Tarian has forgotten about the pain in his hindlimb as well. He's been careful to keep the weight off it and as he drifts nearer to the alluring Altissima, it's easy to forget about the old injury completely. He is swept up in noticing all the fine details that he has failed to notice until now. How the blue sheen of her skin makes her more luminescent than he and how that makes the lunar glow look far lovelier on her than it ever could him (and if she disagreed on that, then Tarian thinks he could happily spend the entirety of this night trying to convince her).
None of those words come out, though.
He's admiring her fine mane in return - a silvery color that could put the moon to shame - and Tarian feels it again. That conflicted feeling rising in his chest, the one that says if Altissima wanted more than just tonight, he would give it to her. The one that keeps rising and swelling in him like a tide, bringing the (terrifying) realization that there might not be a bottom to it. What does he do with a revelation like that?
It makes him want to tell @Altissima the story of his parent's murder and why this - why them - could be such a dangerous thing.
(This is why Tarian spent so many years in the Guard. He enjoyed the fighting. He liked the regimentation of his days and nights. He enjoyed having a purpose and an outlet for his simmering anger. But there had always been the hope beneath the warrior's skin that one day he would cross paths with his parent's killers. That one day he would either redeem their deaths or he would become another casualty in a feud that had lasted for more than three generations.)
But this doesn't seem like the time or the place to explain that. And if he tells her that story, would she understand why?
The silver stallion feels her stiffen and his head turns slightly, wanting to reach out for her neck. Wanting to touch her cheek. But she looks up and away, at the stars overhead. Tarian knows at that moment, he would much rather look at her - that she is something far more divine than anything shining above them - but Altissima has never seemed to enjoy being the focus of attention. So he lets her lead his blue-eyed gaze to the heavens, while the two of them seem to exist only in the galaxies inside their minds.
"Could you imagine it?" Tarian finally asks her, unable to keep the questions that linger in his mind to himself. "The two of us getting along," he murmurs, shifting his weight again and spreading his pale wings wide enough so that the feathers of one might graze against her glowing skin.
None of those words come out, though.
He's admiring her fine mane in return - a silvery color that could put the moon to shame - and Tarian feels it again. That conflicted feeling rising in his chest, the one that says if Altissima wanted more than just tonight, he would give it to her. The one that keeps rising and swelling in him like a tide, bringing the (terrifying) realization that there might not be a bottom to it. What does he do with a revelation like that?
It makes him want to tell @Altissima the story of his parent's murder and why this - why them - could be such a dangerous thing.
(This is why Tarian spent so many years in the Guard. He enjoyed the fighting. He liked the regimentation of his days and nights. He enjoyed having a purpose and an outlet for his simmering anger. But there had always been the hope beneath the warrior's skin that one day he would cross paths with his parent's killers. That one day he would either redeem their deaths or he would become another casualty in a feud that had lasted for more than three generations.)
But this doesn't seem like the time or the place to explain that. And if he tells her that story, would she understand why?
The silver stallion feels her stiffen and his head turns slightly, wanting to reach out for her neck. Wanting to touch her cheek. But she looks up and away, at the stars overhead. Tarian knows at that moment, he would much rather look at her - that she is something far more divine than anything shining above them - but Altissima has never seemed to enjoy being the focus of attention. So he lets her lead his blue-eyed gaze to the heavens, while the two of them seem to exist only in the galaxies inside their minds.
"Could you imagine it?" Tarian finally asks her, unable to keep the questions that linger in his mind to himself. "The two of us getting along," he murmurs, shifting his weight again and spreading his pale wings wide enough so that the feathers of one might graze against her glowing skin.