border seasons, but he does love days like this. The capital is sleepy in late afternoon and his gait is easy and untroubled as he turns down a winding street. At the end of it the hill slopes away to prairie and all the way is bordered with rows and rows of flowers, vibrant against the muted sky.
He’s smiling by the time he reaches the door, over which flowers in all shades of purple and pink cascade from an archway, a waterfall of blooms. There is a leather pouch slung against his shoulder and within is a cornucopia of teas and spices from across the courts and over the sea; such things he has never quite gotten used to, but he hopes the recipient will appreciate them. Perhaps next time he will bring her seeds and flowers from across the world; if anyone could make them bloom, it’s her.
The bay stands at the door as the rain falls around him, never quite touching a hair on his body; his magic, he has found, has more useful applications than he’d ever considered. Normally he wouldn’t mind the wet, but it seems rude to drip on a friend’s floor.
It is a day that Fiona truly enjoys: soft rain, a cool morning.
She is pushing the last of a jar of baking supplies back onto a shelf in her kitchen and wiping down the counter. There is nothing that could make a day such as this any better except for freshly baked goods. Truthfully, a fresh baked good can improve any day if you ask her.
The cinnamon rolls are stacked upon a cake plate, the icing drizzled over them still cooling as she finishes cleaning up. Fiona thinks once it has stopped raining she might take them to the hospital, surprise Atreus, the doctors and the patients with them. Perhaps she can put a smile on their faces.
She’s just about finished when she hears the knock, and Fiona cannot help but smile when she opens the door to see Asterion standing there. Remarkably dry, she might add, despite the rain. Her lilac eyes brighten as she steps aside to allow him room to enter. “Asterion,” she says his name gently, so as not to startle him when it brushes its way into his thoughts.
For a moment, Fiona almost reached for a paper and pen, though she managed to catch herself. It’s a reflex now, she’s discovered. After years of communicating over written text, having a different way to talk—to be able to almost speak at all— is very strange. But every day she gets more used to it.
“You're just in time, there's some fresh cinnamon rolls in the kitchen,” there is spark in her gaze as she waits for his reaction, closing the door behind him and hushing the sound of rain to nothing more than a soft murmur.
He isn’t sure what catches him first; the scent of cinnamon rolls, fresh out of the oven, better than any smell he might have imagined as a boy - or Fiona’s voice, saying his name.
For a moment he is too surprised to enter. It must have looked comical, the way his dark eyes widened, the surprise on his face that quickly shifted to happiness. And then he’s grinning, ducking his head to her, stepping inside the warmth of her home.
“Fiona,” he says, out loud, but his eyes speak more: How? they ask, and I am so happy for you. It might have been stranger, but the oddity of it doesn’t cross the king’s mind, now when Eik has communicated with him much the same way. Anyway, he’s a man who has always lived half in his thoughts; to have a friend join him is not so peculiar as it might have been for some.
He searches for something to add, then, but by this time he is grinning like a fool and most sensible things have run out of his head. Soon, he hopes, he will hear the story of it - but for now it is enough to hear her voice. When it comes again, he flicks an ear toward her, though there is no sound but the rain and their breathing and she has not moved her lips; habits were hard to break for them all. His expression turns more boyish then, and he shakes his head with a laugh before stepping toward the kitchen. “Have I told you before how wonderful you are?” he asks, and touches his muzzle to her shoulder as he passes.
It is a different kind of wonder he wears as he regards the plate of rolls, their warmth and scent both filling the kitchen. Normally he still clings to the foods of his upbringing - wild alfalfa, and bluegrass, and all things that grew wild and untouched. But there are a few things of Novus that he would mourn deeply if he lost them, and here was one.
But the king restrains himself, if even just for a minute. He turns back to the paint, noting how similarly she was colored to the flowers outside in the soft summer day, and passes over the bag of teas and spices. “I brought some things for you,” he says, and his grin quiets to a smile as the rain patterns the window and taps on the roof. “And I think perhaps you have a story for me?” And his eyes are gleaming as though pricked with stars.
The smile on her face broadens, cannot help but stretch and pull at the corners of her lips at Asterion’s initial reaction. Fiona dips her head to him, too, as he finally steps within the warmth of her home and leaves the world outside to its soft summer morning. His expression is so boyish, so full and wide and it reminds her of wonderful things.
Of magical things and childhood and her shoulders shake in what would have once been a silent laugh, but now it is accompanied with the gentle sound of her laughter, dancing in that nowhere space between their thoughts. Oh, Fiona can sing her happiness, her joy, she can laugh with the ones she shares her time with. She can voice her love, for she so deeply cares about so many. And know it they might, but to be able to tell them… She only wished her father were still around so that she might be able to tell him.
“I am never unprepared for guests,” Fiona responds in kind, still smiling, as he brushes past and she follows him into the kitchen. “Would you like something to drink? I have a pomegranate tea chilling, or water if you prefer?” She pauses, adjacent to him at the island when he passes her the teas and spices. Her lavender gaze browses the parcels with great joy and she can already imagine all the things she might make with them.
“Thank you, Asterion; I will think of you when I use them,” she says, and holding them gently as a precious bundle—any gift, given of the heart, is of course—turns to set them upon the counter behind her. At his prodding, she laughs again, a soft, musical sound. “The mystery is wearing off, then?” Fiona asks, turning back toward Asterion with a half-smirk.
She sets a napkin before him, for the rolls, and then her expression grows more fond as she remembers. “It was during the gift exchange, this past winter,” Fiona remembers how she had released that pressed flower, golden petals with a deep obsidian center, over the cliffs. Not so much as a wish, but in gratitude.
She is so thankful, so fortunate, to have Atreus in her life.
“Atreus asked me to meet him there, at the top of the cliffs. He had a little bottle full of a blue liquid,” she stops here, thinking about the tiny vial, “From the appearance it reminded me of healing potions or potions of youth from fairytales… it tasted horrible however.” She shook her head, a smile turning up the corner of her blush lips.
It had tasted bitter, and bland, all at the same time, and had lingered in the back of her throat for a very long time. “But, however he made it—whatever it was—after awhile I was able to speak,” Fiona shrugged a little sheepishly, eyes bright, “Well, sort of.”
The sound of her laughter, merry and soft as the brook that weaves through Susurro, is more welcome and lovely a sound than the rain as it welcomes him deeper into her home.
It’s a lovely kind of wonder that wells in him each time she speaks, even as his gaze drops by habit to look for the pad of paper Fiona always kept with her. How much stranger it must be for her to not always reach for it; the king wonders if she’d always known how her voice would sound, or if the tone of it had surprised her.
“Tea sounds wonderful,” he says, and as she busies herself in the cozy, warm space of the kitchen he takes in the room, smiling as he remembers the boy he’d been and the shock such a room would have brought him. How strange it seems now, to think of a life lived in the wild, and so often alone. Now he can hardly remember what it was like to be lonely.
Her voice, that warm, strange echo in his mind, prompts him to lift his eyes to her, grinning at the expression she wears. “I’m too impatient for mysteries.” About as impatient as for cinnamon rolls - as she sets down the napkin he takes one, pausing a moment to enjoy the scent of it, thinking he ought to bring Moira to try them (and how sweet a thought that is, too.)
But as she begins her story the bay is attentive, dark ears pricked (though of course her voice does not travel through the air) and dark eyes soft as the clouds outside. How well he remembers those winter nights, the heat of the fire a barrier against the cold bite of the air, the warm hall where the people made art and Moira came -
Perhaps it is only because he is thinking of the pheonix-girl that he notices the tone of Fiona’s words when she says Atreus. He still knows so little of the man, but if he could make the lavender paint’s voice brighten so, it spoke well of him.
By the end of her story he is smiling, too, and reaches out to touch her cheek. “I’m glad it was worth the taste,” he says. “What a wonderful gift, and one so well deserved. Does it still feel strange?”
Fiona takes a moment between words to pull a glass down from an overhead cupboard and to take the pitcher of tea from the fridge. It’s a deep ruby red color, with a few slices of lime and some pomegranate seeds floating around inside the mixture. She tops off the glass and pushes it across the counter toward Asterion. The bright acidity will pair nicely with the warm and sweet spice of the cinnamon sugar inside the rolls.
When her story is finished and Asterion reaches out to her, Fiona smiles. Her cheeks warm in humility at his recognition and she thinks a moment before responding. “I’m still getting used to it,” she says, “sometimes I want to reach for my notebooks and my pens; I’ve carried them with me for my whole life.”
In a way, the lavender woman almost misses it. The leather bound tomes have always been a comfort to her, like a constant companion that was always by her side. “At first I was worried that others would think differently of me, that I’m different without my struggle,” Fiona laughs a little at herself. She remembers her conflict that night to decide whether to drink the small potion or not. She remembers thinking of her mother, but now she knows that none of that matters.
Fiona is still herself, and the mare believes more than that, that now she does things just a little bit differently than she had before. If this helps her better in a crowd, or when she’s attempting to multitask, then she is extremely grateful for it. “If it can help me care for the ones that I love, then it was very worth it,” she says at last with bright lilac eyes. If it makes her a better Champion of Community, then so be it. Perhaps it was destiny all along.
The pomegranate tea is cool and tart against his tongue, a reminder that it is summer still despite the rain outside. Somehow, he gets the sense that Fiona’s cottage is always like this; a little haven away from time, cozy despite the season. The grief of losing her former home must have been unbearable, yet she had not withered. To Asterion that embodied the unique strength of his adopted court - always without complaint, soft but resilient, forever blooming again.
“That must be a hard habit to break.” The bay glances sidelong at her, the hint of a grin at the corner of his mouth. “But I hope you still keep them near. It would be a pity if you drew less. Unlike myself, who would be doing a favor to everyone by never picking up a quill again.”
Any hint of a smile fades when she continues speaking, despite the laugh that follows, soft and round as water falling from the petals outside. He almost interrupts then, and is glad that he waits - for the Champion proves once again why she is so vital to Terrastella.
When she is finished speaking (or whatever it ought to be called - when the lilt of her voice has faded from his mind) he catches her eye. “Fiona. It may have helped you become who you are,” (patient, he does not add, and wise, and kind above all) “but it’s only a part of your story.”
He almost touches her again, then; instead, with almost boyish shyness, he ducks his head back to take another bite of cinnamon roll.
“I hope another part of it includes my tasting more of your baking,” he adds, and polishes off the rest of it with the ravenousness of any young man.
Asterion’s gaze strays to the window. Outside the rain is still sliding down the glass, each drop racing the one before it. Just because he’s curious, just because he can, Asterion reaches down and down into the magic inside him and thinks slow. And the rain answers him, slowing, stopping, a patter on the leaves and then nothing at all.
His smile is faint when he turns back to the mare, struck not for the first time by the softness of her color, like a dusky sky caught with clouds, and thankful for the bright shine of her eyes.
“Thank you for letting me interrupt you, Fiona - it’s always a pleasure. I’m afraid I can’t stay; I promised to meet Flora near Tinea.”
And he had a feeling by the time he got there the sunlight would be breaking through the clouds.
“My art will always be a part of who I am, words cannot replace the way that art makes me feel, or allows me to express myself without them,” Fiona responds with a smile, and cannot help the gentle, bubbling laughter like a spring brook, at Asterions self-deprecating words. “You have many other talents, even if the arts are not one of them, rest assured.”
His kindly spoken words bring a warmth blooming to her cheeks and she tucks her chin against her chest, rolling her shoulder lightly as if in a shrug. It is only a part, of course, but it has been such a large part for such a long time of her life. Fiona knows she will grow more used to it as time goes on, it has only been a few months after all.
When his eyes wander to the window, hers follow. And neither speak, only look on, as the rain slows and slows, and eventually, stops. The champion is reminded of how Asterion had been completely dry when he arrived at her front door and turns back to him with knowing, sparkling look in her eye when he stands to go.
“Please, take one to Florentine on my behalf,” she says then, carefully wrapping a roll within a napkin and tying it off before handing it over to him. “And I hope you know that you are never interrupting. My home,” and here, she laughs a little, “and my kitchen, will always be open to you, Asterion. Have a wonderful day.”
