This keening soul;
It was as though she expected him there, as if Fate whispered that he would come. Leto does not stop in what she does, but oh she is so still anyways. Her lips reverently pressed to the bark of an ancient tree. Upon its bark are many things, carvings beautiful and terrible, leaves and stones and bones hanging like gems from his branches.
Stood beneath its shade, the star girl looks so utterly right and yet, so utterly wrong. Upon her own black skin, painted in silver (for it had not been for the benefit of a Night Queen’s ball) are a myriad of sigils and litanies. They seem to shift and whisper in answer to the tree and its own carved markings. Leto is, in that moment, so very of the earth, with her braided hair adorned in bells and bones and leaves of gold and silver.
When at last she lowers her mouth , and her prayers fall away from her lips like prayers, only then are all the ways in which she does not fit thrown into sharp relief. Her eyes open and there is no earthly colour there. No, Leto’s eyes are the light of the moon, of stars that shine from the far flung reaches of the sky.
She holds Asterion within that gaze and if she were not a shed-star girl, she might wonder if the starfire there burns his skin; if he hears the call, the cry of celestial bodies ricocheting, moving, echoing in choral voices. Because, oh, Leto hears them as if they are but souls clamouring beyond the veil.
Her face is the dark of shadows, of ink spilled across white, of satin night so dark it is tinged with electric blue. She wears not the bone of her mask and its impressive antlers and maybe he finds her quite exposed this night.
Leto says nothing as she drinks in this king of hers. His slim sides heave with gasping breaths and his eyes are wide as planets, his skin aglow. Leto takes a breath, pulling it deep, deep into her lungs. Oh he smells of city life, of the smoke of autumn wood fires and the wealth of royals. She smiles then, slow and mysterious and returns her gaze to the tree, for Leto is anything but royal.
Well, Leto?
Her ear twists to catch him, but she does not turn. Her eyes are closed once more, drowning in the whispers of her tree. She knows of what he speaks, of the question he does not ask her. And so she says to him, “Come.” Her eyes open once more to look upon him, to beckon her king closer. “Touch the tree.” And again her lips press to the sigils carved there, their patterns white and bright, red and bloody, black and monstrous. Slowly she withdraws and waits upon him, her silver eyes mid-moon bright.
“You already know I am not made for meetings, Asterion.” The girl says with a shrug as she looks to the canopy of trees. She could not leave the ball fast enough but oh Asterion was drunk on liquor of dance and joy. “My court is a cathedral of trees, a ceiling of stars and a floor of wildest earth.” Then, oh then, she utters soft as a whisper, “I saw to your lands whilst you enjoyed your final night of revelry.” And maybe there is something of hurt within her voice, of regret for the king that would not follow her home that night. Yet there also is gratitude that he ever came home at all.
@Leto | "speaks" | notes: table 2/2!! this was super fun to make
