This keening soul;
Are they always such dark things? Asterion asks with sorrow in his gaze. Oh those eyes are heavy, heavy. But the weight upon Leto’s heart is heavier still. The gravity of sorrow has weighed her down, as if vines of the earth are rising up to wend about her limbs and hold her fast.
Her head bobs, the only part of her that can move. Her tongue wets her lips and her eyes turn from his to the tree and then back again. Bells toll with each movement of her fine head they know the truth of her words before she even speaks them. Leto’s bells were there with every blood drop lost, with every tear that fell upon broken bones. “The story of the Ilati is not a happy one,” the star-girl whispers. Her chin tips up, up, up, peering through the trees to the stars that begin to wail. Ilati souls her held within each tree and they too gaze up as stars begin to shed from their place amidst the black night sky.
Leto seems not to notice as a solitary spark drifts down and burns through a leaf to fall as stardust at her feet. “It is one of genocide and these -,” her lips touch each painted rune upon the tree. And over every one she lingers, eyes closed, her breath a sighing prayer. “These were carved upon the trees to tell the story of my people… They are memories and magic for protection…” the girl trails off and her eyes drift from the tree, out into the darkness where the cries of ghosts seem to echo. Her star-gaze shifts, bright as the moon, bright as the stars above that begin to weep with the summoning of her magic. Now the sky begins to shed its stars as tears of flames. They descend, small and fragile, until the skies above the trees begin to glitter. Only one makes it down to the ground below and Leto’s eyes close with effort, a sigh as her magic fatigues, fading to embers in her veins. The sky blinks, and its tears are lost, its stars gleam bright as bruises.
No Ilati should draw stars. No Ilati should look up instead of down because down is where the earth births life and magic with each setting sun. Leto’s lips withdraw from the sigils and her gaze pulls back from the ghosts amidst the trees. She looks to Asterion, the new Terrastellan King – though how is he new? How long had he held the Dusk Court together now? Leto does not count, she never thought to before, she never cared to before. Yet here he suddenly is, interest setting his eyes upon her skin, upon the sacred trees that hold the swamp wood up, like cathedral pillars. He is here amidst her religion and her life and she both hates and loves him for it.
She shudders with the call of the earth, the hum of roots and water, the thump of feet and the cry of a witch doctor in her ears. Bones jangle above the tree and her eyes lift to watch them sway, her own bird bones jangle in her mane and the sigils seem to dance. They lure her away, for the earth is all she should care about, beyond the siren call of stars and the mulled wine gaze of a familiar king.
I just want to see you, he says, so shy and bold, with eyes that darken, soften, and skin that warms like fires in the midst of night. Like a moth to his flames, he has her attention and she does not sway from him. Leto’s eyes follow that darkening blush, the warming of his voice as he speaks again.
She remembers the painting of her sigils, the cold of paint freshly made, the sweep of a paintbrush, precise in its art. The brush of Asterion’s gaze is something warmer, something more dangerously unknown… Do the marks upon her skin also mean mournful things? His question lingers and she pauses remembering each one that adorns the black of her body. “Not all… they tell the story of me: of my joys and sorrows, achievements and losses. They are the sum of my parts and then spells to protect, to flourish, to guide… They are anything and everything.”
Leto shivers as though touched by his gaze, his thoughts. Her heart is a hummingbird thrum within her chest. It sings its song within her ears and she might blush too if he did not look away to birds nesting atop a branch. “You are bold, Asterion, to assume that one would want to be watched so close. Is that because you are a king?” The girl ponders as he watches the birds. Yet how contrary her words, as her own gaze now draws upon each star of his. Her lips move linking stars that do not wish to be linked. No known constellations draw themselves upon his skin, no stars whisper of being stolen from the sky. She huffs against the hot of his skin, “I know none of these stars.” And maybe this is because he and his mother are not thieves but shed-stars too… “Were you forged from the sky too, Asterion?”
And oh it is a little hope that blooms like light within her soul.
@Asterion | "speaks" | notes: loooooong
