Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
How strange it is, to look at a shrine for her mother and father and uncle. A part of her wants to scream that they do not belong among the dead, that they are not missing, only away -
But she holds onto it, their family secret, the way she bears a sliver of her mother’s dagger on a cord where it lies against her breast. Time-magic is in their blood, worlds are their inheritance, and Aster does not leave so much as a feather on that display, heavy with candles dripping white wax, and flowers that smell nothing like her mother’s.
(Yet she closes her eyes, tight tight tight, for a long moment before turning away. Is there a tear caught there beneath her eye like a bit of broken glass? Aster has never cried).
Teak is trying his best to be good. He is only a cub, after all, with his mantle of silver-tipped fur and his little black spots like ink, and there are so many things here that a young cheetah could investigate. His tail is twitching and twining behind him, tickling against Aster’s knee as he winds between her legs; at last she laughs, and pushes him with her nose, and thinks go. Teak tears off at once, after a group of little dragons as bright and varied as a nest of gemstones, and she watches as they tumble and race out of view amid the wooden stalls and snapping flags and bonfires piled high for the onset of night.
It is an odd feeling, to be alone among so many. The filly (young enough her golden fawn-spots are still faint and gleaming circles on her back and along her sides, young enough her wings are only a suggestion of what they will one day be) moves as slow and stately as a visiting dignitary, her wide eyes gold and wondrous, reflecting the firelight the way the cobblestones reflect the moon. Her hair is pale ivory spun at the edges into gold, half-tangled and half-plaited; she smells of pine and rich dark earth, a wild thing among these horses of the city.
Everywhere there is something new to stop and watch. Best of all she likes the dancers, and stops before a group of them, strung with gypsy-coins that gleam as they spin and catch the firelight like her eyes do, watching them like Teak watches birds. A few mares are playing instruments, a violin and a tambourine and a kind of wooden pipe, though of course Aster knows the names of none of them. All she knows is the way the music sounds like the stars singing down to the sea, or like the moon bidding goodbye to the night, or like a white hind running through the trees and every limb and blade of grass reaching, reaching, just to be blessed by her shadow.
It makes her want to run, too, or to dance as fierce as the wind whips up the white-caps on the sea, or to laugh and cry out until her voice is another instrument ringing out over the square. But for now she only stands, swaying a little with the music, devouring the dancers that whirl and leap and the bonfire whose sparks do the same.
@open | to any!
