fifteen flares inside those ocean eyes; aquaria

[Pteron]

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

“It would have been the right thing to do.” He repeats, emphasis on what he worries Aquaria thinks too inconsequential. Or at least less important than whatever it is she means by actually wanting to be with her. What is he now but with her? They’d certainly both been present in the moment previously, when he’d pressed kisses along the back of her neck. And now she will hardly look at him, and her words are spoken through tightly pressed lips.

Pteron sighs, because he is not sure what else to say that he has not already tried, and it is good that he does not. Aquaria has more to say, and it is confirmation of what he had begun to suspect after her sudden departure from their most recent encounter. Pteron had never been especially good at making his actions match his words; for though he has told Aquaria that his heart lies elsewhere, the child that grows within her is proof that his body does not.

When she pulls away, the pegasus does not follow. Instead, he watches as she stands, a pale figure against the dark sky, the surf dancing at her hooves. The expression that she wears is brittle, and the edges of it are as sharp as what she has to say. Curiously unscathed, Pteron frowns. “Aegean knows about you.” He tells her. “About us. He knows where I am.” Pteron’s affection for Aquaria has never been something he has hidden from anyone but Reia and his mother – the first for safety, the second for sanity. He is proud to refer to Cormorant as his son, and the same will be true of any child Aquaria might choose to have with him in the future – if she ever decides that distance is not what she wants.

“We will stay there,” he concedes after a long look at the horizon, where stars are starting to appear against the navy sky. “I would enjoy your company, if you choose to visit us there.” It’s a small olive branch, perhaps so fragile that she will ignore it entirely. But he has to try. “But if not, I will continue to do what I have promised Hal, and train him and any others who have an interest in learning to spar.”

@[Aquaria]

-- pteron --