[open] a house with no mirrors

[Pteron]

and since you’re the only one that matters,----------------
----------------tell me: who do i run to?

Pteron is watching Nashua while his son regains his terrestrial shape, and when he glances back again to meet the boy’s eyes, he finds that Torrent’s sunmarked face is higher than it had been earlier. The stallion smiles, pleased as ever by the capabilities of his youngest son, and barely refrains from leaning over to rustle the boy’s forelock. He’s not a baby any more, Pteron reminds himself. The pegasus still must remind himself that Halcyon is a father himself now and not the small orange puffling he’d once been, but he is much improved with practiced years of fatherhood.

There has been a long pause, and only when the blue-haired stallion realizes it does he look back at Nashua, just in time for the other to ask confirmation of his identity. Pteron gives it with a nod, his olive eyes warm and bright. He listens as the golden horse speaks, and is struck once more by the quick way time seems to pass outside of Ischia. Much as his children feel forever young, so to have his siblings, and yet this is an adult here for his kingdom, and not a boy on an adventure. The smile on Pteron’s face soften slightly, in reminiscence rather than sadness, but perks up again at the other’s request for a drink.

“Why don’t you show your uncle to the stream,” Pteron suggests, “and I’ll see if I can find your mother?” He phrases it carefully, trusting Torrent with this task though remaining half-wary of this sibling-stranger. Gale had met him, Pteron knows, and had not seen anything worth warning the eldest brother about. Still, Pteron is cautious, and he slips into his own invisibility. He will go to find Aquaria as he had said, but the rapid disappearance does leave the possibility that he remains to supervise.

@[Nashua] @[Torrent]

-- pteron --