in sunshine and in shadow
If you need a friend, I’m in Denocte.
The words affect him more than they should, something like sorrow that squeezes his heart to hear the Night Court named.
It is before the Gate, before the fire, but the story he’d just told is still unfaded, still weighting down his tongue. Perhaps he should never have grown close with any of the Night Court, and to stand here, sharing a sunset and spilling out his soul with yet another of its citizens –
But no. Asterion cannot regret having met her, cannot blame her for the place she lives. He has seen the city; he knows the magic of its streets beneath the cold fire of the stars. It suits her, he thinks.
All this before he is rescued from her thoughts by the sound of his name from her lips, by the sincerity in each consonant and vowel. Gone is the brief cloudiness in his eyes dark as the space between stars; there is only gratefulness when he looks to her now. Asterion nods, and smiles soft as dawn fog, and does not yet trust himself to thank her.
It isn’t until she accepts his invitation, until she stands by his side steady and warm in the dark, that he touches his muzzle to her shoulder. It is another kind of thank you, brief as words would be, and then he is leading her toward Terrastella and the towers that had come to mean home.
He smiles at her question, the expression lost in the shadows underneath the stars, and casts a glance back at her. There is just the barest hint of color and light against the cliffside, and painted against that she is a painting, an icon. More than that, she is a friend.
“I can tell you now,” he says, and his voice is melodic even over the waves that fall to a hush the further they walk away as he begins another story.
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