in sunshine and in shadow
Maybe it is wrong that the thing he feels, as night gives way to pale spring dawn and reveals the silhouette of that unicorn, is hope.
What he had told Isra only days before was no lie: I have always felt braver alongside a unicorn. Asterion will never forget the first time he saw one, as he dreamed beneath a dogwood tree, only a boy with his head stuffed full of stories. That is the day he had met Calliope, and the day his life had changed.
It is the black unicorn he thinks of now, as his dark eyes catch on that figure that could be a silhouette or a shadow of the lion-hearted mare. His breath catches in his throat for a heartbeat, two, and then it wisps away like a sigh of smoke as he approaches. Up and up he climbs in the cool morning, and the sky begins to blush with dawn, just bright enough that he can make out the words scrawled on the note.
After he reads the words he bows his head, as if in prayer, another silhouette that might be taken for a statue. And yet his body trembles, giving him away, and his thoughts race, half worry, half wonder. They branch in a thousand directions, like streams or capillaries, golden water and bright red blood - thoughts of Florentine, of Tempus, of Ravos and the Rift. Of magic that makes and unmakes, eats and eats and is still hungry.
Softly, reverently, he touches his nose to the smooth black shoulder. And then the Dusk King withdraws, and looks down the slope to where others are gathering, and the quiet sea beyond that is growing vibrant with morning.
“Does anyone here still speak with the gods?” he asks, soft. Even as he asks it he hopes the answer is no - for though this place feels holy, holy, he doubts it is the work of god.
@Random Events
