finger trips across my cheek----------------
----------------kiss me until i can't speak

Winter’s grip on Taiga has begun to fade. Pteron still shivers most mornings when he wakes, but the deep snows are melting (not that many of them piled up beneath the protected canopy of the redwoods). With the slow stirring of the seasons comes the rousing of life, both that of the territory as well as the flora and fauna within it.

This is the morning that Pteron will meet with Aten, and the tobiano stallion doesn’t delay in his journey to their meeting place. The early sun already shines brightly on clear meadow, and the thin blanket of snow that had fallen a few nights ago is now mostly dampness in the soil. The pegasus holds his pale wings tightly against himself for warmth, and when he finds Aten already waiting for him at the heart of the meadow allows them to fall away in favor of slightly faster movement. He greets the older stallion with a nod of his head. Pteron lacks his mother’s ever-present smile; he is not as given to thoughtless diplomatic niceties as his dam. Pteron smiles when he means it, and he’s not sure if he’ll mean it during this conversation.

Time will tell though.

“I never planned on staying in Taiga forever,” he begins without ado. “You are not the only one whose wishes were ignored when my mother named me as her successor.” Pteron has been trapped here by his position, and then by the impending birth of his daughter with Reia. Now though, Adarra is a yearling, old enough to make her own choices, and most importantly: old enough to be away from her mother. The dun stallion has been waiting, biding his time, and now it is his time to act – assuming that Aten does not object.

“I want you to challenge me for leadership of Taiga.” The stallion says, and his olive eyes search Aten’s face for a response. There is more he wants to say, but it all depends on how the older stallion responds to this admission – this offer.

-- pteron --

finger trips across my cheek----------------
----------------kiss me until i can't speak

Pteron does not know that Aten suspects him of violence. If he had, if he had any idea that the champagne stallion thinks him capable of harming children, the conversation that he intends to have would have been far different. In much the same way, Aten does not know that Pteron’s body is a literal shield between his wife and the rest of Beqanna, and that to Pteron the idea of inflicting even a fraction of the harm that he absorbs daily into his magically regenerating flesh makes him sick to his stomach. This morning the only sign of that is a mostly healed burn along his right flank. The wound itself it healed, but the dragon fire had been hot enough to sear him to the bone. It will take several more hours before the scar tissue smooths itself flat and hair begins to regrow, as it always eventually does. This is far from the worst he’s received.

What he has to say to Aten is very clearly not what the roan had expected, and Pteron waits out the inquisitive look and the questions that he had known would follow.

“It’s not sudden,” the dun stallion says, knowing quite well the full count of days since he had first seen the tell-tale rounding of his now wife’s belly. A full year he has waited, four seasons come and gone while the child he had not ever wanted grew ever-more independent from her mother. The arrival of spring has marked the surety that Reia will not be bearing him the son she desired, and the winged stallion is more determined now than he had been in the autumn, as well as far less distracted.

“I wish that what I am dealing with were as simple as raising a foal.” Pteron replies, and despite the seriousness of the topic, he cannot keep a smile from tugging at the edge of his mouth. He’s been successful at hiding it, Aten’s words tell him, the rest of Taiga is unaware of the monster that Pteron has saddled them with or the one that lurks in their woods. If he is successful, Pteron thinks, they never will. The relief of knowing he’s kept them safe from Reia and Wolfbane this long is short-lived though, and he soon turns back to the matter at hand.

“There is no one else I could trust Taiga with,” Pteron tells him. “And at the same time, I cannot promise Castile will approve. He might wish to make further changes to the leadership, but I do not have the time to ask him.” For the first time, the urgency of this very-long delayed meeting appears in Pteron’s words. For a moment it is there in his face too, a brief flash of concern, and then it is gone again. “Will you take the leadership, or not?”

-- pteron --

finger trips across my cheek----------------
----------------kiss me until i can't speak



Though Pteron had known this would be a difficult conversation, he had not expected it to be difficult in exactly this manner. That Aten accepts so easily does not surprise the dun stallion. Pteron nods, and is just about to turn to leave when the older horse says his name again. The pegasus remains still instead, his olive eyes meeting Aten’s while he waits for the other male to compose himself and continue.

Pteron does not expect what follows, and that is clear from the ever-deepening furrow in his striped brow as the champagne stallion speaks. Hated him? Why would Pteron ever had thought that Aten hated him? Their interactions have been minimal, but never less than cordial. The bad blood that Aten speaks of certainly doesn’t exist in Pteron’s veins, and the younger stallion cannot fathom why it would in Aten’s. Unless…

Pteron’s single-minded focus on his own concerns have left him blind to a great many things. It has not occurred to him that that Aten might still think the change in power five summers past was some Grand Failing on his part. Aten is still the Protector of the Redwoods, after all, the exact title he’d had before. The redwoods have not needed protection either, at least not from any outside danger. Pteron has lived here this entire time, and never one felt any looming sense of danger or uncertainty. He had grown up in the shelter of Loess though, and knows the protection that comes from being under the eye of a powerful Empire. He has only ever wanted the same for Taiga.

And so he does not argue, does not pry farther, does not attempt to defend his family or the legacy that he now chooses to leave behind.

The dun stallion has never been able to appropriately polish his silver tongue, and so he only nods to Aten’s promise to lend aid in the future. His mind his already elsewhere, after all. It flicks from his wife and child tucked somewhere deep in the woods and then to the shoreline of Ischia, where another lover waits for him, her sides growing round with his son (or so he can only hope). It returns to Reia then, and Pteron is reminded that perhaps the new Leader of Taiga deserves a warning of the calamity that Pteron is certain he will soon be unleashing.

“If you could make certain there is no one on the northern shore in a few hours, I would appreciate it.” He tells the golden now-leader. “I have to share this news with my wife, and I am not certain she will take it well. I’d like to avoid any bystander casualties, if I can.” And then, with a firm nod of his head, he takes to the sky and to Ischia.

-- pteron --