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

[Pteron]

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

It was not so long ago that Pteron promised his wife that he was keeping his marriage vows. Reia had stared daggers at him across the downy feathers of their newborn daughter’s wings while he protested an innocence that she did not believe for a moment. Until now today, he’d kept his word. He’d suggested to Aena and Sequinn that they finally take the tour of Beqanna they’d always talked about, told Aegean to keep clear of the redwoods, and stayed firmly on the mainland and very far from Ischia. There has been nothing and no one but Reia and responsibility for six months now, and the weight was growing unbearable.

It falls away when she leans against him. Pteron exhales a long breath. He pushes gently at the shimmering fin of her mane, very gently but with enough of a smile on his blue mouth to suggest he is trying to be playful. He is savoring what it feels like to have no cares. It takes a moment to fully sink in, and by the time it does the nereid is telling him that it’s time to check on Halcyon. Pteron shifts away but does press his mouth firmly against her jawline before pulling back to look through the trees to where the cub has managed to drag a decently sized salmon in to the shallows.

“I don’t know how you manage it,” Pteron says, gesturing toward the waterlogged boy as the pair make their way to the river’s edge. “Adarra is just a normal pegasus and she’s hard enough to keep in line.” If his daughter were able to become a tiger, he knows that he would be in over his head. Keeping her from being ruled by instinct is already a hard task, adding the ability to become an apex predator would make it all but impossible.

“You do it well though,” the dun stallion adds with a cheeky glance over his shoulder. The next words are quiet, not enough for Halcyon to hear over the gurgling water. “MILFs aren’t usually my type, but I could make an exception for you.” Pteron winks and then immediately turns all of his attention to the tiger wrestling his red-sided salmon up onto the riverbank.

“That’s going to be his breakfast?” Pteron asks incredulously. It’s a large fish, with a silvery tail flopping weakly against Halcyon’s white chin. “Can’t he eat, like, seaweed or something?” There’s a barely hidden expression of disgust on the pinto’s face (though only where Halcyon cannot see him) as he looks from Aquaria to the fish and back again. Knowing that predators eat prey is one thing, but watching the life seep from the salmon’s eyes right at his very hooves is something else entirely. Pteron is pacifist to his very core, it seems.

“I think I’m gonna puke.”

-- pteron --

@[Aquaria]