Asterion has no idea what waits for him tonight, the way his heart will soar and dip and sing like a swallow before the evening is done. For now there is only laughter, only the buzz of good drink in his veins and the warmth of a good fire on his cheeks, making every speck of starlight shine.
For now there is only the girl before him, and her imaginative painting.
He turns his gaze back upon it to study it more closely, impressed at the boldness of the colors, the drama of the scene unfolding therein. And as soon as her answer - and more than that her laugh, a giggle so near her breath stirs the soft hairs of his ear - reaches him, he is hers completely, irrevocably charmed.
The king laughs, too, when she plants a kiss upon his cheek, and he tilts his head toward her, an ear still cocked at her painting.
“Such art as I’ve never seen the like of, Jun,” he agrees, and finds himself watching the color speckle her skin instead of the brush-strokes she puts on the paper. She reminds him, he decides, of Florentine - how at ease she is, how joyful, how easy it is to imagine her grinning or winking or laughing again, and how glad he would be to see it.
“It’s very close,” he answers solemnly, as though he is a great master of the arts, well-studied through all the halls of Novus. “Have you seen such a creature as he?” he asks, and gestures to the sea-creature with its frightening, multi-sized eyes and reaching tentacles. “I shall have to keep a better eye on the coast, if so.” And again he regards the paper, grinning at the sheer energy of it and the paint-freckled woman who created it - and finds that for the first time tonight, he feels like painting, too.
and hardly ever what we dream
@
