over the mountains of the moon
down the valley of the shadow-
down the valley of the shadow-
H
e is rapt at her words, listening not only with the intensity of a king to his people but a boy’s desire to know. Asterion has given so little time to learning the Ilati; other things have swallowed up all his days. Yet they are under his care, too (though surely they would all say differently. They have been under the ‘care’ of many rulers before him and still they live wild and wary as foxes). And he knows the sorrow of their story, but it is only in pieces. From Florentine, from Rhea, from the brief moments he has to wander Terrastella’s library alone, little bits of their long and dark tale have assembled for him. Fierce and shy and powerful, but hunted - forever hunted (and yet did they not hunt, too? He thinks of their skulls and rituals, of how he has been told they slay kelpies for teeth and tongue).
Yet only now does he begin to understand, does his heart feel the echo of it like the tree feels the carvings scored into its bark. Asterion begins to reach for the tree again, breath soft and warm, but he startles away when a spark flares at the corner of his vision, too bright against even the vivid autumn day. Wide-eyed, he looks back to Leto - and that is when his skin shivers in surprise, in wonder.
For the girl is aglow. Starfire seems to trace lines through her, brighter than her runes, like white paint on a dark tree. Her eyes, too, are alight, and though he wants to touch her (to see if her magic burns, if it might sear him) he falls back a step, the dry leaves rustling like old paper under his feet. Beyond them the doves take flight, their voices throaty with alarm.
The sound, the release of familiar scent (rich autumn, like gold and ruby dust) settles him. For a moment he searches the boughs and thinks he catches more light, like fireflies come too soon; but when he looks back to her she is dark as a shadow’s shadow once again. He asks nothing, but the question burns on his tongue like a small fallen star.
He swallows it in favor of listening to her, and though his body falls quiet again he can still feel the beat of his heart as though he was once again running, an urging rhythm. To steady it he focuses again on her runes, wondering at how each small mark denotes a story. Asterion wants to learn them all, wants to be taught the words and strokes to each spell and prayer. He wants protection, too, wants guidance and belonging. These things, too, he swallows down like water.
Instead he smiles at her, warm as an autumn hearth-fire, with a small spark in each eye. Like smoke his smile curls up, soft at the corners. “You admitted in Denocte to watching me. Perhaps I only thought it polite to return your interest.” Somehow they have drifted near one another again; his breath stirs her mane like the barest wind against the bone and seed-pearls and bells, and hers is its own little-fire against his dusky stars. “They’re the only ones that never change to me,” he says of the constellations he wears, and thinks of how many strange patterns he’s walked beneath. At last he has learned the night-maps of Novus; but will he live below them as long as his own?
Her question draws his gaze to hers at last. He searches it for a sign of that blazing light, but now they are silver as evening bells and not swords new-forged. But Asterion cannot answer her question. He blows out a breath, thinks of how Euryale had asked him not so different a question. “Perhaps the sky,” he says at last, slowly, and his gaze reaches up beyond the red and gold of the canopy. “Perhaps the sea. I long for them both, I love them both. And I feel like I am always following them both. Maybe that is why I never feel I fit…” As he trails off the wind sighs around them, cold with coming evening, and Asterion leans a little nearer to her warmth.
@Leto
