[AW] Nothing's wrong but nothing's true

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow* He can’t help it; he closes his eyes as she continues on, listing words of love. He can hear the truth in them, can feel the warmth of those memories as surely as he can feel the winter sunlight on his face or the heat of her body along his shoulder, his ribs. Asterion keeps himself from sighing the way he would at one of his mother’s star-strewn stories, but it is a close thing. When he opens his eyes he is smiling, but it is a strange thing, happy and sad and hopeful and longing all at once. It becomes a softer thing at the break in her voice, when she says home. When she mentions the possibility of losing it again. And he can’t help the way he leans toward her, either, and presses his muzzle soft and brief to the pale plane of her shoulder just before her wing. Only a moment and he withdraws, leaning away and staring back out over the battlements, squinting against the bright gleam of the snow. “I see,” he says, shooting her a quick smile. “Those sound like lovely things. It makes me wonder if I’ve ever had a home at all.” His lips twist, pull the expression into something else, far away and solemn. ,And then he shakes his head like he’s breaking out of a reverie, and scuffs a hoof so it rings out on the stone. “I get lonely too. I didn’t know that’s what it was, for a long time. But if we’re both lonely, here together, then maybe we aren’t lonely at all.” Silly words, maybe, and perhaps it’s for the best they’re now given to the wind. All he knows is he wants those things she talked about, wants them more than he ever has – and it was nice, to hear his name like that, spoken by a friend. @Israfel this got SO MUSHY