Her heart beats like the waves of the ocean and in her veins is sea water, hair is seaweed, her eyes like rolling tides but Astana has never traveled to the ocean. Yet, she has gained her mother’s fascination for the large expanse of water she desperately wishes to see. Her mother had taken her in her dreams, but the pale golden child has yet to truly taste that salt upon her tongue, or really hear the sea birds scream into the sky their jubilation. What Astana has seen is the image her mother perceives as the ocean, and Astana, though a dreamer at heart, she aches for the reality of cool waters and warm sand.
Astana has a way of seeking out kindred spirits. Maybe it is the fact she is a twin and will always be a twin no matter how many miles she and her sister are apart. And she fills that void with friendly faces, offering her smiles freely. The girl wishes to find that kinship in anyone she sees, drawing out connections with delicate grace. She finds dreamers, wanderers, explorers alike, with connections fleeting or lasting, she has not gained the years to decide.
He is awe inspiring, and this comes from a child that has been encouraged time and time again to dream as big and as wide as she can. She can feel her heart racing with the disparity that he is real, tangible, that she will be able to reach out and touch him. Astana can almost feel the way that milky glow reaches out to touch her skin, reflecting off the precious metal her skin is made of. And then his eyes meet hers.
Astana offers him what she can, a soft reckless smile that tips the corners of her lips just so. He says her name and it is formed entirely of bliss and imagination. Is she really here? Would she wake up next to her twin, disappointed once more that she has not reached the end of the world and further still? “My mom has said things like that before,” she says then, noting the similarities between her own mother and the man (could she call him a man?) before her. Crystalline gaze is staring at him curiously as a child so often does. “Does it make you sad?” She asks him then, a curious tilt of her head. “To not know when you dream?” She has to know, she wants to know. Maybe that is the reason her mother’s smile had not always reached her eyes, because she can no longer see the difference. “Or is it bliss?” Please, she has not know.
And then it begins. He has turned her into the stars. Diamond eyes look down to her legs and she is so enthralled with the beauty that for a moment she forgets what has happened and who is with her. With a single tear in her eye (she has always had a soft heart for beautiful, ethereal things) she looks to him. “Your magic,” she says and she is not sure what else to say. “Will you stay with me? Until morning?” Her voice is so little here, showing the child she truly is. That single tear falls down her face and finds its place amongst the snow upon the ground and she finds herself unable to tear her eyes away from him. He was magic of this, she was certain.
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