fifteen flares inside those ocean eyes; aquaria

[Pteron]

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

He cannot quite catch her gaze, but he does not stop trying. When Aquaria looks out over the ocean, Pteron traces with his eyes the bold lines of her proud face, and then with his lips the soft place where her neck meets her shoulder. Even without her nereid glamour, the stallion finds it hard to keep his eyes away from her. Aquaria has always been the loveliest mare Pteron has laid eyes on.

Motherhood and time have changed her from the bright-eyed girl he’d first met to this woman in her prime. Pteron finds them both equally alluring, and if she lets him will show her again how he has missed her, but if not continues to gently caress what of her he can reach. Her tone is as faraway as Tephran volcano, as though she still holds herself apart from him, and Pteron pauses the gentle circle he is drawing on her back to regard her more carefully.

She has been avoiding him, Aquaria admits. Or rather, had been avoiding Aegean.

Pteron had suspected as much after her rapid departure from their first meeting, but he had never been able to confirm. Since she has not kept her children from him, Pteron had known she was not angry with him, and had been content to let her come to him in her own time. Now that he is here, in Ischia, he no longer feels the rush of passing time. There is time for patience now, even against the edge of frustration.

“I think you would enjoy each other’s company.” Pteron replies. “I find it hard to believe that my two very best friends would not get along swimmingly.” Having amused himself with the pun, Pteron nudges gently at Aquaria’s finned mane. Aegean is well aware of Pteron’s relationship with the nereid and of the children they share. Children, Pteron thinks, because having seen Cormorant – even from a distance – there is no doubting that the boy is his. This reminds the dun pegasus of something that had troubled him, and he pulls away to better see Aquaria when he asks:

“Did you hide Cormorant from me when I visited the very last time?” He means the last visit before his absence, the last visit before he had faced his demons dragon, when Aquaria had given him the courage he had long lacked. It had been near the end of winter or early spring (the days blur together this long past), but he is sure the nereid had shown no signs of pregnancy and there’d been no newborn foal. But Cormorant was surely foaled that spring, and the mystery has long puzzled him. He wants her to deny his question of her, and even shakes his head as he says it, indicating his own disbelief. But what then, is the explanation?

@[Aquaria]

-- pteron --