[private] i've never fallen from quite this high; Aquaria

[Pteron]

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

“I wouldn’t want to watch a shark eat its breakfast either.” Pteron replies. “And you don’t know anything about my needs Aquaria,” the stallion growls under his breath, keeping both the sound and the emotion in it from Halcyon as best he can. It is a wasted effort. The tiger cub is far too engrossed in his meal to pay either of the adutls any mind. Mama doesn’t look frightened, and Halcyon knows that she can take care of herself. He hears her mention sharks and orcas, and wonders if perhaps she is telling the stranger how she is much more dangerous than any of them. He forgets this as he tears and swallows, lost in the salmon.

Meanwhile, Pteron has stepped away from Aquaria... He does not settle for the little distance that she puts between them by striding toward her child, instead choosing to widen it further by walking forward himself. He stops only at the river’s edge, his hooves clicking on the stones. She wants to blame him for unnecessary suffering? For taking more than he needs? Pteron scoffs, and kicks a pebble with one front hoof. It flies a disappointingly short distance and lands in the shallow water with a soft plunk. Pteron stifles a snort, a rather impressive show of restraint for the emotions that course through him.

He shouldn’t have come here.

Pteron had known that the moment he’d landed, and yet he’d continued anyway. There was never chance that this trip to Ischia would end well, and that is because it will invariably end. He will either leave and bring dragonfire to the island when his wife finds him, or stay and be hunted down by dragonfire on the island when his wife discovers he is missing. Coming here had been a mistake, and Pteron can’t see any consequence that ends with less than flame and destruction. He’d been selfish, had wanted to forget reality for just a little while. Ischia has always let him do that; the tropical island and Aquaria have always melted his worries away.

The glance over his shoulder, back at where Halcyon is worrying the silver tail (the only part of the fish he hasn’t consumed) and rolling around on the beach.

There is no logic to the envy he feels, but such is the way of emotion. Jealously does not need logic to sprout, or to grow in the tobiano stallion at the thought of Halcyon’s father. Aquaria is his. As soon as Pteron recognizes the thought mentally pales. He sounds like Reia, he realizes, primal and animalistic. He’s better than that. He’s made a mistake in coming here, but that does not mean he should make it worse.

He crosses the swath of riverbank between them, stepping carefully over the stones until he stands on the damp jungle soil once more.

“I’m sorry,” he says, an apology in his somber tone of voice. “You’re right.”

“You were right about everything,” Pteron adds, “from the very beginning. I shouldn’t have led you on. I’m sorry about everything.” He wants to reach out again, but knows better. He is weak, and one touch would not be enough. Pteron is so desperate to feel happiness (even temporary happiness) that he is already stretched to his limits. The emotion that he reproduces and reinforces in his own mind is held firmly, but he knows it will spill out if he loses even the slightest focus. “I’ll go, if you want me to.”

-- pteron --

@[Aquaria]