I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone
or else alone
As Asterion is drawn inexorably back to the ocean, back to the beach that has known and forgotten his footprints a thousand times over, he too thinks of his father.
That is why he’d gone - to meet the man who’d made him. His sister, Florentine, had told Asterion so many stories of this figure - stubborn, courageous, loyal and loving - but the bay could never build something substantial out of the pieces. They were too foreign to the image he’d built up in his own heart, cold and bitter and gone. Why did you leave, he’d asked him at last, and Gabriel had smiled in a way that Asterion still doesn’t realize he shares, wry and sorrowful. It isn’t always a choice, he’d said.
And he understands. The bay had chosen to go, even if he hadn’t thought he’d lose a minute of time on Novus; and now he was back, without his family, without his kingdom, without Moira. The ache it leaves is persistent, a rotting tooth, and as he always has Asterion looks for solace in saltwater.
As so often happens, he isn’t the only one.
There is no sound but the waves and the gulls, and for some time he goes unnoticed to the golden mare. The bay keeps to the shoreline, near enough to be flecked with cool spray, and studies her - the wildflowers in her hair, the sun gleaming on her coat, the simple fact that she’s a stranger. He’s glad for it; his friends are as bruised by his absence as he is, and Asterion is tired of apologizing.
He can’t see her smile, but there is something about the way she stands, about the way her chin tips skyward, that suggests it. And because he is tired, too, of the thoughts that wait underwater to pull his head beneath, he breathes in softly and beckons his magic. The wave that rolls in toward them rises higher before her, becomes a swell, and just before it reaches her it parts. For a moment it hovers as still as sculpture, with the sunlight shining through, and then it shatters into a flock of birds that wheel and stretch wide their wings, and a school of fish that dart and leap, all shining like turquoise diamond. After a few seconds the birds dive below the surface of the water, and the fish swim up and up through the air, and all dissipate into vapor and memory.
And for the simple joy of it, Asterion smiles too.
@
Asterion.
