[private] wait until you see the new me - Pteron

[Pteron]

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

Pteron has been taught how to be polite since birth. At least, he was taught manners when his mother could find him, and that was only a few of the daylight hours of his youth. The rest of the time he was wherever he wanted to be, often invisible or in the air to avoid detection by his parents. Lepis was the one who scolded him for his unsanctioned forays; Wolfbane was always holding back a smile as he stood just out of her sight. That had made the corrections by his father all the more memorable when they came, but fortunately they were infrequent, for Pteron was not at heart a truly disobedient child.

He's not a disobedient adult either, which has made the experience of being flung unexpectedly into leadership all the more overwhelming. Pteron has always been told what to do, and the idea of being the one to give the orders to anyone other than the soldiers under his command is a nearly foreign concept. He has managed to make it through the last few months without ever cracking, and most of the time he is amazed by that. Some combination of riding his mother’s coattails, being propped up by his wife - the Dragon’s Daughter -, and his own self-use of his happiness projection and trips to Ischia when that ran dry. It won’t last forever, some part of him knows, and his aborted trip this morning was yet another failed attempt to free himself of his burden.

The mare has blue-grey eyes like his mother, Pteron notices. Had he forgotten them, he wonders, or had he just not noticed? There were other things to pay attention to: like not jostling her wing. Physical pain is certainly not an unfamiliar sensation to the tobiano pegasus, but he still shudders unconsciously at the memory of their trip to the Brilliant Pampas. The odd angle of her wing, and the way it just stayed broken like that and did not knit and tug itself back together. He summons a bit of happiness to cover that discomfort, and smiles at the offering of her name.

“Vastra,” he repeats with. “That’s a pretty name. I’m glad it wasn’t lost forever.” She thanks him, and Pteron grins. “Consider yourself in my debt, then.” he follows with a roguish grin that he has inherited from his father. “We can call it even if you tell me what you’ve been up to since I left you in the Pampas. Did you find your family? Where you live?” That she has a family Pteron never doubts, and surely she has a home as well. Pteron, loathe the forest more each day though he may, knows that it is his home.

-- pteron --

@[Vastra]