11-19-2019, 08:21 PM
----------------kiss me until i can't speak
Her use of an endearment adds another layer to his concern, one that is not assuaged by the glossiness of her violet eyes or the reassurance that she is just distracted. She calls him darling, and that helps a little, as does the way she tucks herself against him. It’s the kisses that finally push it from his mind. Not just the thrill of them (though that is in no short supply, thrumming through his veins) but rather that she gives them freely, a reassurance that it is not truly his touch that she flinches away from. He reads into her words – and her lack of them – far more than is wise, attempting to draw logic from the kisses she presses against his neck and face. He almost has the message, he thinks.
And then she promises to make them forget their woes and he is tossed once more back into uncertain seas. Their woes? Hers? But she’d just said she was distracted, not upset. Aquaria seems determined to deny him a real answer, but she moves to lead him away, and rather than press the issue he follows willingly. It is not in his nature to leave things entirely alone though, and he lets his shoulder brush against her hip now and again as they walk, meeting her eyes squarely when she looks back with an innocence so pure as to be practiced.
They move away from the beach, and the trail she leads them down is not one that Pteron would even recognize as a path. His olive eyes are drawn by the foliage, deep greens and emeralds, with flowers that he thinks might take even Noah by surprise. They’d surely wilt if he plucked one, the tobiano thinks, but he will have to tell the roan woman – who he thinks of like an aunt – about these hidden jewels in the Ischian jungle. When the trees open up at last, it is to another beach, this one far narrower than the bright white sands they have left behind.
A semi-circle of stones encircle the water, and he wonders if they are the cause of the smaller waves here than on the other beach. Pteron knows very little about the ocean other than that it is where Aquaria belongs, but he has no doubt that these designs on the beach are made of treasures from below the waves. He has no name for most of them, but the swirl of the designs is pleasing to the eye, and he finds that he is smiling as he looks at them without really knowing why. He glances up to tell Aquaria this, but the pale mare is not where he had last seen her. Instead she is out in the water, as pale and delicate as though she is a sculpture of sand come to life.
Pteron realizes as he stands on the shore at looks out at her that he’s never seen her like this: himself on dry land and her out in her element. ‘Come here,’ she commands, and Pteron obeys. Sunlight glitters on the water and on her bright scales, and the dun stallion’s eyes flick down the shimmering cascade of the fins that make up her mane and tail. She is a glorious thing, beauty and the sea combined.
“I like when you call me ‘darling’,” he tells her as he comes near enough to touch. But he doesn’t reach out, even though Pteron fears she might see him vibrate from the restraint it requires. “But I like it more when you are honest with me.” He inches closer in the water, unable to resist the lure that he is not even sure she means to draw him in with.
“I want you to be happy, little fish, not just distracted.” Coming closer was a mistake, because now he can see the glitter of each individual scale and he worries that perhaps he has forgotten how they feel. Just a little reminder, he lets himself think as he touches her cheek gently. But that leads to another thing, and another, and then he is pressing a kiss just below her scarlet starfish and asking: “Tell me what I can do to make you happy.”
@[Aquaria]
-- pteron --