[private] trying to find a better way

[aureus]

Aureus

oh, these wings, they flicker and my feathers stir
'til I'm an ancient soul in a cascade world

The years had not softened Aureus. Had not warmed him to the appeal of strangers. He had never been truly able to wield the easy way with which his fathers both conversed with others so he had instead retreated. Continued to retreat. Folded in on himself and rejected companionship until it was just him and Astrum, sleeping during the day and finding poetry in the night sky, in the shadows of midnight.

He does his best to forget Basilica. To forget Hourglass.

To forget those who would ease him into their friendship and chooses the life of solitude.

Just him and the star that prefers it this way, humming contentedly at having his undivided attention.

It is like this that they wander that evening, his pale glow all the brighter with the small sliver of moon that hangs in the sky. When he catches sight of the fae, he nearly continues on—nearly cuts a wider berth around her—but he feels the tug of Astrum. Perhaps the first time that she has ever drawn him toward another, but it is perhaps not that surprising that the star would be so attracted to one of her kind.

So he abides by her request.

Angles himself through the riverbank until he is close enough to the star-coated girl that she would hear him when he spoke, quiet as his voice usually is. “Hello there,” he says with a small smile, his shyness disappearing into the studious, stern lines of his face. The star hums near him and then spins near to Anuya, spinning a circle around her barrel before coming to rest above his right shoulder again.

“I’m Aureus,” he offers before he nods, “and this is Astrum.”

and I'm quick with the bullet when it comes undone
I got a head like a turret with a mouth for a gun

@[Anuya]