two we were, and the heart was one; which now being dead, dead i must be
She moves like shaded silk, hidden and quiet and smooth. Dark feet press into damp earth as jungles to the girl of fire, the girl of light, open and unfold before her. Phoenix flame burns but does not hurt, heals but does not die. Everlasting, like the resilience of a storm, like the easy rolling of shoulders and tucking of wings.
There was a time once when the Tonnerre would have been frightened of her wings (she flinches still from time to time) and shied away from the wooded areas that could catch them and remind her of how different and wrong she had been within her family. The Estate was not a place for kindness, not a place for one to be different and stand out in the fashion that Moira Tonnerre had. She was a crime, a sin, a punishable being to be mocked and ridiculed. But now, all of that is in the past.
Estelle is a whisper on the wind that brings tears to her when the moon is dark and her tiger is the only one there to hold her. Only the jungle beast can see her weak, can see her crumble and fall. For the world, Moira is flame given breath and a beating heart in mortal skin.
Rendered piece by piece from the past and the future, she is the purring culmination of the skies on fire, of dreams unending, of something more, something wanting. How she wants then looking over large fronds that beg her to taste them, to kiss the dew from their palm. A rumble sounds nearby, and soon the brushing of fur cuts along her hip. From the shadows a tigress came, a mother and sister and lover and secret keeper finding home once more, and there she embraces her winged, strange cub.
The Pegasus cannot frown, not when her companion (so concerned with that frown, with a half snarl and bared fangs upon dark and pale lips) came so far. "Neerja," the phoenix breathes. In that moment, she is not a flame, not stars falling, not breaking dreams being rebuilt. She is merely Moira and the tiger is merely Neerja. A girl and beast, but which is which, Moira does not know. "Denocte…?" She asks, brows furrow to match the grim line of the jungle cat. 'Fine,' rumbles the cat, annoyance wrapped with a bow in a single word. 'I didn't eat anyone. You're welcome.'
And the girl laughs, a grin breaking like the dawn so few hours ago at last. "You must have run all night." 'For you, I would go further.' "Let's look now then, shall we?"
empluvie | echo | @Asterion | "speech"
06-23-2019, 11:40 AM - This post was last modified: 06-23-2019, 11:45 AM by Moira
It is dark beneath the trees, when Asterion finds himself alone once more.
It is no Relic he hunts for - his is a different prey, just as mad, just as dangerous. The king does not consider what he might do when he finds Raum; he only hopes that he is the first, that the silver killer finds no other victims before he can be stopped. The stakes are too high, the price for the Ghost’s life already too much, and Asterion loves too many on this island to let them be at risk.
Oh, but there is wonder in him yet, and the magic in his veins is humming, humming with that livewire thrum of the wild magic of the island. He is too enamored by everything strange to fear for himself. Even the trees seem to be singing, and reaching out their arms laden with fruit and leaves, and beckoning come and see, come and taste. Once, as the bay stallion broke from the edge of the brush into a clearing, he saw a doe and two fawns go bounding into the shadows at the other side, only the fawns’ spots bloomed with daisies and all their dainty hooves shone like pyrite.
And so the starlit king is prepared for wonder, and prepared for evil, but he is not prepared for Moira Tonnerre and her tiger.
The first thing that his dark eye catches is flash of orange, a flash of red, a movement amid the thick curl of ferns. At once the bay slows, his breathing falling secret-soft, wary and wondering at this new revelation from the island. But as they move - as there is the sound of murmured speaking, and a cat’s throaty purr - his eyes widen, enough to reflect what dim light leaks in from the canopy, and his heart begins to beat, and beat, and beat. Surely they would hear it, and turn to find him there -
and then she laughs, and the breeze sighs through the trees so they shiver with a music all their own, and Asterion knows without a doubt who waits beyond the trees. And oh, he is afraid (of her? or for her?) and oh, he wants to go to her, and to turn and melt back in the underbrush like just another shadow on the island - like a coward.
But he cannot leave her, not when there are so many dangers both nameless and named. The leaves whisper against his skin, pressing their coolness to his rich brown sides, but he does not hear them; all he can focus on is the pair before him, the girl and the tiger.
Fool he is, he says nothing, even as he steps into the clearing they share; there is too much his heart begs to say, too much his mind wants to warn, and all he can do is look, and look, and look at the girl who confounds him and his stubborn heart.
when i was marked for suffering, Love forswore all knowledge of my doom;
’I hope you don’t look too closely, there’s trouble staring us down.” Neerja growls at last, golden eyes flicking to where leaves hiss.
He is chocolate among green, a shadow within a shadow, and yet her blood sings. Is it the island or the man that pulls phoenix eyes from bestial body, looking away from the cosmos and away from the earth to find a galaxy she’s missed and loathed and loved and cried for. Brows arch, grin widens, and Moira seems a cat who’s caught a mouse. For all the wiles of this new world, none could ever compare to the way he takes her breath away.
It rushes then, soft and sweet and quickly, out into a small puff of air that has the tiger rolling her eyes and stepping forward. Alarm flashes low and hard for a moment, fear for what her beloved would do to the King, her King, if allowed too close. "Play nice,” the woman croons, teeth tugging a lashing tail back. Neerja roars, ears flat, and swipes at her pegasus halfheartedly.
Imminent iceberg avoided, sparkling, laughing eyes full of amusement meet those chocolate baths and dive in without hesitation. "Have you seen a ghost?” She asks. Mouth quirks near the edge, lips waver with suppressed laughter, and the Regent dips her head in greeting. "I did not wish to bother you before crossing the bridge,” and it is a simple dismissal as to why she had not approached him, why this encounter now is such a seeming shock. Ice water on his spine, frozen, stuck, Asterion is still as he has so rarely been near her before.
"This is Neerja.” At the mention of her name, the tigress stalks forward once more with heavy lids and slow movements. Head tips to the side, nothing like the innocent gesture of her winged cub, no. Purely predatory and threatening, bared fangs are her only greeting. "I think she likes you,” Moira says with another nip toward her companion. "Are you a man on a mission, or a King here to save the world?”
He is never prepared for her grin - he wasn’t then, in his own halls, with candlelight thick and dandelion wine like starlight in his veins, and he isn’t now, with magic thick around them and their last conversation echoing in his mind like rolling thunder always at the horizon.
Oh, but he should know better - isn’t her wild joy the reason she’d snagged him from the first? But Asterion doesn’t hold her gaze for long, as the tiger steps forward and his dark gaze falls to meet one of striking, improbable blue. Maybe he should laugh, at the tug Moira gives the big cat’s tail, and the tiger’s answering roar; instead he stops, only watching. Asterion is not concerned for his own safety (foolishly, he never is), instead grateful for the tiger, for the whims of whatever power bound two creatures together.
She is still laughing, despite the way the birds all take off from the canopy around them at the sight of the roar, crying terror in a hundred strange tongues. What attention might it draw? But perhaps she isn’t wrong, to find wonder even here - and she doesn’t know what he searches for, in the dark and thick and wild forest.
“It’s a ghost I’m hunting,” he says at last, and nods in acknowledgement of her explanation. “I was distracted, then,” he allows, and does not elaborate. How to tell her that he wasn’t sure what they would meet, at the end? How he thought he might have to use up every ounce of his magic to protect every soul on the bridge, so vulnerable suspended above the sea?
The bay has yet to move when Neerja stalks forward again, muscles rippling beneath her richly colored coat, languid and strong. When she bares her teeth at him - as he flicks an ear at Moira’s words of doubtful truth - Asterion extends his muzzle toward the tiger, the way he would greet any wild thing with an exchange of breath, though he is not so foolish as to touch her.
“Neerja,” he says, and then drops his voice low, so only the tiger can make out the words. “I am so glad you’re here with her. Keep her safe.” (Oh, if only he knew his family’s history, how his own father faced his mate’s tiger in much the same way - maybe it is genetic, the way he has fallen for a girl who burns so hot, so fiercely.)
When he lifts his head that startled look, that tharn look, has bled away from him. His expression is somber, and her question - however lighthearted - changes nothing in it; all the while he is listening to the jungle around them, and the sky above, waiting for anything that sounds deadly or wrong.
“I suppose both,” he says, and when he smiles at last there is no joy in it. Still his voice is low, as though the island may be listening - as though a ghost may be listening. “I’m looking for Raum.”
or else at ease Love grows a cruel tyrant, hard to please;
"Mm,” she hums, looking away as he speaks of distractions. There is a bitterness in her eyes, a jealousy in the frowning of red lips that has Neerja pressing against Moira once more and throwing furtive glances towards the man. Having decided he simply isn’t worth her time (not yet), she ignores him and tends to her cub.
Orange and black and white tuck tight against the phoenix, seek entrance into her mind until their consciousness is one. Thoughts flow between them, before them, and neither phoenix nor tiger might know from whom they originate. All that is there is the union, the one-ness. Anger and jealousy and a sullenness vying for dominance, demanding she act (they act) on impulse and instinct. Could the jungle cat have her way, the king would be minced meat, a thing of the past for Moira to no longer shed water over, to moon over, to become jealous and possessive. The cat does not enjoy having to share the attention of her companion, her soul-bonded.
He is something she dislikes even more than the unicorn who is not kin but more to the girl on fire.
Only when Moira’s brow touches striped brow does the tiger turn once more, facing the stallion with a challenge. He approaches and she counters with her own forward steps. At last breath touches breath, but it is discontent in eyes of ice, even as she relays his words faithfully. ’I think he cares for you.’I think he was distracted more, she retaliates, letting jealousy get the better and a small huff force its way past tightly pressed lips. The tiger withdraws from the man, whiskers twitch but teeth hidden.
How Moira morphs so quickly from pleasure to pain! Muscles tighten and pull inward, wings tremble as she remembers the silver man.
The first to meet her these strange lands, Raum had been an intrigue even then. Back when she was younger, greener, ready to take on the world and carve out a home for herself and her beloved cousin… Ghost or not, crow or not, he’d never hurt her. Oh, he’d hurt her unicorn, he’d stolen her Queen, he’d slain a member of her home… But she is no killer. A keeper and tormentor, a thing that sings sweet songs of death to men who turn her out on her own when only anger and joy flood her system simultaneously… And yet she could never act on those words.
"Would he be brought to justice, would you remember a girl with flowers in her hair who asked that they only be something you liked so long ago? If we were to find him, Neerja and I, and deliver him unto you and Isra and Eik for all you have suffered, would you ever think of me again?” And it is an intimate whisper, reflecting his own hushed tones with an inflection of their own. Gold in black upon black peer out from beneath lashes, turn bright eyes pensive and dark as she remembers what it is to be forgotten… Or worse: to never seem to have existed at all.
"We’ve different goals, it seems, but I am glad to see you here no matter the circumstance.” Warmth returns again to husky voice that hums and soothes and smiles, for no matter her fury or jealousy, she could not stay angry long when having been apart for longer. "I’ve never seen a jungle like this - not that I’ve seen many. Neerja remembers her home and the leaves and the pool and the humidity. I think she’s fond of being back in something akin to where she’d been born. Perhaps someday she and I will find our own little paradise…” A place where they could hide away, where war and tyrants and death would not penetrate… A utopia for two, a senseless, hollow dream without the faces she’s come to love so dearly.
'My strange, winged cub, I could destroy all your problems with ease.'
He can’t help but watch her, the way emotions unfold in her eyes and across her face like a lightning storm high above the horizon, like a map rewriting its lines. It is beyond his ability to decipher; he is clueless to her jealousy. All he can read is her hurt, and her bond with Neerja.
Asterion takes it as a good sign, when the cat declines to show him her teeth. But the brief peace does not last, not when he mentions Raum.
He is taken aback by her whisper, fierce and soft as anything in the undergrowth of the forest, more piercing than any song a bird of jade and gold could sing. How to say it’s because of her that he is hunting Raum, that his focus on the mad king does not mean he has forgotten the phoenix?
“You are never gone from my thoughts,” he says, and breaks his stillness to close the distance between them, with only a lingering look at the tiger that says please. The king does not touch her, but he puts his dark mouth close to her ear, and the humid heat of her skin makes his own of salt and stardust feel all the cooler.
“It is not for my suffering that I hunt him. It is for what he has done - kidnapping and nearly murdering your queen, indiscriminate killings, starving the people he rules until they obey. He is a tyrant, and I have a responsibility-” as a king, he does not say. As someone whose magic runs thick, thick as saltwater and blood - enough to do something, enough to kill a monster. All these things, just as he and Eik spoke of, a year ago on a balcony in Denocte overlooking the sea.
When his gaze snares the red girl’s, he can only hope she understands. And concern is thick and acrid on his tongue when he pleads, “Stay away from him, Moira. Please.”Say you will, his tongue does not ask, but his eyes do. She is fierce, she is strong, but she is no match for evil and magic. Not even with her tiger.
As her tone changes to something smoother, honey and gunpowder, he settles back, opening up space between them for a breeze to wind through. The bay pulls in a breath as she speaks, and once again takes in the trees around them, the undergrowth thick and chaotic and richly green. How different it is from a fire-warmed hall in either of their cities, far from their people’s eyes. Not since they first met on the cliffside high above the thrashing sea have they been so alone, and yet the king still feels the weight of judgement on his back.
“It’s beautiful, for all its strangeness,” he says, and now the softness in his voice is more like velvet, more like smoke. Gone is the urgency; of all the things he cannot have, he can at least have peace with Moira. But as her words trail off his gaze searches hers out again, hearing the hurt below the words, wishing - like Neerja - he could fix it.
He wants to say tell me where you find it, and knows he cannot. Instead he smiles, aching, hollow. “There are no sweets in the wild, Miss Tonnerre. I’d give you a week at best.” When he breathes out, it is close enough to warm her cheek. In the trees, the insects and frogs and birds have begun their wild chorus again. It is strange to think how quickly he is growing used to it, how fast the trappings of his life in Novus - castles, dances, wine and bread - fall away like tattered clothing, like thin and itching skin. If he stayed, would he become a wild thing?
Asterion pushes the thought away, but it only hides, it does not flee. Not until he looks back to Moira, the warm gold of her eye, the delicate lines of her face, does the island fall to the background again. “What is your goal here, then? The Relic?”
Words rise like flames upon her skin, lashing and licking and teasing and devouring all at once until she is burning and angry and turning her cheek away from him. How could he say that when he neglects her so? Publicly refuses her? Is so unwilling to think of her and how she must feel?
Fury is a sour taste on her tongue, a rumbling volcano in her eyes. It simmers there, bubbling and churning, pulling tight everything she holds dear (pulling him closer even as she wishes she could push him away for but a moment.) And she is determined to stay strong, to let his body come so close and feel the heat radiating from her pores; does it burn him as it does her? Can he see the way he affects her even now?
Neerja lets him press in close, feeling the need and pain simultaneously and wishing she could take it all away. Unhappily she stalks into the brush, off to patrol and scare away any others who come close and intrude on these quiet moments, these tender times. Even the cat knows when a heart needs to heal and needs to feel. So she disappears with the whisper of the wind that winds between them at last.
"You think I could forget what he has done, Asterion?” And his name is a curse upon her tongue, head tilts high as she looks down her skinny nose to him. Eyes narrow and she steps close, presses near, lays her skin against his skin, sibilating unto him as he whispered softly just to her. "I, too, know my responsibility. You were not there when Isra was taken! My people looked to me as yours look to you, he was of my court. I’ve seen monsters, do not think me a girl to shy away, do not think you can cage me in a castle to keep safe.”
Ears flatten as she withdraws, feeling the jungle breeze and humidity mix until it dances over crimson skin, over sunset sides. Wings are spread, arching toward canopies, letting feathers catch air and a shiver pass down her spine. How hard she’s worked to overcome this fear she holds of herself, of a part that is so profound a part of her that it defines who the phoenix is and why she is and just how she is.
"I will do what needs doing,” she closes with, unable to meet his eyes for the second time since they’ve spoken. And she is closed off to Neerja, letting emotions come to a rolling boil, feeling them tossed in a summer squall from side to side.
He looks for lost eyes, near-crying eyes, and finds only a mass of hair blocking the view. Moira is a statue melting when he tells her how little faith he has in her skills of survival, a glacier being built drop by drop of water freezing. "I’ll have to find a tree full of syrup then,” she pouts. This pushes sulking gaze towards quiet trees of green and blue. Purple leaves could kiss them, but they are too far away. Would they taste like candy if she pressed her lips into their folds? Would they melt like butter under her tongue? "My blood sang, I could do naught but reply.” So she turns to him, she smiles, but it is distant and quiet as never before. "There is something in the air that’s electric and it calls me forth. And there are people I love about the trees that I could not abandon. When Denocte needs answers, I find them.” The challenge is in her voice, daring him to tell her what she should and should not do. Breakable and soft and pliant, these are illusions of a soft thing, a quiet thing, too long pressing down and suffocating the phoenix.
She is a flame. She is mortal and she is wild. She is ruler of her own wishes.
And Fate saw fit to tie her galactic heart and shrink it, condensed into a sun, a moon, a shooting star that orbits a man made of water, of sea-dust. Perhaps she is a comet streaking through his life, perhaps she will crash and burn. But he is not one to tell her where she can and cannot go, what she should and should not do. "I am mortal, but there are things I must do for those I love, too, my King.” At last her eyes beg him to understand, imploring and pleading, pliant and soft so that he might see his own reflection, his own self how she sees him, and her words are a midnight cry, spiraling smoke drifting into a moonless night.
Oh, he might have laughed to hear her thoughts - to think of the scorn of being refused before a crowd. Has she forgotten already that that is what she’d done to him? Denied the want he’d thought they shared? At least his words had been soft, and no china had suffered.
Of course he does not; there is only the turning of her cheek. Asterion, ever obedient, steps back enough to open yet more daylight between them, yet more space for other things to grow.
(He thinks of all those portraits she painted, images of himself staring back more clear than any lake or mirror could provide. what does she see when she looks at him now? does she regret each brushstroke, does she wish to see them burn like a letter signed with his name?)
The king’s gaze watches the tiger trail away into the brush, the roll of her shoulders, the last flick of her tail before she is swallowed up by ferns and brush. The sound of his name on her tongue, the cold anger there, draws him back like a line and this time it is she that steps near, closer than he, and he lets her. How hot her skin is upon his own; how it feels like thievery, to steal just a moment of touch, to wonder how long it will last. Oh, Moira Tonnerre and her contradictions! Asterion cannot keep up with her, changing like smoke, leaping like sparks, as different between moments as the colors in a fire.
“I said nothing about a cage, or going back to Denocte.” To her rage he murmurs reason - the king has learned, at last, that if he does not state his own meaning others will fill in the words for him, and in their tongues they might mean anything. “For your people, then, stay safe. They would suffer to see you hurt - and so would I.” He might have touched her, then, but she is already withdrawing - and yet opening up, too, spreading those glorious wings, and to him she is the strangest, loveliest creature on the island, as unknowable as any bird with bloodstone eyes.
Against she is shifting, a bloom ever bending to its own private sun, leaning on its own breezes. It is a marvel, to him, all the emotions she displays in a moment, even when she will not meet his eye; there is enough to read in the fall of her hair, the line of her neck, the light glancing off the plane of her cheek or pooling in the shallow hollow above her eye.
At last she turns back and the bay meets her eyes again, bright-burning to his dark. She looks for challenge but he can only agree; what she names is the same feeling that has wound around his own heart like a golden thread and tugged. Call it magic, like calling to like, but whatever it is he is nodding, not disagreeing; he has never thought her breakable, never thought her soft. Only precious, and worth protecting, a wild flame he would die before he saw blown out (and yet is he not the water? Perhaps it is another reason for his refusal, how sure he is he would smother her to cold ash).
“Then you understand why I am here.” His words are soft in answer, the soothe of the sea over hot sand; but his eyes flash like moonlight on whitecaps when she calls him My King. Oh, doesn’t she know how much he’d longed to hear that, when first they met? That she might have stayed in Dusk, made him truly her King, and then - ?
His skin is still too hot in the humidity of the island; it remembers too well being pressed against hers. He wants to close up the space between them and learn with her all the things a king and a man should know, he wants to vanish like Neerja to hunt the forest, to find a prey he can fell, a problem he can solve. It frustrates him, this wanting; it turns calm waters into churning, frothing waves. He steps nearer, silent on the thick, rich earth. Has her fire caught him, or does he burn with his own?
“Don’t call me that, Moira. You only just reminded me I’ve no right to command you, or expect you to obey my will.” His eyes promise a challenge, but he doesn’t know the rules, or the stakes, or the game that they play; only that it is for the best, that the phoenix lives in Denocte, and not his own kingdom. What a treasonous subject she would be - already she makes him want to defy his own head, his own heart.
He is birdsong and he is beautiful. Elusive. Ephemeral. Eternally scarred across her heart. Searing eyes seek to breech her own depthless gaze, her own flaming amber that devours everything in its path. If he could read her, he would see the portraits did not end that day he refused her, that day she vowed to love him enough for both of them until he saw the newborn bird in the midst of ashes and flame and ruination. Oh! Were he only omniscient then Asterion could read into the clandestine heart of the red crowned woman, the many twisting turns and paths and harrows she fought to come this far.
But hers is not a tragedy she will admit to.
So the phoenix lets her wings flare out, lets her gaze burn as it turns upon her king once more, lets his agreement stoke the fires for a moment longer. She is a blaze that burns and dances only for his eyes, only for his taking, only for his pleasure and agreeableness. “I do much for my people, and it is my job to help protect them and learn of the world. I am their bridge to unity with all but our docks and seas and I could not be so selfish as to hurt them. You need not worry about any midnight hunt with the moon and wind’s kiss as my only companions.” And she settles, flames cooling, embers winking up at him, trailing phantom hands of smoke and stories down turpentine spine of chocolate and silk. As her skin cools and wings fall, as her temper settles and jealousy - a cruel and terrible mistress - settles into a half-lidded slumber once more, Moira Tonnerre looks to the Crown of Dusk for comfort, for answers, for that soothing balm only his presence seems to provide.
“I know so little and so much of you, Asterion. You are as depthless as the ocean we met beside, and I fear that I will never reach the bottom without drowning first. But I would drown for you,” it is almost like a secret, like a plea, and like a prayer as it falls from black and red lips. People so often confuse her, and this man, this creature, this pure, wonderful being is the most perplexing of them all. He says yes and then says no, he gives her whiplash with just one look. He is almost everything she wants, so deeply, so badly, that it hurts when she closes her eyes.
And Moira always goes back to those brown eyes. They ground her, they draw her forward once she is confined in herself again, once she is in control.
Words of command, a request she not call him what he is, they lash out at her, they beg her, they fall like bricks upon her spine! How cruel, how cold, for him to turn her away again and again. But she is stubborn. She will not give up. The tilting of her head sends bangs falling softly to the side, ears tilting forward and she shakes her nose ‘no’. “I will not lie and call you something you are not. Isra is my Queen, my kin, she bears my heart within her own. But you, Asterion, are my King. Court borders mean little in the face of this feeling, and although you might deny it in yourself, you cannot deny me the right to what I feel. Such a will you have over me, too! I would give almost anything to see you happy, to see you smile. The frown upon your brow is a dagger to my heart, I can hardly breathe when I know I am the root of so much of your unease and unhappiness. Tell me what it is you want of me or tell me to leave you - like the old oak stands tall against buffeting winds that seek to unroot it, I will not fall until I know the war is lost.” Why, she wonders with a breaking voice, does it always seem to come to this when they are together lately? How simple it had been before!
Brushing shoulders and coy glances were enough.
Soft words and dancing was enough.
Now they meet with trepidation and caution, they meet with something that burns and is denied time and time again. She comes seeking a meal and goes home hungrier than before. The Tonnerre girl is starving for his affections, wilting day by day, brooding day by day, becoming something wild and tortured day by day.
Can’t he see what he does to her every time he walks away? Like the wolf that is left to howl their sorrow to the moon, she, too, stands alone in a world passing her by. Waiting - forever the phoenix is left waiting and wanting.
He has not realized before how much easier it is, to stand here beneath an archway of trees and feel the wind against his skin than to be in his own city, his own halls, with a crown on his head and his people around him. How it is hard for him to be honest - to be himself - surrounding by the evidence of a life he’d never imagined, buildings of stone and streets of cobbles, tended gardens instead of the wildflowers he’d always known. Here, with the sigh and shiver of the leaves, the hum of magic and the taste of it on the air, bitter and faint, the potential of danger on the other side of each clearing -
he feels himself. Just a man, and nothing more, and suddenly he is weary of it, all the holding back for the sake of a kingdom he never claimed, a life he fell into instead of chose. They face one another (one burning like a flung star, one still but deep as an ocean trench) and when she says I would drown for you his eyes press closed, his breath sighs out as the birds sing overhead.
It is a frightening thing, to consider telling her the thoughts that churn inside him like offshore waves, half-formed and changing like mist. A frightening thing, when he himself has failed to untangle his knotted feelings, his frustration and want, his worry that love is a thing he has broken too many times (beginning with Talia - always with Talia, soul-sister, the golden twin whose heartbeat was his lullaby before he met the world). How the harder he tried to love, to hold on, the faster she and Aislinn slipped away, wild things that thrashed against his hands, caught birds that bit until he let them go. (Where are they now? It is has been a long time since he wondered, though his heart tells him every day: gone, gone, gone.)
As she continues - baring her own heart, if he lets himself believe it - his eyes open again, lifting from the cool green around them, deep shadows and golden light, to Moira standing crimson, a beckoning flame. In passionate, poetic words she proclaims, and thought neither of them have moved the space between them is shrinking, weighted, until even the symphony of insects and frogs and birds and wildcats and whatever waits and hunts in the jungle is only a background murmur.
Then there is silence between them, waiting, taut. A perfect surface like a lake waiting to be disturbed. What ripple, what wave, would come? Asterion pulls in a breath that tastes of salt and brine, of green and growing things, of magic under all of it like the core of the world. He thinks of all the secrets he’s kept in his heart and how they’ll never grow in that fallow soil, with no light and no wind and no sky to reach for. And when he speaks at last he doesn’t look like a painting or a king or anything at all but a man, half-wild with his hair loose and his body scarred and his eyes like the eyes of a thing both hunting and haunted.
“Oh, Moira.” He shapes the name like a wave, smooth and wide and soft, and like a wave it erodes him, crumbles away some of his uncertainty. Court borders mean little in the face of this feeling. Standing here with the mainland so distant it might be a dream, he believes her. Standing here in a jungle where he hunts a king and a killer though he has no claim to, he believes her. All of a sudden the entire idea of courts seems foolish, for how is it different than the island?- everyone he loves and cares for, sharing the same piece of ground. Where moments ago this place seemed impossible, miraculous, now it is those invisible rules that seem imaginary, absurd. Only this is real - only the two of them. And so he is honest, holding onto her gaze like he is the drowning one.
“I worry that you’ll change your mind about me. Or that I-" silence unrolls behind the words, an uncharacteristic pause. Or that I what? he asks himself, but he can find no answers - except there is the memory of Leto, of Thana, of Euryale and Calliope. Of more. Of every moment where time hung suspended, where a touch or a look made his heart race and his thoughts churn if, if, if. But it is not them he thinks of when he’s alone, or watching the wild sea, or writing a letter in his heart that will never be sent. Asterion pulls in another breath, begins again.
“I’ve seen what love can do when it turns sour. I’ve had it turn to ashes. I suppose that I’m afraid, Moira, that if it happens to us the damage to our courts could be…monstrous. And I’m afraid that - that I’m the one who causes it. That I love wrong, somehow.”
It is this that he is remembering: late afternoon, sunlight shifting and bare branches drawing patterns against the sky. Himself dark, star-spangled, calm and sure - his twin golden, burning, her eyes a raging sea against his placid one. Himself saying I’ll follow you wherever you go. And her reply, with tears, with teeth: I will kill you if you do.
And of a summer night with fire on the horizon, and ash on the sea like snow, and he and Aislinn choosing their courts over each other. Of a love shattered by duty and distrust, all the rotten roots between Dusk and Night. Had those roots been burned away - could that be enough?
Standing here with only Moira, both their castles and lands a distant dream, it feels like it might be.
