hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam
It’s the first time she’s been to sea, since a fair, early spring morning where the light had reflected off the water and the low clouds. It is early summer, now, more than year later and the water is deep and beryl and the sun is low and the sky is soft and blue. There is a warmth to the air that does not seem to reach her, though it nestles itself against her skin.
The sea rolls up the beach to kiss at her hooves, still cold to the touch, and she thinks of all the equines she has met and spoken to on these sands. Samaira wonders if the water remembers them as she does, just the way she does.
The doctor remembers when she could have spent endless days beside the sea, or upon the cliffs near the court, listening to the water rush and crash and sing. Now, she spends all of her days in the hospital, beneath the shadow of the swamp’s thick canopy of trees.
Samaira throws herself into her work and does it with great care, but she does it with great force as well.
The busier she is, the less she thinks about it all.
Not her woeful heart, nor her wings which lay against her sides unused.
Alaunus passes above her, his shadow casting over the ground as he glides on a heavy breeze. It plays in her hair and pulls free a petal from the flowers at her crown, carrying it down the shore. Samaira’s moon silver eyes do not leave the sea, as the tide slowly moves further and further in.
She’s not sure how long she’s stood there, when Alaunus’ voice bridges that gap between their minds. “Someone is coming,” are his words, and the pegasus lifts her head and turns to look, but she cannot believe what she is seeing. Surely, she must have fallen asleep there, by the ocean, and now this is all some trick her mind is playing on her.
There, clear as the sunshine, walks a man with twilight skin. Toward her. Samaira barely manages to pull herself away from where she is standing, barely manages to take one step, and then two. She can see the star shine flecked across his back the closer she gets, the night shade of his eyes.
Nothing feels real, when she stops in front of him and says, “Are you a dream?”
There everything was still a dream - surely it was no waking world where stars were born in great clouds of rose and violet and the ground was the smooth cold of glass. Even Thana was not a true creature of Novus, or a tame one; there, in that swirling darkness and galactic light, she had been more like a harbinger than a horse.
It had still felt like the kind of dream where you might wake up and all the wrongs would have been imagined, where drowsy morning found you safe in your bed with the sun at the window and everything as you left it.
But Asterion has not been such a foolish dreamer for a long time, now. And at last he came to the thick, strange mist that curled at the edges of the island, and stepped through.
It is the kind of summer day he’d learned to love in Novus, the sun warm on his back and the wind cool against his face and neck. Asterion walks along the shoreline the way he always has, and the cold foam rushes up to kiss his hocks, and the seabirds cry and clamor overhead. The bay can’t help the way he listens for one gull in particular, or the way his heart feels heavy and hard as a stone when he doesn’t hear her voice, either in the wind or the pathways of his mind. Perhaps Cirrus is only traveling, too. Perhaps they will both find their way home, accidental wanderers.
A petal tumbles past him on the breeze, as pink as the inside of a shell. For a moment his dark eyes follow it, brow softly furrowed, and when he looks forward again he sees the figure on the beach, a silhouette of a pegasus at this distance. The stallion’s heart stumbles in his chest, more uncertainty, more little-fear; does he prefer to meet a stranger, is he ready to meet a friend? What if, what if - those words have always threatened to swallow him whole, but he is tired of their teeth.
He walks forward, and the figure resolves into a mare with a crown of flowers (minus at least one petal), the color of rich earth, gold marking her like rare treasure. Samaira turns, and he can see the moment when she recognizes him, too, and then the distance between them is eaten up by each until they face each other amid the sun and the surf and the deep blue of the sky.
Are you a dream? she says, and he shakes his head even as he smiles, an expression soft and worn as driftwood, thinking of other conversations treading similar paths.
“Samaira,” he says instead of answering, with all the soft warmth of a summer’s dusk. “No. I am…awake again.” The small dark smile slips from him, drawn out by the next wash of incoming tide. He doesn’t move to touch her, but something in the dark of his eyes suggests he wants to - nose to cheek, shoulder to shoulder. And when he speaks again it is in a low voice that knows it is speaking something the first of a hundred times. “I am so sorry I left.”
hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam
“Samaira,” he says, and her heart stumbles, and trips and falls. She tries to pick it up and dust the sand and the salt off of it, and can feel it fluttering in her chest like a fledgling trying desperately to fly. His voice is perfect, and just the way she has kept remembering it, over and over again, in all of the ways her thoughts have tried to remind her of him.
For a long moment, stretching between them like clouds of silk and candy floss, she can only watch him. Her moon-silver eyes can only take him in, wide and bright and full of equal measures of disbelief and blooming euphoria—a high and comforting warmth she has not known in quite some time.
Samaira can only think of all the times her heart has longed to see him smile, her eyes have wished to look upon his own, her skin ached to press close to his. Now that he is here, she cannot imagine wasting anymore of this precious time.
A breath escapes her, half-laugh and half exhale, a smile turning up the corner of her lips. Tears prick at the corner of her eyes like liquid stars until the pegasus has crossed the distance left between them and pulled Asterion into a close embrace. “My spirit had forgotten its wings without you, Asterion,” she whispers to the air around them. Oh, how it soars again. How she wants to take to the skies and fly.
She realizes too late how quickly the truth has slipped from her lips, how easily. Warmth rises to the woman’s cheeks. Samaira steels herself with a heavy breath and slowly pulls away to look into his midnight eyes. She is but a star swimming in the depths of his gaze, searching for her place in the sky.
“I'm sorry for my boldness, I don't know where it comes from,” Samaira says, dark lashes fluttering against her cheeks. But oh, she cannot take the words back. She would not take them back, not now, not after all this time. You have always been the one everything about me trusts the most, she thinks, and cannot help but wonder if her slip is a sign to finally say all of the things she has left unspoken between them.
It is a relief to see her smile. Asterion hadn’t realized that he’d been braced for anger, or disappointment, until he sees the curve of her lips and something in his chest unknots. A similar sound leaves him, half laugh and half sigh, and when she steps forward he is swift to meet her embrace.
Her words are as soft as the whispering foam, and seem to linger between them. For a long moment he doesn’t answer, only breathes standing pressed against her dark and sun-warm skin, his eyes tightly shut. She smells like summer sunlight, and flowers, and the sea he loves; Asterion smiles against her shoulder.
“Then I have another reason to be glad I’m home,” he answers softly. Though his expression doesn’t change, something about what she’s said makes his heart pang, a mixture of sorrow and guilt. Thana’s warning is a fresh scar in his mind, cold and flashing like a drawn sword - do not find me again, Asterion. He wants to tell Samaira that he’s never been able to keep anyone aloft; that he always wanders in the end, well-intentioned but bound to disappoint. But there is a tenderness in her voice he doesn’t want to bruise, and it feels so good to be held, to bury his nose in her dark mane and breathe in all the scents that mean home.
When she steps away, he is reluctant to let her go. To her apology he shakes his head, a laugh in his eyes, not reading her blush, or the meaning of the intensity in her moon-bright gaze. “I like your boldness,” he says, and a boyish little grin curves his mouth. “I often wish I had more of my own. And it’s a far kinder welcome than I deserve.” For a moment his thoughts turn to those reunions to come - Marisol, Isra and Eik. Moira. He worries there won’t be open arms from any of them, and his expression fades to solemnity.
But Asterion doesn’t want to be solemn, not now, not when her joy was so palpable. The once-king reaches out to touch her cheek. “Tell me how you are, Samaira. I missed you. I missed everything.”
hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam
“I hope there will be more reasons you are glad than reasons you are not,” Samaira says softly into the air around them, as if she is wishing. As if she is hoping that saying it out loud will make it be true. The pegasus realizes she wants nothing more in her heart than for him to stay, and then she realizes, the moment they pull apart, that maybe that doesn’t mean stay here.
But if she could have him, she would have him anywhere, even if it were not on these shores or on the streets they are both so familiar with and yet ever unaccustomed to. Samaira looks into Asterion’s eyes as his lips curl in that boyish smile and her heart warms and settles, like upon a soft cloud, floating there happily.
A quiet laugh escapes her, melodic and light, as he comments on her boldness. “It is certainly not something I practice regularly,” but her moon-silver eyes turn more serious as Asterion continues to speak, “You would not have stayed gone for so long if it had been a choice.” There is no room for doubt in her accented voice, no room for his fears and uncertainties to bleed through. She would not let them in here.
“I’ve missed you too, Asterion,” the Terrastellan doctor responds, a smile forming upon her lips at his touch, “I’ve become a Doctor, at the hospital,” she says, remembering how pleased he had been, once, to hear that she had begun work there. What the earthen pegasus doesn’t say is how determinedly, how endlessly, she poured herself into that work after he had disappeared. She refuses to make room for her aches here, either. “Do you remember the last time we stood on these sands?”
Samaira glances up at Asterion, into his midnight eyes, and her floating heart skips a beat. “I wanted to tell you something that day, and I was too afraid to,” she breathes out slowly and half-smiles. The sea rolls in with a breeze, playfully tugging at the long strands of her hair. “I thought I would never get the chance to tell you,” she leans toward him and tenderly presses her cheek to his.
Closing her eyes, she takes a moment to relish in the warmth of his skin, in the realness of his touch. He is here. He will be here in a minute, and an hour, and tomorrow, and the day after. No matter if it is in Terrastella or not, she will not hold back her desires any longer. Her voice is confessionally quiet, the truth slipping past her lips like an opening spring bloom, “You are the thing my heart has always wanted for.”
“Many more,” he answers, his voice as quiet. It doesn’t feel like a betrayal to say so; the scales are tipped in Novus’ favor, with all his hopes lined up before him. Yet he can’t help but think of Florentine, and Gabriel (it still feels too strange to think of him as father, and the others still in those dark and dreaming lands of the Rift. By choice, he reminds himself, as he has a hundred times already.
And as he has before, he lets those thoughts gently go as Samaira withdraws enough to look him in the eye. Her own look to him like moonlight on water, though his gaze strays beyond them as she continues to speak. The words are a balm to him - but he will not know how much until days from now, when he has made other reunions that are not received with such grace. “No,” he agrees, “I would not have.” The horror at realizing how long it had been is still fresh enough to make him want to flinch; to keep from doing so he looks back to her, his gaze tracing the tattoos etched lightly on her cheek and neck, the petals bright against her dark hair.
His smile at her news is more grounded, his heart and thoughts less faraway. “Congratulations. They’re lucky to have you.” It doesn’t occur to him, yet, how strange it might be to say they instead of we when he speaks of Terrastella. “I do,” he says, and thinks of Alaunus, and of a woman who’d learned to fly again. Of joy, and how simple a thing it could be.
As she continues to speak, Asterion is silent. The wind pulls at their dark hair, fragrant with salt and lilies; her cheek is satin against her own. But the bay notices nothing outside her words, first curious, wondering, and then -
you are the thing my heart has always wanted for.
His own heart stumbles. For a moment he only breathes, watching the clouds drift overhead, his thoughts surprised to blankness; and then he withdraws, gaze level with her own, his smile faded to something serious. “Samaira, I - I had no idea.” He wants to ask, How could you know? How could you be sure? He wants to warn her, Not me, do not choose me - it only ever ends in ruin.
Maybe he should have left it at that, and let her hold onto her happiness. He does not want to be responsible for her sorrow. But Asterion cares too much to lie to her, or to pretend, and each beat of his heart still sounds like Moira.
“But I…I am in love with someone already. If she will still have me, after all this time.” He doesn’t expect the way his own heart bruises to say it.
Samaira could live forever next to him. In this moment, with her skin touching his—soft earth against fading twilight. She could live forever in the rhythm of his heartbeat, which she can feel beneath the delicate skin of his cheek. Hers beats brightly, aloft, flying.
Oh, the pegasus woman would happily forget the world if this moment would only go on endlessly: the moment she finally felt whole once more. He carries the smells of strange places on his skin, but he is still Asterion, who prefers to sleep under the stars and who commands the rivers and the seas.
Perhaps it is Samaira, of anyone, who should have known that what goes up does always come down.
It’s his expression that tells her something is amiss, not that he pulls away to look in her eyes. He is too serious, too solemn, for the admission she has been holding in her heart since he went away. “Samaira, I had no idea,” he says and she thinks no, how could you have.
I have been so good at hiding my heart, she thinks. Until now. Still, the pegasus is waiting. Waiting for the reason the smile has been wiped from his face so suddenly, so completely. And then—
“I am in love with someone…”
She breaks. Like a mirror, in a million star-shine fragments that go tinkling to the ground. It is a beautiful sound, like fairy song, like stars twinkling. It is a terrible sound, the sound of her heart breaking. Again. Again, again, again.
“She is lucky to have your heart,” this, Samaira has practiced plenty in the last year. How to hide the hurt. How to push down the sadness in her moon-bright eyes. There are no stars in her eyes. This she has practiced plenty.
The woman smiles. She wants to be selfish. She wants to say “and if she won’t have you?” Samaira wants to tell him how much she has longed, how her heart had never forgotten him, regardless of how her head had tried to make it.
She wants to cry.
She says, “I hope that you get everything that you desire. You deserve so much.” It’s a burning iron upon her tongue, a million arrows pierced through her wings. A part of her had always hoped—a foolish part—that she would one day get the things that she desired, too.
It is strange, in a way, that for all his years and heartaches he has never been on this side of the sorrow. He thinks now that he would rather have his heart broken a hundred times than watch it happen to someone else, and know it is his doing.
Before he spoke the words her silver eyes had been luminous as the moon. He sees the shadow pass over them. He watches the smile curve her lips, graceful but half-gone. The beach is less beautiful; the gulls aren’t laughing now but sobbing, mournful, a Greek chorus despairing. The ocean sighs at their feet and Asterion wants to sink into its cold and dark.
She is lucky to have your heart. There is nothing he could say to that, not when he disagrees - his wandering heart is nothing but a burden. He smiles too, tightly. Behind him the waves murmur, aware of his turmoil. And when she speaks again they dash themselves over the rocks and dissolve into foam and memory.
Pain sears Asterion like a bolt. He shakes his head, emphatic. “Don’t say that. Not after my abandonment.” And even now, he thinks, she doesn’t know the half of it - how he doesn’t want to lead again, can’t bear to face his countrymen, how if he tries he knows he will only reap failure over and over with every harvest. He almost continues - I’ll get what I deserve- but bites his lip, swallows the words. He hasn’t the right to confide in her, not now.
So instead he sighs, as deeply as the waves. For a moment he watches the gulls as they sweep over the water, always circling and never settling. He says, “Forgive me. I - I should find Marisol, and let her know I’ve returned.” It takes a new kind of courage to look her in the eye again, to study her elegant features and see the sorrow he’s put there. His voice is quiet when he speaks again, hardly more than a murmur. “I hope your spirit remembers its wings, Samaira. And that they are yours, and no one else’s.” For a moment he hesitates, then reaches, slowly, to brush her cheek.
When he withdraws, his eyes are cast down. “We’ll speak again soon. I…I am sorry. Truly.” And with that he turns to begin the long walk to the capitol, leaving her with her heartache, cradling his own. And in moments the waves wash his footprints away.
They are smiling at each other, but neither of their smiles are what they should be. Samaira’s is a stitch, a glue, holding together all the parts of her that had been struck against the seaside rocks like ocean spray. He tries to tell her that he doesn’t deserve the things that he wants in his heart, and she wants to tell him that he’s wrong.
He has always been wrong. Always been punishing himself for things he shouldn’t be, as though he is not good enough just the way that he is. Somehow, that almost hurts worse than the fading flicker of flames inside her. That almost hurts worse than knowing his heart is someone else’s.
The pegasus doesn’t get a chance to tell him that, as he sighs like the waves and the skies and looks her in the eyes as he makes his escape. Samaira would still stand with him on this beach forever, even in silence. Even knowing he does not love her. Even with the hurt, because it is the way of her heart, to want something so deeply, so completely. To suffer for the things she wants.
She seems to have lost the courage to say all the things she wants to say, even though there are hundreds of words tumbling through her mind. She wants to ask him to wait, to stay—selfishly—just a little while longer. Will she ever be ready to let go of him?
Hope, Samaira thinks, is the thing that lets her fly. And here he goes, taking it all with him, pulling it from her like he’s unspooling some invisible thread from her soul. When Asterion reaches out to brush his cheek with hers, she tries to remember exactly how it feels, fearing it will be the last time she ever comes this close to him again.
She tries to remember the exact placement of each of the star-specks upon his back, of the way the light hits his evening eyes, because when she says, “Farewell, Asterion,” it feels like saying goodbye forever. And, when he turns away she almost—almost—takes a step after him.
The ocean is sighing at her feet and everything in Samaira is being washed away like his prints in the sand. She stands there until she is no longer certain whether she imagined the entire thing; whether it was all a terrible dream. At some point she gives up waiting for him to come back, and makes her way to the only place she knows will always be there: the hospital, and her work.
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