Lunara's Realm · Horse

Aster

A young stallion, unbroken/ASS-ter/

Design Aster

I'm not running from the ritual. I'm running because I get to choose when I'm ready - and no one else does.

- Aster

Who he is

Aster's refusal is easy to misread as fear, and the stable almost certainly misreads it that way. He is not afraid of bonding. He expects to want it eventually, all of it, a rider and a stable and a settled life, just later.

What he will not accept is that the timing belongs to somebody else. That is a narrower objection than rebellion and a much harder one to argue with, because it does not attack the tradition at all. It only asks who owns the moment. He argues by movement rather than words. He does not stand in the middle of the stable making a case, he leaves, and the leaving is the case.

Recklessness looks like his defining trait from the outside, and the speed is real enough that those who keep pace with him rarely regret it. Underneath it is something far more deliberate: one decision, made openly, that he does not intend to revisit until it is actually his to make.

Full entry in the wiki

Where you have met him

novel

Bound, Not Broken

Aster's future has already been decided. Complete the coming-of-age ritual, accept Ivy as his lifelong partner and take his place in a tradition generations before him have followed without question. Instead, he runs. Away from Windmane, Aster finds Emberley Stable and Hazel, a mare who seems to belong to no expectations but her own. She is independent, unpredictable and unwilling to make herself easier for him to understand. Nothing about her offers the certainty Aster has known his entire life, and that is exactly what draws him closer. Then Ivy comes to bring him home, and with her comes everything Aster left behind: familiarity, belonging and a future he knows could make him happy. Hazel offers no such promises. Caught between the life chosen for him and one whose ending he cannot know, Aster must decide how much certainty is worth when the price is never knowing what he might have chosen for himself.

See the novel

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Aster the Swifthoof

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From the community

Community portraits

Artwork contributed by the community appears here.

Competitions available now for Aster