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+---- Thread: symphonies exploding in the sky | elio (/showthread.php?tid=26944)
symphonies exploding in the sky | elio - Pteron - 05-15-2020
----------------tell me: who do i run to?
They will wait for the snow to melt, Pteron has decided. It will be easier for them to travel on foot without the hazards of bad weather, especially with his lover’s increasingly delicate state.
For now though, they remain in the woods. Pteron has left Aegean working on a particularly pretty world where the sky was filed with stars even when lit by the noonday sun. The sky that Pteron walks under is not well lit at all, thick grey clouds hiding what would otherwise be mid-morning light. The whole world here feels clammy and dull, and the dun stallion kicks out at a black elm, pivots, and cracks a thick branch on a young redbud with his extended front hooves. That brings at least a thrill of adrenaline, and he begins to move forward again when he feels the soft rise of the hair of his mane that means he is not alone.
He lowers the foot he’s lifted to move ahead, and searches the nearby woods with his olive eyes. He hears nothing, smells nothing, but still…
“Hello?” he calls out. “Is someone out there?” The question is curious; Pteron is neither a proud nor fearful creature. Still, there are dangers hunting Beqanna, and Pteron is not as apt as he might have been to humor what might just be a child playing a game of hide-and-seek.
@[elio]
-- pteron --
RE: symphonies exploding in the sky | elio - elio - 05-20-2020
elio
some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light
Elio now wears physical scars and aches.
He should have known his father's curse mingled with his own pride and naivety would collide into a furious tornado, but that aforementioned naivety kept him from really seeing.
His coat of scars and muddied fur shields him from the cold sorrows that chase. When they catch him, his defenses grow ragged: Lio is shaken, if still smiling, and often finds himself trapped in the memory of his father tearing his tongue from his mouth.
A phantom pain tears through his mouth.
While happier and more grounded in Taiga, the golden man still finds himself wandering from the land in dazed escapes. Wolfbane is there with Lilliana, but neither of them are actually there. Nashua and Yanhua are there, very literally, but Elio doesn't know how to be something to them that totally makes sense.
He feels blind, often listless, but oh . . . how terribly good he is at hiding it.
That's why Lio smiles big when he sees Pteron. What he wants to do is turn and hide, observe from a distance but not bear the weight of explaining why he's different now. He wears his painted grin as well as the mottling scars on his sides, matching that boyish face with an equally as boyish greeting:
"It's me, dummy."
Elio trots closer, wraps Pteron in a tight, swift embrace.
"Where have you been? Mom asks about you sometimes."
@[Pteron]
RE: symphonies exploding in the sky | elio - Pteron - 05-21-2020
----------------tell me: who do i run to?
“Elio!” he exclaims, realization and excitement clear in his voice, “I didn’t even recognize you! When did you do all this growing up?” Pteron holds him tightly as they embrace, marveling at how much his youngest brother has changed. Elio and Lepis had left Taiga when Elio was still a child and seeing him as a man grown is clearly a surprise to Pteron. A welcome surprise though, as he draws back to look at the other dun stallion. With his golden skin and colorful stripes, the young pegasus looks just like the Wolfbane of Pteron’s youngest memories, though his eyes are a shade closer to their mother’s. It has always been a habit of Pteron’s to compare the faces of those he knows, and his family are of particular interest. Elio looks more like Marni than any of the others siblings, Pteron thinks, though who knows what Marni even looks like these days?
This distance between them has never been something that Pteron enjoys. Family belongs nearby: the belief that has driven much of the dun stallion’s recent decision to find his own growing a permanent home. Nowhere felt right, and so he had chosen somewhere new.
“Tephra,” he replies, “with my children and their father, Aegean.” With two of his children, he doesn’t clarify. He does not like to remember that he has almost forgotten what Adarra looks like.
“She asks me about you, too.” Pteron responds, his olive eyes darkening in humor. “Perhaps that is her effort to get both of us to visit more often,” jokes the winged stallion. He takes in the sight of Elio once more, noticing for the first time the scars that Elio wears. Those must have been deep wounds to leave a mark on skin like their, Pteron knows. It takes effort to mark the brothers with any sort of permanence, the silvery scars along the underside of Pteron’s neck proof of that.
“You are back in Taiga?” he asks, rather than press his brother for more information about the injuries. Pteron had made no show of hiding his sympathetic reaction to seeing them, he trusts that Elio will speak of them if he wishes to. “It took me months to get the pine smell out of my nose, but I’d recognize it anywhere.”
@[elio]
-- pteron --
RE: symphonies exploding in the sky | elio - elio - 05-26-2020
elio
some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light
The pink, healing flesh of a U-shaped tear starkly stands out amongst dun and gold fur of Elio's cheek. He was boyish before, not exactly handsome but certainly attractive, but now - now he looks rogueish, near-tired and maybe worn by life. A stallion grown, vastly different from the boy Pteron knew.
Lio nearly convinces himself this is not, in fact, Pteron. It has been long enough since they have seen each other, and he wonders if he had jumped the gun in so warmly greeting this stranger.
But it is Pteron, as right as the sky above and the ground below, and the golden man feels a sense of true relief was over him. At least it has been long enough that they did not meet when Elio still struggled to speak.
"Probably while you were away on another adventure," the fiery stallion jests, making sure to lighten a statement that could be taken as a slight. It was always nice to imagine what Pteron or Marni or Eyas were doing while Elio was trapped by his obedience and concern. He doesn't hold Pteron's escape against him, now simply wondering if any of his ideas aligned with what was actually happening.
Apparently they did, because -
"Children?!" Lio gasps, mouth falling agape in excitement and surprise. He looks boyish again, wearing delight innocent enough to outshine the gray and red of his still-healing body. "Yes, I am back in Taiga," he says after a beat, taking a moment to consider divulging Lethia and Lilliana and all the tension with Pangea (how he failed is what keeps him from bringing it up).
"Back to your children," Lio chirps, curious. "How'd that happen?"
@[Pteron] is he asking what sex is? is he asking how pteron met aegean? who knows B)
RE: symphonies exploding in the sky | elio - Pteron - 05-28-2020
----------------tell me: who do i run to?
The scars and the confirmation that Elio has returned to Taiga does elicit a brief flash of concern, but it is quashed as Pteron takes another long breath and finds no scent of Reia clinging to his brother. So the red stallion’s injuries are from another source, it seems, and not one that he feels the need to immediately divulge. Pteron understands - children are a far easier topic than many others.
“I’m a bit foggy on the details myself,” the dun stallion admits, rolling his winged shoulders in a casual shrug and speaking in a relaxed tone that does not quite match the wicked look in his olive eyes: “My current theory is that if the sex is good enough, Magic will sometimes give you a child as a trophy.” It is difficult to keep his composure as he says this, but he does so. Elio though, raised by the same woman who had taught Pteron to hide his emotions, could surely see the laughter that pulls his lips taut and dances behind his green eyes.
“I take it that you’ve not been practicing enough,” Pteron continues loftily. “Or is that why you moved to Taiga? You made your way through Loess and needed to find something new?” When he had been Elio’s age, Pteron had done much the same. It does not occur to him that the same might not be so for his younger brother. Elio is as good-looking as the rest of their family, after all, and the scars add a bit of flair (as though he needs it with those bright markings). As he finishes speaking, Pteron chivies Elio’s shoulder with a few playful nips, the mask of somberness falling away quickly.
@[elio]
-- pteron --
RE: symphonies exploding in the sky | elio - elio - 06-16-2020
elio
some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light
Elio emits a brilliant flash of laughter at Pteron's joke. His eyes crinkle with genuine mirth and for just the barest moment, he feels as light as the clouds above. Discomfort sticks irritably where the laughter had just left, a reminder that the gold stallion hardly knows of what earns one a child-trophy.
"I, uh--" Lio stutters when he finally comprehends his brother's question. No, not at all, he wants to snap, feeling the timid man his father's attack created fighting to crawl back into his somber shell. No, the striped stallion had certainly kept to himself, and those that did find his presence were far, far from romantic companions. Elio has spent so long obsessing over his father's absence and curse that the idea of romance just . . . hardly occured to him.
"No, brother, I cannot say I am as charming as you," is what Lio does say, swallowing the frightened animal tearing up his throat. "I've never actually . . . uh . . ." His sentence fades into an awkward laugh. "I've yet to meet someone to catch my eye like that, let's just say," he settles on after a skipped beat, hoping it might save some of his dignity but knowing deep down he'll feel embarassment's burn long after this moment.
"What's it like?" Elio asks after a moment stretched too long by sadness. He frowns, then realizes what he has said, face contorting in horror. "I meant--oh my god. I meant love and children. Not . . . Wow."
@[Pteron] aren't they the cutest brother ever
RE: symphonies exploding in the sky | elio - Pteron - 06-28-2020
----------------tell me: who do i run to?
“You probably talk too much,” he replies to Elio’s excuse that no one has yet caught his eye. “I bet if you just keep your mouth shut you could pull off the tall, dark, and handsome look.”He glances down at the iridescent markings of his brother’s coat, a trait from their father that Pteron had not inherited. “Oh wait, the dark is just mud. I bet a bath would help too. I know Taiga’s coast is cold but Ischia’s only a short flight away.” Pteron knows this quite well, of course, having flown the course for much of his time in the redwood forest. “Come visit Aegean and I in Ischia, and I’ll find a nice nereid for you to meet.”
The quiet that follows is broken by Elio’s question, and Pteron is laughing long before his sibling stammers out a correction. “Great,” he says when he catches his breath, “all of the above are great, I mean.” There is more to say on the topic, of course, especially since Elio had been witness to Pteron’s sham of a marriage to Reia.
“Children are easier when you can actually co-parent,” he adds, referring to his own situation but aware enough of Elio’s own childhood to remain sensitive. “And love is easier without jealousy and possessiveness.”
@[elio]
-- pteron --